Dancing on the mass grave: Cultural reconstruction post Indonesian massacres

This writing analyzes how the post-1965 cultural reconstruction in Indonesia functioned as a form of domination to maintain control over women's cultural identity formation and how that has been reflected within performing arts in Indonesia. I will focus on how state narratives of the 1965-1966 massacres were reproduced in the society, both through sustained reproduction of a "fabricated memory" and through the suppression of any contesting or dissenting forms of memory by intimidation. In an effort to trace the interventions of the government into the lives and memories of civilians, we can explore their treatment of the female dancing body, which has been traditionally viewed as outside the realm of politics. I will examine state interventions into cultural practices to further discuss how state terror has been encoded in the female body. I address the state's appropriation of the female body during reconstruction as a manipulation of memory and will emphasize the paradox inherent within their response: on the one hand, demonizing and marginalizing the female dancing body and on the other hand offering a refined, state aligned body as an ideal representation of the nation. The performance of "Indonesian Dance" as a reconstruction of the identity of the nation state contributes to cultural and institutional amnesia of the historical violence and clearly systematizes erasure and the production of "replicas." Therefore, I would like to argue that the presence of a "nationalized dance form" functions locally as a form of violence to the body, and when presented on the global stage as part of the multiculturalism project becomes an extension of that violence, while solidifying the erasure and amnesia project of the Nation State.