Narrating the Nation and Queering Transitional Justice

How is it possible to re-imagine national identity and nation-building during post-conflict transformations without reinforcing inequalities and injustices? Here, I discuss denials of political and moral responsibility in narratives about national identity and nation-building in post-independence Indonesia, with a focus on the genocide of 1965. I challenge research that uses binaries to explain both genocide and notions of gender and sexuality, and suggest that it is more useful to combine approaches from feminist transitional justice and critical genocide studies with queer approaches. The former uncovers the limitations of the use of binaries, while the latter provides alternative ways of thinking, enabling us to avoid the reinforcement of structural dimensions of marginalization in transitional justice. I illustrate my argument with examples from the Indonesian novel Durga/Umayi by Y. B. Mangunwijaya (1991).