Benedict Anderson, a scholar who loved the Philippines, 1936 – 2015
According to his colleague Coeli Barry, Ben was in Jakarta on December 10 for the launch of the translation of his book, Under Three Flags (where he traces the influence of anarchism on the work of Jose Rizal and Isabelo de los Reyes). Afterwards, he went to Surabaya in the eastern part of Java, then to Batu, Malang. He was asleep in his hotel room on Friday night when his breathing became very loud and uneven. Ben had severe sleep apnea, which may have caused his heart to stop.
As of today, 13 December, his body is lying at a funeral home in Surabaya where people will be able to pay their respects.
It was Ben’s wish that his ashes be scattered in Java. Ben had been barred from Indonesia in 1973 after he and Ruth McVey produced a paper arguing that the 30 September Movement in 1965 was not the work of the Indonesian communists as claimed by the Suharto government, but an internal army affair. (Early last year we asked Ben about Joshua Oppenheimer’s acclaimed film on the mass executions of accused communists in Indonesia, The Act of Killing. Ben didn’t like it. He explained why, but we couldn’t hear him because the mall was noisy and Ben had a very soft voice. Even in a quiet place we had to strain to hear him.)
His books Imagined Communities, The Spectre of Comparisons, and Under Three Flags are necessary reading for people who wish to understand the roots of the Filipino nation. The last time we saw Ben was after the launch of El Diablo en Filipinas, his translation of Isabelo de los Reyes’s comic story. The world is dumber for his passing.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
December 14th, 2015 at 00:02
When I finally got in touch with him in UP Asia Center two years ago, and had my books autographed, he told me to smile often because academicians are often too serious in their lives. How true indeed, Your Grace!