Kuntilanak

Abstract

Kuntilanak is an icon of pop culture well known in several nations in Southeast Asia. While the female vampire is the subject of horror films and novels, people in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, claim that the city was founded by evicting Kuntilanak, who inhabited the confluence of the Kapuas and Landak rivers before the city was built. This article examines narratives on Kuntilanak, comparing it with other spirit perceptions found among Dayak in West Kalimantan. It suggests that the horror of that terrifying ghost is the price people had to pay for conceptualizing nature in accordance with Islamic Malay modernity. Referring to Critical Theory approaches, it is argued that the hostility and horror of Kuntilanak are expressions of a specific mode of enlightenment in the widest sense of the term, that is, an effort to conceptualize nature in order to rule over it. Nature thus emerges in opposition to the civilized, Muslim societies ( masyarakat madani ) of Malay coastal towns.