Seminar Jonathan Tjien Fooh: Coloniality of Silence in Javanese Indentured Labour

On Monday 19 January, Jonathan Tjien Fooh (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam) gives a Cultural History and History of International Relations seminar, titled Coloniality of Silence in Javanese Indentured Labour. Tjien Fooh examines how silence shapes the remembrance and erasure of Javanese indentured labour across archives, public commemorations, and family histories. 

The coloniality of silence

For older generations, silence has often been a survival strategy. Younger generations increasingly contest this inheritance by exploring genealogy, addressing intergenerational trauma, and breaking silence through poetry, theatre, music and the revival of Javanese cultural practices.

Tjien Fooh’s research is based on archival and multi-sited ethnographic research in Suriname and the Netherlands. Departing from Martina Ferrari’s (2019) notion of the coloniality of silence, he argues that colonial logics reduce silence to mere absence. This legitimises only the coloniser’s perspective on ‘voice’ while dismissing local epistemologies, such as Javanese ways of knowing, as inferior.

Silence also permeates family histories. Following Marianne Hirsch’s (2012) concept of postmemory, descendants inherit fragments, photographs, gestures, and stories that transmit the affective weight of experiences not personally experienced. 

This lecture is organised by the Cultural History Seminars, in collaboration with the 50 Years of Surinamese Independence: Histories, Legacies, and Heritages series by Debby Esmeé de Vlugt at the History of International Relations.