Rieke casts her philosopher's stone

Emmy Fitri, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Kekerasan Negara Menular ke Masyarakat
(State violence infects the people)
Rieke Diah Pitaloka
pp 210
Galang Press

The latest work of Rieke Diah Pitaloka should have been titled "the study of Hannah Arendt's analysis on the origin of violence and the banality of evil" and not Kekerasan Negara Menular ke Masyarakat, or State violence infects the people.

Kekerasan is Rieke's second book after a poem anthology Renungan Kloset (Toilet musings).

Rieke -- a popular television star and stage actress -- wastes chapters exploring Arendt's thoughts on the political philosopher's synthesis on violence and banality of evil. She could have finished at her first and second chapters where she permeates into why totalitarianism is always actual.

In applying this theme to Indonesia, Rieke cleverly limits her focus to the New Order regime and its major crimes, including the aborted September 1965 coup or G30S, the 1960s mass killings, the Aceh atrocities and later, the spree of violence in other regions like Poso and Ambon.

No one will argue that Rieke supports the theory that a totalitarian government resorts to use violence and logically, the violence will spread to the people as they are exposed to this extensive use of violence.

That is all. Everyone knows that totalitarian leaders, including the country's second president Soeharto, assume they are the patriarchs of their people -- figures to look up to. As such, their methods of maintaining control over the people and retaining power are the first things the people will ape in their lives at the micro level.

Borrowing Arendt's analysis on totalitarianism and the origin of violence, Rieke brings readers to believe this is the only true explanation as to why people resort to violence and therefore, the state is responsible for this phenomenon.

Arendt was a daring philosopher, and usually drew upon emerging cases for her theories, including the well-known Eichmann case that led to her theory of the banality of evil.

Who is the "Eichmann" in Rieke's application of this theory at home? Is it those who are behind bars for petty crimes? Corruptors? Military generals or the soldiers involved in the killing sprees in Tanjung Priok, Irian Jaya, East Timor, Aceh or Maluku? Or is it those who went on a rampage -- looting, killing and raping -- during the May riots?

It is almost impossible to piece together the scattered, abundant incidences of violence in Indonesia in which the state was directly or indirectly involved. The same goes for the myriad cases involving people and violence in their their daily lives. The first step in following Arendt's example slipped here, as Rieke does not identify a single case to support her theory.

Even in the epilogue, she failed to come up with a clear explanation justifying her lengthy discussion on Arendt and its relation to what has happened here.

If only she had stopped exploring and analyzing Arendt's theory, Kekerasan could have been her milestone, a masterpiece that could have earned her a postgraduate degree in philosophy from the prestigious University of Indonesia.

While Arendt examined the historical and social forces that had a great deal of influence in the political realm, Rieke busies herself with juggling theories (to parry with or challenge Arendt's) and forgets to explore her own thematic context.

In speaking of violence and state violence in Indonesia, Rieke could simply take an historical view on the nation's establishment.

Oddly, however, Rieke doesn't challenge the popular knowledge that, long before the New Order, the people of this country were closely connected to violence and that Indonesia has traced a long bloody course through its history.

People are exposed daily to violence -- both vertical and horizontal -- while the country's bloody history extends backward in time to traverse the expansive and imperialist spirit of the ancient kingdoms and empires of Java and Sumatra, the independence struggle, the 1960s and the ensuing bloodbath, and the sectarian and communal conflicts across the archipelago through the late 1990s to the present.

Her accomplished study of Arendt's theory would become ever richer if Rieke really invests some extra effort to expand her thesis to be more versatile and down to earth to Indonesia's context.

However, one must be brave to light a candle to reflect upon the country's past. Our history is at times too long, winding and painful to look at, and particular episodes perhaps too shameful even to acknowledge. In her study of philosophy, Rieke might discover one or two theories that apply to the Indonesian context, but why not be more pragmatic and allow the people see their painful and appalling past in a more bona fide approach?