Indonesia is set to move the capital Jakarta, just like Indonesia’s colonial rulers, the Dutch, did more than 200 years ago.
The new capital city, which will be in Kalimantan, is intended to be very different from Jakarta which is in deep trouble as it sinks with flooding, pollution and endless traffic congestion adding to its woes. Similar issues plagued the Dutch in the late 1700s-early 1800s which prompted a shift away from the old capital to the site of present day Jakarta. This repetition of what the coloniser did feeds into interesting threads of post-colonial theory.
Postcolonial theory revisits, remembers, and interrogates a nation’s development after colonialism. It seeks to investigate the relationship between the colonisers and the colonised, as well as how colonial policies and attitudes influenced both nations. One feature of the postcolonial condition is "political amnesia", the desire to erase memories of colonial subordination and its painful history.
