More Than Words: Transforming Script, Agency, and Collective Life in Bali
Richard Fox
Abstract
Grounded in extensive ethnographic and archival research on the Indonesian island of Bali, More Than Words challenges conventional understandings of textuality and writing as they pertain to the religious traditions of Southeast Asia. Through a nuanced study of Balinese script as employed in rites of healing, sorcery and self-defence, this book explores the aims and desires embodied in the production and use of palm-leaf manuscripts, amulets and other inscribed objects. Balinese often attribute both life and independent volition to manuscripts and copperplate inscriptions, presenting them with ... More
Grounded in extensive ethnographic and archival research on the Indonesian island of Bali, More Than Words challenges conventional understandings of textuality and writing as they pertain to the religious traditions of Southeast Asia. Through a nuanced study of Balinese script as employed in rites of healing, sorcery and self-defence, this book explores the aims and desires embodied in the production and use of palm-leaf manuscripts, amulets and other inscribed objects. Balinese often attribute both life and independent volition to manuscripts and copperplate inscriptions, presenting them with elaborate offerings. Commonly addressed with personal honorifics, these script-bearing objects may become partners with humans and other sentient beings in relations of exchange and mutual obligation. The question is how such practices of ‘the living letter’ may be related to more recently emergent conceptions of writing—which take Balinese letters to be a symbol of cultural heritage, and a neutral medium for the transmission of textual meaning. One of the book’s central aims is to theorize the coexistence of these seemingly contradictory sensibilities, with an eye to its wider significance for the history and practice of religion in Southeast Asia and beyond.
Keywords:
text,
writing,
script,
ritual,
religion,
power,
agency,
Southeast Asia,
Indonesia,
Bali
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9781501725340 |
| Published to Cornell Scholarship Online: May 2019 |
DOI:10.7591/cornell/9781501725340.001.0001 |
