Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space and Political Cultures in Indonesia

Description

In Behind the Postcolonial Abidin Kusno shows how colonial representations have been revived and rearticulated in postcolonial Indonesia. The book shows how architecture and urban space can be seen, both historically and theoretically, as representations of political and cultural tendencies that characterize an emerging as well as a declining social order. It addresses the complex interactions between public memories of the present and past, between images of global urban cultures and the concrete historical meanings of the local. It shows how one might write a political history of postcolonial architecture and urban space that recognizes the political cultures of the present without neglecting the importance of the colonial past. In the process, it poses serious questions for the analysis and understanding of postcolonial states. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents List of figures Preface Acknowledgments INTRODUCTION PART I: ARCHITECTURE 1 "Origins" Revisited: Colonial Milieu and the Crisis of Architectural Representations 2 Modern Architecture and Traditional Polity: Jakarta in the Time of Sukarno 3 Recreating Origins: The Birth of "Tradition" in the Architecture of the New Order PART II: URBAN SPACE 4 The Violence of Categories: Urban Space and the Making of the National Subject 5 Colonial Replica: Urban Design and Political Cultures 6 Custodians of (Trans)nationality: Urban Conflict, Middle Class Prestige, and the Chinese PART III: (TRANS)NATIONAL IMAGININGS 7 Professional and National Dreams: The Political Imaginings of Indonesian Architects 8 "Spectre of Comparisons": Notes on Discourses of Architecture and Urban Design in Southeast Asia CONCLUSION: Beyond the Postcolonial? Notes References Index