Overview

The Materiality and Efficacy of Balinese Letters examines traditional uses of writing on the Indonesian island of Bali, focusing on the power attributed to Balinese script.The approach is interdisciplinary and comparative, bringing together insights from anthropological and philological perspectives. Scholars have long recognized a gap between the practices of philological interpretation and those of the Javano-Balinese textual tradition. The question is what impact this gap should have on our conception of ‘the text’. Of what relevance, for example, are the uses to which Balinese script has been put in the context of ceremonial rites? What ideas of materiality, power and agency are at work in the production and preservation of palm-leaf manuscripts, inscribed amulets and other script-bearing instruments? Contributors include: Andrea Acri, Helen Creese, Richard Fox, H.I.R. Hinzler, Annette Hornbacher, Thomas M. Hunter and Margaret Wiener.

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9789004326811

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Richard Fox, Ph.D. (2002) School of Oriental and African Studies (London), is a member of the Special Research Initiative on Material Text Cultures (SFB 933) at Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. His research focuses on religion, media and performance in South and Southeast Asia. Annette Hornbacher, Ph.D. (1993) Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen, is Professor of Anthropology at the Institute für Ethnologie, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Her ethnographic research has focused on Indonesia, and especially on Bali, where she investigated ritual and theatrical performance as kinaesthetic cosmological knowledge.

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