Kata (review from Goenawan Mohammad's Article)

This article invites us to talk about the power of the meaning and communicative effect in relation to the political and social life. It is previously mentioned that every violence, let’s say war, must have an end and its limit. When it ends, we tend to find the meaning beyond everything that had happened as a reflection to what we have done. Furthermore, Discourse with the use of words, according to Goenawan Muhammad, is far cheaper rather than the war in which one will not always go along with another only because of the authority or being afraid of another. Therefore, when it all ends, words play the significant role both in political and social life. But, Goenawan once doubts if the words−as what written by Chairil Anwar in his writing−might answer the basic problems of political matter, politic in terms of its relation to human life as a social being. Communication does take the important place while the authority and religious matter no longer have any impact or we can say they already fall down to somewhere where no one might consider. When it happens, communication replaces its places in which people might tend to share their opinion, and argue one another to find what they want to achieve. However, it will be not easy to do such thing. Goenawan argues that it is “meaning or sense” which is not easy to stand on it or as it is interpreted as a norm to reach the truth since the truth itself might possibly be designated by the authority.

However, some believe that communicative action in terms of discussion or deliberation, regarded as the way of achieving the common goals, might bring different heads (thought) into such agreement or consensus. Indirectly, to say, it means that words might have something influential that makes them have such effect without any force to accept them, later be called communicative power. In contrast, Goenawan doesn’t agree with Chairil if the written words might serve as the communicative action since we can’t control it instead we are under control of our own language. He further quotes the writing of Sastrowardjojo which puts emphasis that we are trapped within our own words. We only recall the information in the past hoping that it would fit with the present condition, unfortunately it will never do. Therefore, what we should do is first to form the new one, not to recall the previous one. In short, it would be dangerous and too risky if political matter is arranged under the control of the previous norm for it should be based on the new one in the new form as a result of pain, failure, and conflicts.

To conclude, even we are trying hard to escape from what had happened by discussing one another in a group, called communicative action as the process of reflection to what we have done, but it is not easy to be implemented into the political matter, since we are often trapped by the past or previous norm rather than we are forming the new one as the new way to achieve the goals.