Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series. Abingdon, UK: Routledge, 2020. 250 pp. US$160.00, cloth. ISBN 9780367594145.
It will come as no surprise to observers of the Indonesian region of Papua that torture has been widely practiced by elements of the Indonesian police and military as a method of state control and suppression of the indigenous population. Indeed, it is the openness of torture, its theatre and spectacle, that is at the core of this book. Rather than simply revealing the truer nature and extent of torture, Budi Hernawan seeks to understand the logic of its practice, and also its symbolism, via data collected from interviews of its victims and perpetrators, as well as its observers and caregivers.
As can often be the case with books that are a reworking of a PhD thesis, much of the content is highly theoretical, in this case drawing on the work of three major philosophical thinkers: Michel Foucault, Julia Kristeva, and Johann Metz. Perhaps unsurprisingly Foucault provides the bulk of the theoretical framework via his influential work on institutional power, governance, and the spectacularity of torture. Kristeva’s concept of the abject is applied to the ways in which the Indonesian state constructs and rejects Papuans as abject, while it simultaneously depends on Papua for the maintenance of the Indonesian state. There is something of the Hegelian dialectic in this idea, although Hernawan does not take us down that philosophical path. Instead, Hernawan turns to the theology of Metz and memoria passionis (memory of suffering) in “the engagement of Christian faith and theology with the reality of suffering in the world as a continuous dialectic” (36). The memory of suffering is embodied in narrative, and Papuans overturn their treatment as abject beings through the narrative of suffering to reclaim their subjectivity.
Just as all this hefty theory might seem to disengage the book from its important purpose, Hernawan does an elegant job of pulling together these ideas in conceptualizing the ways in which torture is a “mode of governance in Papua” (42). We are then presented with a colonial history of Papua viewed through the lens of torture. This “genealogy of torture” is to demonstrate that “torture in Papua constitutes a sophisticated architecture of domination” that continues to confront “burgeoning networks of opposition” (79). While these conclusions are sound, some of the supporting detail can be confusing and unconvincing. It is never made clear, for example, how the Indonesian state should be defined. Much is made of the role of torture in demonstrating the “sovereign power of the Indonesian state,” and comparison is made with Foucault’s analysis of the behaviour of King Louis XV of France. But Hernawan’s data seems to reveal just how little control the Indonesian state has over the behaviour of its police and military. Where is the Indonesian state and its power actually located? This is an interesting and important divergence from Foucault’s theories about state power, and the book could have explored this avenue further. The Indonesian court system has been reluctant to prosecute cases of torture, but is this an example of the judiciary working in collusion with the state, or is the judiciary afraid of the military? There are examples of people being tortured because they protested against the Freeport mine (112). In these cases are the police and military exercising the power of the sovereign state, or the power of the mining company? The decentralized nature of power in Indonesia is a question that would be worth exploring.
Central to the argument of the book is the “Foucauldian notion of specularity” (89). For torture to be an effective instrument of social control it must be visible. Hernawan’s exploration of this idea is revealing and raises many questions. Who is the intended audience for the theatre of torture? How does one assess the non-Foucauldian context of global scrutiny and international law? Hernawan’s hopeful observation is that the public display of torture in the global context turns the logic of suppression on its head, and enables activist groups to expose the “illegality and immorality of the Indonesian state” (122). Again, the question that comes to mind is to what extent, located at the easternmost end of the world’s largest archipelago, is the practice of torture even under the control of the vastly populated and hugely diverse Indonesian state? Or perhaps a better question might be what duty of care does the state have towards its Papuan citizens, and why does the state not seek to control its military?
Torture and its participants, its trauma and its consequence, is an immensely difficult and complex arena for research. As Hernawan explores the results and implications of his data towards the end of the book, the more tumultuous this theatre becomes. Hernawan reduces his interview data to a final set of narrative scripts to a point where he claims that “no new fundamental elements can be added to the theatre of torture” (135). Turning an analysis of torture into an inductive science will likely induce a mixed reaction from readers, and the book retains the structure and style of the PhD thesis on which it is based, even to include a stray moment where the word “thesis” has not been changed into the word “book” (204). In the end Hernawan applies his work towards the burgeoning peace movement in Papua, and how it may contribute to a “permanent national truth and reconciliation commission for Papua” (177). This is brave and important work, and hopefully more scholars and activists will be able to build on the contribution that Hernawan has made towards this remarkably challenging task.
Michael Main
The Australian National University, Canberra