| Summary/Abstract |
The island of Borneo has been the subject of starkly different portrayals. On the one hand, the devastation of the island’s great rainforests, choking haze from fires set to clear land for oil palm plantations, and open-pit coal mining have prompted visions of environmental collapse. On the other hand, Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s 2019 announcement that the national capital will be moved from Jakarta to East Kalimantan prompted utopian dreams that massive investment and technology will create a glorious future. This article explores how these competing portrayals of Borneo emerged historically through European and American fiction – including utopian novels, lost race stories, and pulp and science fiction – and are reflected and reproduced in Indonesian political thinking. The final section examines how these long-standing ideas about Borneo as the site of the fantastic and the phantasmagoric have colored media reporting and commentary about President Widodo’s planned new capital in East Kalimantan.
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