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’.

Mahatma Gandhi experienced a skin color based incident in South Africa. But he also once considered ‘black’ people savages. Why?

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.

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.

A Response to the UFOs Sidelines and an idea to prevent general election frauds.

Freedom is always fragile. People always need the will to fight for it, whether in Ancient Greece or in Mariupol in the 21st century.

Navid Kermani, the German writer of Iranian descent, calls Fakruddin Attar’s Book of Suffering the “darkest poetry ever written by a human being.”

In the conflict and competition between ‘left’ and ‘right’, what came to the fore was not embittered ideologs or tough guerillas, but the skills of political campaign managers, the competence of advertising bureaus, the canny display of clothing styles, handsome faces and slim bodies.

There was no coup d’état on September 30. Or on October 1, 1965. What happened was more confusing than that—and still, there is no fitting word to name it. But after that day, the Indonesian Communist Party collapsed.

Ambiguity—others might call it diversity—is being gradually suppressed. Civilization is changing. In capitalist societies, in a life system where science, high technology and administration shape people’s lives, there is no place for ambiguity.

Tat Twam Asi. Schrödinger viewed the universe as one. Randomness and plurality are illusions.

As seen from today, Isaac Newton’s physics are indeed simple. His classic physics views reality like a huge machine that moves forward with time, in changing configurations following fixed laws, like Newton’s three laws of movement.

The pandemic has made me—and not only me—anxious about space and sensitive to distance. Maybe this is what the pandemic is shaping, slowly but surely: with these months-long rules about ‘keeping distance’, we are getting used to negotiating with space.

George Washington was respected and praised not only because of his role in the war of independence, but also because he seemed to be someone who did not want political power for himself.

President Biden’s decision to withdraw forces from Afghanistan is – as when Saigon fell to Vietnamese forces – a sign of failure. Meaning, even the state with the strongest economic, technological and military power is not an unlimited force.

The faces on the billboards are really just phantoms of the desire for recognition and the ambition for power – a soft version of the face of the king about to seize lands.

Under a regime that declares a constant state of war, citizens are placed within a prison-like Jeremy Bentham’s ideal construction, the panopticon: on its high tower are the eyes of Argus Panoptes.

AI, artificial intelligence, is both exciting and worrying—and that is our state right now. It is often observed that the more super-intelligent these machines are, the less autonomy we have. We can no longer call ourselves decision-making subjects. It could spell the end of individuality. 

Given this atmosphere, it is understandable why Toeti Heraty entered the field of philosophy and paid particular attention to the person as subject and their world. Her thesis was titled Aku dalam Budaya (I in Culture).

There are not many strong and consistent thinkers and art philosophy writers who are also stalwart artists. Writing and painting go hand in hand complementing each other and adding colors to Goenawan Mohamad’s busy days. 

By S. Malela Mahargasari

In Murakami’s story, the first question that arises is: are names personal possessions? Where do we get them from?

In Bergman’s film, The Seventh Seal, Block does not seem worried that it will all be pointless. He is returning from war, he has travelled through plague territory. He has seen how easily lives are lost. The thin knight with the tense expression is anxious not because of Death, but because God is silent. He has found no basis to his faith. Faith is a torment.

Maxime Rodinson is an atheist. But he is not one to shut himself off with arrogance as do the ‘new atheists’. He sees that “…Muhammad did really experience sensory phenomena translated into words and phrases and that he interpreted them as messages from the Supreme Being.”

The dalang creates an aesthetic construct with layers of components. Voice, sound, diction, intonation and rhythm interconnect when he describes a scene, creates dialogue (with different personalities), introduces humor, makes Bhima move, and moves two wayang in combat.

Like power, noble values are usually associated with heroes – which is one reason people build monuments. These values—nobility of spirit, courage and so on—have no fixed place. The fixed is not in anyone’s heart.

The gods make unnecessary laws because they do not know mortality. A king on earth makes laws, even if they are not good because he is human—he must protect life that is contingent. 

Titles, which are considered to be symbols of recognition, are actually not completely dialogic in nature. Titles are determined after authorities exist to assess a person’s achievement. There have to be judges whose word is not doubted: universities, palaces, or customary leaders. 

Until at least the early 17th century in the Turkish Ottoman empire, the successor was not determined by birth rank. The principle of succession was brutal: the strongest won. It was brutal competition.

As we know, blackboards are where teachers write lessons and students pay attention. This simple technology facilitates the giving and receiving of knowledge. The blackboard cannot be separated from the teacher. It is their first and last sign, like the flag in a scene of defeat. 

Justice, the formulation of which is always unfinished, constantly produces thrilling stories, grand ideals, strong desires, and violence.

Historians note how Napoleon managed to change France, Europe and other parts of the world. After the French Revolution ended the feudal order, he, a revolutionary army officer, emerged as ‘Consul’ from the political ruins.

Yes, death and cruelty do not disappear because of One Thousand and One Nights, but life can be better because of stories and their tellers.

The ‘Malay world’ in this novel is not a closed, impenetrable world. In this novel at least, that kind of world does not become ‘local color’. Usually in literary criticism, what is called ‘local color’ is something identifiable—because it is whole, homogenous and distinctive: descriptions of landscape, customs and local dialects used in the story.

Kartini’s language, the language of a 20-year-old, is like a storm, although not immediately evident. It is not linear, or flat. Hyperbole arises in many sections, particularly when she mentions something (or someone) that she likes. Exclamation marks abound.

The coast is the world to be viewed, with curiosity and wonder, from a distance—from the outside.

Flesh, eyes, skin—the physical and the psychic—have shaped the language of racist violence. In Indonesia, too.

Now Covid-19 can remind us that intimacy with the flesh is the same as simple gratitude when one is healthy, and taking an easy attitude towards pain and death.

The past does not stop. Over and again, we fail to recapture it in memory. Of course, we have history books and think that this is where the past is recorded as memory. But memory is the product of the present, and the present is not a station where memories pause, unchanging. This is why we often try to recall the past in other ways.

His diary is not a monologue, and not a soliloquy: even in the narrowest of cells and in the most cruel oppression—particularly in Nusabambangan, the camp that was actually even worse than Buru—his voice was one of many. 

The phrase "the desert of the real" conveys that ‘the real’ is the destroyed world, gloomy, fantastical, inexplicable through language, especially when viewed from the ordered world. In Indonesia, we are actually in that ‘desert’: with incessant floods, landslides and earthquakes.