Description
This paper aims to discuss the role of the images of the ‘body-in-suffering’ in memorialisation practices in Timor-Leste. Particularly, I argue that the mobilisation of images of bodies-in-suffering in memorialisation practices reflects an effort to challenge the official narrative that promotes the remembrance of the ‘heroes of the resistance’ while silencing the story of the young generation and other non-official members of the resistance fight. I will first discuss what it means to remember in Timor-Leste and how it intrinsically relates to the sacred, divine, living, and practical. I will also discuss the concepts of funu (struggle) and terus (suffering), how they are part of the ongoing construction of East Timorese nationalism, and how they affect memory practices. Second, I will address how the official narrative of heroism is being constructed in Timor-Leste through the construction of cemeteries such as the Garden of Heroes Memorial. Third, I will discuss how the idea of ‘victimhood’ that emerged in the post-independence period afforded new ways of remembering that past by re-centring the bodies-in-suffering in the narrative of the struggle for independence. I will focus on the Santa Cruz and Suai massacres ‘re-enactments’ memorialisation practices and the Comarca Balide Memorial.
