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<blockquote type=cite class=cite cite=""><font color="#006600">Siapno,
Jacqueline (2009) Living through terror: everyday resilience in East
Timor and Aceh’<i>, Social Identities</i>, 15(1): 4364</blockquote><br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Rather than subordinating the
author’s lived experience and embodied knowledge<br>
of violence to a dialogue with a ‘rule of experts’, the essay considers
how<br>
international and local responses to violence can be better integrated
from the<br>
survivor’s points of view. The essay traces the process that goes from
the direct<br>
experience of violence to emotional healing as a spiritual journey of
understanding<br>
the conditions for a sustainable, embodied peace. The essay was
written<br>
over a period of two years, starting in March 2006 when the author
returned to<br>
Aceh to conduct research on forced displacement after a six-year absence.
In<br>
April 2006 the security situation in Timor Leste worsened and the author
found<br>
herself writing the first draft in a
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>gudang
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>(storage room) in Gleno,
Ermera, where<br>
she and her family were forcibly displaced for several months. In May 26
the<br>
author’s home in Delta I, Dili, was burnt down, and, subsequently, in the
space of<br>
one to two months more than two thousand homes were burnt down
throughout<br>
Dili, causing thousands of people to be displaced. The first draft of the
essay was<br>
completed in February 2008, after attempted assassinations on the
President and<br>
Prime Minister of Timor Leste. By this time, the author was very ill,
after having<br>
been evacuated three times, and in the precarious condition of being
Timor<br>
Leste’s ‘interim first lady’. Once the author had been able to heal and
regain her<br>
strength, having initially wanted to withdraw what seemed a depressing
piece of<br>
writing, the final draft of this essay was completed. Thus, the essay
highlights the<br>
process of writing and re-writing of a self-reflexive, marginal female
scholar who<br>
is immersed in social, political, and ecological movements in both Aceh
and<br>
Timor Leste, and whose ethical responsibility is to disclose the truths,
deficiencies,<br>
and weaknesses not just of herself but also of the character of the state
and<br>
political leaders in these two societies. In this sense, the essay
addresses more<br>
broadly the challenges faced by scholars who write ‘theory’ while living
their<br>
everyday in a conflict environment.<br>
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>Keywords:
</font><font face="Arial, Helvetica" size=2>resilience; embodying peace;
equilibrium; agency; speaking beyond<br>
trauma; militarised masculinities</font></body>
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