What is it about?

This article provides an outline of the historical construction of Timorese (East Timorese and Indonesian West Timorese) geo-bodies and communal identities from the mid-nineteenth century to the present time, thereby reconstructing the origins of many national imaginings amongst the Timorese people. Since the controversial annexation of Portuguese Timor by Indonesia in 1976, (East) Timor has been constructed as a place of two territorial identities: Timor as a part of Indonesia and East Timor as a homogeneous nation distinct from Indonesia. However, representations of Timor had been much more fluid and inconsistent in preceding ages. This article studies various communities’ representations of Timor to reveal dialectic relations between diverse colonial and post-colonial representations of the Timorese spaces and their senses of belonging. Thereby, it problematises the political role of global and regional place-making in a contested Southeast Asian locale.

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Why is it important?

This article challenges standard East Timorese historical narrative that presented the country as an isolated island, and provides an analysis of historical emplacement of Timor Island in various regions and global political currencies since the nineteenth century While the nationalist historiography focuses on "commonalities" among the Eastern Timorese, this article emphasizes a variety of Timorese peoples and their liminal positioning in various area studies perspectives such as Southeast Asian Studies, Indonesian Studies, East Timor Studies, Papuan Studies, and post-colonial studies.

Perspectives

This is a paper that won the 2018 Indonesia & Timor-Leste Studies Committee Best Paper Prize (Association for Asian Studies). I've been challenging existing understandings of East Timorese history and culture (especially anthropological understandings of the word "lulik") through my papers on World War II and European missionaries' colonial place-making through language manipulation. But, these works took up relatively short periods. In "Representing Timor," I tried to provide my own longue durée perspective on Timorese history, discussing sources from 13th to 21st centuries. I plan to expand this study in my book project.

Kisho Tsuchiya
National University of Singapore

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This page is a summary of: Representing Timor: Histories, geo-bodies, and belonging, 1860s–2018, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, September 2019, Cambridge University Press,
DOI: 10.1017/s0022463419000377.
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