Demanding Images: Democracy, Mediation, and the Image-Event in Indonesia by Karen Strassler (review)

Abstract

R in terms of its broadest ambitions and reach, Karen Strassler’s Demanding Images is a welcome and absorbing ethnographic study of “the protean and unpredictable nature of political communication in an age of neoliberalism, democracy, and complexly mediated public spheres” (24). The uncertainties of Indonesia’s post-authoritarian politics are the focus of the book, framed by the collapse of the Suharto regime in May 1998 and the election of Joko Widodo (“Jokowi”) as the country’s seventh president in July 2014. This 16-year period witnessed: a studentled reform movement (Reformasi); increasingly pluralistic and participatory democracy, accompanied by decentralization and electoral reforms; growing press freedoms; public demand for transparency and accountability; persistent corruption and scandal; further saturation of society by neoliberal ideologies and economic schemes; a proliferation of new visual and media technologies; and oligarchic control or ownership of media by political elites and corporate figures. This framing begins on an auspicious note—the collapse of an authoritarian regime joined with the exuberant hopes of Reformasi. It ends on one as well—the electoral triumph of the populist, democratic reformer Jokowi. Life isn’t all sunshine, however. Strassler is acutely aware of the “lingering afterlife of authoritarian ideologies and practices” (19) that left Indonesians in a state of anxiety and unease throughout the period. Progressive activists have been key to the energies of reformist moments; so, too, have they been watchful for ghosts from the authoritarian past. It is no surprise then that activists hold