What's taught at our summer school (2014)

In 2014, the summer school was conducted at the Fakultas Ilmu Budaya (Faculty of Cultural Knowledge) of Universitas Gadjah Mada.

UGM local organiser Widaratih Kamiso

and HU lecturer Dr. Olivia Killias

Photo (c) Lye Tuck-Po

The first week of the summer school was lecture-driven. These lectures illustrated important sources of meaning and various ways of forming social memory and prepared the students for their field research projects in the second week.

The five days of classes covered the following topics:

• "Memory and the national canon of Indonesian historiography" by Prof. Dr. Bambang Purwanto (UGM); deconstruction of nationalist historiography.

• "Memory, memory making and heritage: Some fundamental considerations" by Prof. Dr. Vincent Houben (HU); introduction to the central concepts and theories important to memory studies.

• “Legitimacy, lost heroes, and memory,” Dr. Soon Chuan Yean (USM): emerging politics in the Philippines; memory repackaged; memory ruptured; memory sustained.

• “Other ways of remembering” by Dr. Lye Tuck-Po (USM): bodily practices; landscape as a source of meaning, social memory based on experience; differences with inscribed memory

• “The battle goes on: debates on (negative) memory in post-authoritarian and post-colonial societies” by Joszef Berta (HU guest lecturer): transnational genealogies of negative memory; Indonesia and Germany compared; roles of victims and rehabilitation

• “Memory, monument and national hero” by Dr. Sri Margana (UGM): memory contestation; construction and deconstruction of monuments; competition between government, local populations, people from Bali

• “The resonance of silence: Remembering Indië in the post-colonial Netherlands” by Dr. Olivia Killias (HU): remembrance of the Indies in Holland; collective amnesia; absence of a postcolonial debate; decolonisation by means of the culturalisation of memory; subaltern memories; diversity in memory of communities

• “The uses and abuses of memory” by Dr. Budiawan (UGM): comparison between Cambodia, Singapore, and Indonesia; empty signifiers; move beyond discourse of innocence and victimhood

• “Memory, violence and emotions” by Rosa Castillo (HU): subaltern formats of memory making; social memory of violence; role of emotions; context in memory making
• "Philosphical and practical considerations in field research", by Aleah Connley (HU), Rosa Castillo (HU), and Uji Nugroho (UGM).

Uji Nugroho (UGM) lecturing on methodology
Photo (c) Lye Tuck-Po

(extracted from the summer school Final Report and Prof. Houben's summing-up notes)

Memory, memory making and heritage: Some fundamental considerations

An introduction to memory studies: Notes from Prof. Vincent Houben 


Memory is infused in individuals, groups, and societies; it is the object of national and supranational institutions. Memory can be characterised as a system of reference in order to allow for its positioning in a spatio-temporal order. It gives a sense of direction, a sense of purpose, and it reworks past events in such a way that these become meaningful. Memory is therefore fundamental to identity formation. 

Memory is also a social phenomenon. Maurice Halbwachs has underlined the social conditioning of memory, because it mirrors the system of reference people use in their society. Collective memory means that memories can only be generated by communication and interaction within social groups. We remember not only what we know, but also what others tell us and confirm as being important. 

Memories, as Jan Assmann argued, depend on sensuousness in that they must be figured and attached to concrete moments, places, concepts, thereby creating ”memory figurations“ (Erinnerungsfiguren). These figurations reflect reconstructivity, i.e. what a society, or actors within a society, at a given time believe it is meaningful to keep. Collective memory is therefore the result of a changing and active social process of memory making. Communicative memory consists of memories which refer to the recent past. Cultural memory on the other hand, is aimed at fixed points in the past and is connected to socially differentiated formats of participation. 

When institutions get involved in memory making they seek to create history. History aims to override diffuse memories and potentially conflicting practices of memory making through the creation of order. This entails creating order in terms of time and place (what came where, what before and what after), as well as creating order with regard to the broader meaning of what happened in the form of cause-effect relationships. History has thus become the instrument of statehood, since nation-states need to legitimise their existence through the creation of an official narrative. The culmination of history is in heritage, i.e. something material or immaterial which is transmitted down through the generations, exemplifying the core of memory, memory making and history alike. 

However, the field of memory and history is highly contested, since remembering is, as Roxana Waterson and Kwok Kian-Woon pointed out, a dimension of social relations, if not a political matter. Selection and distortion, the politics of forgetting, are as much part of memory, history and heritage as is setting the record straight. 

 In this summer course we will address all these dimensions of memory making and heritage in the region of Southeast Asia, allowing for critical comparisons as well as theoretical and empirical insights. The course will also give participants the opportunity to "do memory studies" by going into the field, visiting sites, having discussions with collective memory experts and getting impressions of how ordinary citizens visiting history sites interpret and accommodate what they have heard and seen into their personal world views.

Memory sites we examined

Students in the summer school conducted field exercises at various memory sites in and outside Penang. Fieldwork, though brief and intense, is an important part of the learning process, that participants generally identify as one of the most rewarding aspects of the summer school. They get to know problems and issues from local perspectives, learn to apply concepts from the lectures, work with other students collaboratively in an international setting, receive methodological tutoring from lecturers, and acquire first-hand experience of the joys and frustrations of doing fieldwork.

Here are the sites they examined this year:

1. Lembah Bujang monument complex

2. George Town World Heritage Inc. (GTWHI)

3. Tua Pek Kong temple

4. Masjid Kapitan Keling

5. Teochew Puppet and Opera Museum

On our summer school in Penang

Photo (c) Lye Tuck-Po

The 2015 international summer school on “The Return of the Past: Memory Making and Heritage in Southeast Asia” (held at Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, from 9th to 20th March) is the fifth in our series of schools. For background information on the programme, click here. 

Post-colonial states in the Southeast Asian region have been described as being strongly oriented towards the future, prioritizing modernisation and development. In recent years however, the past seems to have taken on a renewed relevance. The summer school brings together experts from Berlin, Penang, Yogyakarta, and Australia to discuss memory and its transmission as a social, cultural and political phenomenon. Hegemonic state-centred narratives on the past are compared with bottom-up popular memories in order to understand how multiple identities are constituted as well as contested and modified. 

Eric Loh, a George Town resident, shares his
memories with tourists on a heritage
"walkabout," 2012. Photo (c) Lye Tuck-Po

This intensive course in Penang draws postgraduate students from Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Universitas Gadjah Mada, and Vietnam Free University. In the first week of the programme, lecturers of various disciplinary backgrounds (history, political science, and anthropology) introduced the students to some of the main theories on memory and heritage and gave them insights into important research that has been done on these issues in Southeast Asia. During the second week, participants form small groups and conduct field research at various pre-colonial, colonial and contemporary memory sites, including the Teochew Puppet and Opera House, George Town World Heritage Inc., Kapitan Keling Mosque, and Tua Pek Kong (all in the core heritage zone of the George Town World Heritage Site in Penang) and Bujang Valley ancient monument complex (in Kedah). 


Keep an eye on this blog to find out more about our research on these memory sites!