Shadows of Empire: Colonial Discourse and Javanese Tales | 
| Author: Laurie J. Sears
Publisher: Duke University Press
Category: Book
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 1209806
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 376
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0822316978
Dewey Decimal Number: 791.53
EAN: 9780822316978
ASIN: 0822316978
Publication Date: December 1996
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Condition: Multiple copies available ? may contain highlighting/underlining/writing in margins, cover & corners show wear/curling, used sticker on spine, black marker to edge of text.
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Product Description
Shadows of Empire explores 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 re–envisioning 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 Empire will 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.
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| Customer Reviews:
Weak knowledge of Wayang and Mahabharata = Flawed Book November 22, 2000
23 out of 26 found this review helpful
I don't like to write negative reviews, but in this case I feel I must because there is so little on Wayang available. I disagree with the Thesis: "..that the shadow theater as it is known today is a hybrid of Javanese and Dutch ideas and interests, inseperable from a particular colonial moment." (Dust Jacket). Just when and where was this moment? This may sound good to Duke University Press, the publishers, and Western Academics ignorant of Java and Wayang, but it's just not that simple. I will touch only on two main points: First of all Wayang is a complex expression of not only Javanese shadow theater, but also Sundanese Wayang Golek (three dimensional rod puppet theater). It is also a combination of History, Philosophy, Religion, Literature, Music, Performance Arts and many other subjects. Many of these are foreign or incompatible with Dutch Culture. Wayang Kulit and Wayang Golek also have to be treated together, not only because of their relation, but also due to the fact that the Dutch influence was greater, longer and more complete in (Sunda) West-Java. Sears not only fails to see this important point, but her knowledge of the history of Wayang and its traditions, both in the present and past are weak. Secondly one needs to know the both the Javanese Version (Both Kawi and the Wayang Stories) and interpreatation of the Mahabharata and its relation to the Sanskirt Epic, and carefully note the differences. Sears does not do this at all. In fact her knowledge of the epics are also weak, otherwise the thesis would be different. Thus, to not thoroughly know both Wayang and the Mahabharata flaws this book, so I do not even have to touch on its Postmodern / Western posturing. The writing does not flow, and the proofreading and research are also weak. No, the Netherlands were not in World War I, they were neutral (p. 164) and Sanskrit and Javanese Spelling should not be used interchageably (p. 196). There are many more examples of this, so I better stop. This book does not enhance Wayang studies. Seek out the sources Sears cites, but does not seem to use, in the Biliography instead.
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