SIGNS IN SOCIETY - STIBA Malang

iyo I Social Theory and Social Action
dialogue, that is, a kind of transparent communication anchored in universal
knowledge. Several centuries later the vector of his hierarchy was severely challenged
by Ibn Khaldûn, who argued that philosophers such as al-Farabi and Avicenna,
in putting primacy on intellectual knowledge of corporeal existents,
completely overlook "spiritual essences" (1967:402). Rather, argues Ibn Khaldûn,
when Muhammad guides us toward some perception, we must prefer that to
our own perceptions. We must have more confidence in it than in them. We
must not seek to prove its correctness rationally, even if (rational intelligence)
contradicts it. We must believe and know what we have been commanded (to
believe and to know). We must be silent with regard to things of this sort that
we do not understand. We must leave them to Muhammad and keep the intellect
out of it. (Khaldûn 1967:390)
In contrast to this theoretical encompassment of Greek and Islamic traditions,
Bandy's (1994) account of the loose synthesis of Buddhism and Confucianism
in sixteenth-century China suggests that practical reason can also be a
model for "conversation" across religious or philosophical systems. At the level
of official doctrine, Buddhism's stress on monastic world-rejection and its location
of the origin of suffering in human desire clearly contrast with Confucianism's
focus on the world-affirming ritual conditioning for public life and its
valorization of desire as a positive part of human nature. The synthesis of these
two traditions attained in certain neo-Confucian schools of the Ming period,
however, largely avoided theoretical dispute by formulating a response in terms
of everyday social life, popular folklore, and literary forms. This uneasy synthesis
combined a creative notion of desire as means for spiritual liberation with a claim
that sagehood cannot be restricted to the ruling class. In this case, then, it is the
concrete historical experience of Chinese Buddhism that provides a useful model
for the "adventitious" quality of cross-cultural dialogue.
Several essays in this third volume explore a second dimension of the operation
of practical reason in the philosophy of religion, namely, the dynamic process
of interpretation. In some cases, this dynamism involves the historical trajectory
of the "work" of hermeneutical practices; in other cases, the dynamism
lies in the cultural attitudes toward history, time, and change entailed by philosophical
positions or religious doctrines. What is remarkable, though, is that interpretive
praxis is frequently a creative and structuring response to the comparative
encounter, either with other religious traditions or with an earlier moment
of the same tradition. 10
Poole's account of the history of the Bimin-Kuskusmin's confrontation with
the West details the powerfully conservative interpretive practices of ritual elders
prior to the events of the "great destruction" of the 1940s (Poole 1986a; 1992).
The elders were able to provide satisfying explanations of various experienced
anomalies by relying on the rich metaphorical resources of their "mythic imagi-
Comparison, Pragmatics, and Interpretation I iji
nation": a strange phenomenon or threatening event that cannot be modeled by
one of several existing plant metaphors (e.g., root as source, intertwining as intertextuality,
and husk/core as shallow/deep meaning) is defined away as not culturally
significant, that is, not leaving a "scar" on the culture's ritual "center
place." This situation of interpretive adequacy changed dramatically after a
group of ritual initiates burned to death in a fire at Telefolip and after the region
experienced unusual sheet lightning. No longer able to maintain the position that
anomalies do not scar the center, Trumeng, a prominent ritual elder, created a
new mode of religious interpretation as a middle way between hermetic denial
and cultural self-destruction (Poole 1994). 1° contrast to the previous hermeneutic
of holism, Trumeng advocated a new interpretive method grounded in the
assertion of the analogy of anomaly; that is, Trumeng found in the corpus of
myths a dimension of historical praxis (including transformations, corruptions,
and the progressive weakening of spirit) that was not previously focused on. The
crisis situation of cultural encounter could now be modeled, since an anchored
homology (or "indexical icon" [Silverstein 1981b]; see Chapter 4) can be established
between the interpretation of praxis (the dynamism in the myths) and the
praxis of interpretation (the hermeneutical actions of the ritual elders). In effect,
Trumeng reasserted at a higher logical level the encompassment of history by the
center place in his recognition that change is an essential feature of both traditional
myth and current experience, yet still without admitting the possibility of
the Other's power to forever scar the sacred center. 11
Interestingly, this strongly pragmatic encompassment of history launched the
Bimin-Kuskusmin elders on an interpretive path leading in the opposite direction—both
geographically and semiotically. Now that the sacred site at Telefolip
to the west had been tarnished, they worked to protect their own sacred site by
severing ties with the wider interpretive community (by stopping the exchange
of sacra and ritual personnel) and by elaborating an inward-looking, intentionally
reflexive interpretive program. This, too, can be seen as an icon of the comparative
situation, for the Bimin-Kuskusmin responded to the next historical incursion
of missionaries with "philosophical" rather than ritual discourse.
In contrast to this analogical application of mythic metaphors, Patton's
(1994) discussion of the history of commentaries on Veda 9.112 as a "practice
of reading" within the Indian tradition illustrates a process involving both the
making explicit of what was initially textually presupposed in the Vedic text and
the recontextualization of the locus of textual performativity. The chant sets out
multiple occupational roles (carpenter, physician, smith, miller, priestly poet) that
strive with diverse means for the same ultimate goal, namely, gold or material
wealth. Despite the overt parallelism and consequent equality of these paths toward
wealth, the chant implies a fundamental hierarchy, since the utterance of
this mantra in a sacrificial context (e.g., the pounding of Soma) is the performative
means by which the priestly group gains its wealth and asserts its social