In June 2004, as we were preparing this chapter on the emergence of discourses of trauma in Indonesia, two incidents occurred. The first was a conversation between Santikarma and Bre Redana, an editor at Kompas, an Indonesian newspaper. After hearing that we were writing about trauma, Redana asked Santikarma to explain something. Why were a number of social welfare organizations in Jakarta changing the names of their programs from “crisis centers” (krisis center) to “trauma clinics” (klinik trauma)? Both krisis and trauma – the words borrowed directly from English – were, they agreed, far from neutral terms. “Crisis” had entered widespread usage in Indonesia in 1998, when the “Asian economic crisis,” along with a “crisis of legitimacy” of former President Soeharto's government, were claimed by scholars and journalists to have ushered in the end of 32 years of dictatorship and the new era of political possibility known as reformasi. So popular had the word “crisis” grown that for many Indonesians it came to signal a generic lack: krisis moneter or “monetary crisis” (usually abbreviated as krismon) meant that people no longer had money; krisis kepemimpinan or “leadership crisis” meant that no one had belief in those in power; and “saya lagi krisis” or “I'm in a crisis,” with one's empty hands extended, meant that one had nothing to spare. But what, they wondered, did it mean for a rhetoric of “crisis” to be replaced by a language of “trauma”?