As an Indonesian urbanist, my learning from Anderson’s works is biased towards his writings on Indonesia and would not do justice to his overall scholarship. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism has been cited more than 60,000 times, which indicates how much the concept has spread in many scholarly works. But when I booked the flight, I did not know that it would be the day of his final goodbye.īenedict Anderson is a scholar whose works greatly influence and inspire my writings. My trip to Indonesia included a flight to Surabaya on 18 December 2015 to attend the Urban Social Forum, a gathering of Indonesian urban activists, practitioners, and observers. I had a tiny hope that perhaps there would be other chances to meet him if he was still in Indonesia. I could not attend the event, but I was already planning for a trip to Indonesia the week after that lecture.
We miss him dearly.Įarlier in December 2015, a colleague sent me the open invitation to Benedict Anderson’s public lecture at Universitas Indonesia on “Anarchism and Nationalism”. Yet, here we are, a group of people who are touched by his works and by him as a person. Some of us do not even know him in person.
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