eCommons

 

Voicing Selves: Ethics, Mediation, and the Politics of Religion in Post-Authoritarian Bali

Other Titles

Abstract

This is an ethnographic study of the voice as a resource for forming devout Hindu selves in contemporary Bali, Indonesia. Through case studies of three forms of Hindu chant, I show how vocal performance has been taken up—by the state, by religious authorities, and by vocalists themselves—as a tool of ethical reform and a technology of ethical striving. I argue that the voice has become a privileged medium for imagining and inhabiting new subjectivities in Bali. I contextualize my study of voice within a broader investigation of religion as both a disciplining force and an enabling resource in the lives of Balinese Hindus. Bringing ethnographic attention to a variety of practices through which Balinese Hindus interact with the world they call niskala, the world of invisible deities, and spirits—including ritual exchange, prayer, and the study and performance of religious texts, among others—I show how human-niskala relationships are constituted through, and structured by, hegemonic institutions and discourses, while at the same time, they create spaces of possibility for individuals to engage in creative forms of self-making and world-making. By examining how these relationships are imagined and manifested across different spheres of religious authority, I shed light on the ethical pluralism of religious life in contemporary Bali. This study focuses on religious pedagogies of voice as a particularly productive site for investigating the coming-into-being of new kinds of selves. Because of its connection to language, and, by extension, to texts, the voice has been deployed as both an object and a tool in state-sponsored projects of religious reform in Bali, which emphasize interiority as the core of religious selfhood and foreground texts as the proper source of religious knowledge and moral guidance. Religious forms of vocal performance and training are also an important space in which sensory and affective dispositions are formed. Highlighting the sonic and bodily materiality of vocal expression, as well as its linguistic and textual aspects, I argue that the semiotic, sensory, and affective affordances of vocal performance and training play an important role in shaping the kinds of ethical selves that are imagined and cultivated in Bali today.

Journal / Series

Volume & Issue

Description

Sponsorship

Date Issued

2018-08-30

Publisher

Keywords

Music; Cultural anthropology; Indonesia; Subjectivity; Ethics; Religion; Hinduism; voice; Ethnomusicology

Location

Effective Date

Expiration Date

Sector

Employer

Union

Union Local

NAICS

Number of Workers

Committee Chair

Hatch, Martin Fellows

Committee Co-Chair

Committee Member

Welker, Marina Andrea
Madrid, Alejandro L.
McGraw, Andrew Clay

Degree Discipline

Music

Degree Name

Ph. D., Music

Degree Level

Doctor of Philosophy

Related Version

Related DOI

Related To

Related Part

Based on Related Item

Has Other Format(s)

Part of Related Item

Related To

Related Publication(s)

Link(s) to Related Publication(s)

References

Link(s) to Reference(s)

Previously Published As

Government Document

ISBN

ISMN

ISSN

Other Identifiers

Rights

Rights URI

Types

dissertation or thesis

Accessibility Feature

Accessibility Hazard

Accessibility Summary

Link(s) to Catalog Record