Preface

244
and arbitrary semantic oppositions waiting to be filled, not itself the
imposition of a historically particular epistemological moment onto the
world? And who empowers themselves to colour in the expectant spaces
on this world canvas? Is a post-Saidian appeal to the necessities of colonial
power and knowledge in constituting ‘alterity’ a sufficient solution? If
European nation states were as powerful as often presumed, what purposes
were served in repetitively caricaturing those whom they had conquered, or
were about to? How much were representations a striving after recognition
and a need to imagine selves and others accordingly? Balinese-Dutch
dealings between 1817 and 1908 suggest something of this kind was going
on, a recognition in the end partly denied the Dutch as masters by their
foremost would-be subjects’ suicide in a neat narrative self-termination. 195
Most of the authors on Bali whom I have cited wrote on the post-
Independence period. Short of postulating some post-colonial
epistemological imperialism, why did these authors, whether compulsively
or unthinkingly, cannibalize and reiterate previous representations, under
such different intellectual, social and political circumstances? Mead and
Bateson stated their aim as the scientific establishment of cultural
difference with Bali as the laboratory. Is this an adequate explanation of
their successors’ purposes? Phrased in these terms, have not Bali and
Balinese become mainly important as objects of academic and tourist
indulgence? They are above all objects of our not so recondite pleasures. I
am not convinced though that one can ask such ‘why’ questions without
falling into the essentialist trap of postulating some originary intention.
Perhaps we should think instead in terms of the consequences of
motivations, which look quite different in historical retrospect. Sadly, it
might be that, with so many descriptive and narrative devices available, it
has simply become professional practice to use them. If replicating past,
partly forgotten and underdetermined motives and practices is part of
professionalizing anthropology, then there is much to be said against
professionalization. One of Pirandello’s characters in search of an author
however gave as good an answer as any:
A fact is like a sack which won’t stand up when it is empty. In order
that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment
which caused it to exist.
195 I rely here on Margaret Wiener’s work (1995a, 1995b 1999, in press), including her
nuanced analysis of the extent to which the Dutch strove to obtain Balinese recognition of
their power and superiority. On the other hand, she shows quite how far certain Balinese
royal representations succeeded in obliterating the Dutch and their claims to agency in
Balinese narratives about this period.