Writing the past, inscribing the future history as prophesy in colonial Java
Located at the juncture of literature, history, and anthropology, Writing the Past, Inscribing the Future charts a strategy of how one might read a traditional text of non-Western historical literature in order to generate, with it, an opening for the future. This book does so by taking seriously a...
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| Format: | Book |
| Language: | English |
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Durham, NC
Duke University Press
1995
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| Summary: | Located at the juncture of literature, history, and anthropology, Writing the Past, Inscribing the Future charts a strategy of how one might read a traditional text of non-Western historical literature in order to generate, with it, an opening for the future. This book does so by taking seriously a haunting work of historical prophecy inscribed in the nineteenth century by a royal Javanese exile-working through this writing of a colonized past to suggest the reconfiguration of the postcolonial future that this history itself apparently intends. After introducing the colonial and postcolonial orientalist projects that would fix the meaning of traditional writing in Java, Nancy K. Florida provides a nuanced translation of this particular traditional history, a history composed in poetry as the dream of a mysterious exile. She then undertakes a richly textured reading of the poem that discloses how it manages to escape the fixing of "tradition." Adopting a dialogic strategy of reading, Florida writes to extend-as the work's Javanese author demands-this history's prophetic potential into a more global register |
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| Item Description: | Includes a translation and critical analysis of Babad Jaka Tingkir |
| Physical Description: | xviii, 449 pages illustrations 25 cm |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index |
| ISBN: | 9780822316053 0822316056 0822316226 (paper) |