[In Conversation With] Self and Society: 50 Years of Life Writing in Asia

In conversation with authors of life writings.

In 1974 the Prof Wang Gungwu convened a seminar under the auspices of the Australian Academy of the Humanities on life writing traditions in Asia. Fifty years later life writing continues to be a topic of great interest across many disciplines in Asian Studies. This two part session will begin as a dialogue with Prof Wang, looking at his own efforts in life writing against the framework established in the 1975 seminar, that life writing from Asia reveals ideas about the place of the individual in society rather than about the actual problems, tensions and struggles of the individual. How did he resolve the tension between these two models, and how does he think life-writing has evolved in some Asian domains in the 50 years since he convened the seminar.

The second portion of the seminar will be a forum with three authors of biographical studies, each of whom will look at fascinating historical figures, and the particular issues in life-writing in Asian context that they raise. Myra Abubakar will look at the tensions between life-writing and hero-making in Indonesia, through the example of Tjut Nya Dien, who's life story was first made a biography by a Dutch writer in 1948, before she became an official Indonesian national hero. Paul van der Velde will share his experience of telling the life story of Jacob Haafner to contemporary audiences, of how to present a voice that was highly critical of colonial rule from a position in the metropole. And David Reeve will share the choices he made, with his subject's encouragement, in revealing the very personal struggles of historian Onghokham, and how that added to a book Adrian Vickers called 'the most important book on Indonesian history to come out in recent years'.