Contingent Subjectivity and Urban Hegemony in Ahmad Tohari's Bekisar Merah

A Ernesto Laclau Post-Marxist Reading

Abstract

This study examines the construction of subjectivity and urban hegemony in Ahmad Tohari's novel Bekisar Merah through Ernesto Laclau's post-Marxist theory of discourse and hegemony. Existing readings of Indonesian social-realist fiction frequently privilege material class relations and treat marginal characters as relatively fixed victims of structural domination. To address this limitation, the study adopts a descriptive qualitative design and a Laclauian discourse-analytic approach to textual data comprising narration, characterization, spatial contrasts, and interactions involving the protagonist, Lasi. The analysis focuses on articulation, floating signifiers, chains of equivalence, antagonism, dislocation, and radical contingency. The findings show, first, that the metaphor of the “bekisar merah” functions as a floating signifier whose meaning shifts between the communal-rural discourse of Karangsoga and the commodifying urban discourse of Jakarta. Second, urban elites establish a hegemonic chain of equivalence that associates metropolitan life with progress, prestige, and agency while positioning the village as backward and subordinate. Third, this hegemonic closure remains incomplete because Lasi's memories, moral attachments, and internal conflicts generate antagonism and dislocation. These fissures prevent urban power from fully stabilizing her identity and preserve a contingent space for agency. The study argues that Bekisar Merah is not merely a representation of material poverty or class domination; it is also a literary site where competing discourses struggle to define the subject. This reading extends Laclauian discourse theory into Indonesian literary analysis and highlights the political significance of unstable identity in social-realist fiction.