Gender, Resistance and Transnational Memories of Violent Conflicts

Pauline Stoltz

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030410940
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030410957
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book investigates the importance of gender and resistance to silences and denials concerning human rights abuses and historical injustices in narratives on transnational memories of three violent conflicts in Indonesia. Transnational memories of violent conflicts travel abroad with politicians, postcolonial migrants and refugees. Starting with the Japanese occupation of Indonesia (1942–1945), the war of independence (1945–1949) and the genocide of 1965, the volume analyses narratives in Dutch and Indonesian novels in relation to social and political narratives (1942–2015). By focusing on gender and resistance from both Indonesian and Dutch, transnational and global perspectives, the author provides new perspectives on memories of the conflicts that are relevant to research on transitional justice and memory politics. 

© The Author(s) 2020

P. StoltzGender, Resistance and Transnational Memories of Violent ConflictsMemory Politics and Transitional Justicehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41095-7_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction: Gender, Resistance and Transnational Memories

Pauline Stoltz¹

(1)

Department of Politics and Society, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

Pauline Stoltz

Email: [email protected]

Keywords

GenderResistanceTransnational memoriesViolent conflict

End Abstract

It was his war, not mine. Not yet.

[Het was zijn oorlog, niet de mijne. Nog niet.]

(Birney, 2016, p. 278, transl. PS)

In this study, I take my starting point in the struggles over narratives about memories of political violence during the Indonesian war of independence (1945–1949) and relate these to the struggles during two other violent conflicts. The memories of the war of independence are often related, in both Indonesia and the Netherlands, to memories of the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies during WWII (1942–1945). This is not strange, since these conflicts merged into each other overnight, when the Japanese surrendered, and Indonesian nationalists declared independence from Dutch colonial rule only a few days later. The Dutch refusal to accept this declaration extended the period of violence for another four years (Cribb, 2010). Moreover, individual and collective memories of these two violent conflicts relate in turn to memories of the genocide that took place in Indonesia in 1965, only a few years later. This link to the past is especially noticeable in Indonesia, but it has also influenced contemporary international and transnational relations between Indonesia and other parts of the world, including the Netherlands. Transitional justice measures targeted at the memories of this genocide also remain few (see McGregor, Melvin, & Pohlman, 2018; Wieringa & Katjasungkana, 2019).

I am especially concerned with the resistance to denials of political and moral responsibility and the transnational processes that have influenced the narrative struggles over memories of political violence (including sexual violence) during these three conflicts. We can observe continued and recurrent resistance to denials of such responsibility in both the Netherlands and Indonesia as well as, to a certain extent, in other parts of the world. Better knowledge about gender, intersectional power relations and social inequalities can enhance our understanding of the political strategies developed by individuals and groups to resist silences in order to gain more knowledge about what has happened and address the denials of responsibility by governments and other political actors in order to obtain justice and equality.

What is puzzling is why such resistance is unsuccessful, despite a growing acceptance of international norms on transitional justice since the 1940s, including norms on how to address gender in post-conflict transformations (as codified in, e.g., UNSCR 1325). Today, international actors such as the European Union and the United Nations are putting pressure on national actors to include transitional justice measures in any transformation process after violent conflicts. This is not an exception, but rather a rule, and includes established democracies as well as authoritarian regimes in both the Global North and the Global South (see Winter, 2014).

The aim of this study is to map intersectional inequalities, especially as these relate to gender, ‘race’ and related categories, in the contexts of narratives of individual, collective and transnational memories of the three conflicts. I investigate how these inequalities have allowed injustices to occur, how the legacies of these injustices in people’s memories continue to influence contemporary inequalities, and finally how these inequalities and injustices influence resistance and projects of redress and recognition, or new cycles of denial. More specifically, the aim of the study is to investigate how gender and resistance to silences and denials are relevant in personal, social and strategic narratives of transnational memories of the three violent conflicts in Indonesia (1942–2015).

Theoretically, I engage with research in the fields of memory politics and transitional justice (see Chapter 2; for general introductions to these fields, see Buckley-Zistel, Koloma Beck, Braun, & Mieth, 2014; Tota & Hagen, 2015). I will argue that there are assumptions in these fields of research that impose limitations on the use we can make of them in the study of gender and resistance in memories of violent conflicts. I suggest that we address these limitations by using transnational, gender and intersectional approaches, such as those found in feminist and postcolonial research (Chakrabarty, 2008; Guha, 1998; Krishna, 2009; Mohanty, 2002; Spivak, 1988; Yuval-Davis, 2011) and in research on transnational memories (Assmann, 2014; Assmann & Conrad, 2010). I will combine new theoretical understandings of gender (including masculinities, intersectional and queer theories) with theories on resistance (Lilja, Baaz, Schulz, & Vinthagen, 2017). This includes how resistance relates to the political dynamics of emotions such as empathy and anger and emotional agency after trauma (Hemmings, 2012; Hutchison, 2016; Pedwell, 2014).

Processes of representation play a key role in making traumatic events, such as violent conflicts, collectively meaningful. Traumatic encounters might seem individual—because trauma isolates individuals—but trauma can also acquire wider societal and political importance, or, as is the case here, it may not. Trauma can affect those who surround and bear witness to an event and, in doing so, it can shape political communities. At the same time, there is no guarantee of how this process may unfold or whether communities share emotional understandings of a tragedy. There are circumstances in which communities may understand memories of traumatic events and histories in ways that resonate with shared, culturally ascribed notions of how to behave after bereavement and loss and when to show solidarity. In other words, when communities share an understanding of how to work through trauma and they have a common purpose for what they will obtain, then this politics of emotions helps a community to move on (Hutchison, 2016, pp. 3–4). Here, these circumstances apparently do not exist.

One of the main arguments I make in this study is that we need to pay closer attention to the complexities of the gendered silences, denials and emotions of victims, perpetrators and observers, when we want to understand instances of resistance to the political and moral denial of responsibility for human rights abuses and historical injustices. Another argument is that we need to take seriously what happens in transnational space in relation to the travelling of memories. The politics of location, including how memories are sent and received and how emotions relating t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction: Gender, Resistance and Transnational Memories
• 2. Globalization, Intersectional Inequalities and Narrative Struggles
• 3. Transitional Justice Norms: the UN, Indonesia and the Netherlands
• 4. Silence, Violence and Gendered Resistance
• 5. Masculinities, Intersectionality and Transnational Memories
• 6. Narrating the Nation and Queering Transitional Justice
• 7. Denial, Hope and Transnational Affective Relations
• Back Matter