Un sujet en souffrance? Récit de soi, violence et magie à Java1

Bertrand, Romain

doi:10.1111/j.1469-8676.2003.tb00079.x

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…The priyayi spoke about themselves. However, they did so using the mode of the poetic Canto and not an intimate confession, using mystical notions of the person who prohibited the “games of I” (for the current state of research on the question of Javanese vernacular conceptions of intentionality, see Bertrand 2004, pp.285–302). If it is a symptom of culturalism to deny the universality of the questions that human beings ask themselves, it is also a manifestation of ethnocentrism to want to find, at all costs, everywhere and always, practices of expressing the self that are immediately intelligible.…”

Section: The Question Of Intentionality In the Historical Sociology Omentioning

confidence: 99%

A Foucauldian, non‐intentionalist analysis of modern Javanese ethics

Bertrand

2008

Int Social Sci J

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This article analyses some major works of poetry produced by and for the Javanese nobility, the priyayi. It attempts to show that an interpretation of ways of life is conditional upon first successfully circumscribing a specific scope of subjectivation, while at the same time avoiding two pitfalls: utilitarianism and culturalism. The hypothesis is that the codification by the priyayi of what they thought to be the “right Javanese way” of doing things was simultaneously the product and the language of conflicts of power and prestige, which opposed them to other social groups (notably princes and merchants). In other words, in response to Foucault's constant preoccupation with “eventalising” the story of the way in which discourses on moral rules were constituted, the priyayi's view of the self is related to a historically determined situation of social struggle. Finally, the conclusion reflects upon the possibility of escaping from an instrumentalist conception of power in the scope of the historical sociology of politics.

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Section: The Question Of Intentionality In the Historical Sociology Omentioning

confidence: 99%

A Foucauldian, non‐intentionalist analysis of modern Javanese ethics

Bertrand

2008

Int Social Sci J

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“…Sorcery and politics exist in a close but strained relationship throughout Indonesia, where sorcery is both a political reality and a source of political embarrassment (Bertrand 2003; Bubandt in press; Kroeger 2003; Siegel 2006; Wessing 1996). The predicament of Aisha, Muhammad’s wife, is therefore the predicament of any political figure in a region where sorcery is a public political secret.…”

Section: Aisha’s Predicament: the Modernity Of Sorcerymentioning

confidence: 99%

Sorcery, corruption, and the dangers of democracy in Indonesia

Bubandt

2006

Royal Anthropological Inst

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Magic is the continuation of politics by other means. This, at least, has been the case in North Maluku since the political reshuffle that followed the fall of Suharto and the implementation of decentralization in Indonesia. The strategies pursued by the regional elite to obtain lucrative positions in the new landscape opened up by regional autonomy are thus seen to be thwarted by sorcery from political rivals. Following the life and death of Muhammad, a North Malukan political entrepreneur, I show how sorcery plays an integral part in the new politics of democratization in Indonesia. Political sorcery thrives, I argue, in a complex moral economy that mixes local ideas of sociality, political practices of patrimonialism, and global discourses of democracy. Sorcery and corruption are part of the same political imagination, because both speak ambivalently to the problems of power in times of change. Rather than being anathema to democracy, as the new global discourse on transparency would have it, the occult politics of corruption and sorcery are among the means through which a contested form of democracy is conceptualized and implemented in Indonesia.

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Un sujet en souffrance? Récit de soi, violence et magie à Java1

Cited by 2 publications

References 12 publications

A Foucauldian, non‐intentionalist analysis of modern Javanese ethics

A Foucauldian, non‐intentionalist analysis of modern Javanese ethics

Sorcery, corruption, and the dangers of democracy in Indonesia

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