Five Questions with Intan Paramaditha
Intan Paramaditha is an Indonesian author and academic based in Sydney.
Intan will be speaking at Broadside, the Wheeler Centre’s feminist ideas festival, at Melbourne Town Hall 9-10 November. Bookings at broadside.wheelercentre.com
You’re part of Broadside, on a panel titled ‘A World of Difference: Decolonising Feminism’. What’s one thing our readers can do to begin, or continue, to decolonise their feminism?
Feminist scholars such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Linda Tuhiwai Smith, and Aileen Moreton-Robinson have started the conversation on decolonising feminism 20-30 years ago. We can start by reading their works, and in general, we can check our bookshelves. Have we read more books by women of colour? We’ve probably read many novels or stories by feminist writers from the Anglophone world, but have we heard of women’s voices from countries that are underrepresented in the book market?
Decolonising feminism examines the terrain of power relations, questioning whose voice represents the other and whose knowledge is deemed legitimate. It’s important to see this not just as a theory but a practice in everyday life. We need to question our ways of doing things. How do we connect with others, especially women? Are we aware of unequal distribution of power and knowledge? Have we played the roles as gatekeepers, or have we tried to expand spaces for women? How do we value knowledge produced by a different cultural context?
Your debut novel, ‘Gentayangan’ (The Wandering) is structured around an interesting premise: make your own adventure! What was behind this choice of [a kind of] narrative agency?
The Wandering is a reflection of travel and displacement in our globalized world. By choosing your story, you will assume a particular travelling position and encounter different characters with their own stories to tell. You can say there’s a kind of agency there, but often choices are already structured, like our lives. Often we have to choose not between fun and great, but between dull and bad, because those are the only options available based on where we come from. Choosing our own narrative path is also a reminder of the question we tend to ask in our journey: What if we have chosen that way and not this way?
You’re a writer and academic: is there interplay between two separate disciplines, or are they just extensions of the same? How do you juggle the two?
My views on themes and issues in fiction writing are informed by my academic readings, and I consider style and narrative structure as a fiction writer in some of my scholarly writings. In great days, both enrich each other. However, there are also not-so-great days.
Both literature and academic are fields, in Bourdieu’s sense, with institutions that legitimise or exclude, and many actors trying to do various things – some try to accumulate capital, some want to maintain power, and some others want to survive. Working in two fields means dealing with different power structures. Some people can be really supportive, some have good intention but are not aware of their privilege, and some others ignore or silence you because they want to preserve the status quo. Often, for a woman of colour coming from the Third World, this means a lot of negotiations to make. Often this means choosing your battle because you are just too exhausted to fight against everything.
What’s next?
My novel is coming out in February, so that will keep me busy. But I will also start new academic research project on decolonising feminism based on my experience being involved in a feminist cultural project in Indonesia.
What are you currently reading?
I am reading several books by new women writers in Indonesia. Some of them worked together and formed “Perkawanan Perempuan Penulis” (The Women Writers Collective), and they published an anthology of short stories by and about women. Indonesian literature is dominated by men and male-centred affiliations. We still see literary events with all-male panels even though feminists have been criticising this practice. The Women Writers Collective is one of the smart tactics – and there are many – deployed by women in the arts and culture to support each other. It’s awesome.
