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Abstract

This article examines political violence in Indonesia as a continuing mode of governance that extends beyond periods of open repression. Focusing on three historical episodes—the mass violence of 1965–1966, militarised rule in Aceh during the Military Operations Zone, and the racialised violence of May 1998—it argues that violence does not disappear after formal repression ends, but is reorganised within everyday life through bodily injury, social silence, fear, and learned endurance. To explain this process, the article develops the concept of regimes of pain, defined as forms of power that produce and normalise bodily suffering in order to sustain political order. Drawing on qualitative analysis of survivor testimonies, human rights reports, and archival absences, the article examines how experiences of violence are remembered, silenced, and embodied across different historical contexts. Rather than treating the body merely as a victimised object, the article conceptualises it as an archive of political violence through which power continues to operate long after moments of direct repression have ended. The findings show that unresolved suffering—particularly gender-based violence—functions not only as a legacy of past violence, but also as an ongoing mechanism for reproducing political order by normalising stigma, fear, and self-restraint. By tracing how pain becomes embedded within everyday social relations, the article argues that political violence persists not only through institutions of coercion but also through the management of memory, silence, and the body itself.

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