On October 26, Arnoud Arps, Niels Stensen Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Postcolonial and Memory Studies at Oxford University and UCLA, gave a talk to a dozen people on resistance and reconciliation in Indonesian and Dutch films and literature on the Indonesian revolution. Examining these cinematographic and literary materials, Arps looked at the Indonesian War of Independence (1945-1949), to understand whose war is remembered and how it is commemorated in contemporary culture.
Arps asserted that the War of Independence should be understood as a canvas discourse where everyone paints their own assertions. Whether on the Dutch or Indonesian side, there is no clear understanding of the other's point of view, and Arps set out here to examine their dialogic memory.
Arps began by introducing Perburuan, a popular film about the War of Independence, steeped in a nationalist narrative, which is by no means a story of Dutch antagonists. In this film, the struggle is set in the midst of the Japanese occupation and highlights Indonesian heroes. In The East, on the other hand, the Dutch take center stage and the Indonesians play only a secondary role. Citing other examples, Arps argued that literature has the capacity to continue reimagining how we understand ourselves in relation to the world and some of the most pressing issues of our time - cultural reconciliation, survival after terror, migration. While the Netherlands has focused on the Indonesian war as a single event, Indonesia sees it as a fluid, ongoing struggle.
Arps concluded by reaffirming the importance of intercultural ethical engagement in determining how to build a relationship between the two countries, intrinsically linked by media that return to the colonial past.