Shadows of Empire: Colonial Discourse and Javanese Tales.  By Laurie J. Sears.  Durham: Duke University Press, 1996. 349 pp., bibliography, index. Reviewed by Laura Green, The George Washington University.

Shadow puppet (wayang kulit) theatre has been an important and often-studied element of Javanese culture.  It uses as its backbone the Hindu stories of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, stories that Laurie Sears points out are more alive in Indonesia today than are their counterparts in Western countries such as the Illiad and Odyssey.  But shadow puppet theatre is not just about the distant past. A theme of Laurie Sears' study is that this tradition is not an unchanging element of Javanese life but a very dynamic and flexible one, adjusting itself to a variety of governments and social and political situations.  One reason for its staying power, Sears surmises, is this ability to incorporate contemporary issues and thus remain relevant to the concerns of its audience.

Sears looks at wayang through the lens of both colonial and postcolonial discourse, giving the reader important background information on Dutch colonial rule in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and on the Javanese nationalist movement as well as the postcolonial agendas of Presidents Soekarno and Soeharto.

The early chapters of the book focus on the insistence of Dutch and Indonesian colonial and postcolonial scholars to minimize the role of Islam in Indonesian life by emphasizing wayang as the essence of Java.  Other Western scholars have also traditionally cast Islam as a transgressor. To them it is merely or a faÁade on a culture the real foundation of Javanese culture which is built on Hinduism and Buddhism.  This minimization of Islam reflects an ingrained fear of the religion by Europeans, Americans, and at times the Indonesian government.  European, American and Indonesian scholarly preferences for the Hindu-Buddhist tradition over Islam influenced the content and performance of shadow theatre.

The book also addresses the role of Dutch-speaking Javanese intellectuals in producing nationalist agendas in wayang that subversively challenged Dutch rule.  They used wayang to talk about politics without the Dutch even realizing it.  Sears then moves on to look at the responses of village storytellers to the Dutch and Javanese intelligentsia’s interest in wayang.  Often, she notes, they incorporated new styles and techniques into their performances as a way to attract greater audiences.

Sears also devotes a chapter of the book to the postcolonial period, in which the Indonesian government used wayang to advance its goals and agenda.  President Soekarno used it to combat non-Indonesian influences, especially those of the United States.  In fact, certain puppeteers were thrust into the political arena with unhappy consequences: some were targets of the 1965-1966 violence that ended with Soekarno's overthrow.

The final chapter focuses on new types of texts and technologies that incorporate the stories of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, such as comic books, cassette recordings and television programs.  This chapter makes a fitting conclusion because it points to the future and also backs up Sears' claim that the wayang tradition is dynamic and adaptive to the contemporary environment.  Perhaps Sears should consider writing a sequel to this book in the wake of Indonesia's democratization, as the country's dramatic transformation should bring still more changes to the wayang.

Sears' study is an excellent and fascinating work that is accessible to the layman as well as detailed and informative for the scholar. She incorporates the work of philosophers and anthropologists such as Edward Said, Michel Foucault and Clifford Geertz into her discussion of colonial and postcolonial discourse, but without compromising the book's readability.  A timeline at the beginning of the book might have helped to make the chronology of political and historical events on Java clearer for non-Indonesian specialists.  Even so, Sears' book proves a talented navigational tool through some complex events and makes clear connections between those events and changes in the wayang tradition.