Tjerita and Novel Literary Discourse in Post New Order Indonesia

Häftade böcker. Förlaget Idea. 1 uppl. 2006. 298 sidor.

The work examines developments in the novel and the short story of writers who grew up during the New Order era (1966-1998) in the period of reform post 1998. It is assumed and subsequently affirmed that the genres are developing, modern genres in dialogue with the past and present. The work's main use of theory is that of M. M. Bakhtin's ideas of dialogism. The assumption of 'novelization' is framed in Bakhtin's observation that the 'flowering of the novel is always connected with a disintegration of stable verbal-ideological systems' (such as the New Order) 'and with an intensification and intentionalization of speech diversity that are counterpoised to the previously reigning stable systems', which is found and identified in literature Post New Order. This concrete setting in time is the base for questions of value change and identity, as well as aesthetic developments, which are viewed from a historical ideological perspective.

The dissertation departs from a survey of the prolific short story and assumptions based on the arguably generational novel Saman (1998) Ayu Utami. The survey is the base for a discourse analysis of qualities relating to both form and content. It affirms the rise of the short story in the hierarchy of genres, the newspaper Kompas as 'authority' and actuality as an aesthetic stratification imposed by it. Novelization and its boundaries, reproduction, are found and identified in the genre. Similar ideas are then applied to the novel.

In the period past taboos and myths were identified and engaged by a wide range of authors. These were revealed as such and often engaged in styles that made them less sacral. Gender discourse was found to be one of the most prolific and important discourses of the period, in both genres and of both male and female authors. Gender was directly engaged in feminine or feminist strategies by female authors. In terms of identity new models were sought for that left previous ideals behind and it was often done in ways that envisioned pluralism. Primordial discourses and its concrete figures, identified with the past and gender inequalities, were engaged and challenged. This not only reflected social change in the period; the generation that embraced change and new possibilities used anti primordial discourse, often in styles that challenged orthodoxies, as its prime vehicle for social change.