ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to discover the value of Literature in reinforcing national identity. It discusses the relationship between the absence of Literature courses in school and students’ tendency to adopt a writer’s identity that is essentially foreign. In Indonesia, pupils in national schools have been disadvantaged through lack of grounding in Literature, leaving a vacuum that is being filled with foreign culture that weakens national culture and eventually leads to Euro-/-Americentrism. This chapter uses postcolonial theories to trace the asymmetrical influence of one culture over another, fostered by policies and practices in the Institution of Literature and which have been imposed by the ruling class as far back as colonial times. This study reveals that formal literature instruction is needed to ward off neo-colonialism.
