Masculinity and Independence Ideology: A New Historicist Reading of Male Fighter Representation in Indonesian War Literature

This study examines the construction of masculinity in three Indonesian war novels set during the National Revolution (1945–1949) through a New Historicist approach that situates literary texts within wider historical and ideological discourses. By integrating close reading, reflexive thematic analysis, critical discourse analysis, and parallel reading with colonial archives and revolutionary documents, the research uncovers six intersecting formations of masculinity: anti-heroic, nationalist, hegemonic, colonial-hybrid, trauma-based, and opportunistic. These formations reveal that masculine identities within Indonesian war literature are neither monolithic nor aligned with the idealized heroic figures promoted in state narratives, but are instead shaped by fear, ambivalence, emotional rupture, and pragmatic survival. The findings demonstrate that the novels function as counter-archives that disrupt dominant historiographies by exposing alternative emotional and ideological experiences of men during the revolution. Overall, the study contributes to broader discussions on war, gender, and postcolonial identity by showing how Indonesian war fiction participates in the cultural production of masculinity and challenges the ideological instrumentalization of male bodies in the nation-building project.