Facebook as Space of Resistance for Indonesian-Postcolonial Identity

Abstract

This paper aims to answer the problem of how Facebook functions to re-construct the Indonesian-postcolonial identity by means of narrative in marking the transition from colonized subjects to liberated beings. The reason why colonial discourse still dominates modern society is due to its ability to possibly re-generate the feeling of inferiority in native culture and perpetuate the patterns of behaviour even after the era of colonialism was over. Evidently, the coming of Internet in Indonesia is significant and highly relevant to postcolonial study only if it is grasped in relation to the preceding history of Indonesian ‘old’ media. If Internet is socially imagined as a powerful tool of opposition to authoritarianism, I will show how Facebook makes room for a voice of disapproval of the dominant systems and create an independent surveillance over state, opening up unconstrained participation of people who are used to live under authoritarian regimes. My analysis will be focused on the way Facebook provides a mechanism to formulate a ‘new’ community that hold power to form a collective struggle of those who were considered as the ‘other’ – the ones formerly excluded or marginalized from the oppressive discourse. Certain ideas are liberally spread out in Facebook, creating an unstoppable flow of resistance toward the dominant discourse and changing the face of the nation. I see narrative as the ideological apparatus that seeks to liberate marginalized subjects by giving them the power to interpret their own experience and subjectivity without conforming to the dominant discourse. The medium is now giving a sense of pleasure and fascination in designing the conception of being a free agent. The process of self-identification produces acts of contestation by making clear the fact that identity is historically unstable and an object of change and reconstruction.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n22p82