Perverted normalcy: on the cultural durability of authoritarianism

Authoritarianism in Indonesia persists not only through institutions and coercion, but through everyday understandings of what constitutes normal life. This article develops the concept of perverted normalcy to explain that persistence. Following a historical trajectory from Dutch colonialism through the New Order to the post-Reformasi present, it argues that unresolved violence has accumulated within social relations, shaping expectations, habits, and the limits of political imagination. Violence does not simply leave wounds in the past. It helps establish the terms on which the present is lived. The article examines how this condition took shape, survived democratic transition, and found renewed expression through digital governance. It then traces its reproduction across generations through family, education, media, and silence. These are the everyday settings in which domination becomes familiar, and its historical origins disappear from view. Perverted normalcy thus directs attention to a problem that institutional reform alone cannot resolve. Understanding authoritarian persistence across the region requires examining how histories of violence become ordinary social life, and how democratic transformation might interrupt their reproduction within the relationships and practices that organize everyday existence.