Released on: September 26, 2007, 4:21 pm

Press Release Author: Pustaka Larasan

Industry: Education

Press Release Summary: Pustaka Larasan, Bali, Indonesia, is proud to announce the
recent publication of Razif Bahari\'s Pramoedya Postcolonially: (Re-)Viewing History,
Gender and Identity. This is the first book-length study of the Buru tetralogy of
Indonesia\'s most renowned writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer. This is a book that would
be of great interest not only to students, teachers and critics of Indonesian
literature, but also to those studying colonial historiography, cultural history and
literary criticism.


Press Release Body: Pustaka Larasan, Bali, Indonesia, is proud to announce the
recent publication of Razif Bahari\'s Pramoedya Postcolonially: (Re-)Viewing History,
Gender and Identity. This is the first book-length study of the Buru tetralogy of
Indonesia\'s most renowned writer, Pramoedya Ananta Toer.

Pramoedya Postcolonially investigates some cardinal questions about the construction
of nation, history and identity-questions which are relevant not only when broad
cultural issues like colonial situations and colonial semiosis are being considered
but also when more specific issues like race, gender and class are being taken into
account.

Razif Bahari provides a study of the ways in which Indonesia\'s most well-known
novelist, Pramoedya Ananta Toer, wrestles with these issues in his writings.
Focusing on Pramoedya\'s Buru tetralogy which assumes a variety of positions on the
issues of national identity, history and gender, Razif takes an incisive look at how
the material nature of colonial exploitation informs the ways we constitute culture,
subjectivity and the language that is their medium. Razif examines the way the
tetralogy deals with disparate concepts of the nation, perceptions of historical
experience, and attitudes to questions of language and gender as they are held and
contested by different social groups, placing his reading in the historical, social
and material contexts of Dutch colonial rule and internal colonialism by Javanese
feudalism in Indonesia at the turn of the twentieth century.

Razif Bahari is Assistant Professor of Indonesian and Malaysian literature at the
National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. This
is his first book.


Web Site: http://mlcd.myplace.nie.edu.sg/pramoedya.html

Contact Details: Razif Bahari
Asian Languages and Cultures
National Institute of Education
Nanyang Technological University
1 Nanyang Walk
Singapore 637616

Tel: +65 9800 5743
email: razif.bahari@nie.edu.sg