Shadows of Empire

by Sears, Laurie J.

• ISBN13: 9780822316978
• ISBN10: 0822316978
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-04-01
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

Shadows of Empireexplores Javanese shadow theater as a staging area for negotiations between colonial power and indigenous traditions. Charting the shifting boundaries between myth and history in Javanese Mahabharata and Ramayana tales, Laurie J. Sears reveals what happens when these stories move from village performances and palace manuscripts into colonial texts and nationalist journals and, most recently, comic books and novels. Historical, anthropological, and literary in its method and insight, this work offers a dramatic reassessment of both Javanese literary/theatrical production and Dutch scholarship on Southeast Asia. Though Javanese shadow theater (wayang) has existed for hundreds of years, our knowledge of its history, performance practice, and role in Javanese society only begins with Dutch documentation and interpretation in the nineteenth century. Analyzing the Mahabharata and Ramayana tales in relation to court poetry, Islamic faith, Dutch scholarship, and nationalist journals, Sears shows how the shadow theater as we know it today must be understood as a hybrid of Javanese and Dutch ideas and interests, inseparable from a particular colonial moment. In doing so, she contributes to a reenvisioning of European histories that acknowledges the influence of Asian, African, and New World cultures on European thought-and to a rewriting of colonial and postcolonial Javanese histories that questions the boundaries and content of history and story, myth and allegory, colonialism and culture. Shadows of Empirewill appeal not only to specialists in Javanese culture and historians of Indonesia, but also to a wide range of scholars in the areas of performance and literature, anthropology, Southeast Asian studies, and postcolonial studies.

Table of Contents

Note on Spelling and Translations	vii
Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xix
Introduction: Histories, Mythologies, and Javanese Tales	1	(302)
Hearing Islamic Voices in ``Hindu-Javanese'' Tales	34	(41)
Colonial Discourse and Javanese Shadow Theatre	75	(46)
Failed Narratives of the Nation or the New ``Essence'' of Java?	121	(49)
Javanese Storytellers, Colonial Categories, Mahabharata Tales	170	(44)
Revolutionary Rhetoric and Postcolonial Performance Domain	214	(52)
Fictions, Images, and Allegories	266	(37)
Selected Glossary	303	(8)
Selected Bibliography	311	(24)
Index	335