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MonsieurArkadin

MonsieurArkadin@bookwyrm.social

Joined 3 months ago

Postmodernism, French and Indonesian Lit, Marguerite Duras

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2024 Reading Goal

10% complete! MonsieurArkadin has read 1 of 10 books.

The End of the Road

4 stars

Intense ACAB energy in this book.

Politically, I feel like this is sort of the driving thesis of the entire quartet. As a story, it's the least exciting to read, but you've gone on the journey of anti-colonial/national political awakening for 3 books, and this one here functions almost as a form of praxis.

We switch perspectives to a police officer for the Colonial government, and given the intensive context gained from the previous 3 books we understand how/why every action this cop takes is evil. Even mundane activities like reading a newspaper are filled with all the oppression of the colonial structures, and will be synthesized in a way to pit indigenous people against each other for the benefit of Europeans (and traitors, like the Narrator of this novel).

Probably a narratively unsatisfying way to end the series... but as an intellectual history, also probably the only way to …

Vincent Bevins: The Jakarta Method (Paperback, 2021, PublicAffairs) 5 stars

In 1965, the U.S. government helped the Indonesian military kill approximately one million innocent civilians. …

Connecting the Dots

4 stars

Nothing particularly new here for those interested in this kind of thing... but very useful and compelling to have all the dots connected in this specific manner creating a compelling narrative around the particular shade of neo-colonialsim the US wrought on the world during the cold war and the days since.

For a particular interest in Colonialism, de-colonialism, repression and neocolonialism in Indonesia this would be an integral component of the picture along with:

The Buru Quartet by Pramoedya Ananta Toer Beauty is a Wound by Eka Kurniawan the film The Act of Killing by Joshua Oppenheimer

These media taken together form a pretty solid overview of Indonesia's struggles against colonial forces from both Macrocosmic and Microcosmic perspective, from idealism and materialism, through research and lived experience.