Afterword: Choosing a Frame

AFTERWORD: CHOOSING A FRAME Theoretical and Disciplinary Frames Ethnographies take their framing, in part, from the theoretical and disciplinary elaborations at their edges. Anthropologists often use the introductory chapters of a book to explore the details of larger theoretical discussions that inform the work as whole, and gorge their endnotes with richly nuanced asides and extensive comparative, historical, or bibliographic notes. I chose to keep the explicit theoretical and disciplinary thrust of this book rather spare so that the implicit richness of the ethnographic narrative in Picturing Islam might address a broad range of cross-disciplinary discussions. I wanted this book to be broadly useful and felt that a sharply etched theoretical or disciplinary framing would limit its appeal. That said, it might be of interest to some readers if I offer a just a few remarks about the implications of this book for the study of art and for the anthropology of subjectivity and ethics. For a long time I considered situating this book at the intersection of art history and the anthropology of art (e.g., Marcus and Myers 1995; Westermann 2005). Art historians have begun to use ethnographic approaches in the study of national art histories (e.g., Taylor 2004) and diasporic arts (e.g., Drewal 2008), and anthropologists are increasingly writing about the cultural politics of contemporary art (e.g., Fabian 1996; Myers 2002; Roberts and Roberts 2003; Winegar 2006; Zitzewitz 2008) or about the history of colonial and early modern arts (e.g., Mathur 2007; Pinney and Peterson 2003). Out of such work we may find fresh ways to think about the visual construction of secular institutions, histories, and fields of power. I see opportunity, too, to use such studies to rethink art history and the anthropology Picturing Islam : Art and Ethics in a Muslim Lifeworld Kenneth M. George © 2010 Kenneth M. George. ISBN: 978-1-405-12958-9 143 Afterword: Choosing a Frame of art in light of globalization and indigenous art histories (cf., Belting 2003; Elkins 2007). In Picturing Islam, I have taken an actor-and-object approach, not unlike what art historian Thomas Crow calls a “life and work model” (1999: 2), but supplemented with extensive reflections from the actor-artist (who is not the only actor on the scene, of course). The focus of my “ethnographic art history” – if I may coin a term – has been on Pirous and his art work, and considerably less on the many figures, forces, and institutions that drive Indonesia’s art world and its art discourses. My choice in doing so comes with some trade-offs. For one, the broad workings of an “art world” – the focal concern of sociological approaches associated with Howard Becker (1982), Pierre Bourdieu (1993), and Janet Wolff (1993) – recede into the background. Another potential problem is to overly privilege the figure of the artist. The dangers in doing so are two: treating a painter as if s/he knowingly is in control of aesthetic self-expression; and giving in to the demands of a global marketplace in art that wants names and painterly reputations. The first overlooks the social, cultural, and unconscious forces at work in creating both art and a self; the latter is to cave in to the ideological forces of global capitalism. A third and related trade-off is to leave unquestioned the modernist ideologies that link a painting to a painter’s subjectivity and identity. These issues notwithstanding, I believe my approach to ethnographic art history, which draws from Baxandall (1985) as well as Crow, takes us into the ideological motivations for making art without losing sight of the practical dilemmas of negotiating the social world in which art projects and art transactions take place. We have seen Pirous as he tried to domesticate and inhabit the modernist legacy within the larger contours of national and international cultural spheres. For purposes of international recognition, he chose to pursue Islamic art as a sign of his indigeneity and national belonging. The key entailments were four: taking possession of and innovating upon a largely Western art historical discourse about Islamic art; working out rival ideologies of word and image as they apply to Qur’anic calligraphy (see Mitchell 1986); seeking legitimacy for his art from fellow Muslims and from religious authorities; and refashioning his artistic subjectivity with respect to ethical relationships and practical technique. Pirous did not work out these questions in the abstract, nor did he always tackle them in an explicitly reflexive way (although that was often the case). Rather, he addressed them through very specific works, projects, and discursive frames. In this light, his notion of “spiritual notes” relates not only to inner subjective experience, but exposes his vulnerability to and dependence upon the push and pull of political, religious, and art ideologies, in all of their contingency and contradictions. This brings me to the contribution Picturing Islam may make to the anthropology of subjectivity and ethics. Questions of subjectivity are central to fields beside anthropology, such as literary criticism, psychology, gender studies, postcolonial and subaltern studies, and visual cultural studies, to name just a few. Although anthropologists draw ideas and approaches from these other fields, their interest in subjectivity tends to coalesce around one of two poles. Some put emphasis on 144 Afterword: Choosing a Frame the lived experience and reflexivity of actors (e.g., Biehl, Good, and Kleinman 2007; Good, Delvecchio Good, Hyde, and Pinto 2008), while others situate that reflexivity with respect to the reproduction and transformation of powerful, subject-shaping, social and cultural formations (e.g., Ortner 2006). For the former, “subjectivity is the means to shaping sensibility” (Biehl et al. 2007: 14) and denotes “the most intimate forms of everyday experience” (Good et al. 2008: 2–3); for the latter, it has more to do with the projects that reveal the complex and practical workings of cultural and historical consciousness (Ortner 1995: 183–87; 2006: 110–11, 127–28). These approaches should not suggest that anthropologists fall in theoretically opposed camps; actors and reflexivity are central to both. Yet the different sets of emphases potentially result in different ethnographic directions and protocols. On the face of it, Picturing Islam appears to tilt toward an emphasis on experience and sensibilities. Recourse to ideas about lifeworlds and lived religion would seem to imply this, as would views that link painting with experience, interiority, and expressiveness. Yet I have been careful to write about pictures and not just a painter, about unforeseen social or cultural destinies and not just self-reflexive accounts of subjecthood and subjection, about broad social and political projects and not just the meanings an artist might attribute to a work. I have tried to show how reflexive shifts in self-fashioning depended not just on religious or aesthetic ideologies, but also upon an encounter with materials such as oils and acrylics. Equally, I have suggested how painterly projects were at once aesthetic, political, and religious in gesture and construction; through them, we see how the shifting effort to picture Islam was also a way for Pirous and others to picture a shifting nation-state and shifting self. When major changes sweep the compound ideological order of the everyday, it is not just subjects that are thrown off balance, but pictures and picturing as well. For these reasons, I place Picturing Islam rather closer to the second approach, where we might capture “the multiplicity of projects in which social beings are always engaged, and the multiplicity of ways in which those projects feed on as well as collide with one another” (Ortner 1995: 191). My treatment of ethics in this book stems from my reading of work by Judith Butler (2005), Michel Foucault (1997, 2005), and Paul Ricoeur (1992), and is but a first step toward a deeper exploration of issues. Their work does not exhaust the spectrum of writings that can contribute to the anthropology of ethics, but they helpfully put forward some key questions. As with the exploration of subjectivity, the study of ethics may skew toward the self and self-fashioning, or toward responsibility and the well-being of others, without producing opposed theoretical camps. Of interest to me are the ways these three authors concern themselves with very different social conditions for the ethical life: violence (Butler), freedom (Foucault), and justice (Ricoeur) – concerns that have been as basic to Pirous’s life as they are to ours. At the same time, these authors look to language and narrative as the site of ethical practice and knowledge. Picturing Islam thus raises a question without answering it: Will we see ethics differently if we look to pictures as the fulcrum of ethical relationships? 145 Afterword: Choosing a Frame Ethnographic Frames: A Postscript, 2002–2009 Ethnographies give us but a glimpse of the unfolding of time and human relationships. Ethnographies come to an end. Time and human relationships do not. Pirous and some of the others in his family read through this book as I worked on the manuscript. In this way we have had the opportunity to continue a long conversation, and to ready it so that others might join in. Some readers may feel that my presentation has been too subjective, and perhaps too constrained by my friendship with Pirous. Kirin has reminded me, however, about something that happened to our friend, anthropologist Sidney Mintz. In 1960, Mintz published Worker in the Cane, an anthropological life history of a Puerto Rican friend, sugarcane laborer “Taso” Zayas. As Mintz relates in “The Sensation of Moving, While Standing Still” (1989), early reviewers of the book questioned his objectivity and thought the emotional ties of friendship imperiled chances for a sober, analytic understanding of social life. Twenty years after the book came out, a new generation of readers argued that Mintz had not been friendly enough with Taso and had only deepened the inequality between them by writing as he did. Mintz goes on to tease out some wonderful disciplinary observations about life histories from these contrasting views. I wrote Picturing Islam not only for cultural anthropologists, but for readers in religious studies and art history too. I am curious about what these readers from different disciplines will have to say about the mingling of friendship and research. I have brought my story about Pirous, and how he has made his art and his lifeworld Islamic, to a close with his 2002 retrospective show. Since that time, his son Iwan has married architect Mira Siregar. Two more grandchildren have been born. Pirous and Erna also have built a new house and studio high on a breezy mountain slope overlooking Bandung. After five years of uncertainty immediately following the collapse of authoritarian rule, Indonesia has been making gains with democratic electoral politics, and the political atmosphere remains more open than it was during the Soeharto years. Islamic themes and sensibilities are today at the hub of cultural expression in Indonesia. Books, magazines, films, television, music, fashion, self-actualization programs, text-messaging, interior design, and accessories for the car and home all reflect the steady interest in religious expression and comportment. As Islam leaves a more pronounced stamp on popular culture in Indonesia, various fields of cultural production have come increasingly under the watch of religious authorities and vigilante organizations, a development that leaves me apprehensive about the future for open expression. Although they have not found electoral success, Muslim ultraconservatives have made inroads into everyday culture, society, and media. Their growing influence has evoked civic efforts from liberal Muslims, who wish to keep narrow religious orthodoxies from prevailing in public life. Indonesia’s art world has been a target for the ultraconservative campaign. The hardline Islamic Defenders Front (Front Pembela Islam, FPI), among other vigilante groups, has 146 Afterword: Choosing a Frame been successful in disrupting or closing art events through opportunistic, arbitrary, and self-serving shows of power carried out in the name of God. In the wake of one such incident, Indonesian curator Jim Supangkat (2005) remarked that FPI’s iconoclastic protests “lie beyond the platform of art” and should not be used to accuse Islam of opposing freedom of expression or of opposing art, a view I know Pirous shares. Last, my story has not mentioned the unforeseeable tragedy that struck Aceh on December 26, 2004. The tsunami that rolled out of the Indian Ocean that day took the lives of over 160,000 Acehnese. Seventy of them were Pirous’s relatives, and Meulaboh, the hometown of his youth, was swept from the face of the earth. He was devastated. Kirin and I went to visit Pirous and Erna in March 2005, and I repeated the condolences I had sent in late December. In his sorrow, Pirous had not been able to bring himself to paint, but he took us to a show of his work in Jakarta that he had organized to raise relief funds. The show was called “Jabal Fana”, a reference to the “ephemeral mountain” (Jabal Fana) near Mecca that for Pirous signified mortality and transience, and that had made it into one of his paintings after he returned from the hajj in 1988 (see Figure 4.1). Although he has resumed painting, and traveled to Aceh to help with efforts to rebuild the province, he has never gone back to his hometown to look upon the devastation there; he does not want any knowledge of the calamity to wash away the memories of his youth. In that refusal to look at what could only be a source of pain, I think he has wisely cared for himself once more. 147