EDGS Talk: "Communication against Capital: Red Enlightenment at the Dawn of Indonesia" with Rianne Subijanto

Join us for a book talk with Rianne Subijanto on her book, "Communication against Capital: Red Enlightenment at the Dawn of Indonesia."

Join the Roberta Buffett Institute's Equality Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) Program for a book talk with Rianne Subijanto, Associate Professor in the Department of Communications Studies at Baruch College (CUNY), and author of Communication against Capital: Red Enlightenment at the Dawn of Indonesia, which explores the revolutionary communication strategies of the pergerakan merah, the anticolonial "red movement" in 1920s Indonesia. Subijanto tells the story of ordinary lower-class women and children and people of diverse races and ethnicities who waged their battles against Dutch colonialism within multiple arenas of communication, including political associations, assemblies, printed matter, schools, and shipping lines. Existing communication technologies were repurposed into mechanisms of struggle and used as weapons in anticolonial and anticapitalist resistance. In this process, communist ideas merged with ideals drawn from the Enlightenment to shape the emancipatory spirit of Indonesians. This red enlightenment motivated the production of revolutionary communication strategies of mobilization..

Doors will open at 12:00 p.m., and lunch will be served at 12:15 p.m.

Please note that 720 University Place is not an ADA-accessible space. Increasing physical access to buildings and facilities is a goal of the University, but not all buildings and venues have been updated.

About the Speaker

Rianne Subijanto is an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies at Baruch College and the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. As a media historian of Southeast Asia specializing in Indonesia, her research explores global communication in the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonialism and capitalism, showing how technologies, infrastructures, and communicative practices are deeply entangled with power, labor, and ecology. Broadly, her work contributes to debates on democratic communication, global media, and the critical theory and history of capitalism, while foregrounding struggles for universal emancipation as well as social and environmental justice. 

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