During Suharto’s time in power in Indonesia, there was severe repression, especially against activists who opposed his authoritarian regime. The majority of those involved in democracy and social justice were intimidated, imprisoned, or forcibly disappeared. The state kept its grip on violence and political repression by affecting the public to generate an opinion that would legitimize it.
Antonio Gramsci’s cultural hegemony theory explains how power is exercised through the use of force and ideological domination. His theory explains how dominant forces exert domination by producing and manipulating culture and intellectual life, making the people believe that the existing power relations are the norm and acceptable.
Leila S. Chudori’s Laut Bercerita is a book about Indonesian activists opposing Suharto’s dictatorial rule. With its political and chronological context, the book is an influential patient reflection on spreading Gramsci’s idea of hegemony. Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony explains how the powers that be are able to continue ruling through coercion and by shaping ideology to gain the consent of the masses.
Chudori, a renowned Indonesian writer and journalist, has established her reputation for her works revolving around political repression and past injustices. Writing as a Tempo journalist, she has penned works on authoritarianism and violations of human rights (both of which greatly inform her writing). With extensive research and evocative writing, Chudori puts the activists and victims of state violence into the limelight and makes their struggle against oppression relevant.
Biru Laut Wibisana tells the story of student activism against Indonesia’s New Order regime. In the early 1990s, Laut, along with fellow English Literature students at Gadjah Mada University, entered opposition politics to oppose authoritarianism. The narrative tells of their hardships, struggles, and turning points of fortune.
The novel is divided into two parts. Laut, a young activist, recounts his involvement in the student movement, the growing political repression, and his disappearance following his party’s crackdown in 1998 in the first (1991–1998). In the second half, his sister Asmara Jati learns the truth about his circumstances (2000–2007). Laut Bercerita, inspired by real events, is a narrative of resistance, loss, and the silences that shroud Indonesia’s turbulent history.
The book’s description of regime repression and caused disappearances links to Gramsci’s concept of control. The form’s brutality against activists like Laut is a transparent measure of force to keep possession. Meanwhile, Jati’s struggle to tell the reality shows how prevalent doctrine charms general perception, usually causing individuals to stay quiet or actually complicit.
So, how does Laut Bercerita represent the ratio between power and support for maintaining an autocratic government in control?
According to Marxist theorist Gramsci, the ruling style is determined by two main standards: support and power. Support impacts culture and values, making the arrangements made by the ruling class appear legitimate and unavoidable. In contrast, power deals with the working conditions of machinery and repression to control people under supervision. This idea, known as hegemony, spreads through institutions like schools, media, religion, and civil society, shaping the way people think and sustaining the existing power structure.
Unlike orthodox Marxists, who advocated economic determinism, Gramsci introduced the theory of a “war of position,” in which intellectual and cultural leadership assumes the key role of building up public consciousness and countering oppression.
One illustration of education as a vehicle of hegemonic control is that of the British colonial state in India. The British founded Western-style schools and universities to educate an elite group of Indians in British cultural and political ideals to be loyal to colonial domination. Thomas Macaulay, for instance, promoted English-language education to produce a class of people who were “Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, opinions, morals, and intellect.”
Media is the tool of ideological control. In America, for example, corporate media tends to project narratives that favor capitalist and government agendas. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s Manufacturing Consent illustrates how media serves the elite by controlling the information and creating issues to support the status quo. An example is the way labor strikes are usually depicted; striking workers are depicted as agitators instead of individuals demanding decent wages and improved working conditions.
Gramsci’s idea of “traditional intellectuals” and “organic intellectuals” helps explain how counter-hegemonic movements take shape. Traditional intellectuals reinforce dominant ideologies. In the different writing, organic brains reach from persecuted congregations and vigorously question the position quo. A wonderful illustration is Paulo Freire, a Brazilian teacher and scholar who made necessary education to assign marginalized individuals. His text Pedagogy of the Oppressed causes people to ask chief principles and expand their understanding. Absolutely, it mirrors Gramsci’s idea of counter-hegemony.
Gramsci’s thoughts are motionless and positively applicable in today’s struggle for colonial judgment. Activities like Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Extinction Rebellion (XR) go around against prevailing principles by transforming the discussion about systemic discrimination and conditions. They utilize alternative media, grassroots activism, and artistic histories to question mainstream thought and encourage counter-hegemonic views.
The book demonstrates how the form utilizes points via settings of kidnappings, suffering, and service pressure. Laut, the central character, and his fellow activists are brutally captured, emphasizing how the government relies on brutality to overcome resistance. The army’s therapy of Laut and his companions strengthens Gramsci’s view that when principles independently are not sufficient to keep possession, power evolves.
Chudori’s version of Laut’s detention is hair-raising: “They said give them names. I was able to bite my lip until it bled.” This sequence catches the physical and psychological suffering met by activists who decline to turn to the form. Terror and brutal punishment are not only used to subjugate individuals—but also as a threat to anyone else thinking about defying the regime.
Besides the dependency on violence, the state also exercises power through ideology. The novel shows how the government forms public opinion by using state-controlled media to portray activists as a danger to national security. By maintaining the record, the government makes a performance of fact that creates its pressure permitted.
In Laut Bercerita, propaganda is essential to shaping shared views. Newspapers and TV reports structure activists as revolutionary Marxists out to destabilize federal agreements. It recalls Gramsci’s discussion that the ruling style keeps power by affecting artistic organizations.
State-controlled colleges and academies invest in superpatriotic and anti-communist principles. The student body is indoctrinated to believe that the government is a protector that shelters the nation from danger. Chudori presents this indoctrination in the epiphany of Laut: “Since we were children, we heard about heroes who fought for the country but never about those who were sacrificed for power.” It reveals how an authorized account obliterates inappropriate points, allowing the government to legitimate its place.
The activists in the book engage in political debates, confidential journals, and grassroots campaigns to oppose condition propaganda. Their reports and demonstrations disrupt the prevailing record, quoting Gramsci’s idea that brains and organic authorities play a vital part in revolting hegemony. By expressing an alternative fact, these activists aim to revive societal consciousness and rally competitors.
Laut and his companions laid brochures exposing state crime and misuse of human liberties. Their actions do Gramsci’s theory of counter-hegemonic scholars—those who question the ruling course’s principles with alternative histories. One of the numerous strong beats in the story grabs this defiance: “We do not write for today, but for those who come after us. History demands another voice.” It is the activists’ reaffirmation of their devotion to defending the fact so that years to reach may be mindful of the effect of totalitarianism.
In Laut Bercerita, symbols and storytelling become powerful forms of resistance. Personal testimonies, oral histories, and literature challenge the state’s version of history. The book itself is a counter-hegemonic reader, honoring the remembrance of the faded active and showing form roughness. It connects to Gramsci’s view that civilization is a battlefield where other principles conflict.
For example, Laut’s mom holds his space just as he rejects it, declining to accept the form’s assertion that he never lived. Her disobedience is a component of a broader protest against the erasing of history. Chudori makes sure that the representatives of the saints are not overlooked when adding individual records to the book, defying the government’s control over remembrance.
Chudori’s book is not only close to documented pressure—it is likewise about comprehending how hegemony operates and how it can be questioned. It tells how weak consent-based distinction actually is and how grassroots activities can smash via romantic authority. The book makes it obvious that consistently, when circumstances force appear invincible, the opposition is still achievable via coordinated movement and alternative histories.
More additionally than that, Laut Bercerita indicates how counter-hegemonic activities succeed in academic discussion and dynamic storytelling. Laut’s trip is not just political; it is almost despair, passion, and the profound relationships between those who stand for righteousness. Stirringly, the story drives opposition to feel intimate and binding, supporting the argument for validity happening across years.
The end is soaked in disaster. Laut and numerous others disappear, leaving their relatives entangled in an unending process of sorrow. Before his capture, he dispatched a last note beneath a fraudulent representation (a quick path before he stood tracked down and executed). His family, unaware of his fate, clings to their Sunday ritual, Minggu Bersama Keluarga, as if frivolity has transformed.
The dinner table stays set for four. The Beatles even play in the environment. Nevertheless, an open container remains a mute spectator to a company that will never yield. His mom always boils his favorite dinners. His father, indicators broken, forms the table as if wishing him to step through the door. His sister, Jati, attempts to crack the illusion to drive them to take the fact. However, deprivation drives more resonant than sense.
They live in a ghostly in-between, refusing to say goodbye. However, can the dead ever truly leave when the living will not let them go?
Laut Bercerita lays bare how an authoritarian regime holds on to power. At the same time, it reveals the resilience of those who dare to resist. Its definition of defiance emphasizes the subtle yet hard control of alternative histories to shock the bases of pressure. Chudori’s work is a challenge, a rumored revolt twisted into expressions. However, in a world where hegemony goes and hides itself, who actually owns the account?
References
- Aspinall, E. (2005). Opposing Suharto: Compromise, Resistance, and Regime Change in Indonesia. Stanford University Press.
- Chomsky, N., & Herman, E. S. (1988). Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. Pantheon Books.
- Chudori, L. S. (2017). Laut Bercerita. Jakarta: KPG (Kepustakaan Populer Gramedia).
- Freire, P. (2000). Pedagogy of the Oppressed (30th Anniversary ed., M. B. Ramos, Trans.). New York: Continuum.
- Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Q. Hoare & G. Nowell Smith, Eds. & Trans.). New York: International Publishers.
- Puri, V. (2013). Intonation in Indian English and Hindi Late and Simultaneous Bilinguals. CORE.
