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The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia
The Gay Archipelago is the first book-length exploration of the lives of gay men in Indonesia, the world's fourth most populous nation and home to more Muslims than any other country. Based on a range of field methods, it explores how Indonesian gay and lesbian identities are shaped by nationalism and globalization. Yet the case of gay and lesbian Indonesians also compels us to ask more fundamental questions about how we decide when two things are "the same" or "different." The book thus examines the possibilities of an "archipelagic" perspective on sameness and difference.
Tom Boellstorff examines the history of homosexuality in Indonesia, and then turns to how gay and lesbian identities are lived in everyday Indonesian life, from questions of love, desire, and romance to the places where gay men and lesbian women meet. He also explores the roles of mass media, the state, and marriage in gay and lesbian identities.
The Gay Archipelago is unusual in taking the whole nation-state of Indonesia as its subject, rather than the ethnic groups usually studied by anthropologists. It is by looking at the nation in cultural terms, not just political terms, that identities like those of gay and lesbian Indonesians become visible and understandable. In doing so, this book addresses questions of sexuality, mass media, nationalism, and modernity with implications throughout Southeast Asia and beyond.
Tom Boellstorff examines the history of homosexuality in Indonesia, and then turns to how gay and lesbian identities are lived in everyday Indonesian life, from questions of love, desire, and romance to the places where gay men and lesbian women meet. He also explores the roles of mass media, the state, and marriage in gay and lesbian identities.
The Gay Archipelago is unusual in taking the whole nation-state of Indonesia as its subject, rather than the ethnic groups usually studied by anthropologists. It is by looking at the nation in cultural terms, not just political terms, that identities like those of gay and lesbian Indonesians become visible and understandable. In doing so, this book addresses questions of sexuality, mass media, nationalism, and modernity with implications throughout Southeast Asia and beyond.
304 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 10, 2020
Quite an interesting book with a classical social anthropology cut, which can work both for or against it. I probably could have gotten something more from it, if I'd ever been to Indonesia.
January 23, 2021
Buku ini merupakan proyek untuk memaknakan seksualitas dengan kebangsaan dan nasionalisme Indonesia. Pada era Balai Pustaka dan Pujangga Baru, nasionalitas Indonesia dimaknakan sebagai persatuan dari berbagai suku yang tinggal di Hindia Belanda. Ada banyak sekali novel jaman tersebut yang mengisahkan pasangan anak muda berbeda suku yang kawin lari dari adat mereka. Nasionalisme dikaitkan dengan modernitas, dan berbanding terbalik dengan adat 'kolot' yang cuma memikirkan kepentingan suku.
Dalam pemaknaan ini, Sukarno adalah emblem dari Indonesia. Bapaknya orang Jawa, sedangkan Ibunya orang Bali. Pasangan orangtua Sukarno tersebut kawin lari dari Bali sampai dikejar2 oleh keluarga pihak perempuan ke Jawa. Setelah negosiasi panjang, pernikahan orangtua Sukarno pun akhirnya direstui oleh kedua pihak keluarga. Asal-usul kelahiran Sukarno tersebut menjadi bagian dari mitos personal dia di jaman dulu, dan bersifat reflektif pada jatidiri bangsa Indonesia — Indonesia sebagai sebuah identitas yang transenden terhadap suku dan budaya.
Dalam buku ini Tom Boelstroff menceritakan pengalamannya di komunitas gay Indonesia. Dia melihat bahwa setiap kali ada banyak orang2 Indonesia dari berbeda etnis berkumpul pada suatu tempat, seperti mereka yg merantau ke Jakarta, pasti mereka akan membagi-bagi diri sendiri atas dasar suku. Mereka lebih nyaman untuk berteman dengan sesama suku. Ini berbeda dengan komunitas gay, yang identitasnya baru terbentuk setelah kemerdekaan:
Wacana identitas gay jaman itu selalu difilter melalui lensa nasionalisme. Semacam: "kita orang Gay Indonesia harus punya prestasi yang bisa membanggakan Indonesia!" Identitas gay hampir selalu lebih kuat dari identitas suku, dan merupakan salah sebuah identitas pertama yang dilahirkan melalui nasionalisme, tetapi tidak diakui oleh bangsa dan negara sendiri. Inilah sebabnya mengapa Dede Oetomo, pendiri majalah GAYa Nusantara, setelah membaca buku ini menjuluki komunitas gay Indonesia sebagai "Anak Haram Ibu Pertiwi".
Dalam pemaknaan ini, Sukarno adalah emblem dari Indonesia. Bapaknya orang Jawa, sedangkan Ibunya orang Bali. Pasangan orangtua Sukarno tersebut kawin lari dari Bali sampai dikejar2 oleh keluarga pihak perempuan ke Jawa. Setelah negosiasi panjang, pernikahan orangtua Sukarno pun akhirnya direstui oleh kedua pihak keluarga. Asal-usul kelahiran Sukarno tersebut menjadi bagian dari mitos personal dia di jaman dulu, dan bersifat reflektif pada jatidiri bangsa Indonesia — Indonesia sebagai sebuah identitas yang transenden terhadap suku dan budaya.
Dalam buku ini Tom Boelstroff menceritakan pengalamannya di komunitas gay Indonesia. Dia melihat bahwa setiap kali ada banyak orang2 Indonesia dari berbeda etnis berkumpul pada suatu tempat, seperti mereka yg merantau ke Jakarta, pasti mereka akan membagi-bagi diri sendiri atas dasar suku. Mereka lebih nyaman untuk berteman dengan sesama suku. Ini berbeda dengan komunitas gay, yang identitasnya baru terbentuk setelah kemerdekaan:
Doel, seorang lelaki gay dari Surabaya, telah terbang ke Makassar pada bulan Juli 2002 untuk bertemu dengan sebuah organisasi gay. Suatu siang kami menemani satu kelompok yang terdiri dari sekitar tiga puluh lelaki gay ke latihan bola voli di sebuah lapangan besar dekat masjid Azhar. Sekitar sepuluh meter dari kami, ada sekelompok lelaki lain yang main bola voli. Doel sedang duduk di sebelah saya menonton teman-teman gay kami bermain, ketika dia tiba-tiba berdiri dan berkata: “Orang-orang di sana berbicara bahasa Jawa!” Karim yang duduk di dekatnya mengatakan: “Ya, mereka orang Jawa yang bekerja di pasar(kuli).” Kemudian dia menambahkan dengan bergurau, “Doel, kamu harus ke sana dengan mereka. Soalnya kamu orang Jawa!”
Saya merasa kebanyakan kaum gay dan lesbi Indonesia akan mengerti mengapa Doel hanya menengok ke kami dan tersenyum: “Di sini dunia saya.”
~~ The Gay Archipelago, hal. 177 ~~
Wacana identitas gay jaman itu selalu difilter melalui lensa nasionalisme. Semacam: "kita orang Gay Indonesia harus punya prestasi yang bisa membanggakan Indonesia!" Identitas gay hampir selalu lebih kuat dari identitas suku, dan merupakan salah sebuah identitas pertama yang dilahirkan melalui nasionalisme, tetapi tidak diakui oleh bangsa dan negara sendiri. Inilah sebabnya mengapa Dede Oetomo, pendiri majalah GAYa Nusantara, setelah membaca buku ini menjuluki komunitas gay Indonesia sebagai "Anak Haram Ibu Pertiwi".
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September 9, 2024Boellstorff offers dubbing culture to imagine beyond trite metaphors of globalisation: Purity and contamination, unitary beginnings and subsequent assimilations…. Dubbing culture – where the image and the sound do not align, where encounters do not suture – expects not resolution, but the ongoing mess of entanglement.
Let us sketch some stop-motion fragments of what being gay or lesbi in Indonesia can be like. In the most intimate of the self, voluminous veins bear gallant gush; into the heart of same-gender love – head-spinning, flesh-eating love read as but a shabby imitation of postcolonial citizenship, in a context where heterosexual marriage defines autonomous choice and thus articulates self and nation (pp. 102-107); and off with strange limbs of mediation, ‘partial asides, sporadic human-interest stories, and irregular interviews (pp. 77)’ sifted through the thrum of mass media: Sporting malicious curiosity at attendees of the Third National Congress of Gay and Lesbi Indonesians, sensationalistic reportage feigns scholarly enquiry out of sexual practices, abducting community organising for voyeuristic titillating (pp. 77); like raspy noises from jammed signals, star-studded gossips, diagnoses and obituaries occasionally leak from a torrent of global news, sprinkling a shallow pond of ‘Western homosexualities’ with glittery names – Rock Hudson, Freddie Mercury, Melissa Etheridge (pp. 74)…; two Javanese men’s kisses flicker in terse frames, stacked between long shots of gated mansions, high-end cafés, catered parties – fugitive passions buried in upper-class humdrum, saturated flesh faded by haughty wealth unattainable to most gay and lesbi Indonesians (Arisan!)….
Where is this? What is this? The self, the island, the nation, the world; none of them, all of them, any of them. Gay and lesbi Indonesians do not fail to either achieve postcolonial citizenship or replicate Western hegemony; instead, they rewrite the grammar of subjectivation: Not to fill the gaps, but to find in an unequal world the force of creativity, to make collages of the ‘native’ and the transnational, to dance powerful discourses beyond uniform ideologies; to dub. Dubbing is processual, ongoing, incomplete. Yet in incompleteness bubbles ‘authenticity, meaning, sex, friendship, and love (pp. 87).’ In incompleteness, gay and lesbi subjectivities are performed in earnest.
What a scalar rhapsody! The local and the global, the proximate and the distant, the similar and the different all play like contrasting moods, bursting into one another, carrying off one another, till one cannot pulsate without another, till boundaries and transgressions all fizzle through a swirl so vertiginous, so resplendent.
Let us sketch some stop-motion fragments of what being gay or lesbi in Indonesia can be like. In the most intimate of the self, voluminous veins bear gallant gush; into the heart of same-gender love – head-spinning, flesh-eating love read as but a shabby imitation of postcolonial citizenship, in a context where heterosexual marriage defines autonomous choice and thus articulates self and nation (pp. 102-107); and off with strange limbs of mediation, ‘partial asides, sporadic human-interest stories, and irregular interviews (pp. 77)’ sifted through the thrum of mass media: Sporting malicious curiosity at attendees of the Third National Congress of Gay and Lesbi Indonesians, sensationalistic reportage feigns scholarly enquiry out of sexual practices, abducting community organising for voyeuristic titillating (pp. 77); like raspy noises from jammed signals, star-studded gossips, diagnoses and obituaries occasionally leak from a torrent of global news, sprinkling a shallow pond of ‘Western homosexualities’ with glittery names – Rock Hudson, Freddie Mercury, Melissa Etheridge (pp. 74)…; two Javanese men’s kisses flicker in terse frames, stacked between long shots of gated mansions, high-end cafés, catered parties – fugitive passions buried in upper-class humdrum, saturated flesh faded by haughty wealth unattainable to most gay and lesbi Indonesians (Arisan!)….
Where is this? What is this? The self, the island, the nation, the world; none of them, all of them, any of them. Gay and lesbi Indonesians do not fail to either achieve postcolonial citizenship or replicate Western hegemony; instead, they rewrite the grammar of subjectivation: Not to fill the gaps, but to find in an unequal world the force of creativity, to make collages of the ‘native’ and the transnational, to dance powerful discourses beyond uniform ideologies; to dub. Dubbing is processual, ongoing, incomplete. Yet in incompleteness bubbles ‘authenticity, meaning, sex, friendship, and love (pp. 87).’ In incompleteness, gay and lesbi subjectivities are performed in earnest.
What a scalar rhapsody! The local and the global, the proximate and the distant, the similar and the different all play like contrasting moods, bursting into one another, carrying off one another, till one cannot pulsate without another, till boundaries and transgressions all fizzle through a swirl so vertiginous, so resplendent.
December 31, 2024
Tom Boellstorff's The Gay Archipelago : Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia is an ethnography of sexual "subjects positions". Boellstorff explores how social categories (gay and lesbi) have come into being, how they transform ostensibly Western concepts of homosexuality, and how they are taken up and lived in the Indonesian context.
This study dialogues with queer theory, Southeast Asia studies, mass media studies, globalization studies, postcolonial theory, and anthropology.
Boellstorff brings about 2 new concepts, "dubbing culture" and "archipelagic subjectivities and specialities".
Boellstorff challenges old-fashioned western-centric anthropological academic hegemony. The complexities of gay and lesbi life present further challenges to traditional ethnographic methodologies.
The book is informative. But I'm not equipped with enough anthropological and ethnographic knowledge. So it is rather difficult for me to fully understand the study.
This study dialogues with queer theory, Southeast Asia studies, mass media studies, globalization studies, postcolonial theory, and anthropology.
Boellstorff brings about 2 new concepts, "dubbing culture" and "archipelagic subjectivities and specialities".
Boellstorff challenges old-fashioned western-centric anthropological academic hegemony. The complexities of gay and lesbi life present further challenges to traditional ethnographic methodologies.
The book is informative. But I'm not equipped with enough anthropological and ethnographic knowledge. So it is rather difficult for me to fully understand the study.
December 16, 2020
Kajian yang menarik. Memadu padankan Sejarah dan Budaya disekitar yang kebanyakan tabu.
March 3, 2017
A good book. this book tells about how the gay community in Indonesia gets acceptance from the society. they have an idea to make their existence being accepted by the society in Indonesia.
October 9, 2014
Buku ini sangat informatif, meskipun bagi saya buku ini adalah buku nonfiksi yang sulit dipahami. Penyajian bukunya tidak terlalu berat, banyak istilah antropologi yang sangat asing bagi saya. Selain membahas antropologi, buku ini juga ada muatan sejarah dan politik, sebuah buku yang lengkap tentang gay dan lesbi di Indonesia. Gambar-gambar yang diselipkan seakan menjadi oase setelah membaca deretan kata. Ada banyak hal baru yang saya temukan di buku ini. Penerjemahannya kurang luwes, tapi sudah bisa dipahami dengan baik. Love this book!
March 31, 2015
Best read in conversation with Gayatri Gopinath's "Impossible Desires," probably. My crit about this is related to the overreaching use of the umbrella term of Southeast Asia. How would you describe an area which, in poet Luisa Igloria's words, embodies and structure differences on its own? That being said, where do the queer (those who do not fit the lesbian or gay label, questioning, or simply do not want labels at all) stand in this book's discussion?
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews