Narrating knowledge; Reflections on the encyclopedic impulse in literary texts from Indonesian and Malay worlds

Abstract

First and foremost, encyclopedias are characterized by their attitude to their subject matter, which is information about the phenomenal world organized and selected according to certain conceptual principles that may change according to time, place, and culture. The Kitab Pengetahan Bahasa was one of the ways in which he tried to resist this threat, for to him and his fellow Malays bahasa denoted not just (proper usage of) language, but also proper conduct and good marmers, which, as also becomes clear in Bujang Tan Domang, are seen as the pillars of Malay culture. [...]Raja Ali Haji's work on the Kitab until his death in the early 1870s, rather than a mere lexicographic undertaking, is a quite self-conscious, encyclopedie, and in places, literary act. [...]I want to read from my kitab', the Devil says, for instance, when he seduces a woman to commit adultery (Sekarang aku hendak membaca kitabku; Siti Hawa Haji Salleh 1998:89). [...]Abdullah learns about deceit, greed, gambling, adultery, murder, warfare, et cetera, and this Faustian image of the holy man and the Devil together, roaming through the world in pursuit of knowledge, may be emblematic of all the other travelers and their boundary-crossing, rule-defying journeys in Malay-Indonesian encyclopedie texts. [...]history has cfept into our account, as we noted the difference between 'self-conscious' and 'unself-conscious' encyclopedie texts, a distinction that turned on effcts of colonialism upon indigenous worlds. [...]as we imagined the colonial night growing slowly darker, almost against our will we feit compelled to comment on the disintegration of the narrative impulse we had been so confidently examining.