Department or Program

History

Abstract

This thesis examines the May 1998 violence in Indonesia as a problem of historical narration, arguing that the riots are not a singular, self-evident event but rather, a product of contested meaning-making across multiple sites of record production in the aftermath of authoritarian rule. The first chapter analyzes contemporaneous newspaper reporting to demonstrate how dominant vocabularies of kerusuhan (riot), chaos, and spontaneity shaped public understanding while obscuring larger questions of responsibility, ethnicized targeting, and lived experience. This effectively created an evidentiary partition that rendered some forms of violence visible while marginalizing others, particularly sexual violence and anti–Chinese Indonesian attacks. Building on this, the second chapter interrogates this partition through alternative archives, including reports from the Tim Gabungan Pencari Fakta (TGPF) and non-governmental organizations, showing how these sources challenged but did not fully overcome the epistemic limits of the public record due to political compromise, resulting in partial recognition without meaningful accountability. Lastly, the third chapter shifts from documents to memory, drawing on oral histories and contemporary political discourse to explore how May 1998 is remembered, arguing that its legacy remains unsettled not because evidence is absent, but because its interpretation continues to be shaped by power and silence.

Level of Access

Open Access

First Advisor

Bramao-Ramos, Sarah

Date of Graduation

5-2026

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts

Number of Pages

92

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