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Abstract
This examination of narrative refractions of warfare and warriors in the Nusantaran world is a preliminary step towards establishing the contours of a Malay/Indonesian art of war. In this study I have fashioned a temporal and spatial assemblage as a map of the locations, features and significances of Malay/Indonesian martial culture.
The primary objective of the piece was to describe the historical development of pencak silat in Indonesia by drawing on a wide range of textual sources. Much of the contemporary material is drawn from field research carried out primarily in Indonesia during the New Order. The work traces the terrain of a “silat archipelago” and argues for the importance of the martial traditions to an understanding of the region. It examines the culture of violence in the Malay-speaking world and its relation to conceptions and performances of power in an historical framework through traditional representations of the combative arts in texts of Malay/Indonesian courts.
Against this background, the work traces the defeat, criminalization and marginalization of silat warriors under European colonialism, during which time local martial traditions were driven underground and a culture of secrecy was born as a response to state repression. It subsequently portrays the resurrection of local martial culture, which began in earnest under the Japanese military occupation. Through works of fiction, it details the ways in which silat and warriors are represented in postcolonial narrative. An exploration of cerita silat, the most popular genre of fiction during the New Order, leads into a discussion of possible relations between state-sponsored violence and the surging popularity of violent narratives. Relations between the state and the arts of magic; entailed in the silat tradition are explored within the context of the failure of the Suharto regime's efforts at corporatizing culture.
The conclusion to this project follows the trajectory of silat narrative through the implosion of the New Order state as the system of military governance fell apart, resulting in horizontal contestation through the continued inscription of a silat narrative of nation.