The Bali Bombings Monument: Ceremonial Cosmopolis.
ۧۙۘ۩ۨۑۢ ٷۧﯠ۠ ۣۚ ٷۢۦ۩ۣﯣۜۙ ے
ۑﯠﯣﮡۛۦۣﮠۙۛۘۦۖۡٷۗﮠۧ۠ٷۢۦ۩ۣ۞ﮡﮡﮤۤۨۨۜ
ẳẰ ẺỀẽẹẬặ Ẻằ ẾẴẬẹ ếỀắẴẰẾۦۣۚۗۙۧ ۪ۦۙۧ۠ ٷۣۢۨۘۘﯠ
ۙۦۙۜ ﭞۗ۠ﯙ ﮤۧۨۦۙ۠ٷ۠ ٷۡﯗ
ۙۦۙۜ ﭞۗ۠ﯙ ﮤۣۧۢۨۤۦۗۧۖ۩ۑ
ۙۦۙۜ ﭞۗ۠ﯙ ﮤۧۨۢۦۤۙۦ۠ ٷۗۦۣۙۡۡﯙ
ۙۦۙۜ ﭞۗ۠ﯙ ﮤۡۧ ۣۚ ۩ۧۙ ۦۙے
ۣۣۣۧ۠ۤۡۧﯙ۠ ٷۣۢۡۙۦۙﯙ ﮤۨۢۙۡ۩ۣۢﯞۢۛۧ ۣۖۡﯡ ۠ٷﯡۜۙ ے
ٷۦۨ۩ێ ٷۡۦٷﯚۢ ٷۣۡۺﯟ ﯢۢۘ ٷۧ ۫ۙﮐ ٷۘۢ۠ۙﯡ ﮞۧ۫ۙﮐۙۚۚ ﯣ
ڿۀ ڽھ ۤۤ ﮞڿڽڼھ ۺۦٷ۩ۦۖۙﯘ ﮡ ڽڼۧۧ۩ۙ ﯢ ﮡ ھ Џۣ۠۩ۡۙ Үﮡۙۧ ۘ۩ۨۑۢ ٷۧﯠ۠ ۣۚ ٷۢۦ۩ۣﯣۜۙ ے
ڿڽڼھۗۜ ۦٷﯞү ڽ ﮤۣۙۢ۠ۢۧۜۙۘ ۠ۖ۩ێ ﮞҮҰҰڽڼڼھڽүڽڽҰڽھڼڼۑﮡҮڽڼڽﮠڼڽ ﮤﯢۍﯚ
ҮҰҰڽڼڼھڽүڽڽҰڽھڼڼۑﮰۨۗٷۦۨۧۖٷﮡۛۦۣﮠۙۛۘۦۖۡٷۗﮠۧ۠ٷۢۦ۩ۣ۞ﮡﮡﮤۤۨۨۜ ﮤۙ۠ۗۨۦٷۧ ۜۨ ۣۨ ﭞۢﮐ
ﮤۙ۠ۗۨۦٷۧ ۜۨۨۙ ۣۗ۫ ۣۨ ﯜ
ﮤۨۢۙۡ۩ۣۢﯞۢۛۧ ۣۖۡﯡ ۠ٷﯡۜۙ ے ﮠ۶ڿڽڼھڿ ٷۦۨ۩ێ ٷۡۦٷﯚۢ ٷۣۡۺﯟ ﯢۢۘ ٷۧ ۫ۙﮐ ٷۘۢ۠ۙﯡ ﮞۧ۫ۙﮐۙۚۚ ﯣ
ﮡҮڽڼڽﮠڼڽﮤۣۘ ڿۀڽھ ۤۤ ﮞھ Үﮞۧۙۘ۩ۨۑۢ ٷۧﯠ۠ ۣۚ ٷۢۦ۩ۣﯣۜۙ ے ﮠۣۣۣۧ۠ۤۡۧﯙ۠ ٷۣۢۡۙۦۙﯙ
ҮҰҰڽڼڼھڽүڽڽҰڽھڼڼۑ
ۙۦۙۜ ﭞۗ۠ﯙ ﮤۣۢۧ ۧۧۡۦۙێ۩ۙۧۨ ۥۙې
ڿڽڼھ ۦۤﯠ ڼڽҮ ۣۢ ۀﮠۀڽھﮠۀҰڽﮠڼڿڽ ﮤۧۧۙۦۘۘٷ ێﯢ ﮞۑﯠﯣﮡۛۦۣﮠۙۛۘۦۖۡٷۗﮠۧ۠ٷۢۦ۩ۣ۞ﮡﮡﮤۣۤۨۨۜۡ ۦۚۘۙۘ ٷۣۣ۠ۢ۫ﯚ
The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 72, No. 1 (February) 2013: 21–43.
© The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2013 doi:10.1017/S0021911812001799
The Bali Bombings Monument: Ceremonial
Cosmopolis
JEFF LEWIS, BELINDA LEWIS, AND I NYOMAN
DARMA PUTRA
In 2003 a monument was erected at the site of the 2002 Islamist militant attacks in Kuta,
Bali. Government and other official discourses, including the design brief, represent the
monument as an integrated and culturally harmonious public testimony to the victims.
However, the monument is also a discordant association of ideas, meanings, and political
claims. While originally designed to subdue insecurity, the Bali bombings monument, in
fact, constitutes a site of powerful “language wars” around its rendering of memory and
its presence in Bali’s integration into the globalizing economy of pleasure. This paper
examines the ways in which the monument is being articulated and “consumed” as a
social and cultural marker for the island’s tourism geography. The paper pays particular
attention to the increasing diversity of Bali’s visitors and the ways in which a precarious
“cosmopolization” of the Kuta-Legian area is being experienced and expressed at the
monument site.
INTRODUCTION
HE BALI BOMBINGS MEMORIAL commemorates the first of two Islamist attacks that took
place in 2002 and 2005. On October 12, 2002, a van loaded with explosives was detonated outside the Sari nightclub in Legian Street, Kuta. At about the same time, and just
across the street, a pedestrian bomber detonated his backpack in Paddy’s Bar. At Paddy’s
the explosion ignited propane gas bottles, creating an intense fireball that burned alive
many of the nightclub patrons who had survived the initial blast. The official death toll
for the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar bombings was around 202, though the actual figure
may have been higher as many non-Balinese Indonesians were personae non gratae
and were never counted in the official figures. Around eighty-eight Australians were
killed; the other major nationalities included Indonesian, British, American, Japanese,
Brazilian, German, and French.
The 2002 bombings critically damaged Bali’s reputation as a safe, peaceful, and harmonious tourist destination and had a devastating effect on the tourism industry and local
livelihoods. These events triggered an unprecedented social and economic crisis. For
local Balinese, the bombings were also associated with a deeper cosmological imbalance.
The notion of “Bali harmony” that had for several decades underpinned the exponential
T
Jeff Lewis (jeff.lewis@rmit.edu.au) is Professor of Cultural Politics in the Global Cities Institute, School of
Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Belinda Lewis (belinda.lewis@monash.edu) is Senior Lecturer in Health Promotion, School of Primary
Health Care, Monash University, Melbourne.
I Nyoman Darma Putra (idarmaputra@yahoo.com) is Professor of Language and Culture, Faculty of Letters,
Udayana University, Bali, Indonesia.
22
Jeff Lewis et al.
growth in Bali’s tourism economy was called into question. In the wake of the tragedy,
there was considerable reflection amongst the Balinese themselves about rapid sociocultural change associated with rampant and uncontrolled tourism development; serious
environmental degradation; uneven distribution of wealth; growing social inequalities;
and increasing economic, ethnic, and religious tensions between the Hindu Balinese
and “outsider” migrants from other parts of predominantly Muslim Indonesia. Within
this context, the Bali Tourism Authority and religious leaders conducted extensive interfaith, ritual cleansing ceremonies designed to restore a sense of harmony and focus on the
unique characteristics of traditional Balinese culture that would contribute to Bali’s
capacity to deal effectively with the tragedy. The unresolved social and cultural contentions that had inevitably been generated by Bali’s modernization, increasing cosmopolitanism, and engagement with a globalizing economy were largely played down (Lewis
and Lewis 2009b).
The Bali bombings memorial was constructed in 2003 during the three months
before the first commemoration service for the 2002 attacks. Both the memorial and
first commemoration were conceived in terms of broader processes of cosmological
cleansing, economic recovery, and restoration of a social harmony. Set within the
teeming tourist cosmopolis of Kuta, the Bali memorial was designed to reconcile the
underpinning violence, contentiousness, and impact of the attacks, creating an authorized
homology that would contribute to spiritual, social, and cultural healing. The diverse
design elements and historical-cultural references of the memorial were drawn together
to create a homogenizing narrative, or “homology,” which aimed to give a sense of cohesion and unity.1 This communion of aesthetic and cultural elements would transform the
horrors of the past into a comprehensible but powerful narrative that distinguishes right
from wrong, order from calumny, and pluralism from sectarianism. As Spiro Kostof
(1987) has noted, such memorials are generally designed to transform the diverse and
complex details of conflict events into a more integrated vision of history (see also
Logan and Reeves 2009; Mare 2002). There is a long scholarly lineage of critique
focused on this privileging of a particular perspective of the past as “official history” (Foucault 1977b).2
In many respects, this is precisely the “official” objective of the Bali bombings monument. For those who commissioned and designed the monument, the site would not
simply commemorate the victims of the attacks; it would advance a common narrative
of peace and reconciliation against the ideological discord and violence that had precipitated the atrocity of the bombings. Thus, the Badung Regency, which presides over the
Kuta district, commissioned a memorial that subscribed to national government aspirations on security-building, unified pluralism (espoused in Pancasila, the ideological
1
We are using the term “homology” to describe these homogenizing narratives. As indicated, the
term refers to an attempt to homogenize cultural pluralism and diversity, drawing various discourses and narratives into a form that subsumes the parts within a more unitary “sameness.”
The term is the reciprocate of what Georges Bataille ([1957] 2001) describes as “heterology,”
which is an assembly of narratives that maintain a degree of independence and autonomy.
2
The privileging of a particular perspective of the past as “official history” has been variously
defined as “ideology” (Benjamin [1940] 2005), “discourse” (Foucault 1977b), “writing” (de
Certeau 1988), and the “imaginary” (Taylor 2004). Each of these scholars has undertaken critical
analysis of the ideological dimensions of “official history” and its political and social implications.
The Bali Bombings Monument
23
framework of the Indonesian state), and Bali’s community and economic restoration
(Hitchcock and Putra 2007; ICG 2003; Lewis 2006). The memorial’s homologous narrative conceptualized the atrocity in terms of an official ideology and memory that would
(re)synthesize the disparate parts of Indonesia that had succumbed to the force of globallocal contentions and political violence. Bali’s own frequently cited disposition to
“harmony” was therefore to be mobilized for national reconciliation and local recovery;
the official memory of the events would fortify Bali’s own radical “cosmopolization”
and integration into the global tourist economy.3
This conception of official memory and the conciliatory force of Bali harmony,
however, remains problematic (Allen and Palemo 2005; Hitchcock and Putra 2007;
Lewis and Lewis 2009b; Robinson 1995). Indeed, the symbolic ordering that seeks to
organize and homologize the meaning of the Bali bombings monument has neither
obscured nor reconciled the complex cultural elements that comprise “the bombings”
as memory and representation, specifically within the peculiarly disjunctive spatial and
cultural context of Kuta, Bali. Indeed, the monument’s primary narrative of unity,
harmony, and reconciliation is perpetually subverted by counter-narratives that invoke
the very contentious issues and cultural tensions that the monument is designed to overcome. Thus, the diversity and complexity of cultural threads, memories, and practices
that constitute the Kuta ethnoscape and its plethora of political dispositions continually
challenge and destabilize the ideological and cultural homology that brands the island’s
tourist economy of pleasure. At their most acute, these language wars are expressed in
the formidable apprehensions of purist Islamists who regard the memorial and the
Bali pleasure zones as a profound offense against Islam and evidence of Western
moral infamy and violent political hegemony (Barton 2004, 2010; Eliraz 2007; Ramakrishna and Tan 2003; Sidel 2006, 2008).4
Within the shadows of these more spectacular contentions, however, there exists a
broad range of alternative narratives, cultural perspectives, and counter-memories—
the sort of fragmentation and counter-forces that Michel Foucault (1977a, 1977b,
1980) describes in terms of a resistant microphysics in opposition to hegemonic power
itself. In this context, this paper has two principal and related objectives. First, the
paper examines the ways in which the homology and authorized memory of the Bali
3
By “cosmopolization” we are referring, in particular, to the urbanization of Bali’s southern, Badung
region. Since the inception of mass tourism in the 1960s, this rich agricultural region has become
densely urbanized through tourism infrastructure, and various forms of housing, retail, and industrial development. It is now a sprawling urban space that is a “cosmopolis” of transient peoples,
including international tourists and Indonesians from many parts of the archipelago, including
Muslim Java and Lombok.
4
We distinguish in this paper between “purist” and “militant” Islamism. By “purist” we are describing that group of Muslims who share a strong religious affiliation with Salafi and Wahabbi traditions,
who have a literalist interpretation of the Qu’ran, and who are committed to the broad imposition of
Islamic or sh’ariah law over Muslim communities and territories. While there are clear theological
and cultural variations within this group (see Hassan 2006; ICG 2004), they share a general rejection of secularism, democratic politics, Western liberalism, and any form of state authority that is
not based on Islamic theocracy. Among this group are those who adopt militant strategies for
the imposition of sh’ariah; however, only a small proportion of Islamic purists are violent or
militant.
24
Jeff Lewis et al.
bombings are being shaped within an overriding ideology and economy of pleasure (see
Lewis and Lewis 2009a, 2010). Secondly, the paper examines the ways in which this homology is being challenged and subverted through the multiplication of counter-narratives
that are being generated through various mechanisms and processes. These mechanisms
and processes are themselves the predicate of Bali’s own cultural instability and transitional disposition, including the increasing complexity of its tourist ethnoscape and its
increasingly discordant contiguity of cultural practices. This study, thereby, contributes
to broader speculations about the nature of Bali’s engagement in the global economy
of pleasure and the countervailing conditions of global language wars and political violence. The paper concludes by raising important questions about Indonesian and
global pluralism, social harmony, and cosmopolitanization.
Inevitably, this paper situates its discussions within the broader context of “the war
on terror” or what Jeff Lewis calls “the 9/11 wars” (Lewis 2005; Lewis and Lewis
2009a, 2010). However, these wars and their related contentions are not of themselves
the central focus of the paper. Rather, the paper focuses on the ways in which these contentions are implicated in the formation and “deconstruction” of the Bali monument
homology. Thus, the paper problematizes the notion of cosmopolitanism and its assumptions within the specific context of the Bali bombings monument. The paper seeks to elucidate the cosmopolization of the Kuta region, and the bombings site in particular,
through the analysis of cultural narratives and practices. To this end, the paper examines
the ways in which narratives have been inscribed into the monument site through its
design; it also examines the shaping of alternative narratives and meanings, specifically
as they are evinced by the site’s visitors and users.
To achieve these heuristic objectives, the researchers employed a combination of
methods, including textual and empirical analyses. While these will be more fully outlined
in the discussions below, the purpose of their use in this research can be summarized in
the following terms—
1. Textual analysis
The monument is a text whose meanings can only be accessed through analysis of the
political and cultural conditions in which it is set. These conditions are framed through
the application of specific concepts and a theoretical model that engages with various
forms of historical, textual, and cultural artifacts. While this part of the essay focuses principally on the ways in which the homologous narrative and memory were formed, it also
outlines the ways in which this congregation of meanings is subverted by an alternative
narrative volition and the disposition of what Foucault (1977b) calls “counter-memory,”
that is, the gaps by which meanings falter and subside, even through the very process of
self-assertion.
2. Interviews
The study also examines the ways in which people engage with and derive meanings
from the monument and its attempt to impose a specific memory and narrative. Interviews were conducted with a range of visitors to the site over selected periods between
2008 and 2010. These interviews, conducted in English and/or Bahasa Indonesia, were
designed to access people’s perceptions and experience of the Bali monument and
explore the range of ways in which visitors were generating their own narratives and
The Bali Bombings Monument
25
understandings. The interviews provided valuable insights into the formation and
character of the Kuta monument’s totemic cosmopolitanism.
3. Participant Observation
In addition to the textual analysis and interviews, the research used participant observation to provide a more complete picture of people’s perceptions and practices as they
engaged with the monument and its surroundings, and with each other. Participant observation enables researchers to observe people’s natural behavior, interactions, and practices without the disruption of the researchers and their institutional interpellation. It
provides a context for understanding data collected through other methods and can
strengthen the analysis by providing a complement to participants’ subjective reporting
about what they believe and do (Family Health International 2005; Liamputtong
2007). Extensive participant observation was conducted at the monument site over
selected periods between 2008 and 2010. These detailed observations about the presence
and practices of different national and ethno-religious groups provided valuable insights
and also helped to refine the interview process.
BALI’S COSMOPOLIZATION
IN THE
ECONOMY
OF
PLEASURE
The Bali bombing attacks occurred as the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Australia were preparing to invade Iraq and extend the parameters of the global war on
terror. The perpetrators, members of the Islamist militant organization Jemaah Islamiyah
(JI), explained their actions in terms of U.S. incursions into holy Muslim lands, especially
the Middle East and Indonesia itself. The JI leadership viewed America and its allies,
including Australia, as moral contaminants and infidels, whose cultural values and practices were deeply offensive to the purity of the Muslim faith (Barton 2004; Hitchcock and
Putra 2007; ICG 2003, 2004; Lewis and Lewis 2009a; Sidel 2006; UNDP 2003).
In this context, the militants regarded the Balinese as collusive and treacherous allies
of the West and its imperial disposition (Lewis and Lewis 2009a; Nordholt 2007).
However, purist Islamist groups like JI tend to view Bali’s cosmopolization as merely
the apex of an ongoing, historical betrayal. This betrayal began in 1949 when Sukarno’s
new nationalist government rejected the Jakarta Charter, the precepts of sh’ariah law,
and Islam as the official national religion. In order to maintain the integrity of the new
state and support non-Muslim territories like Bali, the national government’s pluralist
principles inevitably incited a range of violent secessionist movements from Darul
Islam to Jemaah Islamiyah itself (Intan 2006; Nordholt 2007; Robinson 1995).
Bali’s engagement with global tourism, which has brought vast numbers of nonMuslim peoples into Indonesia, has clearly served to intensify these political passions.
The aggregate number of mostly Western international tourists grew from a few
hundred in 1970 to around sixty thousand by 1980. From this period, with the inception
of Suharto’s own personal investment strategy, the numbers and accompanying tourism
infrastructure grew exponentially. By 2002, tourist arrivals had grown to a record 1.2
million but the militant attacks in 2002 decimated visitor numbers in the following
year; while not as dramatic, the 2005 attacks also contributed to a significant decline in
visitor numbers. A snapshot of the impact of the attacks is illustrated in figure 1 below.
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Jeff Lewis et al.
Figure 1. Annual direct foreign tourist arrivals (Bali Provincial Government,
2009).
While originally attracting travelers from the advanced Western states of Europe, the
United States, and Australia, Bali’s tourist cosmopolis has evolved to include visitors from
Japan, Eastern Europe, East and Southeast Asia, and various parts of Indonesia itself.
This diversification in recent years is related, at least in part, to the bombing attacks.
In response to the sudden downturn in tourism numbers after the 2002 bombings,
especially from Australia, the Indonesian government embarked on an extensive recovery
and tourism promotion campaign (Hitchcock and Putra 2007; Pambudi, McCaughey, and
Smyth 2009; UNDP 2003). With money provided by the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and World Bank, government agencies developed a new strategy that sought to
stimulate domestic tourism and diversify the source of international visitors. This diversification was accelerated even further after the 2005 bombings, as the number of Australian visitors declined again and travel warnings in the United States and Europe were
reiterated.
The execution of three of the Bali bombers late in 2008 provoked another dip in
Anglophonic arrivals, as Americans, Australians, and Britons heeded their governments’
travel warnings about the likelihood of Islamist reprisal attacks. While some of this relative decline in Anglophonic visitors might also be explained in terms of the emergence of
alternative, developing world tourism destinations, it is also very clear that a new wave of
non-Western visitors (both Muslim and non-Muslim) are now arriving in Bali. Figure 2
shows a 76 percent increase in foreign tourist arrivals between 2006 (the year following
the second bombings) and 2009. The figure also presents a breakdown of the top nine
national groups arriving in Bali over the past few years. During this period, tourist arrivals
from Australia gradually recovered and by 2009 this country was ranked first, followed by
Japan.5 The balance of other nationalities is also changing quite markedly. The proportional increase is far greater from non-Western countries such as China (390
percent) and Malaysia (83 percent) than for the United Kingdom and Europe (average
of 58 percent).
In a peculiar way, the increase in non-Western tourism in Bali might seem to approximate one of the primary objectives of the Bali bombers and purist Islam more generally,
that is, the diminution of Euro-American imperialism and influence in Indonesia and the
(re)colonization of Hindu Bali by Muslims from Java, Malaysia, and beyond. It is certainly
clear that domestic tourists are increasingly dominating the shopping malls and main
beach areas of Kuta, especially during peak Indonesian holiday periods and outside
peak Australian holiday periods. The number of Indonesian tourist visits to Bali each
5
The murder and sexual assault of several Japanese tourists in 2009 and 2010 led to further dramatic falls in Japanese visitor numbers. Political unrest in Fiji and Thailand also contributed to
an increase in the number of Australians choosing to holiday in Bali and other parts of Indonesia.
The Bali Bombings Monument
27
Figure 2. Direct foreign tourist arrivals and market rank 2006 and 2009
(Bali Provincial Government, 2009).
year is now estimated to be approximately three times that of international visitors.
Indeed, Asian peoples are outnumbering European-based peoples and cultures across
much of Badung, including the new developments from Dreamlands through Kuta,
Seminyak, and Tanah Lot. With the accelerating integration of the Chinese middle
classes into the global economy of pleasure, the exponential increase in PRC tourists
to Bali is likely to continue, even in the face of the global financial crisis. Along with
new arrivals from places like Belarus and Russia, the domestic and other Asian tourists
who now come to Bali have radically altered the island’s cosmopolitan mix and cultural
ethnoscape. Not surprisingly, this cosmopolization of Bali is having a direct effect on
the spatial and cultural vista of Bali, and the ways in which the Bali monument is
being used and understood, that is, the ways in which the meaning of the site is being
ideologically fostered.
SHAPING
THE
MONUMENT HOMOLOGY
As indicated in the introduction to this paper, the Bali monument has been imagined
and established as a communal totem around which a complex aggregation of beings
might find their common humanity. This commonality is constituted not simply
through a shared compassion or conceived enemy (terrorists-terrorism), but through a
distinctive and powerful imaginary of Bali itself. The core of the homology, that is, is
28
Jeff Lewis et al.
an imagining of Bali’s own durable and self-projected conception of tradition, religion,
ritual practice, and cultural harmony. These cultural conceptions of tradition are
thereby mobilized through the island’s transformation into a global tourist destination
and integration into the global economy.
In this sense, the homology that is shaped into the monument site is bound to the
sense of Balinese tradition and its commodification in the modern tourist economy
(Lewis and Lewis 2009b). This is not to suggest that the Balinese rituals and traditional
practices are in any way artificial; it is rather to note that the imaginings of the past have
been re-rendered into the island’s transformations, including the pleasures and vicissitudes associated with modernization, cosmopolization, and global integration.
It is precisely these imaginings that are also central to the conception and design of
the bombings monument. In particular, the Balinese notion of harmony-in-contention
(duality and balance) was critical to the design. Balinese-Hindu mythology is strongly
focused on the spiritual interdependence of good and evil. Within this mythology, the
bhuta kala demons are not considered entirely evil, nor are their spiritual nemeses considered entirely wholesome. Rather, the dialectic of evil and good that characterizes Balinese Hinduism and the older forms of ritual culture is formed through an eternal
contingency; evil is not subjugated, redeemed, or eradicated from the human body or
spiritual world more generally since it is the predicate of good. The principle of rwa
bhineda or “two in one” conceives of good and evil in terms of a mutual identification
that seeks merely to minimize the harm that evil may inflict on the living (and the dead).
While many Balinese communities and individuals have been able to sustain this imagining of a rwa bhineda harmony, even through the shock of rapid (post)modernization,
the horror of the bombings tested the island people’s theological, ethical, and social
resolve. Like the revenge massacres perpetrated in Bali against Chinese and alleged
Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI; Communist Party of Indonesia) sympathizers in
1965–66, the Bali bombings left the local people raw and disturbed (Hitchcock and
Putra 2007). Since the 1970s, of course, the Balinese had been compelled to marshal
the ideal of harmony and its cultural imagining both in support of rapid tourism development and against its excesses. While delivering significant economic benefits to the island
and Indonesia more generally (Pambudi, McCaughey, and Smyth 2009), tourism and
global integration also challenged Bali’s ecological, social, and cultural sustainability;
the bombings, in this sense, were simply the apex of a more enduring and less visible
crisis that perpetually destabilized the ideal of harmony and Balinese cosmopolitanism
(Howe 2005; Lewis and Lewis 2009a, 2010).
Thus, while the Indonesian government and the IMF focused on the social and
economic conditions of recovery after the bombings (UNDP 2003), Balinese community
leaders sought to restore harmony through the rebalancing of the rwa bhineda. Indeed,
as Michael Hitchcock and Darma Putra (2007) have clearly demonstrated, the Balinese
themselves were concerned about the outbreak of evil that rapid development and
cosmic imbalance had generated. To this end, the Bali Tourism Authority, Hindu
priests, and other community leaders embarked on an intense program of ritual cleansing, much of which was constituted around interfaith congregation and religious dialogue.
The Bali bombings memorial and the first commemoration service were conceived
in terms of these broader processes of economic restoration, social appeasement, and
cosmological cleansing. Within a week of the attack, the idea of a memorial at the site
The Bali Bombings Monument
29
of Bali’s “Ground Zero” was reported in the Bali Post. An academic from Udayana University, Luh Ketut Suryani, argued at a meeting with the Badung Regency that the bombings were a “strong warning” (peringatan keras) and “punishment” (hukuman) from the
gods because Bali’s rapid tourism development had deviated radically from religious
values (Bali Post 2002). Thus, while the construction of the monument was clearly motivated by “modernist” and secular concerns about the Balinese tourism economy and the
circumvention of religious or sectarian violence, the monument was also sanctified in the
island’s religious and spiritual aegis.
Indeed, for the Badung Regency, which commissioned the project, the secular and
religious functions of the memorial were largely indistinguishable; the bombings had critically damaged Bali’s reputation as a safe tourist destination, but this harm was itself integrally linked to cosmological imbalance. This interdependence of secular and
cosmological conditions was clearly a part of the design brief and the propagation of
the monument’s ideological homology—a harmony that collapsed political, ethnic, and
religious difference. As illustrated in figure 3 (above), the design is composed of three
elements: a memorial wall, a replica of a Balinese-style temple, and a fountain. The structure is set on a raised stage or gallery that has steps on the east and west sides. In the front
of the structure at street level is a small, decorative amphitheater that is illuminated at
night and appears as a beacon guarding the approach from the nightclub district of
Legian Street.
While there were minor modifications to the monument in 2010, the design principles have remained constant. These principles have been outlined in various forums
by the architect, I Wayan Gormuda:6
• As with most Balinese temples, the shrine is marked as an elevated site, moving
the visitor toward a more transcendent perspective of heaven and purity. The
monument is therefore set on a raised platform or gallery, with steps approaching
from the east and west sides. There is also a small amphitheater set at street level.
This marks the symbolic approach to the memorial and the gateway from
material to spiritual conditions.
• The large “tree of life” (kayon) represents the lives of the bombing victims and
the prayers that will guide them to heaven. The tree brings together the material
and spiritual conception of life and the peace that returns, even through tragedy.
The fearsome Bhoma image, which appears at the base of the tree, is the ubiquitous guardian of holy shrines in Bali; the Bhoma drive away evil spirits.
• The altar is a hybrid design space. The backdrop is a huge memorial board displaying the name and nationality of each of the 202 identified victims. On either
side, the altar provides space for flower offerings, messages, and prayers. As with
domestic and public shrines and temples, the altar is a significant site for spiritual
cleansing and daily libation.
• The Balinese compass rose in the pond at the approach to the monument orientates the memorial and the visitor toward Mount Agung, the holiest landsite in
Bali and the home of the gods.
6
Interview with I Wayan Gormuda by Darma Putra, Denpasar, January 12, 2009.
30
Jeff Lewis et al.
Figure 3. The Bali bombings monument prior to modifications in
2010. Photo: Belinda Lewis.
• The triangle connecting the three half circles represents the Hindu trinity of the
three most significant deities—Brahma, Visnu, and Siva.
While the kayon, Bhoma, temple, deities, and fountain were conceived and constructed as symbological references within the religious traditions of Bali, the memorial
board, gallery, altar, and location of the memorial have connections with Western religious and secular symbology. Moreover, the memorial board and the victims’ names
were presented in a distinctly Western style, applying European-derived functional
elements; these include the gold lettering set against a polished black background, and
the names that are ordered according to nation and alphabetical listing. These rational
and lineal structures, in fact, directly challenge the universalism and cyclical nature of
the rwa bhineda and the monument’s Vedic elements.
Even so, the Regency and the Indonesian government wanted the monument to be
ready for the first commemoration ceremony of the bombing in October 2003 when
world attention would again be turned toward Bali. As Lewis (2006) notes, this commemoration was particularly important for Australia and the Australia-Indonesia
relationship. The Indonesian government and Badung Regency wanted to promote a
sense of “restored harmony” that would in turn revivify Bali’s reputation as a safe
holiday destination. Along with other things, the Australian government used the commemoration ceremony to promulgate its own sense of nation and validate policies on
the “war on terror” (Lewis 2006). With Australian troops engaged in warfare in Iraq
and Afghanistan, the sense of national destiny was fortified in 2003 by news video
footage of the monument and the commemoration ceremony, which was broadcast
directly into Australia.
The Bali Bombings Monument
31
These respective national, security, economic, and ideological claims were thereby
inscribed into the complex bricolage of design elements and the ceremonial politics of
the first commemoration (Lewis 2006). In prescribing an alignment of communal,
ethnic, national, secular, and religious claims, the homology of the monument sought
to foster a miraculous ideological commonality. Not surprisingly, the precarious convolution of design and cultural elements threatened to fracture as the various meanings of the
monument within this secular setting began to struggle for primacy in the cosmopolitan
cacophony of the Legian streetscape.
BEYOND
THE
HOMOLOGY: BALINESE NARRATIVES
OF
MEMORY
AND
HARMONY
The Balinese themselves, in fact, identified this volatility. Many in the Balinese community opposed the construction of the memorial, rejecting its claim to universal value
and reverence. There was much public debate about the issue through local radio and
newspapers, particularly the Bali Post. Among the opponents, some believed that the
memorializing of a catastrophe would simply perpetuate the negative spiritual and
social impact of the “tragedy” (Asmara 2002).7 In an interview conducted in 2009,
Bali’s governor, I Made Mangku Pastika, former head of the Bali bombings investigation
team, reflected on the local and transnational value of the monument and its detractors.
With the prospect of further developments on the memorial site and the establishment of
an international “peace park” on land at the site of the Sari Club bomb blast, Governor
Pastika noted:
Some Balinese people think that it is useless to remember bad things that have
happened in the past. . . . There are many Balinese who dislike the monument
and the remembrances at Ground Zero. But, I also see it from the point of view
of the outsiders. On every commemoration, I always come. I want to respect the
people from outside.8
In many ways, contentions over the meaning of the site for Balinese and “outsiders” is not
surprising since the “traditions” of Vedic-Balinese culture are inscribed by the divine
cycle of purity, contamination, and renewal. Within this perspective, “memory” exists
within the hierarchy of the ephemeral material world and spiritual eternity; to fix
memory beyond the natural or cosmological rhythms of time is to interrupt the inevitability of life, death, and rebirth.
Indeed, this Western notion of “cultural preservation” has always been problematic
in Bali since it seeks to create an atavistic relic that resists the necessity of decay. In her
discussion of Bali’s colonization, Margaret Wiener (1994) points out that it was the Dutch
who imposed concepts of preservation and tradition as they supported the colonizer’s
administrative and political interests (see also Lewis and Lewis 2009a). In more recent
7
The Bali Film Board gave similar reasons for banning the 2007 Enison Sinaro film Long Road to
Heaven. The film details the story of the Bali bombings, which the Board believed would be distressing to many Balinese as it would open old wounds (BBC News 2007).
8
Interview with Governor Pastika by Darma Putra, Denpasar, January 1, 2009.
32
Jeff Lewis et al.
times and as we intimated above, this idea of an authentic or traditional Bali has been
mobilized in tourism discourses in order to identify the island as a distinctive product
in the global economy of pleasure. This remodeling of Balinese tradition for consumption
by domestic and international tourists represents the integration of “tradition” (as strategically conjured elements of the past) with modern economic and cultural practices. Bali’s
tourism boom and integration into the global economy of pleasure is neither arbitrary nor
ideologically neutral. It is an interpellation within a broad cultural history that is replete
with struggle and violence, as much as harmony and cosmological balance.
Thus, debates among the Balinese about the meaning and value of the memorial—
and its related Peace Park—are clearly influenced by these historico-cultural elements
and also by claims to a modern, global cultural politics (Turmakin 2005, 21–82). The Balinese, quite rightly, contemplate whether the homologous “memory” that the monument
is designed to represent is either culturally or morally generative—whether the monument actually speaks for the hosts and host culture, or is simply an extension of the
global economy of pleasure and the ambiguous interests of the cosmopolis. In this
sense, the monument resembles the hybrid dance forms that have evolved to serve the
interests and pleasures of “outsiders,” most particularly as entertainment for the resort
guests in Sanur and Nusa Dua. For many Balinese, in fact, the monument has added
very little to the cleansing and interfaith rituals that local communities themselves have
initiated. The memorial seems more credibly like a gesture of appeasement, or even
apology, to those foreign nations whose citizen-consumers have powered the tourism
economy.
FRAGILE COSMOPOLITANISM: COUNTER-NARRATIVES OF PLEASURE
AND
DISPLEASURE
While Balinese traditional conceptions of history and memory are challenged by the
presence of the monument, these anxieties are linked to even deeper and more durable
concerns about the loss of autonomy associated with global integration—including global
geopolitics. As noted above, Jeff Lewis (2006) argues that the Australian government and
media used the first commemoration of the 2002 attacks to support national grieving and
justify policies associated with the global “war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq. The
monument was an ideal backdrop, as it propagated a sense of East-West harmony and
a collaborative grieving that inspired an impression of multilateral approaches to transnational terrorism. Through this symbolic amplification of its own national interests and perspective, Australia was able to “imagine” the memorial space as a site of reverence and
remembrance, a place in which the holy force of the war on terror could be articulated
as a transnational, ideological, and even cosmological mission. Retribution, in this sense,
could be reconfigured in terms of a divine purpose that transcended national, ethnic, or
religious difference: terrorists are the enemy of all humankind.
As Aristotle duly noted, memory is the most powerful faculty in the creation of narrative. In this context, the commemoration service sought to overlay the monument with
a moral and political aesthetic, by which the memory of the attacks became ossified as
pure ideology and Western knowledge systems were elevated as collective salvation.
Thus, the gaps and threads of the design and construction process became sanctified
through the public presentation of the monument and the broad discourse of glory.
The Bali Bombings Monument
33
The discourse of the commemoration, that is, sought to seal or obscure the gaps in an
extravagant invocation of a unity that was propagated by the ideals of “Bali harmony,”
economic cosmopolitanism, and a politics that transcends national, ethnic, religious,
and secular boundaries. History was wound into a perfect and unitary thread that
defied, as it mobilized, those excesses of violence upon which it was predicated, that
is, the Western model of global domination and hierarchical economic and knowledge
systems. The economy of pleasure, upon which the original violence and the site itself
were constructed, was thus laminated into the concrete edifice, deflecting the vision of
visitors away from the West’s own disposition of violence and toward a more benign transnational and transcendent projection. Through the monument’s homology of cultural
elements, the West was able to imagine itself as the progenitor of global pluralism, innocence, and universal freedom.
Since the first commemoration, however, this claim to ideological purity has been
continually tested by the immanent dynamic of culture and Bali’s own intrinsic crisis of
transformation. As Henri Lefevbre (1991) continually reminded us, spaces can never be
fixed or unified, but are besieged by cultural mutation and the counter-narratives that
human groups perpetually generate through social change. In particular, the further cosmopolization of the Kuta-Legian tourist zones of Bali have brought new cultural practices
and consumer modes to the area. As noted earlier in this paper, the increasing diversification of the Kuta tourist ethnoscape has contributed further to the island’s complex cultural
contiguities and the contentions arising from such transient and intense modes of territorialization. Amidst this assemblage of bodies, desires, practices, and beliefs, the monument’s propagated ideological purity seems extraordinarily discordant; its claims to unity
and totemic cosmopolitanism sit in a peculiar disjunction with the swarm of human typologies and their respective claims to primacy and pleasure.
These complexities and the fragility of Bali’s cosmopolitanism are evident in the perceptions and practices of visitors to the monument site. In order to examine this complexity in contrast to the monument’s propagated homology, the authors conducted a series of
empirical studies from 2008 until 2010. The research included participant observation
and open-ended interviews with visitors to the site. While this research does not claim
to be exhaustive, it illustrates the ways in which a disjunctive mix of counter-narratives
is being generated around the monument and it highlights some important issues that
reflect more broadly on new modes of transient territorialization and cultural transition
in Bali.
While the aims of the research were outlined in the introduction, further detail on
participants and methods is provided below. The findings from both the participant
observation and interviews have been synthesized and presented as an integrated
discussion.
In 2008–2009, the research was undertaken at various times across the given year;
including local Indonesian school and religious holidays and the peak periods for international visitors. This phasing of the research was designed to connect researchers
with the various ethnic and national groups who visit Bali. Thus, while Australians are
the most numerous visitor group overall, they only dominate the ethnosphere of Kuta
during identified peak holiday periods. Other national groups—including Indonesians
themselves—are more numerous at quite different times of the year. A further phase
of the research, conducted from June until September 2010, aimed to capture the
34
Jeff Lewis et al.
changing nature of people’s perceptions and practices following the implementation of
new security measures and modifications to the monument site undertaken by the
Badung Regency in April of that year. Discussion of the findings from the 2008–2009
phase illustrates some of the counter-narratives being generated around the monument.
This is followed by discussion of the findings from the 2010 phase, which reveal new
layers of complexity in the context of official attempts to restrict the practices of local
and international visitors.
2008–2009
Most visits to the memorial occurred during the evening (6:00–10:00 p.m.) with up
to one thousand visitors per hour during Indonesian school holidays and/or Muslim
holiday periods. In the heat of the day, the average was around one hundred per hour.
These numbers do not include pedestrians observing the monument from a distance
as they passed by. The vast majority of visitors to the monument were Indonesian
nationals (around 55 percent), most of whom were from Jakarta, although there were
also visitors from other parts of the archipelago. Other major visitor groups included
Malaysian, Korean, Taiwanese, and Chinese nationals. In the course of an evening,
around four tour buses per hour would bring these visitor groups directly to the monument. At other times of the year when Japanese and Europeans were relatively numerous
in Kuta and the surrounding tourist zone, the numbers of these visitors at the monument
were relatively low compared with those from Asian countries. At any one time during the
evening, Australians would comprise approximately 5 percent of the total visitor
numbers, with this increasing to almost 50 percent during peak Australian holiday
periods. Visitors would spend an average of twelve minutes at the monument site.
Other than the numbers and ethnic derivation of the visitors, perhaps the most significant aspect of the research is the ways different groups use the monument as a public
space. As a general observation, the behaviors and identifiable practices of visitors to the
site are influenced by the level of ethnic-national presence of the group; behavior is often
modified, depending on the numbers of similar and different ethnic-national groups
present at the site.
Very clearly, the space has become a tourism memento site for the majority of visitors. The design of the site ushers visitors through a form of gallery experience, directing
them from one part of the site to another. At each point of interest in the gallery, the
majority of visitors would pause and arrange themselves for personalized photographs.
The non-Western visitors, in particular those from Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan,
and China, would take photos of their various assemblages of family and friends at the
fountain, the altar, and the amphitheater at the front of the monument. Only the memorial board, which is raised above head height, was photographed without human interpellation. The two Australian authors were also frequently conscripted as transnational props
in the memento photographs, providing further proof of the tourists’ exotic experiences
in Bali.
For most of these visitors, it is a happy occasion. The monument provides some of
the cultural nuance that renders their holiday exotic and memorable. The Balinese cultural elements are well received, though the Bhoma are not particularly recognizable at
The Bali Bombings Monument
35
night and they are not as frequently photographed as one might expect. There is virtually
no solemnity in the visits by these groups, even though most understand the significance
and purpose of the monument.
I am so happy I am here in Bali! This is my first holiday overseas. I want this
photo to remember Bali. I want my family at home to see me here. Bali is
very nice place. This monument is very nice place for photo.
[Chinese woman, aged twenty-eight]
The monument, in fact, is one of Kuta’s few noncommercial public spaces, other than
the beach. And it is one of the few spaces in which a visitor feels welcome and comfortable. Virtually every other open space in the Kuta-Legian tourist zone is privately owned,
a legacy perhaps of former President Suharto’s appalling indifference to responsible
development planning and his government sponsorship of Bali’s rapid and poorly
planned tourism development by voracious private developers. As the Balinese were
largely excluded from planning and development of the Badung area, community
needs were disregarded and public space subsumed by private interests.
To this end, the bombings memorial is quite unique. For all its very obvious aesthetic
and cultural failings, the space represents a new phase in Balinese autonomy in the aftermath of the Reformasi, especially in terms of decentralization and the capacity of Re
ۑﯠﯣﮡۛۦۣﮠۙۛۘۦۖۡٷۗﮠۧ۠ٷۢۦ۩ۣ۞ﮡﮡﮤۤۨۨۜ
ẳẰ ẺỀẽẹẬặ Ẻằ ẾẴẬẹ ếỀắẴẰẾۦۣۚۗۙۧ ۪ۦۙۧ۠ ٷۣۢۨۘۘﯠ
ۙۦۙۜ ﭞۗ۠ﯙ ﮤۧۨۦۙ۠ٷ۠ ٷۡﯗ
ۙۦۙۜ ﭞۗ۠ﯙ ﮤۣۧۢۨۤۦۗۧۖ۩ۑ
ۙۦۙۜ ﭞۗ۠ﯙ ﮤۧۨۢۦۤۙۦ۠ ٷۗۦۣۙۡۡﯙ
ۙۦۙۜ ﭞۗ۠ﯙ ﮤۡۧ ۣۚ ۩ۧۙ ۦۙے
ۣۣۣۧ۠ۤۡۧﯙ۠ ٷۣۢۡۙۦۙﯙ ﮤۨۢۙۡ۩ۣۢﯞۢۛۧ ۣۖۡﯡ ۠ٷﯡۜۙ ے
ٷۦۨ۩ێ ٷۡۦٷﯚۢ ٷۣۡۺﯟ ﯢۢۘ ٷۧ ۫ۙﮐ ٷۘۢ۠ۙﯡ ﮞۧ۫ۙﮐۙۚۚ ﯣ
ڿۀ ڽھ ۤۤ ﮞڿڽڼھ ۺۦٷ۩ۦۖۙﯘ ﮡ ڽڼۧۧ۩ۙ ﯢ ﮡ ھ Џۣ۠۩ۡۙ Үﮡۙۧ ۘ۩ۨۑۢ ٷۧﯠ۠ ۣۚ ٷۢۦ۩ۣﯣۜۙ ے
ڿڽڼھۗۜ ۦٷﯞү ڽ ﮤۣۙۢ۠ۢۧۜۙۘ ۠ۖ۩ێ ﮞҮҰҰڽڼڼھڽүڽڽҰڽھڼڼۑﮡҮڽڼڽﮠڼڽ ﮤﯢۍﯚ
ҮҰҰڽڼڼھڽүڽڽҰڽھڼڼۑﮰۨۗٷۦۨۧۖٷﮡۛۦۣﮠۙۛۘۦۖۡٷۗﮠۧ۠ٷۢۦ۩ۣ۞ﮡﮡﮤۤۨۨۜ ﮤۙ۠ۗۨۦٷۧ ۜۨ ۣۨ ﭞۢﮐ
ﮤۙ۠ۗۨۦٷۧ ۜۨۨۙ ۣۗ۫ ۣۨ ﯜ
ﮤۨۢۙۡ۩ۣۢﯞۢۛۧ ۣۖۡﯡ ۠ٷﯡۜۙ ے ﮠ۶ڿڽڼھڿ ٷۦۨ۩ێ ٷۡۦٷﯚۢ ٷۣۡۺﯟ ﯢۢۘ ٷۧ ۫ۙﮐ ٷۘۢ۠ۙﯡ ﮞۧ۫ۙﮐۙۚۚ ﯣ
ﮡҮڽڼڽﮠڼڽﮤۣۘ ڿۀڽھ ۤۤ ﮞھ Үﮞۧۙۘ۩ۨۑۢ ٷۧﯠ۠ ۣۚ ٷۢۦ۩ۣﯣۜۙ ے ﮠۣۣۣۧ۠ۤۡۧﯙ۠ ٷۣۢۡۙۦۙﯙ
ҮҰҰڽڼڼھڽүڽڽҰڽھڼڼۑ
ۙۦۙۜ ﭞۗ۠ﯙ ﮤۣۢۧ ۧۧۡۦۙێ۩ۙۧۨ ۥۙې
ڿڽڼھ ۦۤﯠ ڼڽҮ ۣۢ ۀﮠۀڽھﮠۀҰڽﮠڼڿڽ ﮤۧۧۙۦۘۘٷ ێﯢ ﮞۑﯠﯣﮡۛۦۣﮠۙۛۘۦۖۡٷۗﮠۧ۠ٷۢۦ۩ۣ۞ﮡﮡﮤۣۤۨۨۜۡ ۦۚۘۙۘ ٷۣۣ۠ۢ۫ﯚ
The Journal of Asian Studies Vol. 72, No. 1 (February) 2013: 21–43.
© The Association for Asian Studies, Inc., 2013 doi:10.1017/S0021911812001799
The Bali Bombings Monument: Ceremonial
Cosmopolis
JEFF LEWIS, BELINDA LEWIS, AND I NYOMAN
DARMA PUTRA
In 2003 a monument was erected at the site of the 2002 Islamist militant attacks in Kuta,
Bali. Government and other official discourses, including the design brief, represent the
monument as an integrated and culturally harmonious public testimony to the victims.
However, the monument is also a discordant association of ideas, meanings, and political
claims. While originally designed to subdue insecurity, the Bali bombings monument, in
fact, constitutes a site of powerful “language wars” around its rendering of memory and
its presence in Bali’s integration into the globalizing economy of pleasure. This paper
examines the ways in which the monument is being articulated and “consumed” as a
social and cultural marker for the island’s tourism geography. The paper pays particular
attention to the increasing diversity of Bali’s visitors and the ways in which a precarious
“cosmopolization” of the Kuta-Legian area is being experienced and expressed at the
monument site.
INTRODUCTION
HE BALI BOMBINGS MEMORIAL commemorates the first of two Islamist attacks that took
place in 2002 and 2005. On October 12, 2002, a van loaded with explosives was detonated outside the Sari nightclub in Legian Street, Kuta. At about the same time, and just
across the street, a pedestrian bomber detonated his backpack in Paddy’s Bar. At Paddy’s
the explosion ignited propane gas bottles, creating an intense fireball that burned alive
many of the nightclub patrons who had survived the initial blast. The official death toll
for the Sari Club and Paddy’s Bar bombings was around 202, though the actual figure
may have been higher as many non-Balinese Indonesians were personae non gratae
and were never counted in the official figures. Around eighty-eight Australians were
killed; the other major nationalities included Indonesian, British, American, Japanese,
Brazilian, German, and French.
The 2002 bombings critically damaged Bali’s reputation as a safe, peaceful, and harmonious tourist destination and had a devastating effect on the tourism industry and local
livelihoods. These events triggered an unprecedented social and economic crisis. For
local Balinese, the bombings were also associated with a deeper cosmological imbalance.
The notion of “Bali harmony” that had for several decades underpinned the exponential
T
Jeff Lewis (jeff.lewis@rmit.edu.au) is Professor of Cultural Politics in the Global Cities Institute, School of
Media and Communication at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Belinda Lewis (belinda.lewis@monash.edu) is Senior Lecturer in Health Promotion, School of Primary
Health Care, Monash University, Melbourne.
I Nyoman Darma Putra (idarmaputra@yahoo.com) is Professor of Language and Culture, Faculty of Letters,
Udayana University, Bali, Indonesia.
22
Jeff Lewis et al.
growth in Bali’s tourism economy was called into question. In the wake of the tragedy,
there was considerable reflection amongst the Balinese themselves about rapid sociocultural change associated with rampant and uncontrolled tourism development; serious
environmental degradation; uneven distribution of wealth; growing social inequalities;
and increasing economic, ethnic, and religious tensions between the Hindu Balinese
and “outsider” migrants from other parts of predominantly Muslim Indonesia. Within
this context, the Bali Tourism Authority and religious leaders conducted extensive interfaith, ritual cleansing ceremonies designed to restore a sense of harmony and focus on the
unique characteristics of traditional Balinese culture that would contribute to Bali’s
capacity to deal effectively with the tragedy. The unresolved social and cultural contentions that had inevitably been generated by Bali’s modernization, increasing cosmopolitanism, and engagement with a globalizing economy were largely played down (Lewis
and Lewis 2009b).
The Bali bombings memorial was constructed in 2003 during the three months
before the first commemoration service for the 2002 attacks. Both the memorial and
first commemoration were conceived in terms of broader processes of cosmological
cleansing, economic recovery, and restoration of a social harmony. Set within the
teeming tourist cosmopolis of Kuta, the Bali memorial was designed to reconcile the
underpinning violence, contentiousness, and impact of the attacks, creating an authorized
homology that would contribute to spiritual, social, and cultural healing. The diverse
design elements and historical-cultural references of the memorial were drawn together
to create a homogenizing narrative, or “homology,” which aimed to give a sense of cohesion and unity.1 This communion of aesthetic and cultural elements would transform the
horrors of the past into a comprehensible but powerful narrative that distinguishes right
from wrong, order from calumny, and pluralism from sectarianism. As Spiro Kostof
(1987) has noted, such memorials are generally designed to transform the diverse and
complex details of conflict events into a more integrated vision of history (see also
Logan and Reeves 2009; Mare 2002). There is a long scholarly lineage of critique
focused on this privileging of a particular perspective of the past as “official history” (Foucault 1977b).2
In many respects, this is precisely the “official” objective of the Bali bombings monument. For those who commissioned and designed the monument, the site would not
simply commemorate the victims of the attacks; it would advance a common narrative
of peace and reconciliation against the ideological discord and violence that had precipitated the atrocity of the bombings. Thus, the Badung Regency, which presides over the
Kuta district, commissioned a memorial that subscribed to national government aspirations on security-building, unified pluralism (espoused in Pancasila, the ideological
1
We are using the term “homology” to describe these homogenizing narratives. As indicated, the
term refers to an attempt to homogenize cultural pluralism and diversity, drawing various discourses and narratives into a form that subsumes the parts within a more unitary “sameness.”
The term is the reciprocate of what Georges Bataille ([1957] 2001) describes as “heterology,”
which is an assembly of narratives that maintain a degree of independence and autonomy.
2
The privileging of a particular perspective of the past as “official history” has been variously
defined as “ideology” (Benjamin [1940] 2005), “discourse” (Foucault 1977b), “writing” (de
Certeau 1988), and the “imaginary” (Taylor 2004). Each of these scholars has undertaken critical
analysis of the ideological dimensions of “official history” and its political and social implications.
The Bali Bombings Monument
23
framework of the Indonesian state), and Bali’s community and economic restoration
(Hitchcock and Putra 2007; ICG 2003; Lewis 2006). The memorial’s homologous narrative conceptualized the atrocity in terms of an official ideology and memory that would
(re)synthesize the disparate parts of Indonesia that had succumbed to the force of globallocal contentions and political violence. Bali’s own frequently cited disposition to
“harmony” was therefore to be mobilized for national reconciliation and local recovery;
the official memory of the events would fortify Bali’s own radical “cosmopolization”
and integration into the global tourist economy.3
This conception of official memory and the conciliatory force of Bali harmony,
however, remains problematic (Allen and Palemo 2005; Hitchcock and Putra 2007;
Lewis and Lewis 2009b; Robinson 1995). Indeed, the symbolic ordering that seeks to
organize and homologize the meaning of the Bali bombings monument has neither
obscured nor reconciled the complex cultural elements that comprise “the bombings”
as memory and representation, specifically within the peculiarly disjunctive spatial and
cultural context of Kuta, Bali. Indeed, the monument’s primary narrative of unity,
harmony, and reconciliation is perpetually subverted by counter-narratives that invoke
the very contentious issues and cultural tensions that the monument is designed to overcome. Thus, the diversity and complexity of cultural threads, memories, and practices
that constitute the Kuta ethnoscape and its plethora of political dispositions continually
challenge and destabilize the ideological and cultural homology that brands the island’s
tourist economy of pleasure. At their most acute, these language wars are expressed in
the formidable apprehensions of purist Islamists who regard the memorial and the
Bali pleasure zones as a profound offense against Islam and evidence of Western
moral infamy and violent political hegemony (Barton 2004, 2010; Eliraz 2007; Ramakrishna and Tan 2003; Sidel 2006, 2008).4
Within the shadows of these more spectacular contentions, however, there exists a
broad range of alternative narratives, cultural perspectives, and counter-memories—
the sort of fragmentation and counter-forces that Michel Foucault (1977a, 1977b,
1980) describes in terms of a resistant microphysics in opposition to hegemonic power
itself. In this context, this paper has two principal and related objectives. First, the
paper examines the ways in which the homology and authorized memory of the Bali
3
By “cosmopolization” we are referring, in particular, to the urbanization of Bali’s southern, Badung
region. Since the inception of mass tourism in the 1960s, this rich agricultural region has become
densely urbanized through tourism infrastructure, and various forms of housing, retail, and industrial development. It is now a sprawling urban space that is a “cosmopolis” of transient peoples,
including international tourists and Indonesians from many parts of the archipelago, including
Muslim Java and Lombok.
4
We distinguish in this paper between “purist” and “militant” Islamism. By “purist” we are describing that group of Muslims who share a strong religious affiliation with Salafi and Wahabbi traditions,
who have a literalist interpretation of the Qu’ran, and who are committed to the broad imposition of
Islamic or sh’ariah law over Muslim communities and territories. While there are clear theological
and cultural variations within this group (see Hassan 2006; ICG 2004), they share a general rejection of secularism, democratic politics, Western liberalism, and any form of state authority that is
not based on Islamic theocracy. Among this group are those who adopt militant strategies for
the imposition of sh’ariah; however, only a small proportion of Islamic purists are violent or
militant.
24
Jeff Lewis et al.
bombings are being shaped within an overriding ideology and economy of pleasure (see
Lewis and Lewis 2009a, 2010). Secondly, the paper examines the ways in which this homology is being challenged and subverted through the multiplication of counter-narratives
that are being generated through various mechanisms and processes. These mechanisms
and processes are themselves the predicate of Bali’s own cultural instability and transitional disposition, including the increasing complexity of its tourist ethnoscape and its
increasingly discordant contiguity of cultural practices. This study, thereby, contributes
to broader speculations about the nature of Bali’s engagement in the global economy
of pleasure and the countervailing conditions of global language wars and political violence. The paper concludes by raising important questions about Indonesian and
global pluralism, social harmony, and cosmopolitanization.
Inevitably, this paper situates its discussions within the broader context of “the war
on terror” or what Jeff Lewis calls “the 9/11 wars” (Lewis 2005; Lewis and Lewis
2009a, 2010). However, these wars and their related contentions are not of themselves
the central focus of the paper. Rather, the paper focuses on the ways in which these contentions are implicated in the formation and “deconstruction” of the Bali monument
homology. Thus, the paper problematizes the notion of cosmopolitanism and its assumptions within the specific context of the Bali bombings monument. The paper seeks to elucidate the cosmopolization of the Kuta region, and the bombings site in particular,
through the analysis of cultural narratives and practices. To this end, the paper examines
the ways in which narratives have been inscribed into the monument site through its
design; it also examines the shaping of alternative narratives and meanings, specifically
as they are evinced by the site’s visitors and users.
To achieve these heuristic objectives, the researchers employed a combination of
methods, including textual and empirical analyses. While these will be more fully outlined
in the discussions below, the purpose of their use in this research can be summarized in
the following terms—
1. Textual analysis
The monument is a text whose meanings can only be accessed through analysis of the
political and cultural conditions in which it is set. These conditions are framed through
the application of specific concepts and a theoretical model that engages with various
forms of historical, textual, and cultural artifacts. While this part of the essay focuses principally on the ways in which the homologous narrative and memory were formed, it also
outlines the ways in which this congregation of meanings is subverted by an alternative
narrative volition and the disposition of what Foucault (1977b) calls “counter-memory,”
that is, the gaps by which meanings falter and subside, even through the very process of
self-assertion.
2. Interviews
The study also examines the ways in which people engage with and derive meanings
from the monument and its attempt to impose a specific memory and narrative. Interviews were conducted with a range of visitors to the site over selected periods between
2008 and 2010. These interviews, conducted in English and/or Bahasa Indonesia, were
designed to access people’s perceptions and experience of the Bali monument and
explore the range of ways in which visitors were generating their own narratives and
The Bali Bombings Monument
25
understandings. The interviews provided valuable insights into the formation and
character of the Kuta monument’s totemic cosmopolitanism.
3. Participant Observation
In addition to the textual analysis and interviews, the research used participant observation to provide a more complete picture of people’s perceptions and practices as they
engaged with the monument and its surroundings, and with each other. Participant observation enables researchers to observe people’s natural behavior, interactions, and practices without the disruption of the researchers and their institutional interpellation. It
provides a context for understanding data collected through other methods and can
strengthen the analysis by providing a complement to participants’ subjective reporting
about what they believe and do (Family Health International 2005; Liamputtong
2007). Extensive participant observation was conducted at the monument site over
selected periods between 2008 and 2010. These detailed observations about the presence
and practices of different national and ethno-religious groups provided valuable insights
and also helped to refine the interview process.
BALI’S COSMOPOLIZATION
IN THE
ECONOMY
OF
PLEASURE
The Bali bombing attacks occurred as the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Australia were preparing to invade Iraq and extend the parameters of the global war on
terror. The perpetrators, members of the Islamist militant organization Jemaah Islamiyah
(JI), explained their actions in terms of U.S. incursions into holy Muslim lands, especially
the Middle East and Indonesia itself. The JI leadership viewed America and its allies,
including Australia, as moral contaminants and infidels, whose cultural values and practices were deeply offensive to the purity of the Muslim faith (Barton 2004; Hitchcock and
Putra 2007; ICG 2003, 2004; Lewis and Lewis 2009a; Sidel 2006; UNDP 2003).
In this context, the militants regarded the Balinese as collusive and treacherous allies
of the West and its imperial disposition (Lewis and Lewis 2009a; Nordholt 2007).
However, purist Islamist groups like JI tend to view Bali’s cosmopolization as merely
the apex of an ongoing, historical betrayal. This betrayal began in 1949 when Sukarno’s
new nationalist government rejected the Jakarta Charter, the precepts of sh’ariah law,
and Islam as the official national religion. In order to maintain the integrity of the new
state and support non-Muslim territories like Bali, the national government’s pluralist
principles inevitably incited a range of violent secessionist movements from Darul
Islam to Jemaah Islamiyah itself (Intan 2006; Nordholt 2007; Robinson 1995).
Bali’s engagement with global tourism, which has brought vast numbers of nonMuslim peoples into Indonesia, has clearly served to intensify these political passions.
The aggregate number of mostly Western international tourists grew from a few
hundred in 1970 to around sixty thousand by 1980. From this period, with the inception
of Suharto’s own personal investment strategy, the numbers and accompanying tourism
infrastructure grew exponentially. By 2002, tourist arrivals had grown to a record 1.2
million but the militant attacks in 2002 decimated visitor numbers in the following
year; while not as dramatic, the 2005 attacks also contributed to a significant decline in
visitor numbers. A snapshot of the impact of the attacks is illustrated in figure 1 below.
26
Jeff Lewis et al.
Figure 1. Annual direct foreign tourist arrivals (Bali Provincial Government,
2009).
While originally attracting travelers from the advanced Western states of Europe, the
United States, and Australia, Bali’s tourist cosmopolis has evolved to include visitors from
Japan, Eastern Europe, East and Southeast Asia, and various parts of Indonesia itself.
This diversification in recent years is related, at least in part, to the bombing attacks.
In response to the sudden downturn in tourism numbers after the 2002 bombings,
especially from Australia, the Indonesian government embarked on an extensive recovery
and tourism promotion campaign (Hitchcock and Putra 2007; Pambudi, McCaughey, and
Smyth 2009; UNDP 2003). With money provided by the International Monetary Fund
(IMF) and World Bank, government agencies developed a new strategy that sought to
stimulate domestic tourism and diversify the source of international visitors. This diversification was accelerated even further after the 2005 bombings, as the number of Australian visitors declined again and travel warnings in the United States and Europe were
reiterated.
The execution of three of the Bali bombers late in 2008 provoked another dip in
Anglophonic arrivals, as Americans, Australians, and Britons heeded their governments’
travel warnings about the likelihood of Islamist reprisal attacks. While some of this relative decline in Anglophonic visitors might also be explained in terms of the emergence of
alternative, developing world tourism destinations, it is also very clear that a new wave of
non-Western visitors (both Muslim and non-Muslim) are now arriving in Bali. Figure 2
shows a 76 percent increase in foreign tourist arrivals between 2006 (the year following
the second bombings) and 2009. The figure also presents a breakdown of the top nine
national groups arriving in Bali over the past few years. During this period, tourist arrivals
from Australia gradually recovered and by 2009 this country was ranked first, followed by
Japan.5 The balance of other nationalities is also changing quite markedly. The proportional increase is far greater from non-Western countries such as China (390
percent) and Malaysia (83 percent) than for the United Kingdom and Europe (average
of 58 percent).
In a peculiar way, the increase in non-Western tourism in Bali might seem to approximate one of the primary objectives of the Bali bombers and purist Islam more generally,
that is, the diminution of Euro-American imperialism and influence in Indonesia and the
(re)colonization of Hindu Bali by Muslims from Java, Malaysia, and beyond. It is certainly
clear that domestic tourists are increasingly dominating the shopping malls and main
beach areas of Kuta, especially during peak Indonesian holiday periods and outside
peak Australian holiday periods. The number of Indonesian tourist visits to Bali each
5
The murder and sexual assault of several Japanese tourists in 2009 and 2010 led to further dramatic falls in Japanese visitor numbers. Political unrest in Fiji and Thailand also contributed to
an increase in the number of Australians choosing to holiday in Bali and other parts of Indonesia.
The Bali Bombings Monument
27
Figure 2. Direct foreign tourist arrivals and market rank 2006 and 2009
(Bali Provincial Government, 2009).
year is now estimated to be approximately three times that of international visitors.
Indeed, Asian peoples are outnumbering European-based peoples and cultures across
much of Badung, including the new developments from Dreamlands through Kuta,
Seminyak, and Tanah Lot. With the accelerating integration of the Chinese middle
classes into the global economy of pleasure, the exponential increase in PRC tourists
to Bali is likely to continue, even in the face of the global financial crisis. Along with
new arrivals from places like Belarus and Russia, the domestic and other Asian tourists
who now come to Bali have radically altered the island’s cosmopolitan mix and cultural
ethnoscape. Not surprisingly, this cosmopolization of Bali is having a direct effect on
the spatial and cultural vista of Bali, and the ways in which the Bali monument is
being used and understood, that is, the ways in which the meaning of the site is being
ideologically fostered.
SHAPING
THE
MONUMENT HOMOLOGY
As indicated in the introduction to this paper, the Bali monument has been imagined
and established as a communal totem around which a complex aggregation of beings
might find their common humanity. This commonality is constituted not simply
through a shared compassion or conceived enemy (terrorists-terrorism), but through a
distinctive and powerful imaginary of Bali itself. The core of the homology, that is, is
28
Jeff Lewis et al.
an imagining of Bali’s own durable and self-projected conception of tradition, religion,
ritual practice, and cultural harmony. These cultural conceptions of tradition are
thereby mobilized through the island’s transformation into a global tourist destination
and integration into the global economy.
In this sense, the homology that is shaped into the monument site is bound to the
sense of Balinese tradition and its commodification in the modern tourist economy
(Lewis and Lewis 2009b). This is not to suggest that the Balinese rituals and traditional
practices are in any way artificial; it is rather to note that the imaginings of the past have
been re-rendered into the island’s transformations, including the pleasures and vicissitudes associated with modernization, cosmopolization, and global integration.
It is precisely these imaginings that are also central to the conception and design of
the bombings monument. In particular, the Balinese notion of harmony-in-contention
(duality and balance) was critical to the design. Balinese-Hindu mythology is strongly
focused on the spiritual interdependence of good and evil. Within this mythology, the
bhuta kala demons are not considered entirely evil, nor are their spiritual nemeses considered entirely wholesome. Rather, the dialectic of evil and good that characterizes Balinese Hinduism and the older forms of ritual culture is formed through an eternal
contingency; evil is not subjugated, redeemed, or eradicated from the human body or
spiritual world more generally since it is the predicate of good. The principle of rwa
bhineda or “two in one” conceives of good and evil in terms of a mutual identification
that seeks merely to minimize the harm that evil may inflict on the living (and the dead).
While many Balinese communities and individuals have been able to sustain this imagining of a rwa bhineda harmony, even through the shock of rapid (post)modernization,
the horror of the bombings tested the island people’s theological, ethical, and social
resolve. Like the revenge massacres perpetrated in Bali against Chinese and alleged
Partai Komunis Indonesia (PKI; Communist Party of Indonesia) sympathizers in
1965–66, the Bali bombings left the local people raw and disturbed (Hitchcock and
Putra 2007). Since the 1970s, of course, the Balinese had been compelled to marshal
the ideal of harmony and its cultural imagining both in support of rapid tourism development and against its excesses. While delivering significant economic benefits to the island
and Indonesia more generally (Pambudi, McCaughey, and Smyth 2009), tourism and
global integration also challenged Bali’s ecological, social, and cultural sustainability;
the bombings, in this sense, were simply the apex of a more enduring and less visible
crisis that perpetually destabilized the ideal of harmony and Balinese cosmopolitanism
(Howe 2005; Lewis and Lewis 2009a, 2010).
Thus, while the Indonesian government and the IMF focused on the social and
economic conditions of recovery after the bombings (UNDP 2003), Balinese community
leaders sought to restore harmony through the rebalancing of the rwa bhineda. Indeed,
as Michael Hitchcock and Darma Putra (2007) have clearly demonstrated, the Balinese
themselves were concerned about the outbreak of evil that rapid development and
cosmic imbalance had generated. To this end, the Bali Tourism Authority, Hindu
priests, and other community leaders embarked on an intense program of ritual cleansing, much of which was constituted around interfaith congregation and religious dialogue.
The Bali bombings memorial and the first commemoration service were conceived
in terms of these broader processes of economic restoration, social appeasement, and
cosmological cleansing. Within a week of the attack, the idea of a memorial at the site
The Bali Bombings Monument
29
of Bali’s “Ground Zero” was reported in the Bali Post. An academic from Udayana University, Luh Ketut Suryani, argued at a meeting with the Badung Regency that the bombings were a “strong warning” (peringatan keras) and “punishment” (hukuman) from the
gods because Bali’s rapid tourism development had deviated radically from religious
values (Bali Post 2002). Thus, while the construction of the monument was clearly motivated by “modernist” and secular concerns about the Balinese tourism economy and the
circumvention of religious or sectarian violence, the monument was also sanctified in the
island’s religious and spiritual aegis.
Indeed, for the Badung Regency, which commissioned the project, the secular and
religious functions of the memorial were largely indistinguishable; the bombings had critically damaged Bali’s reputation as a safe tourist destination, but this harm was itself integrally linked to cosmological imbalance. This interdependence of secular and
cosmological conditions was clearly a part of the design brief and the propagation of
the monument’s ideological homology—a harmony that collapsed political, ethnic, and
religious difference. As illustrated in figure 3 (above), the design is composed of three
elements: a memorial wall, a replica of a Balinese-style temple, and a fountain. The structure is set on a raised stage or gallery that has steps on the east and west sides. In the front
of the structure at street level is a small, decorative amphitheater that is illuminated at
night and appears as a beacon guarding the approach from the nightclub district of
Legian Street.
While there were minor modifications to the monument in 2010, the design principles have remained constant. These principles have been outlined in various forums
by the architect, I Wayan Gormuda:6
• As with most Balinese temples, the shrine is marked as an elevated site, moving
the visitor toward a more transcendent perspective of heaven and purity. The
monument is therefore set on a raised platform or gallery, with steps approaching
from the east and west sides. There is also a small amphitheater set at street level.
This marks the symbolic approach to the memorial and the gateway from
material to spiritual conditions.
• The large “tree of life” (kayon) represents the lives of the bombing victims and
the prayers that will guide them to heaven. The tree brings together the material
and spiritual conception of life and the peace that returns, even through tragedy.
The fearsome Bhoma image, which appears at the base of the tree, is the ubiquitous guardian of holy shrines in Bali; the Bhoma drive away evil spirits.
• The altar is a hybrid design space. The backdrop is a huge memorial board displaying the name and nationality of each of the 202 identified victims. On either
side, the altar provides space for flower offerings, messages, and prayers. As with
domestic and public shrines and temples, the altar is a significant site for spiritual
cleansing and daily libation.
• The Balinese compass rose in the pond at the approach to the monument orientates the memorial and the visitor toward Mount Agung, the holiest landsite in
Bali and the home of the gods.
6
Interview with I Wayan Gormuda by Darma Putra, Denpasar, January 12, 2009.
30
Jeff Lewis et al.
Figure 3. The Bali bombings monument prior to modifications in
2010. Photo: Belinda Lewis.
• The triangle connecting the three half circles represents the Hindu trinity of the
three most significant deities—Brahma, Visnu, and Siva.
While the kayon, Bhoma, temple, deities, and fountain were conceived and constructed as symbological references within the religious traditions of Bali, the memorial
board, gallery, altar, and location of the memorial have connections with Western religious and secular symbology. Moreover, the memorial board and the victims’ names
were presented in a distinctly Western style, applying European-derived functional
elements; these include the gold lettering set against a polished black background, and
the names that are ordered according to nation and alphabetical listing. These rational
and lineal structures, in fact, directly challenge the universalism and cyclical nature of
the rwa bhineda and the monument’s Vedic elements.
Even so, the Regency and the Indonesian government wanted the monument to be
ready for the first commemoration ceremony of the bombing in October 2003 when
world attention would again be turned toward Bali. As Lewis (2006) notes, this commemoration was particularly important for Australia and the Australia-Indonesia
relationship. The Indonesian government and Badung Regency wanted to promote a
sense of “restored harmony” that would in turn revivify Bali’s reputation as a safe
holiday destination. Along with other things, the Australian government used the commemoration ceremony to promulgate its own sense of nation and validate policies on
the “war on terror” (Lewis 2006). With Australian troops engaged in warfare in Iraq
and Afghanistan, the sense of national destiny was fortified in 2003 by news video
footage of the monument and the commemoration ceremony, which was broadcast
directly into Australia.
The Bali Bombings Monument
31
These respective national, security, economic, and ideological claims were thereby
inscribed into the complex bricolage of design elements and the ceremonial politics of
the first commemoration (Lewis 2006). In prescribing an alignment of communal,
ethnic, national, secular, and religious claims, the homology of the monument sought
to foster a miraculous ideological commonality. Not surprisingly, the precarious convolution of design and cultural elements threatened to fracture as the various meanings of the
monument within this secular setting began to struggle for primacy in the cosmopolitan
cacophony of the Legian streetscape.
BEYOND
THE
HOMOLOGY: BALINESE NARRATIVES
OF
MEMORY
AND
HARMONY
The Balinese themselves, in fact, identified this volatility. Many in the Balinese community opposed the construction of the memorial, rejecting its claim to universal value
and reverence. There was much public debate about the issue through local radio and
newspapers, particularly the Bali Post. Among the opponents, some believed that the
memorializing of a catastrophe would simply perpetuate the negative spiritual and
social impact of the “tragedy” (Asmara 2002).7 In an interview conducted in 2009,
Bali’s governor, I Made Mangku Pastika, former head of the Bali bombings investigation
team, reflected on the local and transnational value of the monument and its detractors.
With the prospect of further developments on the memorial site and the establishment of
an international “peace park” on land at the site of the Sari Club bomb blast, Governor
Pastika noted:
Some Balinese people think that it is useless to remember bad things that have
happened in the past. . . . There are many Balinese who dislike the monument
and the remembrances at Ground Zero. But, I also see it from the point of view
of the outsiders. On every commemoration, I always come. I want to respect the
people from outside.8
In many ways, contentions over the meaning of the site for Balinese and “outsiders” is not
surprising since the “traditions” of Vedic-Balinese culture are inscribed by the divine
cycle of purity, contamination, and renewal. Within this perspective, “memory” exists
within the hierarchy of the ephemeral material world and spiritual eternity; to fix
memory beyond the natural or cosmological rhythms of time is to interrupt the inevitability of life, death, and rebirth.
Indeed, this Western notion of “cultural preservation” has always been problematic
in Bali since it seeks to create an atavistic relic that resists the necessity of decay. In her
discussion of Bali’s colonization, Margaret Wiener (1994) points out that it was the Dutch
who imposed concepts of preservation and tradition as they supported the colonizer’s
administrative and political interests (see also Lewis and Lewis 2009a). In more recent
7
The Bali Film Board gave similar reasons for banning the 2007 Enison Sinaro film Long Road to
Heaven. The film details the story of the Bali bombings, which the Board believed would be distressing to many Balinese as it would open old wounds (BBC News 2007).
8
Interview with Governor Pastika by Darma Putra, Denpasar, January 1, 2009.
32
Jeff Lewis et al.
times and as we intimated above, this idea of an authentic or traditional Bali has been
mobilized in tourism discourses in order to identify the island as a distinctive product
in the global economy of pleasure. This remodeling of Balinese tradition for consumption
by domestic and international tourists represents the integration of “tradition” (as strategically conjured elements of the past) with modern economic and cultural practices. Bali’s
tourism boom and integration into the global economy of pleasure is neither arbitrary nor
ideologically neutral. It is an interpellation within a broad cultural history that is replete
with struggle and violence, as much as harmony and cosmological balance.
Thus, debates among the Balinese about the meaning and value of the memorial—
and its related Peace Park—are clearly influenced by these historico-cultural elements
and also by claims to a modern, global cultural politics (Turmakin 2005, 21–82). The Balinese, quite rightly, contemplate whether the homologous “memory” that the monument
is designed to represent is either culturally or morally generative—whether the monument actually speaks for the hosts and host culture, or is simply an extension of the
global economy of pleasure and the ambiguous interests of the cosmopolis. In this
sense, the monument resembles the hybrid dance forms that have evolved to serve the
interests and pleasures of “outsiders,” most particularly as entertainment for the resort
guests in Sanur and Nusa Dua. For many Balinese, in fact, the monument has added
very little to the cleansing and interfaith rituals that local communities themselves have
initiated. The memorial seems more credibly like a gesture of appeasement, or even
apology, to those foreign nations whose citizen-consumers have powered the tourism
economy.
FRAGILE COSMOPOLITANISM: COUNTER-NARRATIVES OF PLEASURE
AND
DISPLEASURE
While Balinese traditional conceptions of history and memory are challenged by the
presence of the monument, these anxieties are linked to even deeper and more durable
concerns about the loss of autonomy associated with global integration—including global
geopolitics. As noted above, Jeff Lewis (2006) argues that the Australian government and
media used the first commemoration of the 2002 attacks to support national grieving and
justify policies associated with the global “war on terror” and the invasion of Iraq. The
monument was an ideal backdrop, as it propagated a sense of East-West harmony and
a collaborative grieving that inspired an impression of multilateral approaches to transnational terrorism. Through this symbolic amplification of its own national interests and perspective, Australia was able to “imagine” the memorial space as a site of reverence and
remembrance, a place in which the holy force of the war on terror could be articulated
as a transnational, ideological, and even cosmological mission. Retribution, in this sense,
could be reconfigured in terms of a divine purpose that transcended national, ethnic, or
religious difference: terrorists are the enemy of all humankind.
As Aristotle duly noted, memory is the most powerful faculty in the creation of narrative. In this context, the commemoration service sought to overlay the monument with
a moral and political aesthetic, by which the memory of the attacks became ossified as
pure ideology and Western knowledge systems were elevated as collective salvation.
Thus, the gaps and threads of the design and construction process became sanctified
through the public presentation of the monument and the broad discourse of glory.
The Bali Bombings Monument
33
The discourse of the commemoration, that is, sought to seal or obscure the gaps in an
extravagant invocation of a unity that was propagated by the ideals of “Bali harmony,”
economic cosmopolitanism, and a politics that transcends national, ethnic, religious,
and secular boundaries. History was wound into a perfect and unitary thread that
defied, as it mobilized, those excesses of violence upon which it was predicated, that
is, the Western model of global domination and hierarchical economic and knowledge
systems. The economy of pleasure, upon which the original violence and the site itself
were constructed, was thus laminated into the concrete edifice, deflecting the vision of
visitors away from the West’s own disposition of violence and toward a more benign transnational and transcendent projection. Through the monument’s homology of cultural
elements, the West was able to imagine itself as the progenitor of global pluralism, innocence, and universal freedom.
Since the first commemoration, however, this claim to ideological purity has been
continually tested by the immanent dynamic of culture and Bali’s own intrinsic crisis of
transformation. As Henri Lefevbre (1991) continually reminded us, spaces can never be
fixed or unified, but are besieged by cultural mutation and the counter-narratives that
human groups perpetually generate through social change. In particular, the further cosmopolization of the Kuta-Legian tourist zones of Bali have brought new cultural practices
and consumer modes to the area. As noted earlier in this paper, the increasing diversification of the Kuta tourist ethnoscape has contributed further to the island’s complex cultural
contiguities and the contentions arising from such transient and intense modes of territorialization. Amidst this assemblage of bodies, desires, practices, and beliefs, the monument’s propagated ideological purity seems extraordinarily discordant; its claims to unity
and totemic cosmopolitanism sit in a peculiar disjunction with the swarm of human typologies and their respective claims to primacy and pleasure.
These complexities and the fragility of Bali’s cosmopolitanism are evident in the perceptions and practices of visitors to the monument site. In order to examine this complexity in contrast to the monument’s propagated homology, the authors conducted a series of
empirical studies from 2008 until 2010. The research included participant observation
and open-ended interviews with visitors to the site. While this research does not claim
to be exhaustive, it illustrates the ways in which a disjunctive mix of counter-narratives
is being generated around the monument and it highlights some important issues that
reflect more broadly on new modes of transient territorialization and cultural transition
in Bali.
While the aims of the research were outlined in the introduction, further detail on
participants and methods is provided below. The findings from both the participant
observation and interviews have been synthesized and presented as an integrated
discussion.
In 2008–2009, the research was undertaken at various times across the given year;
including local Indonesian school and religious holidays and the peak periods for international visitors. This phasing of the research was designed to connect researchers
with the various ethnic and national groups who visit Bali. Thus, while Australians are
the most numerous visitor group overall, they only dominate the ethnosphere of Kuta
during identified peak holiday periods. Other national groups—including Indonesians
themselves—are more numerous at quite different times of the year. A further phase
of the research, conducted from June until September 2010, aimed to capture the
34
Jeff Lewis et al.
changing nature of people’s perceptions and practices following the implementation of
new security measures and modifications to the monument site undertaken by the
Badung Regency in April of that year. Discussion of the findings from the 2008–2009
phase illustrates some of the counter-narratives being generated around the monument.
This is followed by discussion of the findings from the 2010 phase, which reveal new
layers of complexity in the context of official attempts to restrict the practices of local
and international visitors.
2008–2009
Most visits to the memorial occurred during the evening (6:00–10:00 p.m.) with up
to one thousand visitors per hour during Indonesian school holidays and/or Muslim
holiday periods. In the heat of the day, the average was around one hundred per hour.
These numbers do not include pedestrians observing the monument from a distance
as they passed by. The vast majority of visitors to the monument were Indonesian
nationals (around 55 percent), most of whom were from Jakarta, although there were
also visitors from other parts of the archipelago. Other major visitor groups included
Malaysian, Korean, Taiwanese, and Chinese nationals. In the course of an evening,
around four tour buses per hour would bring these visitor groups directly to the monument. At other times of the year when Japanese and Europeans were relatively numerous
in Kuta and the surrounding tourist zone, the numbers of these visitors at the monument
were relatively low compared with those from Asian countries. At any one time during the
evening, Australians would comprise approximately 5 percent of the total visitor
numbers, with this increasing to almost 50 percent during peak Australian holiday
periods. Visitors would spend an average of twelve minutes at the monument site.
Other than the numbers and ethnic derivation of the visitors, perhaps the most significant aspect of the research is the ways different groups use the monument as a public
space. As a general observation, the behaviors and identifiable practices of visitors to the
site are influenced by the level of ethnic-national presence of the group; behavior is often
modified, depending on the numbers of similar and different ethnic-national groups
present at the site.
Very clearly, the space has become a tourism memento site for the majority of visitors. The design of the site ushers visitors through a form of gallery experience, directing
them from one part of the site to another. At each point of interest in the gallery, the
majority of visitors would pause and arrange themselves for personalized photographs.
The non-Western visitors, in particular those from Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, Taiwan,
and China, would take photos of their various assemblages of family and friends at the
fountain, the altar, and the amphitheater at the front of the monument. Only the memorial board, which is raised above head height, was photographed without human interpellation. The two Australian authors were also frequently conscripted as transnational props
in the memento photographs, providing further proof of the tourists’ exotic experiences
in Bali.
For most of these visitors, it is a happy occasion. The monument provides some of
the cultural nuance that renders their holiday exotic and memorable. The Balinese cultural elements are well received, though the Bhoma are not particularly recognizable at
The Bali Bombings Monument
35
night and they are not as frequently photographed as one might expect. There is virtually
no solemnity in the visits by these groups, even though most understand the significance
and purpose of the monument.
I am so happy I am here in Bali! This is my first holiday overseas. I want this
photo to remember Bali. I want my family at home to see me here. Bali is
very nice place. This monument is very nice place for photo.
[Chinese woman, aged twenty-eight]
The monument, in fact, is one of Kuta’s few noncommercial public spaces, other than
the beach. And it is one of the few spaces in which a visitor feels welcome and comfortable. Virtually every other open space in the Kuta-Legian tourist zone is privately owned,
a legacy perhaps of former President Suharto’s appalling indifference to responsible
development planning and his government sponsorship of Bali’s rapid and poorly
planned tourism development by voracious private developers. As the Balinese were
largely excluded from planning and development of the Badung area, community
needs were disregarded and public space subsumed by private interests.
To this end, the bombings memorial is quite unique. For all its very obvious aesthetic
and cultural failings, the space represents a new phase in Balinese autonomy in the aftermath of the Reformasi, especially in terms of decentralization and the capacity of Re