Diskusi "fresh" dengan Prof. C.W. Watson

Fakultas Adab mendapat kunjungan Prof. C.W. Watson, Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology and Multi-cultural Studies, Head of Department and Convenor of the BA in Social Anthropology pada Kent University, United Kingdom. Professor yang biasa dipanggil "Bill" ini, berkesempatan memberikan kuliah umum tentang :"Analisis Autobiografi untuk penulisan Sastra dan Sejarah". Dengan suguhan kuliah yang sangat menarik, energik bahkan terkesan Talk Show, paparan Prof. Bill sungguh mendapat sambutan luar biasa dari kalangan dosen dan mahasiswa. Kuliah umum dimulai pukul 10.00 WIB hingga azan Zuhur ini, dihadiri sekitar 150 orang mahasiswa dan dosen (bahkan banyak yang berdiri di luar aula). Di awal kuliah, Prof Bill lebih lanjut mengatakan most of my research relates to Indonesia and Malaysia. I have lived in both countries for several years and speak the language of the countries fluently. Among the subjects in which I have an especial interest are: multiculturalism, the practice and politics of Islam in South-East Asia, perceptions of gender, local village politics and textual criticism. I also have a long-standing interest in the relationship between anthropology and literature and have written extensively on Malay and Indonesian novels.

Dengan dipandu oleh Muhammad Ilham (dosen Sejarah dan Kebudayaan Islam), paparan Professor yang menghabiskan waktu produktifnya untuk meneliti "komunitas Kerinci" (melahirkan sebuah buku : "Naskah Undang-Undang Tanah di Kerinci") bahkan beristrikan orang Kerinci ini, Professor Bill memberikan sesuatu yang "baru" dan "fresh" tentang pendekatan autobiografi dalam penelitian sejarah dan sastra. Dengan mengambil beberapa kasus autobiografi dalam penulisan sejarah dan sastra Islam Nusantara, Professor Bill ingin menekankan bahwa unsur subjektifitas dalam penulisan autobiografi justru menjadi sesuatu yang diharuskan sehingga autobiografi tersebut menjadi menarik. Pertanyaan yang justru timbul adalah bisakah autobiografi yang subjektif itu jadi data dalam penelitian ? Bill mengatakan, "justru dalam autobiografi tersebut akan terefleksi kejujuran seorang "Aku" dalam menulis riwayat hidupnya". Prof. Bill dalam khazanah keilmuan Indonesia, dikenal sebagai penulis sekaligus peneliti buku yang sering dijadikan rujukan dalam tradisi ilmu sosial (khususnya Sastra dan Antropologi) yaitu buku Being There : Fieldwork in Anthropolgy , Of Self and Injustice dan Of Self and Nation

Of Self and Nation: Autobiography and the Representation of Modern Indonesia. This valuable set of eight essays on twentieth century Indonesian literature and social thought has a precise aim: to chart out the cultural space where the autobiographical self and the Indonesian nationalist imagination have intersected and mutually shaped each other, rhetorically and politically, over the period framed by the publication of Raden Ajeng Kartini's colonial-era, Dutch language epistolary memoir From Darkness to Light (1912) and the Indonesian language, New Order-era collection Mencari Islam (Looking for Islam, 1990). This more recent volume was comprised of a series of personal histories by young Muslim writers, born in the 1960s, who authored lives deeply shaped by the Soeharto regime's heavy-handed religion and patriotic culture policies. Along the way, while covering this eighty-year span of time, anthropologist and student of literature C. W. Watson considers a mix of famous and lesser-known autobiographies, taking each as a text actively caught up in large social processes of Indonesian nationalism and narration. After his chapter on Kartini's letters (written to a Dutch acquaintance, and not so much about Indonesia per se as