State Terrorism and Political Identity in Indonesia: Fatally Belonging.

STATE TERRORISM AND POLITICAL IDENTITY IN INDONESIA: Fatally Belonging. By Ariel Heryanto. London and New York: Routledge. 2006. xii, 242 pp. (Tables.) US$65.00, cloth. ISBN 0-415-37152-X.

General Suharto approached the endurance record for twentieth-century dictators. He ruled Indonesia for 32 years, putting himself in the league of the infamous Iberians, Salazar and Franco, and some African heads of state. One has to suspect that any dictatorship that persists past three decades cannot be entirely based on raw coercion. Something else has to be at work. Ariel Heryanto suggests that Suharto's prolonged reign was due not so much to state terrorism, but the "simulacra" (p. 12) of it. Suharto seized power by orchestrating the massacre of hundreds of thousands of people in 1965-66 and held onto power by constantly reminding Indonesians of that strife and chaos, without ever admitting his own culpability for it or going into the gory details. He insisted that any hint of discord portended a relapse into the nightmare of 1965-66. Heryanto argues that the mass violence of 1965-66 "has been a crucial force in the formation of the subject identities, fantasies, and everyday activities of this nation for decades"; it has been a "trauma" that remains "an unspoken and unknown part of the nation's history" (p. 3).

In Heryanto's analysis, the regime appears to have been terribly anxious about its hold on power. It aspired to peer into every person's mind (with the "mental screening" programme), censor every publication, and enforce every regulation, yet it was acutely aware of its limitations. Precisely because the regime lacked stable, efficient and institutionalized methods of rule, it resorted to bluffs: "the conscious manufacturing and sanctifying of simulacra announce the absence of a totalitarian capacity" (p. 189). It obsessively constructed an official state ideology (Pancasila), a singular version of national history (centred on the demonization of communism), and a utopian vision of peaceful social relations under the patriarchal sway of army officers (as in the "Indonesia in miniature" theme park in Jakarta). The rulers generated a fantasy world in which they achieved "total dominance" (p. 13), ruled without popular resistance and elite infighting, and determined at whim what was true and false. In the process of resolving their anxieties in their fantasies, they often fooled themselves as to the nature of their power, to the point of absurdly seeing every faint sign of a hammer or sickle as evidence of communist subversion.

If the regime was not as powerful as it imagined itself and its discourse more for its own purposes than for legitimation, then why did so many Indonesians tolerate it for so long? Was the intimidating bluster really effective? Heryanto argues that Indonesians tended not to perceive the regime itself as the main source of their problems when they were involved in the "active reproduction of fear and suspicion among themselves" (p. 20). Also, their expressions of opposition were often indirect. During the fraudulent election campaigns held every five years, youths would parade around the cities in motorcycle convoys and loudly cheer at the parties' rallies. All the enthusiasm, according to Heryanto, reflected the public's understanding that the election campaigns were frivolous and could be used as "free and temporary public entertainment" (p. 151). This was a case of "hyper-obedience as subversion" (p. 135).

Heryanto's analysis of power is subtle and original, informed by both a deep knowledge of recent events in Indonesia and an admirable familiarity with social theory. Not many writers on Indonesian politics draw upon semiotics and poststructuralism with such aplomb. The theory is not always well integrated with the ethnographic description. Some problematic terms (such as trauma and fantasy) are not given much depth. Nevertheless, this book succeeds in transcending customary analytical frameworks. It is a valuable book that should be a central reference point for any debate about Indonesia's post-1965 politics.

JOHN ROOSA

The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada