Fetish, Recognition, Revolution / / James T. Siegel.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Archive 1927-1999
• VerfasserIn: Siegel, James T.,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2022]; ©1997
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (287 p.)

This book concerns the role of language in the Indonesian revolution. James Siegel, an anthropologist with long experience in various parts of that country, traces the beginnings of the Indonesian revolution, which occurred from 1945 through 1949 and which ended Dutch colonial rule, to the last part of the nineteenth century. At that time, the peoples of the Dutch East Indies began to translate literature from most places in the world. Siegel discovers in that moment a force within communication more important than the specific messages it conveyed. The subsequent containment of this linguistic force he calls the "fetish of modernity," which, like other fetishes, was thought to be able to compel events. Here, the event is the recognition of the bearer of the fetish as a person of the modern world. The taming of this force in Indonesian nationalism and the continuation of its wild form in the revolution are the major subjects of the book. Its material is literature from Indonesian and Dutch as well as first-person accounts of the revolution.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I. The Fetish of Appearance -- Chapter One. The "I" of a Lingua Franca -- Chapter Two. What Did Not Happen to Indonesians -- Chapter Three. Fetishizing Appearance, or Is "I" a Criminal? -- Part II. Recognition -- Chapter Four. Student Hidjau and The Feeling of Freedom -- Chapter Five. Scandal, Women, Authors, and Sino-Malay Nationalism -- Chapter Six. Love Sick, or the Failures of the Fetish and of Translation -- Chapter Seven. The Wish for Hierarchy -- Part III. Revolution -- Chapter Eight. Collaboration and Cautious Rebellion -- Chapter Nine. Revolution -- Epilogue. Pramoedya Ananta Toer's "Flunky + Maid," or Conservative Indonesian, Revolutionary Indonesian, and the Lack of Indonesian Literature -- Notes -- About the Author