Date and Time: November 7th (Mon.), 2016, 16:00 –
Place: Tonan-tei (Room No. 201) on the 2nd floor of Inamori foundation
memorial building, Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Kyoto University

Title: Tales of Genocide: The Oppenheimer Project, Interventionism and Human Rights Campaigners in Indonesia
Speaker: Dr. Adam Tyson, School of Politics and International Studies, Faculty of Education, Social Sciences and Law, University of Leeds

Moderator: Masaaki OKAMOTO, CSEAS, Kyoto University

Abstract:
We all deplore human suffering. We have an intuitive sense of justice, of right and wrong. And yet I struggle to endorse the emerging genre of genocide documentaries ― exemplified by the work of Joshua Oppenheimer ― and the political campaigns that accompany many of these popular productions. I agree with Makau Mutua, a Kenyan-American professor of law, that the human rights corpus is experimental, incomplete, and has the potential to reproduce a type of cultural dispossession that is reminiscent of colonial times (in Africa, or Southeast Asia). In other words, we need to question the extent to which modern human rights campaigns are premised on an illegitimate normative (Eurocentric) framework. Celebrity filmmaker Joshua Oppenheimer has brought the human rights ‘crusade’ to Indonesia in a most spectacular way. His two ‘documentary’ films about Indonesia’s genocide in 1965-1966, The Act of Killing and The Look of Silence, are widely celebrated within the human rights fraternity, although the director faces accusations of exploitation and unethical practices in the field. Ian Buruma and many other influential figures have risen to Oppenheimer’s defence, claiming that his critics misunderstand what he is trying to achieve: to reveal how former executioners manage to live with their past, and how government propaganda and the twisting of public narratives has shaped Indonesian society ever since. I do not debate the reasoning behind Oppenheimer’s investigation of the Indonesian genocide, but rather examine the processes and nature of his investigation. I argue that the making of his films requires direct intervention into the lives of former killers and victim communities. By revisiting the traumas of the past, Oppenheimer and some human rights campaigners are producing controversial and unsettling imagery and narratives that risk jeopardizing the uneasy peace that exists in local Indonesian settings today.