Category: History Sejarah
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phase eight; for now
“What kind of history do I want to write?” is a constant question I’ve asked since day zero of my graduate studies in the US, knowing that I would turn my intellectual gear from policy analysis to history. It’s an inquiry about method and form, about questions I want to answer, all the things about…
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phase seven; a call
Thursday morning in mid-December: a sudden call from a hospital. I was in my office, talking and having a casual discussion with Sofyan and Ridha about politics, dissertations, and everything else in-between. I didn’t pick up the call right away. I quickly sighed. The last time they called me, they moved an appointment (which I…
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phase six; telltale
An artful life sojourned through a cliché: a young kid from an Old Town once tried to make staging theaters out of the world yet failed because their economy was just too cruel. Later, after two decades, a friend asked: “what would you do if you can?” “Maybe theater; a dying art in this country.…
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phase five; come on to
Weeks in-between spring and summer were bright; most times dull. I keep contracting my own deadline. I’m not hard on myself. I know I wanna do more things, but I’m just tired all the time. I already have half of a draft and whatever. Should I celebrate small things? I don’t wanna. I keep refusing…
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phase four; pacing
I kissed her goodbye a thousand times; and yet the gaze still sees her as part of me. It doesn’t matter anymore what I call myself. I can only write. Out of disaffection because what I have right now is responsibility to finish, to think, to answer, to sit with the past always for the…
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phase three; keep trying history
for they who write history for they who make history for all of us,who are and will be history memory I sat with Mbak Anna. It was in Yogya, last year. I visited some good people there as I tried to find a place of collaboration where I can share my question. I always respect…
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phase two; ready
I went to the Netherlands with a broken heart. Anxiety of traveling. The unfinished grief from visa shenanigans. Long distance relationships with my loved ones. My best friend K in Amsterdam gave me a room to weep and a corner in the kitchen to watch her baby child and occasionally zone out. At night, I…
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hold and held
A friend teased my responses from Gencontrolz roundtable on reproduction and care labor. “I want to say ‘no’ to all your questions.” I giggled. He knows my impulse really well; how my response to Fai’s, Michelle’s, and Phuong Anh’s prompts is not really an explanation, nor an answer. It’s questions. More and more questions. As…
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phase one; not yet
The tip of my fingers smells funny. The old papers give marks. The past sticks on the surface of my skin. Someone I never know had touched those pages, binding them, carrying them, until they arrived in the hands of librarians and stayed on the shelves for decades. They put stamp, catalog number, enforcing the…
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Indonesia’s History, Annotated
I presented some parts of the essay at the 24th Cornell SEAP Graduate Student Conference (De)Constructing Southeast Asia under the title “Feeling Strange, Feeling Home: An Annotation of Indonesian History.” Along the way, I feel like to stress the subtitle more because it was through bibliographical annotation that I develop my way and form of…
Nik Setiadarma 