Digital Poetics as Cultural Memory: Remythologizing Trauma, Spirituality, and Resistance in Indonesian Poetry
DOI: https://doi.org/10.65840/jllcd.v3i1.39
digital poetry, myth, Drupadi, cultural memory, identity, post-tradition, digital humanities
Abstract
This study demonstrates how Indonesian digital poetry reconfigures cultural memory through the radical remediation of myth, trauma, and spirituality. Analyzing 42 contemporary works (2019–2025) via critical hermeneutics and digital ethnography, we reveal three paradigm shifts: First, figures like Drupadi (Mahabharata) embody digital somatic agency—transforming the female body into a site of resistance through visceral metaphors ("hair of blood," "bowl of wounds") that subvert patriarchal narratives (Spivak). Second, our Spiral Mediation Model maps poetry’s ontological evolution across stages: digital transmission (myth-metadata), participatory rememory (reader-as-co-curator), and living archive crystallization, challenging digital disembodiment theses (Hayles) by proving platforms extend embodied cultural memory (Assmann). Third, spiritual poems ("Prayer in Hagia Sophia," "Jesus and Mother") construct algorithmic altars—hybridizing sacred experiences across faiths through glocal aesthetics. Findings establish Indonesian digital poetry as neo-ritualistic praxis, where hashtags ritualize trauma (#perempuanluka), algorithms sacralize pluralism, and metadata enables counter-memory. Theoretically, we advance: (1) a decolonial framework for Global South digital humanities, centering Indonesia’s 97M social media users; (2) trauma-informed poetics framing poetry as corporeal hermeneutics; and (3) ethical imperatives for UNESCO-compliant digital archiving. Methodologically rigorous (triangulating NVivo textual analysis, CrowdTangle metrics, and creator interviews), this research exposes urgent epistemic risks: AI-generated poetry’s erosion of authorship and algorithmic curation biases. Ultimately, these poems emerge as living archives—transmuting historical pain into participatory resilience through continuous remediation.
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