The document discusses the critical methods employed in literary studies, focusing particularly on Marxist theory and its implications in literature and society. It offers guidance on how to formulate arguments and thesis statements when analyzing literary works, and explores perspectives on class struggle, communism, and the impact of ideology on culture. Additionally, it presents a historical context regarding the communist purge in Indonesia, along with references to specific literary examples illustrating these themes.

1. Close Reading
and Marxism
(Research
Methods for
Literary
Studies)
Lukas Nandamai, S.Pd, M.A.
Universitas Mercu Buana,
Yogyakarta and Universitas Sanata
Dharma, Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

2. Literary Criticism
• is the study, discussion, analysis,
evaluation, and interpretation of
literary works.
• Literary criticism is usually expressed
in the form of a critical essay.

3. Determine what we want
to explore and reveal
Selecting the most
appropriate tool to criticize
the work.

4. Decide which literary work
you’d like to analyze ..

5. formulate a thesis
based on the primary source
AND
prove this thesis using
the primary source &
secondary sources

6. • Literary work you
analyze – novel, short
stories, poems,
drama
Primary
source
• Other sources needed to
analyze the work based on
the research problems, e.g.
literary criticisms, biography of
the author, history, social
context, psychological theories,
etc.
Secondar
y sources

7. An argument
When you write an extended literary essay,
often one requiring research, you are
essentially making an argument.
You are arguing that your perspective-an
interpretation, an evaluative judgment, or a critical
evaluation- is a valid one.
What makes a good literature paper?
(Source: 1)

8. A debatable thesis statement
• Like any argument paper, you must have a
specific, detailed thesis statement that reveals
your perspective, and, like any good
argument, your perspective must be one
which is debatable.

9. example:
• You would NOT want to make an argument of
this:
Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is a novel about a
young girl who wants to have blue eyes.
• That doesn't say anything-it's basically just a
part of a summary, it does not require a
research and it is hardly debatable.

10. • A better thesis would be this:
Morrison’s The Bluest Eye reveals the White
standard of beauty and its impacts on African
American women in 1940s.
• That is debatable and researchable. The rest
of the paper will be an analysis to prove it,
using specific examples as evidence from the
primary text and supported by related sources
by scholars.

11. What lenses can?
Nyai
Ontosoroh
Identity
formation-
Minke
Native –
Colonial
contact
Dutch
colonialism
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Identity
confusion-
Annelies, Robert

12. A literary work can be analyzed
by using different approaches
The approach or criticism you use depends
on your need (research problem and aim).

13. Critical Approaches
to literature
Critical Approaches
to literature

14. Some critical approaches
literary
work
Formalist
biographical
Historical
Socio-cultural
Feminist/gender
psychological
Ecocriticism
Decontructionist
post
colonial
Marxism
Theory

15. Marxism Theory
• The perspective that scrutinizes the parallel events
between the bourgeoisie/capitalists (industrial owner or
those who own the means of production) and proletariat
(workers).
• Most conflict occurs whereas the bourgeoisie oppresses
the proletariat.
• Marxism’s main proposition is that a revolution takes place
where the proletariat revolt against the bourgeoisie
(Communism).
• The revolution’s outcome is a no-class society. A
communist society.

16. What is Communism (Marxism)?
Socialism
Communism
(Marxism)
•As everyone now works together,
war is a thing of the past –
armies are not needed.
•Sharing means no police are
needed.
•Everything is provided by the
people – so money becomes a
thing of the past.
•All human activity
goes towards
benefiting each
other – allowing all
to live their lives to
the full.

17. Communism (Marxism) =
“Short Version”
Step #2
• A “temporary” dictatorship will step in and help to re-
develop society (re-build industry, create laws, etc.)
Step #3
• The “temporary” dictatorship will voluntarily give up power,
thus creating a classless, borderless utopia

18. Development of the “factory culture”

19. Stereotype of the Factory Owner

20. “Upstairs / Downstairs” Life

21. Socialism According to Marx
• Karl Marx- German philosopher, supported the
establishment of socialism and communism.
• Wrote the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” along
with Friedrich Engels.
• Marx was unhappy with capitalism and the negative
aspects of industrialization (Most significantly, the
unfair exploitation of the working class.
• Marx dreams that a society without class can
happen eventually, without a necessary revolution.
If such is the case, a “socialist” society happens.

22. What is The Communist Manifesto?
• The Communist Manifesto was Marx and
Engels’ greatest work
– Published in 1848
• Not widely read in Europe until after Marx’s
death in 1883
– Marxist “Bible”

23. Who are the major players in Communism?
• Two (2) groups:
1. Proletariat = Working
class / lower classes of
society
2. Bourgeoisie = Upper
classes / the ones who
gain wealth off the
proletariat

24. What Needs To Take Place First?
• Marx believed that history could be explained
through class struggle
• Marx was convinced that history would pass
through certain phases (I.E. Feudalism,
Capitalism, Socialism) until finally a
Communist society would emerge.

25. Communism
• After the proletariat has successfully overthrown the
bourgeoisie:
1. Communism would gradually emerge.
2. The need for government would no longer
exist.
3. There would no longer be separate classes in
society.
• Everyone would work according to their abilities
and…
• Everyone receives according to their needs.

26. History of Class Struggle
Utopian Society
Feudalism Capitalism
B ourgeiosie/P roletariat E m erge
S ocialism
Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Com m unism

27. Marx’s Theory?
• Marx and Engels studied the history of the world’s economies and the
way that power, industry and finance are controlled.
• They saw the way countries developed in stages over world history
Primitive
Communism
Feudalism
Capitalism
Socialism
Communism
(Marxism)

28. It is a concept born due to the fact that literature works portray the
reality of differences in people’s social class and history.
 Many of the current concepts, terms, and issues related to social
class derive from Marxist criticism.
 it’s grounding concepts is Marx’s theory of “modes of
production.”
 Marx proposed that human history is divided into seven
successive historical modes of production (tribal hordes,
Neolithic kinship societies, oriental despotism, ancient
slaveholding societies, feudalism, capitalism, communism)
 The capitalist/bourgeois mode of our time has been
characterized mainly by the conflict between the industrial
working class (proletariat/labor) and the owners (bourgeoisie)
who are considered as owners and manipulators of the means of
production.
Department of Political Science
More on Marxism Theory

29.  Other classes, including the unemployed and criminals (the lumenproletariat)
becomes spectators of this clash from the historical sideline.
 Marx predicted that international labor will win and the communist mode of
production will emerge triumphant, and eventually leading to equality, a class
with no class.
 According to Marx the superstructure of the socio-economic is based on its
cultural spheres: politics, law, religion, philosophy and arts.
 Ideology consists of the ideas, beliefs, forms and values of the ruling class
that circulate through all the cultural spheres.
 The working class conceives a “false consciousness” since they ascribe to
bourgeois ideas and values which make them forget the realities of their own
working class lives.
 Hegemony appoints their believes by non-violent institutions such as church,
school, family, the media, mainstream arts, trade unions, business interests
and technoscientific establishments.

30.  Many novels like James Joyce’s Ulysses incorporate such social conflict
in heteroglot discourse a carnivalization of different languages that
revolt against official style  commodity, commodity fetishism and
commodification are considered as useful in reading society and
culture and the terms often appear in popular critics and theorists.
 Commodity: a working class creates not for their own work but for
the sole purpose of subsistence. E.g. they cannot claim copyright or
originality for their own work.
 Fetishism: focusing on the goods in the store and overlooking the
paid labor involved  the displacement of use value from the
commodity and transformation into cash exchange results in the
alienation of the labor: carpenters do not value their own works since
they focus more on exchange value rather than use value.

31.  Commodification results in making people and things as
objects with price tags.
 Artists sell their work anxiously to gain profits and the system
makes critics as hired advisers to money collectors  theorists
begun to wonder if criticism and the arts can any longer
possess a socially critical dimension  contemporary Marxist
critics and cultural studies scholars increasingly worry about
the assimilation by the market (and the media) of every form
of resistance, ranging across the arts and popular culture.
 Marxist criticism and cultural studies frequently aim their
critical inquiries at this system and its dynamics.

32. THE ABORTIVE COMMUNIST COUP OF 30TH
SEPTEMBER 1965 (G30S): A MARXIST-
ALTHUSSERIAN RESEARCH
Sample Research

33. Louis Althusser’s Ideology and Ideological State Apparatus
• “What distinguishes the ISAs from the (Repressive) State Apparatus
is the following basic difference: the Repressive State Apparatus
functions 'by violence', whereas the Ideological State Apparatuses
function by ideology.”
• Lous Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus (ISA): they manage
social instability and conflict to impose and maintain hegemonic
order, working for the most part outside of official state power 
Culture and popular arts are also involved in transmitting
ideologies.
• “I ask the pardon of those teachers who, in dreadful conditions,
attempt to turn the few weapons they can find in the history and
learning they 'teach' against the ideology, the system and the
practices in which they are trapped […] They are a kind of hero […]
But they are rare.”

34. The Movement of the 30th September 1965
(G30S/Gestapu)
1. Six Generals were killed by members of the palace
guard, the Tjakrabirawa, under the command of Lt.
Col. Untung in the presence of Gerwani and the
Pemuda Rakjat in the evening of September 30 in
Lubang Buaya, Jakarta. A seventh general,
Nasution, escaped but his young daughter
subsequently died of gun wounds.
2. Major General Suharto and Nasution at Army
Headquarters took quiet and decisive action
against the plotters.
3. Sukarno was held under the military’s protection;
then he put Suharto in charge of controlling the
nation’s situation through the Supersemar letter.
4. Sukarno was found guilty of plotting the Movement
and sentenced into prison and died there out of
illness.
5. Suharto replaced Sukarno as President.
1. The Movement was a mutiny of
junior officers (Anderson and
McVey. “The Cornell Papers, 1971)
2. The Movement was an alliance of
army officers and the PKI (Crouch,
“The Army and Politics in
Indonesia,” 1978)
3. The Movement was a frame-up
against the PKI (Wertheim, 1970)
The New Order/The Army/
Suharto’s Regime version, 1966-
1998 (Harry Aveling)
The Post-Reformation Era
Version, 1998-present
(John Roosa, Anderson and
McVey, Harold Crouch and
W. F. Wertheim)

35. 1. Minimum Hegemony (1965-1970)
2. Total Hegemony (1971-1980)
3. Decadent Hegemony (1981-1998)
Overview of the Three Periods of the New Order Regime in the Context of Literary Opposition

37. Ir: Insinyur = A title for engineers.
Jendral = General.
Ir. Sukarno
Old Order New Order
Jenderal Soeharto
Significance of
Study
Brian Massumi’s “Political
Ontology of Threat”
US and the post-9/11 Context
The
“Political
Ontology of
Threat” as
applied to
the
Communist
Purge in
Indonesia

38. Chapter III
• Method, Approach, primary & secondary
sources, procedures

39. "A Woman and Her Children " by Gerson Poyk (1966)
1. A is under great confusion to whether or not save
the children of K (who is a Communist) and his
wife, Hadijah (a non-Communist).
2. The antagonists hinder A’s good intention to save
the children as all state institutions dealing with
children’s well-being such as schools and
orphanages reject taking care of any child of a
Communist. The conflict heightens as one of the
masses provokes A into believing that the mother
of the children is just taking advantage of K’s
kindness. In addition, A’s past experiences of
being imprisoned because of the slander of
Hadijah’s husband strengthens the hatred. This
causes A to grow a fit against Hadijah.
3. An army tells A that communists do not have a
penny anymore as all of the wealth had been
confiscated by the army to ensure that they do
not conduct any follow-up movement. With
shock, A hastily jolts to Hadijah’s house and finds
her dead.
1. Description of the PKI having massive power
and therefore being hated by the people
before the events of the Gestapu. The main
character was imprisoned because of a
Communist's political power.
2. The Communist Threat propaganda creates
the communist purge which is not
commensurate with what the PKI did in the
Gestapu. A communist wife who herself is not
a Communist dies over depression. Their
children become parentless and no orphanage
(as part of the ISA) accepts them. Nobody
wants to have anything to do with any
Communist element. Tumpas kelor
(annihilation of any Communist element from
its roots).
3. The main character becomes an example of
Althusser’s “teachers”.
Plot, Character, and Other Elements
FINDINGS
Plot, Character, and Other Elements Findings

40. Thank you