Penyair, esais, pelukis. Catatan Pinggir telah terhimpun dalam 14 jilid. Buku terbarunya, antara lain, Albert Camus: Tubuh dan Sejarah, Eco dan Iman, Estetika Hitam, Dari Sinai sampai Alghazali.
Konten
Eliezer
You were involved, Richard, but I do not want the State to punish you. You have changed. You were the one who revealed this scandal, whatever your motive might have been.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 30 January 2023
The Past
History seems to want to close wounds. As though wanting to wipe trauma, the past begs for forgiveness.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 23 January 2023
The Shadow
A Hans Christian Andersen’s story of a shadow that transformed into human.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 16 January 2023
Sambo
In the The Drama of Sambo, it turns out that one important element in democracy (often forgotten) can actually be upheld: the armed forces, which are given the right to monopoly of violence, bow before those who hold authority without arms.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 9 January 2023
December 25
Birth is the beginning as yet untouched by history. When it symbolizes the arrival of a teaching, then that teaching can be assumed to be still ‘innocent’—as yet untested by interpretation, conflict, denial and violence.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 2 January 2023
The Keeper
Soccer is the globalization of capital and internationalization of teamwork. Boundaries of nation, citizenship and religion are no longer relevant. Money is the reformer that increasingly often shifts previously revered values.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 26 December 2022
The Criminal Code
Sex and love operate in the private world, in an area that cannot be scrutinized by ulema, pastors, village heads or the criminal police.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 19 December 2022
Branding
Among political 'analysts', the word “branding” often has negative connotations. The extravagant G20 meeting held in Bali has been mocked as nothing more than ‘branding’, President Jokowi style.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 12 December 2022
Bees
They are the ‘petite bourgeoisie’. Leftists mock them as fence-sitters. Rightists of feudal persuasion look down on them. In the Javanese poem the Wulangreh, cherished by aristocrats, they are described as having ‘merchant temperaments’.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 5 December 2022
Mall
There is no equity of pleasure and greed, but there is equity in the skin cancer and rising sea levels that swallow islands as the earth warms and the Poles melt.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 28 November 2022
Kherson
People say that in the past, powerful nations—as the holders of hegemony—were able to keep international interaction orderly. But these days, powerful nations cannot always regulate the behavior of weak nations.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 21 November 2022
Skin
Mahatma Gandhi experienced a skin color based incident in South Africa. But he also once considered ‘black’ people savages. Why?
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 14 November 2022
Prophecies
The ancient literati used apocalyptic pattern in their prophecies of social and political shocks.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 7 November 2022
My Language
On October 28, 1928, a group of young men daringly chose ‘bahasa Indonesia’—the new name that transgressed boundaries of ‘bahasa Melayu’—as the unifying language. At that moment, they showed the power of hybridity.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 31 October 2022
Teresa
Democracy happens because the ignored and belittled rise up to affirm themselves. When Don Quixote was published in 1605, democracy did not exist in daily life. But Cervantes introduced his times to Sancho Panza, an illiterate farm laborer who wanted something impossible: to become governor.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 24 October 2022
Woman
In the story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu from ancient Iraq, that is more ancient than the holy texts, it is woman—her body and soul—who is the savior. But in several Abrahamic religions, women do not have an equal ‘space’ with men.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 17 October 2022
Giosuè
La Vita è Bella cannot help but inspire. Maybe because we are living at the end of the 20th century with a number of questions that haunt us both before and after we enter the cinema: in a world with millions of Giosuès, is it true that life, also beauty and cruelty, are in the end a matter of how they are interpreted for us?
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 10 October 2022
Pararaton
Power never exists in perfect form. It is rather the sign of something lacking, but it is effective because it produces main actors who can differ from one another, yet be of one desire: to overcome that sense of lack.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 3 October 2022
Hyperion
Hyperion, the tallest tree on earth, is not alone. Its arrogance is the fruit of fantasy.
Sidelines Edisi : Monday, 26 September 2022
Damar Wulan
In Sandhyakala Ning Majapahit, Damar Wulan is troubled as he confronts philosophical questions about the meaning of life, why he must die, and whether so-called good and bad exist.