Category: Uncategorized (Page 4 of 5)

This week the Origin class listened to a lecture about Igniting Change: In search of the “origins” of national identity in Indonesia. Arnout van der Meer gave the lecture.

Throughout the lecture we looked at the national identity formation in colonial Indonesia. It was very diverse in Southeast Asia because there were lots of influences from the outside. Soemarsono, a key player in mobilizing people in Indonesia to work against the colony. Soemarsono compared the situation with an oil lamp. The wick of the lamp represents the hindu Buddhist heritage. The lamp oil also came from Islam and Islamic modernism. The lampshade was given by the Dutch (western culture). The metaphor is that they (Indonesians) have to light the oil lamp themselves.

Soemarsono radicalizes very quickly and it causes him trouble with his superiors. He just wanted the socio political emancipation of the Javanese. This lead to the overhaul of the system of cultural hegemony. Everyone wanted to embrace modernism. Meer argues that this all occurred before world war 1.

So who was Soemarsono? Born in 1887-?. He helped spark a national awakening. He was wealthy and well respected. He received western education in Batavia. He was Muslim and fluent in Dutch.

Problems start to arise within the colonies in Southeast Asia. The boundaries of the colonies in Southeast Asia were drawn the second half of the 19^th century by these European colonizers. This causes problems for the young nation states. Their entire history is shaped by people coming into the area, therefore agriculture, colonizers, Indian influence on culture, decolonization and the cold war all affected Southeast Asia.

How does one find the root of the national identity? The onion theory –to get to the core of national identity you can peal away one piece of the onion at a time. However, it doesn’t allow for change over time. It is interesting to apply the onion theory to the built environment of Indonesia. One can look at specific examples of where these onion layers are very close. For example in Indonesia you can see a massive Cathedral and a Mosque. You can also see these relationships in language and clothing as well as many other products of cultures.

One can look at the Origins of National Identity in Indonesia and see where and when influences entered Indonesia. We can see that western colonialism effected Indonesia in the 16^th-20^th century. Later we see the influence of the spread of Islam 1200- present. Also, the Hindu Buddhist past 100-1200. So what are the actual origins?

The relationships between all of the colonizers and the native Southeast Asians are bizarre. It seems like a scramble of cultures. It is very difficult to try and find the origins of Indonesia’s national identity. However, one can see where they are at today, which is a nation that could perhaps surpass the imperial states that infiltrated their culture in the first place. The new national identity includes western concepts. Soemarsono created a new identity for the Indonesians connecting the past and the modern. They believed in Asian modernity, chose to adopt western science and technology, chose Islamic morality and ideas about democracy and equality.

Being someone that has spent significant time abroad, in a country that speaks a language other than English, I found this talk particularly interesting. It caused me to think about the importance of language in a culture, and how culture defines certain aspect of life. Continue reading

This past week our Origin class received a lecture about Voice and verse: at the origins of contemporary poetry from Stefano Colangelo. Colangelo argued poetry does not have origins. It is a state of mind. Colangelo references Croce who makes the comparison between poetry and aesthetics. “Art is pure intuition or pure expression… but a kind od intuition not at all devoid of concepts and judgments, the primordial form of knowledge, without which it is impossible to understand its other more complex forms”. Therefore Colangelo says that poetry is about intuition and expression is poetry itself.

Colangelo discussed Gaston Bachelard who said, “While all other metaphysical experiences are preceded by endless introductions, poetry rejects all preambles, general principles, methods and proofs. It rejects doubt. At the most it requires a prelude made of silence. At first, drumming on concave words, it quiets prose and those reverberations that would leave in the soul of the reader a continuity of thought or a few murmurs. Then after these empty sounds, it produces its moment” it’s another way to be timeless. It is really fascinating to look at the relationship between poetry and time.

We also discussed Paul Valery who claims language speaks in poetry.“In short, the Language generated by the voice, not the voice generated by language”Therefore voice is the root of poetry. Poetry only needs voice to be born.

In addition, Colangelo talked about Roland Barthes who said, “Style is predominantly a phenomenon of generative order, it is the transposition of a humor. Style, on the contrary only has a vertical dimension, it plunges to the closed memory of the person, it draws its opacity from a certain experience of matter; style is but a metaphor, that is to say an equation between the literary intentions and the carnal structure of the author.” From Barthes points Colangelo argued that style is a metaphor in itself. It is the connection between writer and reader. Style is related to the instrument of perception. Style is connected to body. Poetry is connected to voice We perceive poetry with our bodies. You can love a poem that someone else doesn’t because you have a different body.

We looked at the words of Paul Celan – “composing verse relates not so much time, as to universal time” “an entire language is gathered in every first word of a poem” “Poetry: language in its nascent state. Thus, language in statu nascendi, language that is setting itself free. “ “The word in a poem is only partially occupied by the vicissitudes of the poet; another part is occupied by the vicissitudes of poetry; a third part is left empty, to be occupied”. I found his words really interesting. I like what he said about poetry setting the language free.

Lastly we looked at Elias canetti – “I dream of a man that unlearns the languages of the earth” When he went to Morocco, because he didn’t understand the language, “Over the course of our life, we all learn a little something about all the countries and the peoples in the world, but I lost that bit of knowledge in a matter of a few hours” he wanted to listen to the sounds and the cries without understanding. Foreignness is the key to understanding poetry.

In conclusion, there is a good relationship between origin and being a stranger. It is helpful when one is switching among languages and switching among different cultures. When you are too familiar with a culture you do not receive the language the same way. Everything is related to poetry. Colangelo’s last words of advice were to be less academic, and to be more human.