Dr Arnoud Arps - Memori Melompat: Jumping Memory, Popular Culture, and the Indonesian War of Independence

IAS Residential Fellow Dr Arnoud Arps delivers a seminar on their research -

This seminar uses Indonesian popular culture (film, historical re-enactment, and online music videos) about the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-1949) in its aim to understand ‘colonial histories’ from the decolonial non-Western perspective of the formerly colonised. In this seminar, I would like to critically scrutinise the idea that memory travels freely and discuss how a straightforward mobility of cultural memory does not apply to every local context. Memory in Indonesia travels temporarily, briefly, and not far. As a demonstrative semantic device, the Indonesian term memori melompat (jumping memory) signifies cultural memory formation beyond the West. It emphasises that Indonesian popular culture about the war is indicative of the need for a local reframing of existing memory concepts to better understand contemporary engagements with the colonial past.

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