scholarly journals JAVA ISLAM: RELATIONSHIP OF JAVANESE CULTURE AND ISLAMIC MYSTISM IN THE POST-COLONIAL STUDY PERSPECTIVE

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 19
Author(s):  
Rubaidi Rubaidi

<pre><em><br /></em></pre><pre><em>This paper examines and shows at the same time about Javanese Islam (Islam Nusantara) which is typical of a few Muslims in the world. The characteristic in question is a combination of Javanese culture (Javanese original religion, Hindu and Buddhist) with the intrinsic dimension of Islam itself. This combination occurs because it is bound by a red thread called mysticism, which is between Javanese mysticism and Islamic mysticism </em><em>as</em><em> a compound. The two conception of mysticism is because the essence of mysticism actually contains the teachings of the unity (tauhid) of God. This encounter through mysticism allows for acculturation between Javanese culture and Islam. This thesis is based on the reconstruction of the thinking of Sufi teachers in the Majelis Shalawat Muhammad in Surabaya and Bojonegoro as a research base. The Sufi masters referred to were placed as sub-alternations which were prevalent in post-colonial studies. As a sub-altern, this paper is believed to better narrate the perpetrators of Islamic mysticism in understanding the dialectic between Islamic mysticism and original Javanese culture or Javanese mysticism itself. Their relations gave birth to what is called Javanese Islam which is typical in Indonesia.</em><em></em></pre><pre><em> </em></pre><pre><em><br /></em></pre><pre><em><br /></em></pre><pre><em><br /></em></pre><pre><em>Makalah ini membahas dan menunjukkan pada saat yang sama tentang Islam Jawa (Islam Nusantara) yang merupakan ciri khas beberapa Muslim di dunia. Karakteristik yang dimaksud adalah kombinasi budaya Jawa (agama asli Jawa, Hindu dan Budha) dengan dimensi intrinsik Islam itu sendiri. Kombinasi ini terjadi karena diikat oleh benang merah yang disebut mistisisme, yaitu antara mistisisme Jawa dan mistisisme Islam yang merupakan senyawa. Dua konsepsi mistisisme adalah karena esensi mistisisme sebenarnya mengandung ajaran persatuan (tauhid) Tuhan. Pertemuan ini melalui mistisisme memungkinkan akulturasi antara budaya Jawa dan Islam. Tesis ini didasarkan pada rekonstruksi pemikiran guru sufi di Majelis Shalawat Muhammad di Surabaya dan Bojonegoro sebagai basis penelitian. Para guru sufi yang disebut ditempatkan sebagai sub-pergantian yang lazim dalam studi pasca-kolonial. Sebagai pengganti, makalah ini diyakini akan lebih baik menceritakan para pelaku mistisisme Islam dalam memahami dialektika antara mistisisme Islam dan budaya Jawa asli atau mistisisme Jawa itu sendiri. Hubungan mereka melahirkan apa yang disebut Islam Jawa yang khas di Indonesia.</em></pre>

2018 ◽  
Vol 111 (3) ◽  
pp. 451-458 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Schilbrack

At the end of the twentieth century, scholars in the academic study of religion made what we might call “the reflexive turn,” in that they picked up the tools of genealogy, deconstruction, and post-colonial studies and they began in earnest to reflect critically on their own conceptual categories. Where did the very concept of “religion” come from? Whose interests are served by this apparently modern, European, and Christian way of categorizing practices? One way to think about the effect of the reflexive turn is to think of the conceptual vocabulary in religious studies as a window or lens through which scholars had previously been examining the world. What had been taken as natural and transparent now becomes itself the object of study. Richard King calls this “the Copernican turn,” that is, as he nicely puts it, a turn to focus on the representation that makes the object possible rather than the object that makes the representation possible. The goal of this turn is to “denaturalize” the concept of religion (King, 1). The reflexive or Copernican turn, in my judgment, is a crucial aspect of social inquiry that scholars of religion should not ignore. But it clearly leads to the question: once one denaturalizes the concept of “religion,” what does the academic study of religion study?


Organization ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Ceci Misoczky

The aim of this article paper is to offer a Latin-American perspective on the field of post-colonial studies. Following the modernity/coloniality/de-coloniality approach it is possible to recognize how the complicity between modernity and rationality has worked to homogenize knowledge throughout this part of the world. Such an approach makes it possible to reflect on how this process towards homogeneity has been resisted, as seen in the current indigenous struggles against extractive development policies. These struggles show that the various critiques of development need to be articulated and renewed in order to account for processes such as these, incorporating multiple scales perspectives and knowledge produced from the epistemic colonial difference. The critique of managerialism also needs further developments to account for the new roles of management in contexts of open conflict. It is defended that the re-consideration of Marxist Theory of Dependency could enrich the way we understand global capitalism and that at least part of OS could be liberated from the hegemony of management, opening possibilities for multiple interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogues.


STADION ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 204-225
Author(s):  
Cyril Thomas ◽  
Pascal Charroin ◽  
Bastien Soule

At the Mexico City Olympics, Kenya won eight medals in athletics. This performance enabled this State, whose independence dated back just four years, to display its identity to the eyes of the world. Kenyan athletics, mainly in middle- and long-distance events, continued to assert itself until it dominated the medal ranking in the 2015 World Championships. However, even if it is a vehicle for emancipation and identity-building, Kenyan athletics is also dependent on external influences. Therefore, even though France and Kenya never had colonial links, they have built interdependent relationships in athletics during the post-colonial era. The purpose of this study is to understand the particular postcolonial process around which these relationships were built, in the absence of colonial ties. We have chosen to conduct this study based on the investigation of minutes of the French Athletics Federation (FFA) committees and the journal L’Athlétisme, the official FFA review. We conducted semi-structured interviews with Kenyan and French athletics actors (athletes, managers, race organizers, and federal officials). These data reveal a continuing domination of Kenya, by France, in athletics. This relationship of domination marks a survival of the colonial order. However, Kenyan athletes’ domination, especially in marathons, contributes to the vulnerability of French performances. The singularity of the postcolonial process studied lies as much in the absence of colonial ties between France and Kenya as in the transformation of a relationship of domination specific to the colonial period.


2020 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 297-308
Author(s):  
Isaac Bazié ◽  

Even if the local and the global have been studied from many perspectives, a notable fact in current globalization rhetoric emerges when considering the World-Africa tandem : it is the access to a more global sphere of critical voices that speak out against the (neo)colonialist conditions in which Africa's relations have historically been conceived and perpetuated. The present contribution is part of the debate on the consequences that globalization, since the 16th century, has had on the relationship of (post)colonial subjects with their original space. We will see that the telluric experience, which is understood as primary contact with the earth, is presented in African novels as a very important part of the identity process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (4) ◽  
pp. 379-396
Author(s):  
Daniel Škobla

AbstractThe focus of this article is on two Czech and Slovak films, My Friend Fabián (Můj přítel Fabián, 1955) and Gypsy (Cigán, 2011). While the former emerged in the 1950s, in the period of socialist industrialisation, the latter was released in the period of post-socialist consolidation of capitalism. Theoretically this article relies on a mix of approaches from film studies, social anthropology, post-colonial studies and archival research. The central research question is how cinematic representation of Roma were approached in the past and how they have changed over time. The film My Friend Fabián is replete with colonial tropes of uninhibited dancing, singing and exotica stereotypes and depicts imaginary Roma as incompetent individuals who are subject to the paternalistic care of the White socialist functionaries. At the same time this film presents a viable model for Roma integration and social advancement via education and full-fledged integration into the working class. In contrast, the film Gypsy is much more respectful towards Roma, contemporary performers and characters are real Roma and their film destinies are realistic. But the world that surrounds film characters is the world of total racial exclusion, which offers no hope and no prospects whatsoever for Roma and their social advance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
D. Degterev

Received 31.08.2020. This article is devoted to the evolution of non-Western theories of development in the epoch of global capitalism, i. e. after 1990. It describes in detail what is meant by this concept – models of socio-economic development, alternative to the Western neoliberal paradigm and associated with the modernization of non-Western countries, primarily in the “Global South”. Periodization of these approaches is given in connection with the process of decolonization (early 1960s), the end of the bipolar world, and the strengthening of China (since 2010s). Two main directions of such theories – neo-Marxian tradition, as well as post-colonial and anti-colonial studies – are shown. The author concludes that the “non-Westernness” of post-colonial studies is conditional, while anti-colonial and neo-Marxian studies are very much intertwined. The article shows the role of such organizations as CODESRIA and Third World Network in shaping the intellectual development agenda of the Global South. It traces the evolution of neo-Marxist approaches to development of the poorest countries, which originated in Latin American structuralism, American neo-Marxism, the works of J. Galtung and W. Rodney. By the early 1980s, the world-systemic approach was already dominant, its representatives were relatively capable to explain the collapse of the socialist system, and also made attempts to describe the growing influence of China. Nevertheless, the theory of the transnational capitalist class that emerged in the 1990s and 2000s was more successful from this point of view. The article investigates the phenomenon of an emerging confrontation between China and the United States in the ideological field – for the influence on leftist intellectuals around the world, and shows the main resources of both sides in this conflict. Special attention is paid to Postdevelopmentalism that developed in the 1990–2000s in line with postmodernist approaches; both strengths and weaknesses of this concept are presented. In conclusion, the author summarizes that neo-Marxist approaches play a key role as the major alternative to neoliberal capitalist development in the countries of the “Global South” while national modernization theories are lacking in the non-Western countries. Acknowledgements. The article has been prepared at RUDN University and supported by a grant of the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (RFBR). Project no. 19-111-50655 (Expansion) “Non-Western Theories of Development in the Age of Global Capitalism”. The author also expresses his sincere gratitude to P. Bond (University of the Western Cape, South Africa), T.M. Gavristova (YarSU), E.N. Grachikov (RUDN University), Li Yan (CASS, China) and V. G. Shubin (Institute for African Studies, RAS) for their valuable comments.


Author(s):  
Alistair Fox

This chapter examines Merata Mita’s Mauri, the first fiction feature film in the world to be solely written and directed by an indigenous woman, as an example of “Fourth Cinema” – that is, a form of filmmaking that aims to create, produce, and transmit the stories of indigenous people, and in their own image – showing how Mita presents the coming-of-age story of a Māori girl who grows into an understanding of the spiritual dimension of the relationship of her people to the natural world, and to the ancestors who have preceded them. The discussion demonstrates how the film adopts storytelling procedures that reflect a distinctively Māori view of time and are designed to signify the presence of the mauri (or life force) in the Māori world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.


2015 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-28
Author(s):  
Gunasekaran N ◽  
Bhuvaneshwari S

Salman Rushdie remains a major Indian writer in English. His birth coincides with the birth of a new modern nation on August 15, 1947. He has been justly labelled by the critics as a post-colonial writer who knows his trade well. His second novel Midnight’s Children was published in 1981 and it raised a storm in the hitherto middle class world of fiction writing both in English and in vernaculars. Rushdie for the first time burst into the world of fiction with subversive themes like impurity, illegitimacy, plurality and hybridity. He understands that a civilization called India may be profitably understood as a dream, a collage of many colours, a blending of cultures and nationalities, a pluralistic society and in no way unitary.


2018 ◽  
pp. 38-74
Author(s):  
Barry Rider

This article is focused on exploration not merely proposed developments in and refinements of the law and its administration, but the very significant role that financial intelligence can and should play in protecting our societies. It is the contention of the author that the intelligence community at large and in particular financial intelligence units have an important role to play in protecting our economies and ensuring confidence is maintained in our financial institutions and markets. In this article the author considers a number of issues pertinent to the advancement of integrity and in particular the interdiction of corruption to some degree from the perspective of Africa. The potential for Africa as a player in the world economy is enormous. So far, the ambiguous inheritance of rapacious empires and the turmoil of self-dealing elites in post-colonial times has successfully obscured and undermined this potential. Indeed, such has been the mismanagement, selfishness and importuning that many have grave doubts as to the ability of many states to achieve an ordered transition to what they could and should be. South Africa is perhaps the best example of a society that while avoiding the catastrophe that its recent past predicted, remains racked by corruption and mismanagement. That there is the will in many parts of the continent to further stability and security by addressing the cancer of corruption, the reality is that few have remained or been allowed to remain steadfast in their mission and all have been frustrated by political self-interest and lack of resources. The key might be education and inter-generational change as it has been in other parts of the world, but only an optimist would see this coming any time soon – there is too much vested interest inside and outside Africa in keeping things much as they are! The author focuses not so much on attempting to perfect the letter of the law, but rather on improving the ways in which we administer it.


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