Images of Youth: on the Iconography of History and Protest in Indonesia

This article investigates the visibility of youth (pemuda) in Indonesian history, concentrating on the 1998 Indonesian Student Movement's politically transgressive and yet increasingly popular forms of expression. The figure of the activist (aktivis), transfused with its history of revolt, nationalist struggle, violence and victimization, constituted the core of a powerful series of representations of nationalist youth politics that popularized student demonstrations within public culture. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork, I trace the development of what I identify as the activist-as-fetish image over the movement's course, analysing how global and historical elements engender local and contemporary meanings in highly effective and yet heavily mediated ways.