Power, Language, and Identity: A Foucauldian Analysis of Post-Colonial Language Education Policy in Indonesia

Abstract

This study challenges the dominant postcolonial discourse on the education of the Indonesian Language and Literature as a neutral vehicle in shaping the national identity and inculcating cultural values by employing Foucaultian genealogical analysis. By questioning the taken-for-granted belief that literature naturally falls under the responsibility of character education’s mandate, the research traces the power/knowledge relations of four historical periods (Dutch colonial period (1900–1942), Japanese occupation (1942–1945), Soekarno period (1945–1966), and the New Order regime (1966–1998). Genealogical analysis of documents shows that the contemporary moral regime positioning teachers as agents to ‘give’ values is a sedimentation of discursive formations. Each historical period left different power/knowledge structures: colonial linguistic subordination embodied in Sasrasoegonda’s grammar arrangement, episteme rupture during the Japanese occupation that elevated the Indonesian language while banning Dutch, systematic structuring of ideologically selected literature in the revolutionary nationalism era, and standardization that exiled politically controversial works in the New Order regime. Three interweaving mechanisms illustrate how power/knowledge formations were articulated: disciplinary normalization through the standard written curricula, ideological interpellation through the selection of canonical texts, and governmentality self-regulation through the production of the moral teacher. This moral regime marginalizes discursive formations that position subjects beyond their social, political, and cultural locations. The research challenges the popular notion of literature as a transparent cultural transmission medium and reveals that the literary discourse not only acts as an ideological state apparatus but also a field of struggle for alternative meaning-making. The current democratic reforms, which use the communicative competence framework to advance the discourse of diversity, can be seen as a new governmental technology to maintain the standardization pressure while seemingly empowering the teachers. For a meaningful educational transformation, the research calls for a realization that teaching language and literature is an inherently political practice that opens a space for pedagogical counter-conduct that can create a real space for criticality and freedom from the state-led moral frameworks.