Ghosts of the new order: haunting, historical denial, and the politics of unfinished justice in Indonesian fiction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.67490/ijpl.v1i1.1039Keywords:
archival silence, haunting, Indonesian fiction, memory politics, unfinished justiceAbstract
Background: Post-authoritarian Indonesia remains marked by unresolved memories of New Order violence, where official acknowledgement has not fully addressed cultural silence, stigma, disappearance, and deferred justice. Objective: This study examines how Indonesian fiction represents haunting, historical denial, and unfinished justice as interrelated narrative structures rather than separate thematic concerns. Method: Using qualitative close reading, episode-based coding, spectral motif analysis, denial–archive mapping, and ethical witnessing analysis, this study analyzes selected Indonesian novels and short fiction alongside scholarly and contextual materials. Results: Findings show that spectral return is concentrated in absent bodies, recurring memories, haunted spaces, fractured testimony, material traces, inherited stigma, and suspended mourning. Historical denial appears through euphemistic displacement, silenced testimony, missing archives, stigmatized identity, managed forgetting, displaced blame, and premature reconciliation. Unfinished justice is represented through refusal of closure, ethical witnessing, family recognition, delayed truth, postmemory inheritance, failed return, and moral indictment of impunity. Implication: This study argues that Indonesian fiction functions as a critical archive of cultural memory without being reduced to legal evidence or historical documentation. Novelty: This study advances post-authoritarian literary criticism by reading haunting as a methodological lens for connecting archival absence, narrative disturbance, and the politics of unfinished justice in Indonesian fiction.
Downloads
References
[1] A. A. Ilma, "The nation's unfinished dead: Haunting, archival silence, and the politics of memory in post-authoritarian Indonesian novels," Indones. J. Polit. Lit. Stud., vol. 1, no. 2, 2026.
[2] P. Jamilah, "Constructing the nation: Literary representations of Indonesian nationalism in Pramoedya Ananta Toer's works," Indones. J. Polit. Lit. Stud., vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 21-32, 2026.
[3] Refai, "Narratives of resistance: Political allegory in post-reform Indonesian novels," Indones. J. Polit. Lit. Stud., vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 1-10, 2026.
[4] M. R. Ridlo, "Ideology and gender in political literature: A feminist reading of Indonesian political dramas," Indones. J. Polit. Lit. Stud., vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 45-57, 2026.
[5] K. N. Widyatnyana, "Literary memory and political violence: Trauma narratives in Indonesian historical fiction," Indones. J. Polit. Lit. Stud., vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 33-44, 2026.
[6] M. Ansori, "Writing under algorithmic rule: Digital authoritarianism, surveillance, and counterpublic imagination in contemporary Indonesian fiction," Indones. J. Polit. Lit. Stud., vol. 1, no. 2, 2026.
[7] E. Andalas and H. B. Qur'an, "Remembering the 1998 Indonesian sorcerers massacre: Memory of tragedy and trauma in Intan Andaru's Perempuan Bersampur Merah (Woman in Red Scarf)," Rupkatha J. Interdiscip. Stud. Humanit., vol. 13, 2021.
[8] S. Eddyono, "The shift in the regime of silence: Selective erasure of the 1965 massacre in post-New Order Indonesia's official narrative," Memory Studies, vol. 17, pp. 776-794, 2023.
[9] R. Hartati, D. Pratiwy, and W. Anayati, "Political conflict in Laut Bercerita by Leila S. Chudori: Insights from New Historicism," Journal of Language, 2024.
[10] J. N. I. Putra, D. Rahmawati, and C. Jia, "Exile trauma and gender relevance in the novel Pulang: Postmemory studies Marianne Hirsch," Poetika, 2024.
[11] J. Widodo and E. Andalas, "Revisiting Chinese Indonesian violence in Indonesian post-New Order fiction," KEMANUSIAAN: The Asian Journal of Humanities, 2024.
[12] K.-Y. Leong, "Invisible threads linking phantasmal landscapes in Java: Haunted places and memory in post-authoritarian Indonesia," Memory Studies, vol. 16, pp. 296-318, 2021.
[13] A. Martini, N. Sharma, and D. Timothy, "Dark tourism and spectral geographies: Ghosts, memories, and the rupturing of absence and presence," Tourism Geographies, vol. 27, pp. 1-16, 2025.
[14] K. Pang, "Transnational hauntings: A reparative reading of ghosts and weak rootedness in Zen Cho's 'Rising Lion - The Lion Bows' and Black Water Sister," Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 61, pp. 823-836, 2025.
[15] J. N. An, "Fictive incoherence in Cynthia Dewi Oka's A Tinderbox in Three Acts: A poetic accounting with the 1965-66 Indonesian massacres," Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 61, pp. 867-883, 2025.
[16] S. Mayasari-Hoffert, "'I made no sound at all': Exploring Indonesia's collective trauma in Saman and Enrico's Love Story by Ayu Utami," Journal of Postcolonial Writing, vol. 61, pp. 884-899, 2025.
[17] N. Kholifah, H. Busri, and S. Wahyuni, "The phenomenon of silencing activists in the novel Laut Bercerita and digital silencing in Indonesia: An analysis of Gramsci's hegemony," KEMBARA J. Sci. Lang. Lit. Teach., 2025.
[18] F. Faruk, "Virtuality of Seno Gumira Ajidarma's Eyewitness as a work of magical realism," GEMA Online J. Lang. Stud., 2024.
[19] N. M. Humphry and A., "Spectral interlocutions and the politics of unfinished: Buddhism, haunting, and memory in Karunatilaka's The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida," Frontiers in Sociology, vol. 10, 2026.
[20] F. Ferdinal, "Terror narrative: Representing state violence in modern Indonesian literature," OKARA: Jurnal Bahasa dan Sastra, 2021.
[21] B. D. Anggono, R. A. Prabowo, and Y. N. Mardika, "Constitutional Court and the past conflicts in post-authoritarian Indonesia," Constitutional Review, 2023.
[22] G. C. Gunn, "Revisiting the Indonesian National Revolution through a post-authoritarian lens," Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol. 55, pp. 518-529, 2024.
[23] J. Lloyd and L. Steele, "Place, memory, and justice: Critical perspectives on sites of conscience," Space and Culture, vol. 25, pp. 144-160, 2022.
[24] A. Tamba and R. Harahap, "Reconciling post-exile identities in Leila S. Chudori's novel Pulang," Journal of Aceh Studies, 2024.
[25] L. H. N. Herujiyanto, "Mass murder and the political ontology of threat: Four Indonesian short stories," UNITAS, 2023.
[26] A. Dragojlovic and K. McGregor, "'They call me Babu': The politics of visibility and gendered memories of Dutch colonialism in Indonesia," Women's History Review, vol. 31, pp. 933-952, 2022.
[27] R. D. Larasati, "Train and its fugitive rhythms: Rewriting empire, violence, and the politics of sound," Cultural Studies, vol. 39, pp. 974-991, 2025.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 M. Rifa Jamaludin Nasir (Author)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License