Virtuality of Seno Gumira Ajidarma’s Eyewitness as a work of magical realism
In the authoritarian regime of the New Order (NO), news regarding Indonesian colonization and massacres towards East Timor could not be openly published. Seno Gumira Ajidarma who is actually a journalist had to convey his testimony through literary media instead of journalist report, particula...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
2024
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| Online Access: | http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25028/ http://journalarticle.ukm.my/25028/1/Gema%20Online_24_4_17.pdf |
| Summary: | In the authoritarian regime of the New Order (NO), news regarding Indonesian colonization and
massacres towards East Timor could not be openly published. Seno Gumira Ajidarma who is
actually a journalist had to convey his testimony through literary media instead of journalist report,
particularly in the short stories collected in Saksi Mata (SM) (Eyewitness). The inquiry centers on
the question: by what narrative strategy does Ajidarma convey the testimony? Since it is apparent
that he uses magic realism technique to tell the stories. This raises the question of how the global
genre made to be relevant to national political issue. This paper focuses on the strategy used by
Ajidarma to communicate what could not be openly expressed, along with its ideological
implications. By applying Aldea’s virtuality theory of Magic Realism, which is based on Deleuzian
ontology, this research finds that the short stories in SM employ magical realism virtuality to solve
the problem of expression that is repressed by the NO. This enables them to achieve both relative
and absolute deterritorialization of the knowledge system controlled by the NO regime in East
Timor. Relative deterritorialization is conducted by transforming the identity of the narrator
character to a narrator that transcends the boundaries of NO identification, while absolute
deterritorialization is conducted by linking the characters directly to the abstract creative power of
Being through the “flute art” that continually to move without sound and words, dragging and
displacing all categories of the actual world. |
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