People/paulstange/voices/9.html

Ancestral Voices in Island Asia

by Paul Stange

chapter nine
THE POLITICS OF ATTENTION

In reflecting on the impact of recent theories my comments are stimulated by issues which arise in foregrounding traditional culture. Though works I deal with are only loosely linked to deconstruction or mysticism they highlight issues arising from intersection between them in the Javanese context. Each offers a reading of contemporary culture implicitly or explicitly assessing the place of tradition within it. In at once critiquing and applying deconstruction my focus is on posing a question rather than resolving it or providing a balanced survey. I will not do justice to works mentioned because my questioning is at the periphery of their purposes, in the spirit of deconstruction itself.
The central issue is of cultural imperialism: do philosophies, epistemologies, methodologies and political predispositions of Western scholars, even those of the new wave and on the left, in effect make their works instruments of subordination? The most notable work of deconstruction in Asian studies has been Edward Said's book Orientalism. Mention of it has become synonomous with acknowledgement that Western scholarship on Asia is embedded in power relations, systems of knowledge being party to imperialism. Said showed that scholarship has been part of a colonial enterprise, the "knowledge" Europeans have of the "Orient" serving to enshrine unequal relations and even shape what Asians know of themselves. He drew attention, as Steadman had earlier, to how notions of "East and West" lead to misguided stereotyping paired with "intuitive and rational" and "passive and dynamic". Said rested his case on extremes, mainly on Victorian scholarship and too much on studies of the Islamic world, but his thesis stands and is relevant. Since the seventies explorations in this vein have been a major industry in the human sciences. I raise in relation to Said's style of theorising the same point he did of earlier practices.
Students of Southeast Asia moved, as suggested in the outset, toward decolonised scholarship long before Said. During the thirties Van Leur signalled the move away from colonial historiography, written as though "from the deck of a ship", calling for a rewriting of Indonesian history from an indigenous social perspective. His effort was revived by Smail, who distinguished questions of moral judgement, perspective, relative importance and focus and illustrated how local perspective could enrich understanding of the plurality of actors and visions within world history. The following generation showed that the range of indigenous scholarship has been shaped by varied lenses. Ever since Hall defined the field, students of the region have taken the challenge of reframing history from the local perspective seriously.

deconstruction as disempowerment
Relativism arises inevitably in anthropology because it has been centrally engaged with translation between European and non-European systems. Derrida noted this in an essay on Levi Strauss, pointing out anthropology could only arise in a "decentred" culture. As in the way that studies of Southeast Asian history foreshadow postmodernist concerns, so in anthropology and religious studies some of its major issues are long known. In religious studies relativism relates to issues of "insiders", who by belonging find "sense", and "outsiders", who in observing see "no(n)sense". Though Derrida problematised opposition of "inside and outside" at length, the issue remains. In semiotic senses of religion each is seen as defining itself--as a hermeneutic circle--making sense only through participation, never when looking in. At the same time debates dealing with the mystical through social theory are timeless. New theories resemble the theory of relativity and the bootstrap hypothesis in the physical sciences. Like relativity they draw attention to the intrusive consequences of every instrument of knowledge; as the bootstrap notion suggests, they exist on their own authority.
The new wave brings powerful insights and styles of analysis I identify with, but ambivalence is deep in relation to dominant epistemology. New approaches are tied tightly to mentalist epistemologies, to conviction "thought" is the only locus of "knowledge". Every scholarly work, like any view, produces distortions and misrepresents--one of the accepted insights of new theories. In general sensitivity to alternative and competing epistemologies is a primary contribution of new approaches, as is clarified in exemplary fashion by Becker and colleagues. Nevertheless the overwhelming presence of religious conviction within Asia is in stark contrast to dominant philosophies of new wave scholarship: this gap deserves attention. Older studies claimed to be essentially agnostic, holding that issues of belief could be suspended, bracketed apart from scholarship; current fashion may be diverse but is usually atheistic, admitting the intervention scholarship represents and at the same time affirming there can be no ultimate substance to religion.
Methodological atheism ensures, regardless of private positions academics hold, only voiding of spirituality can come through if works are to be "scholarly". Professions of atheism are read as indications of neutrality; statements resembling religious conviction are interpreted as jeopardising scholarship even by those who do not believe "objectivity" exists. If local practices emphasise a spiritual dimension, it is written out of the picture. References to "spiritual" are reread as "political" and local perspectives on local purposes are thus consistently redirected. The dominant philosophical position of interpreters may ensure a significant blind spot and encourage angles of focus running against the grain of their subject.
Thus my key objective is to identify a specific perceptual warp, constraints on what, if anything, of inner life is allowed to come through in new academic representations. Specifically it seems a systemic blindness to "rasa" is clear in recent scholarly representations culture, one ironically at odds with a current which also opens theorisation of the body. As already indicated,"rasa" means "feeling" as experienced through taste, touch and emotion, but at a deeper level "intutitive feeling", the sixth sense, organ or "tool" which registers awareness of feelings, indeed of inner life. To speak of rasa as a domain is not to refer to an unknowable available only to the elect. We may note human ability to run a mile under four minutes while admitting only a few athletes are capable. The exclusion I am concerned with is analogous to conclusion no one can run that fast because the person making the evaluation cannot; we can speak about capabilities, of athletes or mystics, without having to either experience or replicate them. Intellect may acknowledge it is the condition of the body, not the mind which is crucial to speed; in Javanese terms it is the heart, not the head, which gives access to spiritual knowledge. There is neither contradiction nor mystery in speaking about matters which cannot be conveyed through words; it requires only admission of limits to intellectually constituted knowledge.
Even in sophisticated self conscious new ways there is continuing assertion of power, a hegemonic functioning which may become most profound when practices are committed to exposing that quality in themselves. Concentration on one half of the dialectic, on the conditioning forces which shape human subjectivity, effectively represents local actors as creating parodic imitation--whether of Western filtered constructions of their own past or of modern practices. Present practices, if conceived as relating to "tradition", are discounted by precisely those who are most committed to foregrounding everyday praxis. Significant communities of contemporary actors, spread across a spectrum of political life, are rendered speechless by an unwillingness of theories to engage them. Through the examples which follow it will become clear "traditionalists" are most often presented, when mediated by the very theories which stress engagement and committed to liberation, as ciphers, disempowered and made to appear as victims because, according to dominant rules of postmodern discourse, the dimensions within which they chart their struggles cannot be on the map of the "knowable".
Postmodern theorising has sensitised us to the fact academic systems, as systems of theorising, are rooted in a wider social context intimately tied to imperialistic power relations. In the ways in which we admit issues into our discourses we are still far from open to contributions to knowledge implicit in the highly developed theorising of non-Western cultures; highly analytical theorising may be categorised as "belief" whenever root presuppositions depart from those implicit in our thinking, conventions arising from Europe still maintain claim to limiting the laws of discourse and we thus retain commitment to implicit cultural imperialism. Unconscious imperialism may be implicit in every reproduction and extension of knowledge but academic models profess commitment to increasing openness.

Mystical forms of spiritual life are contentious not only within scholarly conventions but to any orthodoxy because mysticism relates to the undefinable, to precisely what cannot be identified with a "form" (not even with a "mode of discourse"). Classically understood mysticism is precisely what is knowable only to and through an internal voyage of "experience" and related to conviction the truths of spiritual life, however mediated, are not captured in forms as such. There are two primary senses of the term, both relevant here. The first refers to the "inside" of religious life; the second to practices and beliefs centrally focussed on direct consciousness of union. In Java, following Islam,"batin" refers to inner and "lahir" refers to outer aspects of religion. Thus "kebatinan" refers to the science or path of the inner life, practices concentrating on activating spirituality, within or independently of religious rituals, teachings and practices. Essentially mysticism is the depth dimension within religion.
In the context of the Indianised kingdoms and Islamic sultanates, religious thinking usually took mystical form while art and etiquette implied spiritual values. Even those who did not see themselves as religious accepted ultimately access to "Truth" came only through gnosis. This does not mean a large percentage have ever been mystics--only that within dominant religious practice the mystical dimension was given a focal place until recently. Senses of what it meant to be religious, in court cities or remote villages, used to stress the vertical dimension of spiritual depth.
Persistence of mysticism has been attributed to Indian influences which interacted profoundly with indigenous animism. Often mysticism used to appear in commentaries on Java as a counterpoint to Islam, implying wrongly that it is not also an integral part of it. Counterpointing arose in part because students realised that profession of Islam coexisted with earlier spiritual traditions. Thus stereotypes of Islam, themselves problematic in the end, were transparently inapplicable in the Javanese context. European images of Islam had been conditioned by post-Reformation senses of religion which imply emphasis on doctrine and a core of rituals. Now it is understood that Sufism, through the tarekat movements, has been a vehicle for popular practices in traditional Islam containing, apart from extravagances, sophisticated and refined mystical philosophy. Thus it is known mysticism has been a part of, not necessarily in opposition to it.
At the same time now "religion" in general is increasingly defined by and implicitly reduced to material forms--to phenomenal structures of ritual and belief, to social and ideological structures. Discourses about the status of mysticism involve not only politics as normally understood, but also a struggle between differing epistemologies and ontologies--they are an arena in which the nature of what it means to be human is at issue. Dominant trends are working to produce an Indonesian version of the reduction of the human to "one-dimensionality". The point is double edged, applying to trends in the country and interpretations by scholars who articulate knowledge of it.

Being Indonesian does not guarantee local lenses are activated in scholarly work. Claims to presentation of indigenous perspectives may be crosscut by commitment to Western methodologies. In focus and framing local scholars sometimes present views non-natives are unable or unlikely to adopt, but theorising of mysticism is not often problematised. The consequence is a reductive reading which allows mysticism into discourse only as idea, never as praxis. It is important to distinguish the issue of indigenous history from postures in relation to mysticism. I am not suggesting to be "indigenous" historiography must "be" religious or mystical. Far from opening up internal, local and indigenous perspectives, in these respects Indonesian scholars usually exemplify the limitations of established Western theorising.
Hadiwiyono, a Protestant minister who taught at a Yogya Theological college, worked on texts following the model of Dutch philology. His analysis aimed to show that contemporary sects adhere to essentially Hindu concepts of self. Working with manuscripts, beginning with Sufi texts of the 17th century and continuing to booklets of contemporary teachers, he in this respect gave voice to local thought. Apart from a Christian bias, the primary limitation of his study is he speaks of mysticism as though it is a version of philosophy, without sensitivity to interplay of ideas and practices, illustrating a general problem in representations of mysticism. Insofar as scholarly work, especially philological and historical study, prioritises "texts", written traces of praxis, representation of human activity is mediated heavily by words, presenting only a fragment of practice. The consequence of approaching mysticism through literary texts is ideas, rather than practices or consciousness, become the "subject".
Kartodirdjo has been centrally concerned with local perspectives and in his major early work does provide insight into religious upheaval in late 19th century. However, the religious dimension is treated as a social phenomenon explained through soci0-economic variables. In a collaborative work on the priyayi he moved farther from constraints of Western conceptualisation, but in early works sources are Dutch and interpretations American. Though providing a insight into the way process appears from the village, these works are blatantly reductionist. If in Hadiwiyono's case "the mystical" is presented exclusively through thought systems, in Sartono's it is reduced to socio-economic factors, seen almost exclusively as a reflex of other dimensions.
In Koentjaraningrat's study of Javanese Culture there is a sociological rather than ideological or political basis for analysing Javanese religious life. Following the logic of earlier critiques of Geertz he distinguishes between Javanism (kejawen ) and orthodoxy, arguing that orthodox (santri) and heterodox (kejawen /abangan) Muslims exist within both major classes, of village oriented peasants (wong cilik)" and urban directed courts (priyayi and bangsawan"). With modesty he claims as fieldwork only short periods of research. His framework and a wealth and coherence of detail can be attributed to native status, but he does not capitalise on that claim, instead relying on foreign written sources. However this reliance conditions perspective and produces a view of mysticism as a "cultural artifact" rather than lived experience, the practical dimension comes into view better through ethnography. Debates about domestication, especially Islamisation, of knowledge have been active. Islamic intellectuals, including Said, have played a leading role in questioning the epistemological basis of social sciences. Southeast Asian scholars have contributed to debate but most Indonesian academics accept the formulation of knowledge in Western social sciences as a given. The issue of "Indonesianising" knowledge was popular several years ago and is still recognised as an issue, but few pursue it actively at present.
In this review focus is on scholars who foreground culture, but it should be clear that I am taking issue not with focus on culture, but with those who read it too much in political-economic terms. Shifts in the ways Western theorising of culture accommodates, or fails to accommodate, religion, especially the depth dimension within it, are significant. Despite growing sophistication in theory there may be increasing reductionism, albeit of a new form, in understandings of "religion".

rasa blindness in Javanese studies
In moving from general considerations to comments on representations, the questions I am asking, on the one hand of postmodernism on the other of works on Java, are related but separable. With one hand I am deconstructing studies of Java; with the other I question deconstruction and interpretations sometimes related to it. Deconstruction and Javanese studies are independently symptomatic of wider currents, each illustrating, in different ways and only in a few cases at once, a wider problem. I remain especially interested in, but claim only to hint at, the point where they coincide--that is specific constraints evident in postmodernist representations of mysticism. "Deconstruction" is a style of discourse and practice, not a theory that can be pinned down, by its elusive nature it actualises the openness of meaning propounded and eludes critique.
Several authors I refer to are selfconsciously engaged with postmodernism or deconstruction, most engage literary and cultural theory. Without exception works I refer to add depth of insight and theoretical sophistication to study of Java; I question the unsaid as much as the said and thus make only marginal commentary which is not pretending to be comprehensive or balanced.
In debates about conceptualising Indian influences, "external forms" were counterpointed to "indigenous uses". Early studies depreciated locals, in effect if not intent, seeing all inspiration as imported, a general and explicit disempowering of locals framed by colonial structures which encouraged it. Everyone disavows this aspect of colonialism. Wolters used the term "localisation", employing insights from literary theory, to emphasise that imported elements are adapted by indigenous systems to local purposes. The volition and creative power of local actors reappears in that, but his gain may be at risk in recent studies, not because it is denied but because its significance is forgotten.

In a thesis by Sears on the history of the wayang her analysis uncovers a hidden voice within the drama. Sears' work, essentially structuralist rather than postmodern, is relevant here. As is known, the narrative core of wayang centres on the Mahabharata. Nevertheless there is emphasis on likelihood of a Javanese origin to it presentation. Rassers speculated that the shadow drama began as invocation of ancestral spirits in the context of rites of initiation centering on Polynesian styled men's houses. He refers to Hazeu's arguments that in technical terminology and elements of narrative form the wayang is indigenous. Others, including Krom and Ras, argued for Indian origins. Whatever the origins of the drama, Sears gives a convincing argument that the authoritative voice encoded within it is that of the Indian treatise on drama, the Natyasastra, thus that the theory which establishes its aesthetic constraints is fundamentally Indian.
Afficionados of wayang see it as profoundly and distinctively Javanese, it occupies a key position within the web of tradition, ramifying through other fields. This led me to consider what Sears does not ask. Her thesis tells us of a structure underlying wayang, but does not ask what is Javanese about it. This is not wrong (why must it?) but reminds us that conclusions are, as critical theory tells us, dictated by the direction of questions. Sears' thesis directs attention to construction, the ways in which humans are made by systems. Rethinking the thesis in the light of effort to attribute weight to local actors, my problem related to a difference of objective. Sears' concern lay in uncovering formal rules; mine with what people use the drama for, how it served their purposes. The issue is not of accuracy, but of differing motives and methods which give issues of origins different complexions.
Another example relates to wayang. In Keeler's book on dalang (puppeteer) and wayang in village context he deals with its meanings in relation to Javanese "selfhood". The book is wide ranging and probing ethnography, not narrow analysis of the dalang's role. Though clearly sensitive to recent theorising, Keeler's writing sidesteps and then depreciates indigenous interpretive frameworks; he is unselfconscious about his mediating role as interpreter, presentation of his self within exploration of 'other' selfhoods. He adopts a magisterial voice deemed permissible in ethnography into the 1960s but dubious now. Geertz referred to informants by pseudonym; Keeler renders them anonomous, speaking for "the Javanese" in a way even Koentjaraningrat never does. The authority we engage is Keeler's, requiring faith in his experience of village culture. Writing-out of informants, a habit of anthropology under question, is itself a disempowering, a denial of voice to those represented. There is a more invidious disempowering. Early on he establishes that he aims to focus on practices contingent on the wayang so as to avoid both "imposing alien judgements" or "indigenous exegitical 'traditions'". As objective and strategy this is reasonable, but it provides no grounds for ignoring interplay of indigenous theories and actions within local practices. In dealing with local interpretations of wayang he discounts indigenous esoteric theories too easily.
Keeler dismisses local interpretation of the wayang off-handedly, with comment that "these seem to fit certain theosophical prejudices of both Javanese and Western analysts (or apologists)...". He notes the works of prominent authors, Mangkunegara VII and Seno Sastroamidjojo, but does not take time in his text to explain their theories explicate "meaning" through exploration of notions of correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, a framework central to traditional cosmology. That connects representation of figures, as we have seen, to senses, desires, psychic organs, and other elements of psychology, making performance a reference to spiritual process. This theory is not the private domain of a few interpreters, much less just of those influenced by the Theosophical Society as Keeler suggests. It is a pervasive framework of thought within traditional cosmology and has been explicitly articulated as such, not only in India but also through a rich tradition of literature.
Ironically in conclusion, framed by Geertz and Ricoeur, Keeler repeats that he has taken issue with established theories, those he mentioned only to exclude, then presents as conclusion, that: only when we treat the wayang "...as an experience of great evocative power rather than as some elaborate heuristic device, do we escape the intellectualist prejudices and expectations we bring to the study of texts."--as though this is his elaboration of Western theories. He appears unaware of the perfect match between what he says and Indic Javanese rasa theory, the same body of knowledge he earlier side-steped. He is correct and presents his point lucidly, but in the process indigenous theory is both dismissed and then appropriated without acknowledgement.
Keeler has seen this point explained and there was every reason for him to note his argument is a key element of Javanese theorising. Keeler's point is linked to rasa theory, Tantrism and the idea of correspondences as explicated in the wayang itself. Connection to rasa theory within the Natyasastra, the text Sears refers to, is not incidental. Keeler probably absorbed Javanese theorising remaining unaware of the debt but the claims to lineage implied remain revealing: he did not look to Javanese theories as a source of insight into the dynamics of the drama, seeing only Western theories as casting light in this regard. He read Javanese theory as mechanical exegisis, giving it less voice than Geertz had, and arrives at a very useful conclusion by displacing the Javanese he claims to represent. This tells us more about the rules of scholarship than it does of wayang--simultaneous discounting of indigenous theory and claim to lineages of Western teachers can lead us to ask which interpretive process is most bound by sacred lineages of transmission.

A second observation appears peripheral to Keeler's objectives, but is more revealing. The term "batin", within which "inner" realities are apprehended, appears often in Keeler's exploration, but"rasa" does not feature. This is indicative of a limit in what Keeler admits into discourse. Rasa, though derived from Sanskrit, is central to kebatinan concept and practice, it cannot be ignored. Neither the significance of rasa nor self consciousness about its relation to spirituality and wayang can be identified exclusively with urban elites. Sensitivity to word play is characteristic of village oral culture and the word "rasa" resonates incredibly. In Javanism it is precisely with rasa that we enter inner aspects of personal experience, the formation of Javanese selfhood, which is supposed to be Keeler's focus. The absence of this concept signals a crucial boundary in Keeler's considerations.
Discounting of indigenous theories and voices is related to unwillingness to engage the experiential inner dimension which, his analysis admits, is central for informants. Engaging with rasa as a concept does not require being a mystic or any impossible translation; it requires only readiness to acknowledge local ideas about functions of consciousness--quite possible even if we do not activate them in ourselves. The corpus of rasa theories demonstrate by existing that we may build analysis in reference to planes which are not communicable through texts. Geertz and Mulder, neither remotely "mystical" personally, were capable of registering the place of rasa in Javanese thought. Keeler's exclusion goes hand in hand with appropriation: what he claims his is a weak version of precisely the Javanese theory he devalues.
Florida, like Pemberton, Day, and Anderson who she draws on, opens new depths in analysis of the resonances of tradition in Java. In a delightful essay on the non-uses of traditional literature in Surakarta she refers to disdain the 19th century philologist Cohen Stuart expressed for his language assistant's linguistic ability. The obvious irony is that Javanese now view Ronggowarsito, the assistant in question, as the last great traditional court poet. Florida shows that Javanese respect but fail to read their literature; that Dutch contribution to the formation of Javanese tradition as now construed was great; that even elements of mysticism within it are constructions of political and social forces. Her work counterpoints official versions of tradition to its observable substance, showing a multiple voiced countercultural substance in both past and present, one absent in sanctioned and oversimplified readings of a glorified high culture.
She misses double irony in the analogy between her position and Cohen Stuart's. Like colonial scholars, she has been acknowledged as "more expert than the Javanese" and her comments about current orthodoxy mirror Cohen Stuart's about Ronggowarsito. In saying contemporary Javanese fail to "read" their literature she adheres implicitly to a notion of reading, promoted since the Reformation, which discounts the hierloom (pusaka) significance of texts, ironic because she is otherwise sensitive to this aspect of them. Her comment relates to ignorance of the literal substance of the texts, a sense of "reading" implicity Protestant, relating to "meaning" through what words designate. She notes connections through the vigour of critical qualities to pop culture, one which incidentally remains religious. Unmentioned others in Solo, who have not read Ronggowarsito, nevertheless position themselves in his lineage, living practices related to his concerns about an age without moorings. Failure to refer to them means even this version of philology privileges texts above practices by the way it selects what to present.
Ulbricht and Mangkunegara VII, to mention prominent interpreters of wayang, had been influenced by the Theosophical Society. Florida makes this point with the same implication it has in Keeler's book. If we reflect on the nature of the connection, and on what framing it the way they do implies, there are other points to make. The Theosophical Society was significant in late colonial society, perhaps the only context where members of Indonesian and Dutch elites met on equal ground, sometimes transcending the unequal status implied by colonial situation. It was also an especially natural meeting place for those within each community most interested in learning from the other one. Coincidentally, Indonesian participants were socially and politically situated to control print media and institutions which shaped nationalism and underpin the contemporary state. The influence of the Theosophical Society is amazing, underpinning Buddhist and Hindu revival and underlying practices of a generation who went on to found other movements which also claim to be "indigenous".
Does "deconstruction" mean esoteric mystical interpretations of the wayang are a "product" of the Theosophical Society? This is the weight of Keeler's and Florida's comments. On the wider question of whether mystical (kebatinan ) movements are derivative, argument has never been pushed quite so far by interpreters, who accept kebatinan claims. For different reasons Muslims employ an argument resembling that of deconstruction, presenting kebatinan as essentially a corrupt derivative of Islam and pointing to the Dutch as a source of the strength of hereticial mysticism. The connection between the courts, priyayi bureacratic elites and the Dutch was not incidental--the Dutch did shore up precisely the elite which tended to preserve Indic notions at the expense of orthodox Islamic ones.
But we cannot read convergence, between wayang and kebatinan on the one hand and the Theosophical Society on the other, strictly as conditioning. Behind Theosophy we find Western esotericism, an apparently marginal current of the late Victorian era, influences coming through leaders including Olcott, Blavatsky, Besant and Leadbeater. Besant was a prominent feminist and advocate for independence linked to leading nationalists in India. Though European in origin the leading Theosophists drew from a well of Indian thought; when Javanists drew on Theosophy they did so not only for instrumental reasons implied by social analysis of relations with the Dutch, who indeed brought Theosophy into their context, but because it came from the same roots as wayang. By "the same" I mean not only common source in India but also common appeal to internal experience.
There is also parallelism between esoteric Theosophy, with its elaborate sense of interchanges between adepts and spirit masters on subtle planes, and older Javanese spirit beliefs, beliefs which were already an amalgam of indigenous and Indic. In each contexts humans relate to complex spirit realms and there is a similar underlying perception of reality. Thus Javanese had strong reasons, within the terms of their already mystical and Indic culture, to "see" the esoteric significance of the wayang. Choosing to explain such inclinations as a recent invention is a thin artifice when history, convergence, creative adaptation and local purposes are so evident. Once again choice of emphasis tells us about the scholars exercising it more than of the subject.
Related arguments suggest Javanese senses of their tradition are creations of Dutch scholarship. Traditional perceptions are generally discounted in explaining contemporary process, present formulations of "tradition" are interpreted mainly as constructions convenient for utilitarian political reasons. This point can be made unobjectionably and the political uses of ideology deserve the exposure scholarship offers. There is no doubt that contemporary interpretations of the past are mediated by present politics. My concern is that in the process of exposing mediating forces, interests and purposes we neglect and depreciate another dimension, of culturally and religiously shared meanings.
In an essay on uses of gamelan music in contemporary society Pemberton presents us suggestion its significance relates not to ostensible aesthetic appreciation, but essentially to "creation" of passive and controlled people. Traditional gamelan is a key element in rituals. Pemberton draws attention to ways in which gamelan has been constructed by courts as a vehicle for asserting the primacy of elite culture. Regulation by introduction of chairs to ceremonial life and maintenance of deference patterns can be linked to modern reproductions of "feudal" status systems. The thrust of argument is that people do not "listen" to gamelan, its presence is a form of "musak". What is meant by "listening" is problematic and the "passivity" Pemberton alludes to raises a deeper issues. Passivity is related to the condition petitioners at courts cultivated through meditation, reflecting deferential attitudes directly tied to "feudal" hierarchies. It is internally related to passivity of ego, but counterpointed by activitation of intuitive feeling (rasa), relating to reception through the ear. Pemberton's "passive" refers to passivity of part of the person; he fails to note the spiritual within the same moment not only because his idea of that guides him wrongly, but because that aspect did not register. In Javanist theory gamelan registers in rasa to be "spiritual music". Musicians spoke of a spiritual aspect of music, as Pemberton notes, without being "precious". Their everyday attitude seemed at variance with his notion of "spirituality", his implication being spirituality is connected with the lofty and ethereal.

Similar disjuncture is apparent in Siegel's Solo in the New Order. Siegel is a leading figure, guided deeply by recent theories and making self conscious use of Derrida's deconstruction. Neither natives of nor researchers in the city will find this coverage presents the city in the ways they know it, not in what most consider its typical or modal faces. Nor does the book deal, in overview historical or social terms, with changes over past decades or with the social groups or activities which reflexively come to mind in a stock-taking reflection on this city of half a million.
Entry is always at a tangent to the obvious. Local politics is represented through one instance subjected to extended probing, not via overview. Islam appears only vaguely, through indirect relation to burial and local conflict, never being spotlighted, though it is a major presence in his neighborhood of the city. Javanism appears mainly as backdrop for what seems "aneh" ("odd"; used when a phenomenon seemed so to him) around the edges of the everyday, and briefly in relation to Anderson's essay on power. The local Chinese, whose shops and homes surrounded the neighborhood, appear only as contributors to funds for the nightwatch and as intruders, strangely conflated with spirits as though just an element upsetting local hierarchies. Everything is approached from the side, never head.. The environments which he touches, perspectives presented and flavours evoked are nevertheless recognisable, relevant and productive of insight.
There are grounds to question the way insights are reached. The most obvious indication of need for caution occurs when Siegel introduces the notion of "sore" as reference to the state of relaxation he observed as neighbors stood outside their houses in the late afternoon. He characterises it as a kind of "drifting", launching comment with an anecdote about his entry into the neighborhood, when he stepped down off his bicycle in confusion and then left. He emphases the way two women responded, as though "...one has seen such things before", on the erroneous premise the event would have been unusual. As it happens, if there is a neighborhood in Solo where the event would have been natural, Kemlayan is it; one resident has rented bicycles to travellers since the early 1970's. False assumption does not negate observation, but does put us on guard about the way he builds his ideas. In other places as well the weight of emphasis on the "oddness" of foreigners in Solo appears to be projection of his feeling of oddness in the context.
What Siegel calls "sore" is linked to extended commentary on what he sees as vacuum or emptiness in Javanese communication. He comments on speaking kromo, the elite level of Javanese, as saying "...nothing of substance." Probing the "vacuity" of standard, formulaic, exchanges with foreigners or between Javanese he theorises that in conversations people find their 'real' pleasure in complicitous sharing of the secret that "...they both know without saying that they are not speaking ngoko"(everyday Javanese). Occams razor is needed; Siegel misses the obvious. What Siegel calls "nothing" or "vacuity" is precisely transaction in feeling through which people establish and cultivating contact. In everyday transactions words are a vehicle for contact in feeling; there is a substance in exchange even if not in the words. Keeler has noted the same presumed emptiness of content in Javanese exchanges with foreigners and every traveller is familiar with the pattern they refer to.
Words in function not only to purposefully say nothing, as both authors suggest, but to establish relationship (including establishing status, clearly an aspect of their purpose). Europeans focus on mental meaning, what we imagine as "substance", when the attention of Javanese may be on transactive relationship in rasa. Siegel notes, following Errington, that embellishment is at its highest with referance to hidden presence of royalty as a structured element of discourse. The presence in question is termed "Ingsun", which is not just the "ruler" as they put it, but also deity or "God". If "God" is not 'real' this can only be imagined as internalised status deference, but reference in Javanese clearly intends something beyond that. At the "lower level", of exchanges in the street, there is cultivation of rasa; in refined forms rasa is an avenue to connect awareness to God. The smiles Siegel reads as complicity in suppressing ngoko relate also (if to ngoko at all) to interplay of rasa.
Siegel and Keeler see a vacuum at the core of discourse because of incapacity to distinguish "ngalamun" from "sore", leading to a misreading of "nothing". "Ngalamun", roughly, "to daydream", in technical terms (ordinary Javanese are conscious of) is to let attention leave the body. As Javanese view it the danger is that if attention wanders then the body, once vacant, can be occupied by an intruder--possession is likely. Even children may nudge an adult when they "catch" one with attention wandering to "call them back", a reflexive act linked to everyday awareness of their attention and, through sensitivity and attentiveness, even to where another person's "attention" is. Siegel speaks of "sore" as though it is "ngalamun"; it is closer to "meditative centring", relaxing of activity in thought, releasing tensions accumulated. It is precisely "present", if without "thought", thus appearing "empty" to any observer who measures "presence of self" by activity of reflective thought.
The spiritual dimension is present within, as a dimension of, realities researchers are conditioned to bracket apart. Being spiritually active and attuned through rasa, the vehicle for entry into the inner life, is not at odds with being in the midst of activities, in a joking mood, or for that matter embroiled with politics and economics; neither is it at variance with being oppositional or marginal, as the political sensitivity attaching to spiritual leaders ought to indicate. To establish, as these works do, that what we construe as "tradition" is enmeshed in political process and economic interests does not mean the spiritual element is not there at the same moment--except by its omission in description. To speak of the intricate web which binds gotong royong, Dewi Sri, asas tunggal, Sawito, and gamelan to each other and to systems of power is to speak of the exoteric.
The esoteric side to all of them is not in conflict with or alternative to the exoteric, it is another aspect, referance to a different dimension within the same transaction. The mistake is to imagine, as our ideologies encourage us to through reification, there can be separation between economic, political, social and spiritual. If older works privileged classics and imperialists, new interpretations give power to material rather than subtle forces, implying a dualism they would reject--Dutch philology, Theosophy and Western theory are empowered at the expense of indigenous voices. If economic and political logics we can discern render notice of other planes unnecessary, then representations establish priorities, valuing what they highlight, voiding what they deny or fail to note.
The weight of recent argument is Javanese remain victims. Motives are seen as essentially political in the way we read that term. However artificial cultural constructs seem to outsiders that it is not all there is worth saying about them. Leaving commentary at that point is equivalent to viewing early Javanese states as creations of Indian princes, failing to note the process of appropriation by local peoples. Ostensibly emphasising popular culture and indigenous actors, recent works seem disdainful in reference to tradition as a dimension of practice. With new intimacy, those we come closer to are accepted less for what they profess and aim to be. In one respect this signals gains in theoretical understanding of cultural process, but there is reason to keep questioning the costs and implications.

the hegemony of postmodernist discourses
The link between interpretations of tradition and mysticism and the confrontation of poststructural theories with mysticism is multilayered and implicit above. Foucault's sense of politics underpins my sense of the politics of mysticism as a clash of epistemic worlds, a conflict between systems which define the limits of what is real and knowable. If politics is a struggle between discursive formations, a contest between ways of defining issues, then the central issue is what determines the constraints or boundaries of interaction, providing a template for communication and guiding attention to what will or will not enter into discourse. In these terms the most powerful suppression comes neither through logical argument nor ostensible strength but through the capacity to choose what to engage with and what to simply ignore. In this sense "power is knowledge", not the reverse, and the underlying issue is always that of who or what determines the rules of the game.
Foucault situated academia within Western lineages of hegemonic knowledge. Taking his cue, we note that academic approaches, including postmodernist approaches to mysticism, are a component within the Indonesian constellation of events, academics assert specific claims about the limits of knowledge. Western scholars are disproportionately privileged through the freedom they have to voice (time and money for research) and promote (control of publication and education) their views and through the status given to them in the Indonesian context (including the status of indigenous exponents). Their preoccupations thus intrude vigorously, continuing, as earlier naive colonialism did, to dictate local trends. Academic representations, of whatever stripe, inevitably, as postmodernism itself informs us, impinge directly on the cultural politics of the people who are ostensibly subjects.

To inscribe a note on the margin of these projects, precisely the sort of engagement Derrida's practice of deconstruction commends to us, we must examine the specific metaphysical and epistemological constraints which guide these new interventions. The critical constraints are related to Saussure's affirmation that "...there is simply no access to knowledge except by way of language and other, related orders of representation" and also recognisable in Derrida's commitment to the position that "...we simply cannot have a primordial intuition of the other's lived experience". In the general wave of emphasis on "the social construction of reality" it is held that all human knowledge is mediated by thought structures. These views are held widely, dominating new forms of scholarship rather than being restricted to Derridian deconstruction. Derrida's use of the term is relevant even when not directly tied to works touched above--he articulates principles underlying them. To him deconstruction is a practice not a theory, turning against every orthodoxy as it arises it becomes a form of guerrilla warfare. Indeed engagement with it here, provoked partly because some appear to use it as an orthodoxy, ironically partakes of it--it invites its own subversion persistently.
Derrida argues meaning is always open, renegotiated by each discoverer, defined not by a transcendental subject but only intertextually, through the ways, within any context, signs and symbols relate to surrounding systems. These positions are presented as conclusions of logic but resemble a-priori professions of faith. The "religious" nuance to this comment is ironic, because the philosophies at issue are tied to Nietzsche, who pronounced "God" dead, and Derrida's form of "...deconstruction is the 'hermeneutic' of the death of God".. However, the postmodernist opinion that there is no absolute, no "transcendental subject", and hence no final substance to religion is held by those committed to it in precisely a "religious" fashion; we are not so far from religion as either those who think it dead or those who bemoan its loss think. Insistant openness about meaning, opposition to closure and fixity, is linked not only to profound recognition of the role of interpreters within any process of interpretation but also to a relativism that borders on being absolute.
Mysticism begins where postmodernism ends. The Buddhist dialectics of Nagarjuna moved beyond dualities and negations, and long pre-empted Derrida's deconstruction of oppositions. Cultural theory is moving close to mystical theory--both place extreme emphasis on praxis and on the phenomenal dimensions (language, social and cultural structures) as mediators of experience and knowledge. However, the mystical as cultivated through meditation is universally described by those who enter it as accessible only through consciousness which begins where language ends. As nearly as I can summarise: postmodernism centres on a nihilistic "void void", mysticism, including Buddhist forms, on a "full void".
Realisation of the extent to which symbol systems limit human access to knowledge and a pervasive phenomenological relativism have long been central within the intellectual traditions of mystical religion. Recognising the extent of mediation in the same way, postmodernism points toward an "empty emptiness", seeing meaning as attainable only in terms of sign and symbol systems, as constantly recreated through the systems by which we have access to it. In contrast mystical traditions point toward a "full emptiness" which is accessible through knowledge attainable in our bodies. From the mystical perspective deconstruction appears to speak from, to and of the mental. Implicitly yet affirmatively it denies the possibility of access to knowledge through the body, a mode of knowledge, experience of selfhood and way of being which is thus actively depreciated, most specifically by being excluded from discourse. The final imperialism of deconstruction thus lies not in superimposition of a Western system over Asian systems, but in an imperialism of the mind within the body.
Postmodernism may be symptomatic of rather than liberating from the alienation of modern life. Stressing negations to the exclusion of affirmation makes deconstruction disempowering. If meaning and subjectivity are only comprehensible as constructions of sign systems determined intertextually then agency is missing. Affirmative uses of signs, symbols and structures is ignored by an approach which puts emphasis on one half of the dialectic, on constructions of subjectivity. Commitment to exposing conditioning forms appears to reveal nothing but conditioning process in the end. Postmodernists insist we cannot get beyond the logic of communications systems, that there is no final court of appeal. Postmodernism is itself a speech community extending its rules, working implicitly to govern others to the extent that it gains prominence. By its own revelation the contest is not one of logical ploys with an external neutral arbiter, but of power, reflecting the positioning of actors. Insofar as it implies subordination of mystical to materialistic ontological and epistemological systems it participates in power struggle between ways of being human.
Postmodernists expose the myth of progress yet ironically situate themselves, at least by exclusivity of focus on recent Western theorising, as though superseding earlier knowledge. Emphasis on Freud's work as discovery ignores, as Jung did not, the earlier technicians of inner space; it is like speaking of Columbus as discovering the Americas, writing the Amerindians out of history. Deconstruction instructs us Freud's breakthrough equally marks the moment when psychic spheres, once familiar to shaman and mystics, had been repressed. In the history of Western consciousness the rise of print, Reformation, suppression of witches, industrial reorganisation of social life and narrowing of knowledge to an adventure of thought are all related. What is really new about Freud and his disciples is the context and gestalt: restriction of "knowledge" to the domains of thought and the related suppression, underlined in the witch trials, of the intuitive and thus also of religion, not in its entirety, but as a distinct mode of knowledge. Are we inadvertently agents of a new inquisition if we say that what we do not see cannot be there?
Admission that within scholarship we are implicated subjectively as well as objectively is not new and does not imply the irrelevance of enterprise. It is no longer legitimate to maintain, nor would most openly argue, that "objective knowledge" is embodied only in one tradition, not even in of "international" academicians. The constitution of knowledges is contextual, what obtains and is knowable is intimately tied to situations producing it and in which it is used. Decolonisation of discourses has gone half way; there is no escape from intervention and no doubt the postmodernism we cultivate, like modernism before it, extends into every sphere it touches. Like economic systems, philosophical currents grow and move. The newest works are responsible steps in the right direction, locals appear in diversity and everyday dress as actors on their own stage. But the rules which govern discourse remain part of a configuration of industrial culture that is increasing its power to define the nature of being. According to these rules it appears learning from rather than about those we study is still heresy or can only be read as advocacy; notions of "critical theory" are reserved for Western lineages. The newest works probe more deeply, but with increasing fierceness of adherence to a logic which represents, translates and hence helps make the Javanese inner world something quite other than it has been.
Producing analysis, not just mimicry, faith, or "avoidance of exegesis", many Javanese still conceptualize within a complex and explicit theory of microcosm and macrocosm correspondence. It is a key, along with military power and linguistic hierarchies, to how meanings are constructed. Keeler affirms the centrality of mysticism in Java, but will not admit that knowledge through it can be relevant to our consideration of it. By one current game rule, that "experience" is only a discursive category, only those who claim that mysticism cannot be experientially known are authorised to speak of it. In the backwash of the Enlightenment, if Parisians speak we are predisposed to imagine they trade in critique. When the "provincialization of Europe" is complete, "theory" will cut both ways. Keeler and Siegel illustrate my essay's point in their responses, as for them reflexivity cannot be Javanese and only the outsider perspective of the West produces the privilege of theory and critique.

the substratum in time
Through the cycles of history Sinic, Indic, Islamic, and European forces have been superimposed on Southeast Asia. Each worked to claim it, to recast society within borrowed models. Local memories nevertheless preserve senses of primal identity and assert them. Now a metropolitan super cultures radiate from new national centres, promoting new languages and the growth of a supra-ethnic identity spread through the bureaucracy, schools, literature, electronic media, and, not least, the military. But national revolutions have not been just a matter of achieving political and economic independence, they also assert cultural identities. In the aftermath of revolutions modernity appeared to define governments through models borrowed from the west; dominant elites, secular or religious, have been the most westernised Asians.
The gestalt provided by the substratum suggests that local peoples have appropriated symbolic, social and economic systems in each historical phase. Each adaptation involved restructuring internal as well as reordering external relations in a context of increasing integration into global networks. Traditional societies blended animistic and classical influences with world religions. As Islamic, Catholic and Theravada patterns became entrenched they were amenable to synthesis, blending with ancestral rituals. Consolidation of a Theravada pattern involved no major conceptual break with the also Indic mold of previous classical states and continuities are evident in traditional schooling and ritual. Whether in Islam, Catholicism or Theravada the focus of attention remained participatory, in this respect reminiscent of animistic and Indic ritual. Ritual repetition, primary in all systems, infused sound with sacral power so that it resonated with states of inner being as much in Arabic, Pali, or Latin as it did earlier in Sanskrit.
Emphasis on the role of Sufism in conversion of the archipelago drew attention to openness of the line between Islamic and pre-Islamic cultures. Examination of interplay between Islam and adat, or local custom, images that as a gradual dialectical redefinition within archipelago Islam. The earlier supposed disjunction between Islam and the substratum was not so severe as is implied through the scriptural view of religion, prevalent underlying earlier interpretations. Though traditional Asian Islam was more mystical than earlier recognised, tensions between customary beliefs and doctrinal orthodoxy nevertheless began early, as 17th century Acehnese and Javanese disputes indicate. Presumption that Catholicism was more radical a break than Islam would also be unjustified. Syncretism predominated within the Hispanization of the Philippines and Catholicism has been deeply domesticated to Tagalog purposes.
Theravada Buddhism generated other contradictions, but does not problematised the substratum in the way Islam has. Buddhist theory fits spirits into a continuum everybody is placed on and core scriptures encorporate spirit beliefs. Vietnamese also blended folk beliefs relatively comfortably with Chinese derivatives. Recent Chinese migrants brought folk religious patterns from the substratum of their ancestral villages in South China, compounding guardian spirits with Confucianism and Buddhism. Syncretism was characteristic among all local Chinese communities, as they had brought folk southern Chinese religion with them. Chinese temples still draw variously on elements of Taoism, Confucianism and Buddhism. Within all traditional religious domains people drew on earlier popular magic as well as later ritual, maintaining an intuitive sense of what religious experience essentially involves.
At the social level a convergent analysis can be maintained to distinguish the impact of Islam and Theravad in relation to the substratum. In Thailand boundaries of village society have been defined by relationships to temples, community and religious identities coincide. In Islam emphasis on law and ritual prescribe exclusive commitment as core profession. The territory of submission, dar al-islam, is defined by profession and ritual prayer and marks off those who do not belong. Traditional Islamic schools drew students from dispersed areas so resulting sense of community correlated with intensity of commitment, institutional engagement, and lifestyle rather than with geographical community, as in Buddhism. Both doctrinal theory and the social nexus interweaving temples with community help explain the relatively harmonious relationship between Buddhism and the substratum.
Generally we can say that religion has been more politically volatile in island Southeast Asia than on the mainland, that this correlates to, being partly explained by, contrasting Semitic and Indic postures on syncretism, differing attitudes toward allowance of interchange between orthodoxy and the substratum of folk magic. In any case the syncretic mentality of earlier worlds did not emphasise pre-occupation with boundaries, community was formed in and focussed on courts, schools or monasteries. Traditional ideologies everywhere did not distinguish religious and political domains as we now do. This break became more severe only with the development of modernism beginning in the 19th century.

Scriptural religion allowed such distinction and arose through institutions and technologies mediated by colonialism. Whether in the Malay, Thai or Vietnamese cases scripturalism defined identities in increasingly exclusive and literal terms, generating religious boundaries paralleling the geographical limits produced by imperialism. The context of and concern for boundaries produced new modes of contention and increasing division between religion and politics. This happened despite the insistence of many Muslims and Buddhists that those remain intrinsically related, as was evident in nationalism throughout the region. To put this point properly, some local actors have been consistently unable to imagine these as separate; their commitment has still been to spiritual purposes expressed only sometimes through what we call political process.
In all contemporary polities in the region states have aimed to construct entities which link peasant and tribal structures to national centers. This integrative revolution related urban structures to the substratum within national territories to a previously unimagined extent and explains much of the way national politics have drawn from, and then worked to contain, popular impulses. Peasants have not distinguished as we might between nationalism, millenarianism and communism. Religious conflicts have often thus underlied and related directly even to those political movements which are framed in secular political terms on the surface. In several notable cases the force behind uprisings which are communist, in ideological terms at the top, has been closer to the animism of the substratum at base.
Indonesian tensions in the initial period after independence were clearly shaped in part by division between syncretic and modernist Muslims. The Indonesian Communist Party has been widely interpreted as having, in its effective operation in the end, represented the most syncretically oriented Javanese, those most committed to patterns rooted in the substratum. The party was strongest, certainly in its numerical membership, among syncretic Javanese; opposition to it was also fiercest from orthodox Muslims youth, who along with the army helped eliminate the party in the mid l960's. The party became a vehicle for abangan Javanese interests through the fact that it made an effort to forge a new link between peasant society and politics at the centre.
The notion of the substratum also helps us grasp the Vietnamese wars of independence. The French scholar Mus emphasised that French and American protagonists did not see the political situation or issues in the same terms as Vietnamese. Westerners tended to be aware of and pay attention to events in urban centres, the sites colonialism created, and never knew the hearts and minds of villagers. He evoked images of primal village spirituality and cosmological court traditions to suggest local perspectives. His analysis suggested that most of the Vietnamese population concluded in 1945 that the 'mandate of heaven', the mantle of nationalism in our terms, had clearly fallen on Ho Chi Minh. Drawing attention to cultural miscommunication as an aspect of the Vietnamese wars does not imply it is the only element worth considering.
But tragic events such as those of Indochina recur, in Kampuchea they continue, and remind us that comprehension is a prerequisite to constructive communication. Enlarging our worldview to subsume another lies beyond translating other worlds into our established frameworks. The Vietnam wars represent powerful evidence that societies, insofar as we can speak of collective consciousness, misread each other in the same way that individuals may. Western powers remained oblivious of both the pervasive power of and radically different attitudes present within village society. Indonesian and Vietnamese illustrations are but two suggestions of the ways substructures surface through social contention in the recent past. Animism is relevant to understanding both popular movements and Marcos ideology in Philippine politics. The resonances of revolutionary ideology and earlier religion in Burma are analogous to those Geertz and Anderson noted for Indonesia or Mus for the Vietnamese.
At another level, through the formation of neotraditional political ideologies, examples from the contemporary period suggest that early beliefs about power still have relevance. Sukarno emphasised slogans and symbols in an effort to subsume diversity within one vision of the world. He claimed, in syncretic terms, to be simultaneously a Nationalist, Marxist and Muslim and argued that these were not different in essence. A similar emphasis existed in U Nu's Burma, as his sense of socialist Buddhism highlighted underlying similarities between these frameworks and translated the national revolution into Buddhist notions of merit-making, reciprocity and equality. Another exemplar of this style has been Sihanouk, who throughout his career has tried to work as a balancer, to balance Thailand against Vietnam, East against West.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Sukarno concentrated on maintaining consensus among the elite, among those who were political voices in the capital. When it looked as though elections and the rise of the Communists threatened elite consensus he insisted that Indonesians had to formulate their own style. He invoked notions of gotong-royong and musyawarah-mufakat, traditions of mutual help and consensual community, within a nationalism welded to Marxism and Islam. In his terms problems arise from the fact that people catch the embers rather than the flame of these systems, they became dogmatic literalists. He argued he was not against Islam, but the corruptions of practice, and held that his ability to synthesise depended on capacity to see the essence rather than just outward forms of systems. His thus thoroughly syncretic approach suggests precisely the conjunction of consciousness and power emphasised within traditional systems.
As a communal substructure within Southeast Asia the substratum is certainly both breaking down and becoming less visible. At times, as in eastern Europe with the turn of the decade, cracks reveal cultural forces which had been obscured. Ethnic and state identities once submerged within umbrella structures surfaced with intensity and trauma commensurate with preceeding repression. Popular movements such as those in Poland or the Philippines combine with less dramatic instances to remind us that repressed and unspoken forces can be sustained, sometimes bursting through powerful hegemonies. Even when peoples have been declared extinct, as native Australians or Americans have at times been, renewal of identities remains possible and may become, through 'reinvention', sources of inspiration.
Casting an eye back through time, everywhere external influences have been transformed, reworked and used by local systems which have had ancestral spirits at their heart, that the template world religions have fitted into is animistic. There is no doubt that guardian spirit cults and magical practices also still percolate below the surface throughout Southeast Asia. Malay spiritual specialists can be linked not only to shamanism but also to shaivism and sufism; the strands of Malay religious history wove into a pattern based on a pre-historic systems. Kalijaga's conversion is presented in Javanese mythical histories as a fulfillment of earlier Javanese ideals through Islam, without implying insignificance to the shift. Animistic healing practices transcend boundaries between Buddhism and Islam among Thais and Malays.
Structural breaks in practice occur when burial practices change or there is transition from a multiplicity of deities to one God, but continuities may be subtle. In Java establishment of saint cults became a cover for an old pattern of spirit contacts. If Muslims meditate on the graves of the walisanga in search of powers we may question whether the primary modality of spiritual life is Islamic. In New Order Indonesia Suharto's grave mimics Indic styles and enshrinement of Sultan Agung as a national hero suggests dynastic claims to a guardian ancestor.

Early versions of this have been discussed at the Australian Association for the Study of Religions conference (Brisbane, September 1988); at a Moving the Boundaries seminar (Fremantle, November 1988); and the Asian Studies Association of Australia conference (Singapore, February 1989). I am indebted to many people in those contexts and in Java. In different ways the paper has also benefitted from specific comments from Rod Giblett, Anne Marie Medcalf, Judy Watson, John Legge, Alan Mansfield, Ian Chalmers, Garry Gillard, Ariel Heryanto, Mark Perlman, Drs Warsito and the BCAS readers--none of whom can be blamed for my bent.

Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Random House, 1979).

John Steadman, The Myth of Asia (London: Macmillan, 1969).

Similar observations about Said's work are noted at greater length in George Marcus and Michael Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986) p. 1-2.

Jacob Van Leur, Indonesian Trade and Society (The Hague: Van Hoeve, 1955).

John RW Smail, "On the Possibility of an Autonomous History of Modern Southeast Asia", Journal of Southeast Asian History V 2 N 2 (1961).

Anthony Reid and David Marr editors, Perceptions of the Past in Southeast Asia (Singapore: Heinemann, 1979).

D.G.E. Hall, A History of South-East Asia (London: Macmillan, 1977 (1955)).

Jacques Derrida, "Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" in R. Macksey and E. Donato editors, The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University press, 1970) pp. 251-252.

One relevant exploration of this interface is Geoffrey Benjamin, "Notes on the Deep Sociology of Religion", Working Paper Number 85 (Singapore: Department of Sociology, University of Singapore, 1987).

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974) pp. 30-65.

Clifford Geertz's definition in "Religion as a Cultural System" emphasises self-sustaining circularity and bridges between religion and culture in the way I do. In his The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1973).

In A.L. Becker and A. Yengoyan editors, The Imagination of Reality: Essays in Southeast Asian Coherence Systems (Norwood, New Jersey: Ablex Pub. Corp., 1979). Becker's essay on "Text-Building, Epistemology and Aesthetics in Javanese Shadow Theatre" and Robert McKinlay's "Zaman dan Masa, Eras and Periods", are especially pertinent. Becker suggests that wayang characters represent epistemologies; McKinlay demonstrates with notable clarity how religious transitions within Southeast Asia have reordered "knowledge".

The best introductions to the place of spirituality within traditional Javanese culture, are still Soemarsaid Moertono, State and Statecraft in Old Java (Ithaca, New York: Cornell Modern Indonesia Project, 1968) and Clifford Geertz, The Religion of Java (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976 (1960)).

A recent example, discussed below , is Harun Hadiwiyono, Man in the Present Javanese Mysticism (Baarn: Bosch & Keuning, 1967). He essentially argues that the mystical identification of ultimacy (or God) with self traces always to the Hindu doctrine of unity of Brahma and Atman, thus implying that union mysticism must be Hindu derived.

Anthony Johns, "Sufism as a Category in Indonesian Literature and History", Journal of Southeast Asian History V 2 N 2 (1961) definitively drew attention to the significance of Sufism as a conditioning factor in facilitating Islamisation of Southeast Asia. In a fine recent essay John Bousfield synthesises other scholarly works to demonstrate the coherence and depth of philosophical Sufism in the Southeast Asian context. His essay is in M.B. Hooker ed. Islam in South-East Asia (Leiden: Brill, 1983).

Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964) remains useful, though I clearly adapt his words to my purpose. The discussion of Indonesian religious change closest to my point here is in Clifford Geertz, Islam Observed (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), especially chapter 4, "The Struggle for the Real".

Hadiwiyono's book (Op. Cit.), his PhD thesis, remains one of the few sources presenting Javanese mystical texts in an accessible form.

Sartono Kartodirdjo's thesis, The Peasants' Revolt of Banten in 1888 ('s-Gravenhage: Martinus Nijhoff, 1966) is rightly regarded as a masterpiece. When I discussed this point with him (in January 1989) Professor Sartono laughed and added a pertinent note. When his thesis was examined one examiner congratulated him by covering his name on the manuscript and commenting that "if a reader did not know the name they would not know the author was Indonesian". The analytical posture maintained in his thesis is carried onto a larger stage with his book on Protest Movements in Rural Java (Singapore: ISEAS and Oxford University Press, 1972). More recent works open up local cultural perspectives more deeply--see Sartono Kartodirdjo, Sudewa and Suhardjo Hatmosuprobo, Perkembangan Peradaban Priyayi (Yogyakarta; Gadjah Madah University Press, 1987).

Koentjaraningrat, Javanese Culture (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1985).

Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas, Islam, Secularism and the Philosophy of the Future (London: Mansell Pub. Ltd., 1985) is a notable exception in Malaysia; in a very different style Ignas Kleden raises critical issues in Indonesia in Sikap Ilmiah dan Kritik Kebudayaan (Jakarta: LP3ES, 1987). A sampling of recent publications suggests the extent of interest. Some of focus on identifying Indonesian qualities in local practices, most also problematise approaches: Sunoto, Menuju Filsafat Indonesia (Yogyakarta: PT Hanindita, 1987): Darmanto Jt. and PH Sudharto editors, Mencari Konsep Manusia Indonesia (Jakarta: Penerbit Erlangga, 1986); H. Abdjul Asis Ahyadi, Psikologi Agama: Kepribadian Muslim Pancasila (Bandung: Penerbit Sinar Baru, 1988); JC Tukiman Taruna, Ciri Budaya Manusia Jawa (Yogyakarta: Penerbit Kanisius, 1987)

Oliver Wolters, History, Culture and Region in Southeast Asian Perspective (Singapore: ISSEAS and Singapore UP, 1982).

Laurie Sears, Text and Performance in Javanese Shadow Theatre (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1986).

W.H. Rassers, Panji, the Culture Hero, A Structural Study of Religion in Java (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1982)

J.J. Ras, "The Historical Development of the Javanese Shadow Play", Review of Indonesian and Malaysian Affairs V 10 N2 (1976), pp. 50-76.

Ward Keeler, Javanese Shadow Plays, Javanese Selves (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1987).

Victoria M. Clara van Groenendael, The Dalang Behind the Wayang (Leiden: Verhandelingen No 114, 1985).

Keeler, Op. Cit., p16.

Ibid., p. 244.

Ibid., p. 267.

In Geertz's discussion of wayang , in The Religion of Java (Op.Cit) pp. 267-278, the priyayi and abangan perspectives on it are contrasted and the mystical sense of the drama, as representing the spiritual journey of meditation is presented. In my essay on "Mystical Symbolism in Javanese Wayang Mythology", The South East Asian Review, Vol 1 No 2 (1977), one I discussed with Keeler in January 1981, I present a variety of Javanese mystical interpretations and uses of the drama. The central point there, summarised on p. 122, is remarkably convergent with Keeler's conclusion on p. 267. The way we position ourselves in relation to Javanese "exegisis" could hardly contrast more.

Had he looked to Soebardi, The Book of Cabolek (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975) he would have found an illustration of the complexity and nuance to Javanese esoteric interpretation of their own drama as they saw it in the early 19th century. Keeler has generally, like Geertz before him, tended to write about Java as though its culture is oral, implicitly depreciating the impact, mediated ironically precisely through the wayang, of interactions between court and village spheres.

This is attested to in a variety of works, making its absence here notable. Clifford Geertz puts great emphasis on the central role of rasa (Op.Cit) pp. 238-239; Hadiwijono (Op. Cit.) pp. 165, 194, draws similar attention to it; Jerome Weiss, Folk Psychology of the Javanese of Ponorogo (unpublished PhD thesis, Yale University, 1977) pp 285-289 makes similar points; and, in "The Logic of Rasa in Java", Indonesia no 38 (1984), I have connected it to mystical practices and everyday social interactions. I know members of two mystical movements, including Pak Joyo, a Javanist Hindu priest with whom I have discussed wayang and rasa at length, living within several kilometers of Keeler's base. Weiss's argument is based on village research, thus it cannot be argued that the significance of rasa applies only for the elite. E.M. Uhlenbeck, Kajian Morfologi Bahasa Jawa (Jakarta: Jambatan, 1982). In chapter 10 Uhlenbeck focusses on the variations of the word "rasa" in Javanese, clarifying its critical place linguistically. Speakers of Indonesian will be aware of that"rasa" often replaces what in English would be "thinking". Javanese and Indonesian languages admit rasa as a cognitive function, even apart from formal theorising in that direction.

Geertz (Op. Cit.); Niels Mulder, Mysticism and Everyday Life in Contemporary Java (Singapore: University of Singapore Press, 1978).

Nancy Florida, "Reading the Unread in Traditional Javanese Literature", Indonesia No 44 (1987).

Ibid. p. 3.

David Reeve, Golkar of Indonesia (Singapore: Oxford University Press, 1985) is an important recent work, drawing these connections out, especially in relation to New Order political culture.

Julia Howell clarifies the connection between the Theosophical Society and recent Buddhist movements in "Indonesia: Searching for Consensus" in Carlos Calderola ed., Religion and Societies: Asia and the Middle East (The Hague: Mouton, 1982) especially p. 515.

Reeve, Op. Cit., pp. 5-6 makes the point properly.

John Pemberton, "Musical Politics in Central Java (or how not to listen to a Javanese gamelan)", Indonesia No 44 (1987).

Ibid., pp. 27-28.

James Siegel, Solo in the New Order: Language and Hierarchy in a Javanese City (Princeton, New Jersey; Princeton University Press, 1986).

He uses the term "Muslim", without problematising it and thus somewhat dubiously, only for what in the past have been termed "santri" (the especially orthodox) (Siegel, Ibid. p 78), implicitly the Javanists (kejawen ) are thus not "Muslim".

Ibid. p. 34.

They appear principally in association with money, an association which has some objective basis in Javanese/Solonese perception, and as a vehicle for the "aneh" (the "strange", Siegel uses it as a reference to that which cannot be contained by discourses established to maintain order) but this means they are also thoroughly objectified.

Selectivity is evident in the prominence Siegel attributes to Sri Mulat, the form of drama he focusses on. In a perceptive note on wayang he comments on that it is "...the richest source of metaphor and imagery in Java...what the world would really look like if one could really understand Javanese thoroughly"(Ibid. p 87). Thus he is not arguing that wayang is irrelevant, but he positions it as archetypal and of decreasing prominence (both correct). He then puts emphasis on the popularity of Sri Mulat, a form of drama popular during his fieldwork around 1980. Whatever its status then, it is dead now, as several people commented during my December 1988/January 1989 visit to Solo.

James Siegel, Solo in the New Order (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1986) pp. 55-57. My research centred in Solo, mainly from 1971 to 1974, when I lived half a kilometer from what became Siegel's base, and also for short return visits every two years since. Pak Moewardi, whose place is now called "Westerners" in tourist guidebooks, is a cousin of Suyono, who has been my host in Solo.

He returns to the theme later in the text (Ibid. pp. 125) and then in his concluding chapter, in exploring how a theatre audience related to him. There are other places, such as in connecting issues of hierarchy to spirits (Ibid. pp. 237-238) and contexts (pp. 252-253 and p. 272) where Siegel's interpretation is stretched. The prominence of the "aneh", ("strange"), a central theme which deserves extended comment I do not give here, is clearly projection of what seemed "strange" to Siegel. Like Geertz, Siegel chose to approach Javanese spirit beliefs through non experts. Their aim is quite reasonable--to get at ordinary, rather than expert views. But this strategy prioritises "a local carpenter" (in Geertz's case) and teenagers on the night watch (in Siegel's case), giving more weight to those views of spirits than those of people who systematically pursue contacts. This is tantamount to ignoring theologians while aiming to present understanding of the Christian church. A consequence is that the spirit spheres, which local experts map intensively, appear in Geertz as an inventory of odd superstitions and in Siegel as feared blank space the "knowable" is defending itself from.

Ibid. p. 17. The point is followed for several pages and then resumed in relation to "sore" (p. 55) where he notes "little is said"; then later he refers to the "...capacity of speech to express a certain vacuity.' (p. 72); and to a speaker referring admiringly to an orator at a funeral who had "...spoken for a long time and said almost nothing" (p. 260).

Ibid. pp. 27-28.

Ibid. p. 285.

Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (London: Metheun, 1982) pp. 5 & 46.

Mark Taylor, Erring: A Postmodern A/theology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984) p. 6. Gayatri Spivak connects him to Nietzsche at length in her translators "Preface" to Derrida's Of Grammatology (Op.Cit.).

See David Loy, "The Cloture of Deconstruction: A Mahayana Critique of Derrida", International Philosophical Quarterly Vol XXVII No l (1987).

(Tambiah 1970 p 195)

Johns (1961)

Abdullah's (1966), as do recent studies (1983)

Mature grasp of Islam, as in Woodward (1988)

al Attas (1966; Johns (1965)

Phelan (1959) Ileto (1979)

Lester (1973 pp 45, 135)

Geertz (1971)

von der Mehden (1963)

Geertz (1973 ch 10)

highlighted by Geertz (1976) and Jay (1963).

Mortimer (1974)

ref to Mus

McCoy (1982) linked them to the same wider patterns I note

Sarkisyanz (1965)

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