LANGUAGE OF THE STATE

Posted on Oct 30, 2011 in budaya | 0 comments

“This song of lamentation itself became the song of praise”
F. Nietzsche

There are many papers, books, and so on that told us a story about ’65 event, many of them told a story about the killing, the bloodshed, the conspiracy, the survivors, and the aftermath. Seems like there is nothing left to tell about this event, and the main question still: “What really happen at that time?” The Balinese would say “gumi uwug”, but what exactly that’s mean? And the question that followed should be “How come it comes to perished?” Following the logic of gumi uwug, at first the world was fine, and then came the political party which one of them was PKI (meanwhile the world was on (cold)war). Then there’s a rivalry between the political parties in Indonesia which it were lead to the perished of the world. When it comes to perish, the world (as a whole) divided in to two: communist and capitalist, the communists with all their nerves against the capitalist, vice versa. The world going perished, gumi uwug.

At first I thought that gumi uwug was merely a symbolization of the 1965 event where man killing their fellow man (for various reason). But the metaphor gumi uwug quite bothers me. Once I think about that the metaphor was just merely a metaphor, nothing more. But there’s no such thing, beside, it is used by most of the people in Bali. That means that it is a language that understood by the people who use it and its mean something. Therefore I think it is not merely a symbolization of man killing their fellow man, I think there’s something more than that. I made up illustration above to trace the use of the metaphor. As we can see, the metaphor not even exists before the rise of the political parties. It was come to its existence after the contra-communists killing everyone who they think as “communist’s partisan”, which come with result that there are many people who died at time were not communist’s partisan. The word “communist” became the most powerful word to send someone to their grave, and it’s still like that until the down fall of Orde Baru regime.

State is not only set of economic and political power, it is a thought that find its form in linguistic order. We have seen it from the used of the word ‘communist’, and how people submitted under the law of the state through that word. “Communist” is only one of billion – maybe more – words, that used by the state power to submitted the people under the law of the state. The used of these words usually depend on condition of the state and/or following the law of the state and it is arbiter. The law of the state is always arbiter, because it is following the logic of the state which is to maintain its power over the people. Language of the state is the language of the phobia; it’s following the mechanisms which are play the instrumentals part of formation of phobia: First, the separation between parts that contradicted within, second, projection on the huge urge that being repressed, and third, the displacement of the fear.

Transcendent and huge optimistic of fear (within dream), fail to blurred out the uncertainty of danger. The disguise fear changed into certain object; within define the fear – its objectification – subject found its way to escape. The unrecognized fear (in mind), externalized and formed. In the case of the used of the word communist – and the metaphor gumi uwug – the fear formed from natural disaster: the eruption of mount Agung. The disguised fears find its form in the destruction of some places in Bali by the eruption. The unrecognized fear externalized in to the existence of “living evil”: communism. It’s objectification helped by local myth of the order of macro and micro cosmos and the history of communist party in Indonesia. The word communist became the strongest word in Bali because it was built on the belief of the people. The killing of (so called) communist partisans was a mass-panic because the effect of the eruption raising the emotional ambivalence, and it was directed to internal conflict and separation between currents feeling such as love and hate. The hate part (which was within unconsciousness) projected into the cause of the imbalance of the order of macro and micro cosmos (in this case the communists) and then changed into the evil that must be kill.

In its development, the state does not have to repeated the story of the imbalance of the order of macro and micro cosmos or the story of the effect of the eruption because it is precipitated in people’s minds. These residue looks like it is not contextual but it have huge gravity energy and determine some one’s life or death. As the result, up until now most people afraid of the word communist and in many occasion the state always repeated the 1965 event as if the people forget the event. The interesting things are that the (so called) anti-state activists, the scholar, and so on do the same thing. Almost every year in September 30th, Indonesia’s media full of the story of this past event.

Without denying the importance of the history and respect for the (so called) victims (and the perpetrators), the repetition used language of the state. Which mean that we are submitted under the law of the state, because we think on state’s way of think and the result is we using the language of the state and act toward preservation of the state. The question is can us using other language than language of the state? Every period, every generation, has its own language as a media of expression, and this language has a different structure and meaning from language of the state. In 1980’s the (Indonesian) youth has bahasa prokem, the overall structure of Indonesian slang is not all that different from formal Indonesian, although in many cases sentences are simplified or shortened when necessary. This period produce words such as: bokap (father), skokul (school, but this word slowly out dated, by 1990’s it no longer used), diajarin (to teach), etc. In 2000’s the LBGT community invented their own language, which are use the formal words, but attach a new meaning. The method is using the similar sound despite the meaning are different, for example, the word mau (want), is replaced with the word mawar originally meaning rose.

Those languages (bahasa prokem and/or the language that invented by LBGT community) cannot really became the opposite of state’s language, because it is a restricted language (not every single person within LBGT community use this language), it usage wide spread only within web of certain persons. It is understood in certain milieu, but has no meaning at all in other. Beside, the usage of the language is about the class of the people who use it, and these explain why the repetition of 1965 event on the media repeatedly using language of the state. The repetition could not use bahasa prokem (or bahasa gaul like what it called now days) and/or the LBGT language because: first, it is only understood in certain milieu, second, it is not a “proper” language, since the media has their own interest behind the preservation of the state, and third, the (state) intellectuals have their own accepted language within their milieu.

Basically there are no solutions for this problem, because language is the basic of our very existence, and state always has a way to recuperate the countering ideas and reproduce it to its own. Nietzsche (and so Foucault) suggesting countless loss events, and parody; the countless of loss event is what Foucault said as systematic dissociation, which is an approach that countering historical approach that relating something that are not related. This approach means to be antidote of antiquarian approach that not considered countless loss events, such as corruption, violence, and accidental events. These events were avoided because it could threaten the solemnities of beginning and afraid that people are not paid respect for the past. If function of history is to remember the past, non-history, and supra-history are strategy to forget the past and writing history as parody is to piece together historical, non-historical, and supra-historical aspects. In this case parody is the locus to measure the dosage of our historical and non-historical need.

I have no imagination you said.
Wrong. I don’t have a language.
Language to cleanse
my resistance to those who are educated!   (Cherrie Moraga)

 

ketha