The social realist stories of Putu shanty as historical record. Balinese Culture and Indonesian National Politics in the 1950s

Abstract

Putu Shanty was one of Bali’s leading intellectuals in the middle of the twentieth century, but he has been effaced from official publications identifying cultural leaders of the island. His short stories, written in a social realist style, were intended as interventions that would influence the course of history but are also a valuable record of historical discourse. ‘Anti-feudalism’ was a central discursive concern of Shanty’s, and while it was shared on a national level with other political leaders and writings, its implications on Bali were highly specific, involving local social contestation and attempts to redefine religion. The role of intellectuals such as Shanty demonstrates that there are significant differences between discourses of the 1950s and the early-twenty-first-century constitution of ‘tradition’.