BUDAYA NASIONAL DI TENGAH PASAR: KONSTRUKSI, DEKONSTRUKSI, DAN REKONSTRUKSI

Abstract

In the Reformation period, the state regime still mobilizes traditional-ideal values as national culture without giving conceptual and operational explanations. In this article, I combine two approaches, cultural studies and postcolonial studies, for reading national culture as represented in some President Soesilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s presidential speeches. I will analyze ideal-but-ambivalent constructions of national culture in regime’s perspective as represented in those speeches, particularly, in the context of continuous of national culture in regime’s perspective in those speeches, particularly, in the context of the government’s continuous mobilization of traditional meanings as the invisible power for Indonesian people, while, at the same time,placing emphasis on economic progress.Instead of a strategic cultural construction, national culture produces its own deconstruction and fails to be discursive formation. Further, I argue that the regime operates their governmentality by reconstructing newer national culture based on market economics as discursive constructions, which ideally can provide conceptual and material basis for state regime in conducting governance and for citizens in achieving welfare in neoliberal formation.

Keywords

• national culture, regime’s perspective, construction, deconstruction, reconstruction, neoliberalism.