Abstract
These comments and reflections on the impact of recent theories on the study of Java are stimulated by issues that arise when focusing on the interpretation of traditional mystical culture. Though the works I will deal with are only loosely linked to either deconstruction or mysticism, they do highlight issues arising from how these intersect. Each work offers a reading of contemporary culture that implicitly or explicitly assesses the place of traditions within it. In at once critiquing and applying deconstruction, only occasionally to works that use it, my focus is on posing a question rather than on resolving it or providing a balanced survey of scholarly work. I will not do justice to the works mentioned because my questioning is at the periphery of their purposes, in the spirit of deconstruction itself.
Notes
This article was originally submitted to BCAS in May 1989. Early versions were discussed at the Australian Association for the Study of Religions Conference (Brisbane, Sept. 1988); at a Moving the Boundaries seminar (Fremantle, Nov. 1988); and the Asian Studies Association of Australia Conference (Singapore, Feb. 1989). An earlier, shorter, and different version was published in Indonesian in Prisma (Jakarta), no. 2 (XVIII, 1989), pp. 3-16, and a shorter but similar version was published in English in Prisma, no. 50 (Sept. 1990), pp. 89-110. I am indebted to many people in those contexts and in Java. In different ways the paper has also benefited 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 referees—none of whom can be blamed for my bent.
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References
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