Post-Colonialism From Within: Repoliticisation and Depoliticisation in Ifa Isfansyah’s Adaptation of Ahmad Tohari’s The Dancer

Abstract

Indonesia is largely invisible in adaptation studies and post-colonial film adaptation. As with many post-colonial countries, Indonesia has suffered from a long conflict between the military forces and civil society since its independence in 1945. This struggle is reflected in a novel entitled The Dancer written by Ahmad Tohari during the Suharto era and its film adaptation with the same title by Ifa Isfansyah in the post-Suharto era. Using the political theory of depoliticisation, I argue that the adaptation represents the spirit of repoliticisation of the early post-Soeharto Indonesia while concurrently offering a distinctive type of depoliticisation typical of the current era. Not only does the study try to shift attention from Anglo-American and Commonwealth film adaptations, but it also offers an alternative to the homogenising discourse of the Centre (the West) and Periphery (the East) and its derivative post-colonial adaptation theories.