Pramoedya’s imprisonment shaped his critique of colonial archival ignorance

Evidence

For Pramoedya, whose stories were transmitted orally in prison where he was incarcerated for fourteen years, his writings banned, it is not surprising how sharply his assault is aimed—at the erudite, educated ignorance that Java’s Dutch officialdom cultivated and that the colonial archives produced and contained. — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 116