Valence of Rawagede Violence

This project is a response to the massacre that occurred in Rawagede, Indonesia, in 1947 (see a paper by Nicole L. Immler and Stef Scagliola (2020) for more information). There is a gap between 1947 and 1977 which does not tell how the survivors survived after the massacre. The frame for reading the history of Rawagede, which is thick with the issue of heroism, actually negates the history of the impact of the massacre on residents. The history of Rawagede is not read through a community frame, but through a military and heroic frame. This has a long-lasting impact as the history of Rawagede is not fully understood by the community as colonial history which concerns humanitarian issues.

This project - initiated by Muhamad Gerly in collaboration with Aldo Nazario and Muhamad Wendy Perdana - aims to examine the massacre from the perspective of widows and their descendants, and to form a new frame about this event from their perspectives, and how they map status, strata, and social structure after the incident occurred. Our aim is that the massacre is not only understood as a historical event within the independence struggle from a heroic perspective, but also a humanitarian tragedy during colonisation that has left a hidden social crust in the voices of mothers, wives, and women who lost their loved ones overnight.