Political dimensions in four Indonesian women’s travel writings: Cultural resistance and ambivalent agency Dimensi politik empat cerita perjalanan perempuan Indonesia: Resistensi kultural dan agen ambivalen
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Abstract
This study examines four Indonesian women’s travel narratives published between 2011 and 2014: The Naked Traveler One Year Round The World Trip (Trinity), The Jilbab Traveler (Asma Nadia), Perempuan Merah Putih (Nungky Irma Nurmala Pratikno), and London: Angel (Windry Ramadhina) through the concept of ambivalent agency by Ullah (2025) and Spivak’s (1994) notion of the double bind. This study reinterprets these contradictions not as conscious political strategies, but as symptoms of a complex, often complicit, negotiation with hegemonic power. The analysis reveals that agency in these texts is achieved through patterned accommodations to the very structures they critique: Trinity articulates agency through self-orientalizing mimicry that internalizes the tourist gaze; Nadia navigates the commodification of piety, transforming the jilbab into a neoliberal lifestyle brand; Nungky operates within the gendered constraints of State Ibuism, performing empowerment only within state-sanctioned nationalism; and Ramadhina utilizes intimate relationality to manage the anxiety of the unhomely. The study concludes that Indonesian women’s travel writing is less a site of pure resistance than a space of ambivalence, where the postcolonial subject must inhabit conflicting norms, simultaneously resisting and reproducing patriarchal and capitalist logics to achieve mobility.
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Jaya, A., Faruk, F., & Sudibyo, S. (2026). Political dimensions in four Indonesian women’s travel writings: Cultural resistance and ambivalent agency. Diglosia: Jurnal Kajian Bahasa, Sastra, Dan Pengajarannya, 9(1), 91-104. https://doi.org/10.30872/diglosia.v9i1.1398
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References
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Ullah, R. (2025). Ambivalence and resistance: The complexities of postcolonial agency in Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam. International Journal of Social Sciences Bulletin, 3(5), 112–126.
Wadud, A. (1999). Qur’an and woman: Rereading the sacred text from a woman’s perspective. Oxford University Press.
Yovela, S., Priyatna, A., & Prabasmoro, T. (2024). Ambivalent identity as abject in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and China Men. Diglosia: Jurnal Kajian Bahasa, Sastra, dan Pengajarannya, 7(3), 281–296. https://doi.org/10.30872/diglosia.v7i3.971
Akmal, R. (2023). To wear, to wander, and to write: Women’s subjectivity and the jilbab in Asma Nadia’s Jilbab Traveler. Dalam Proceedings of the International Conference on Education, Language and Literature (hlm. 206–213). Atlantis Press. https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-140-1_22
Antaranews.com. (2025, April 15). Indonesia’s MPR urges action to close rural-urban education gap. Antara News. https://en.antaranews.com/news/351917/indonesias-mpr-urges-action-to-close-rural-urban-education-gap
Arimbi, D. A. (2009). Reading contemporary Indonesian Muslim women writers: Representation, identity and religion of Muslim women in Indonesian fiction. Amsterdam University Press. https://doi.org/10.5117/9789089640895
Arjana, S. R. (2018). Brand Islam: The marketing and commodification of piety by Faegheh Shirazi. American Journal of Islam and Society, 35(1), 103–108. https://doi.org/10.35632/ajis.v35i1.815
Atia, M. (2012). “A way to paradise”: Pious neoliberalism, Islam, and faith-based development. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(4), 808–827. https://doi.org/10.1080/00045608.2011.627046
Badran, M. (2009). Feminism in Islam: Secular and religious convergences. Oneworld Publications.
Barlas, A. (2002). “Believing women” in Islam: Unreading patriarchal interpretations of the Qur’an. University of Texas Press.
Bhabha, H. K. (1994). The location of culture. Routledge.
De Araújo, S. H. (2021). Desired Muslims: Neoliberalism, halal food production and the assemblage of Muslim expertise, service providers and labour in New Zealand and Brazil. Ethnicities, 21(3), 411–432. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468796820980544
Fanon, F. (1986). Black skin, white masks. Pluto Press. (Karya asli diterbitkan 1952).
Huggan, G. (2009). Extreme pursuits: Travel/writing in an age of globalization. The University of Michigan Press.
Hyunanda, V. F., Palacios Ramírez, J., López-Martínez, G., & Meseguer-Sánchez, V. (2021). State ibuism and women’s empowerment in Indonesia: Governmentality and political subjectification of Chinese Benteng women. Sustainability, 13(6), Article 3559. https://doi.org/10.3390/su13063559
Jaya, A. (2026). Decolonizing mobility: Indonesian women’s travel writing as political intervention. Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, 32(1). (Akan terbit).
Jaya, A., & Pratama, M. R. A. (2021). The representation of Indonesian women in contemporary travel writing: A study of discourse on gender and travel writing. Poetika: Jurnal Ilmu Sastra, 9(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.22146/poetika.v9i1.60700
Jayanti, S. R. N., & Wiyatmi. (2022). Deconstruction in the novel The Jilbab Traveler by Asma Nadia, et al: A feminist perspective. International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Translation, 5(11), 110–114. https://doi.org/10.32996/ijllt.2022.5.11.13
Jones, C. (2010). Materializing piety: Gendered anxieties about faithful consumption in contemporary urban Indonesia. American Ethnologist, 37(4), 617–637. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1425.2010.01275.x
Kobayashi, K., Jackson, S. J., & Sam, M. P. (2019). Globalization, creative alliance and self-Orientalism: Negotiating Japanese identity within Asics global advertising production. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 22(1), 157–174. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877917733812
Kumoratih, B. T. (2017). Indonesian women travelers’ experiences and challenges in The Naked Traveler anthology [Skripsi, Universitas Katolik Soegijapranata]. Repository Unika. http://repository.unika.ac.id/15032/
Lisle, D. (2006). The global politics of contemporary travel writing. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511491535
Mahmood, S. (2005). Politics of piety: The Islamic revival and the feminist subject. Princeton University Press.
Mandela, F., & Gitawati, N. D. (2024). Ambivalensi ideologi patriarki pada serial TV populer House of the Dragon: Kritik feminisme. Diglosia: Jurnal Kajian Bahasa, Sastra, dan Pengajarannya, 7(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.30872/diglosia.v7i1.838
Mernissi, F. (1991). The veil and the male elite: A feminist interpretation of women’s rights in Islam. Addison-Wesley.
Mills, S. (1991). Discourses of difference: An analysis of women’s travel writing and colonialism. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203379882
Mir‐Hosseini, Z. (2006). Muslim women’s quest for equality: Between Islamic law and feminism. Critical Inquiry, 32(4), 629–645. https://doi.org/10.1086/508085
Mohanty, C. T. (1988). Under Western eyes: Feminist scholarship and colonial discourses. Feminist Review, 30(1), 61–88. https://doi.org/10.1057/fr.1988.42
Mohanty, C. T. (2003). Feminism without borders: Decolonizing theory, practicing solidarity. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smp7t
Nadia, A. (2012). The jilbab traveler. Asma Nadia Publishing House.
Nurlaelawati, E. (2010). Modernization, tradition and identity: The Kompilasi Hukum Islam and legal practice in the Indonesian religious courts. Amsterdam University Press.
Pratikno, N. I. N. (2011). Perempuan Merah Putih: Kisah pendakian ke puncak Gunung Elbrus, tertinggi di benua Eropa. Kompas Gramedia.
Pratt, M. L. (1992). Imperial eyes: Travel writing and transculturation. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203106358
Putri, R. D. (2020). Representasi identitas Muslimah modern “jilbab traveler” dalam novel karya Asma Nadia. JSW (Jurnal Sosiologi Walisongo), 4(2), 117–132. https://doi.org/10.21580/JSW.2020.4.2.5878
Ramadhina, W. (2013). London: Angel. Gagas Media.
Rarastesa, Z. (2020). Female identity and sexuality in contemporary Indonesian novels [Disertasi doktoral, University of South Florida]. Graduate Theses and Dissertations. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/8481
Rudnyckyj, D. (2009). Spiritual economies: Islam and neoliberalism in contemporary Indonesia. Cultural Anthropology, 24(1), 104–141. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1548-1360.2009.00028.x
Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
Sani, F. F. (2023). Kritik terhadap wacana patriarki dalam novel La Civilisation, ma Mère ...! karya Driss Chraïbi. Diglosia: Jurnal Kajian Bahasa, Sastra, dan Pengajarannya, 6(2), 423–438. https://doi.org/10.30872/diglosia.v6i2.646
Simoni, V. (2018). True love and cunning love: Negotiating intimacy, deception and belonging in touristic Cuba. Dalam C. Groes & N. T. Fernandez (Eds.), Intimate mobilities: Sexual economies, marriage and migration in a disparate world (hlm. 165–186). Berghahn Books.
Spivak, G. C. (1994). Can the subaltern speak? Dalam P. Williams & L. Chrisman (Eds.), Colonial discourse and post-colonial theory: A reader (hlm. 66–111). Routledge. (Karya asli diterbitkan 1988).
Suryakusuma, J. I. (1996). The state and sexuality in New Order Indonesia. Dalam L. J. Sears (Ed.), Fantasizing the feminine in Indonesia (hlm. 92–119). Duke University Press.
Trinity. (2014). The naked traveler: 1 year round the world trip part 1. Bentang Pustaka.
Ullah, R. (2025). Ambivalence and resistance: The complexities of postcolonial agency in Mamang Dai’s The Legends of Pensam. International Journal of Social Sciences Bulletin, 3(5), 112–126.
Wadud, A. (1999). Qur’an and woman: Rereading the sacred text from a woman’s perspective. Oxford University Press.
Yovela, S., Priyatna, A., & Prabasmoro, T. (2024). Ambivalent identity as abject in Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior and China Men. Diglosia: Jurnal Kajian Bahasa, Sastra, dan Pengajarannya, 7(3), 281–296. https://doi.org/10.30872/diglosia.v7i3.971