Dealing with Post-colonial theory for my thesis has brought me into a deep thought about a condition in my own country. How people are still colonized by the colonial force from inside.
The background of post-colonial theory is Edward Said's Orientalism, which tried to convey the truth of colonial supremacy. The example that he gave at the time was the imperialism of western and white supremacy. Under this white supremacy, the western culture has crowned itself as the ruler of the world. Anything which is not coming from western culture is considered as "the others". Now, the term "the others" might not sound detrimental, but the impact of the term is the negative attitude towards them. "Others" are considered as low-class, and thus they need the upgrade from the "upper class", or "the average". "The Average" (Doty, 1995) itself consists of white, adult, middle-class, and heterosexual male. They tried to create a uniformity of the cultural depiction and forcing their values to the "Others". Thus, the homogenisation or appropriation to reach "oneness" or "sameness" was born. This homogenisation, in turn, creates a shallow miniature of "the average". The cultural-specific values from "others" are ignored or even worse, mocked.
Now, what does those things have to do with Indonesia? Isn't Indonesia a country where diversity is the ultimate power and distinctive characteristic?
True, we have tons of different races, local dialects, and accents. But, like it or not, there is an imperialist force putting itself on the top of power distribution. This force is called "capital culture". Well, not necessarily capital as in capitalism. What I mean here is the force of culture from capital city, or if I may coin the term "Jakartanian".
Since this (sub)culture exists in the capital city, it gains a dominance over other cultures. Without any doubt, it serves as the information source and cultural reference. However, just like what happened in the colonial era, it renders "other" culture lower compared to them. The negative labelling to the other cultures took place. The "others" are considered as remote, primitive, and uneducated.
Take a good example. I speak Indonesian, English, and Javanese. All these languages occupy different prestigious levels. Many people said that my English is "accentless", which they probably mean free from Javanese accent. However, my Indonesian is "contaminated" with Javanese accent. When most of my students heard me spoke Indonesian, they suddenly said, "Sir, you'd better speak in English. Your Indonesian is so bad!" Now, assuming that they don't have negative attitude towards Javanese accent, they still uphold the supremacy of "accentless" Indonesian. However, most of the facts say that Javanese, both the language and the culture, is portrayed negatively by the media.
So, does that mean that this is the colonization from the media? Well, what media are we talking here? As I mentioned previously that the media are centralized in the capital city, they do have a sense of responsibility to uphold such a culture existing in their area. Thus, they "label" Javanese people as innocent, uneducated, and simplistic. To be fair, they also "label" other tribes, such as Batak (harsh, rude, hypermasculine), Papuan (completely uneducated and unable to speak Indonesian properly), Madurese (again, harsh, rude, uneducated, wild), and many others.
Even worse, the negative attitude and labeling do not happen only in the media. With all the exposure to the media, people tried to attain this "oneness", to escape from the pitfall of primitive and uneducated. This resulted in the lack of interest for younger generation to preserve their tradition. Most of them refer to Jakartanian culture as the "main culture" a.k.a. "The Average" in post-colonial perspective.
Quite ironic, eh? People complain a lot about western imperialism in Indonesia, while they don't realize that the imperialism and colonization from within is even worse and can destroy the "Unity in Diversity".
Gee, sorry for this scribble. This is just a piece of mind coming to my head as I read Post-Colonial theory.
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