The Bali Bombings Monument: Ceremonial Cosmopolis

Abstract

In 2003 a monument was erected at the site of the 2002 Islamist militant attacks in Kuta, Bali. Government and other official discourses, including the design brief, represent the monument as an integrated and culturally harmonious public testimony to the victims. However, the monument is also a discordant association of ideas, meanings, and political claims. While originally designed to subdue insecurity, the Bali bombings monument, in fact, constitutes a site of powerful “language wars” around its rendering of memory and its presence in Bali's integration into the globalizing economy of pleasure. This paper examines the ways in which the monument is being articulated and “consumed” as a social and cultural marker for the island's tourism geography. The paper pays particular attention to the increasing diversity of Bali's visitors and the ways in which a precarious “cosmopolization” of the Kuta-Legian area is being experienced and expressed at the monument site.