Manuscripts, Madness

This chapter introduces the ethnographic context and theoretical problematic for the book’s approach to Balinese writing practices. It argues that contemporary uses of the island’s traditional script are caught between conflicting articulations of human flourishing and collective life. There is first the state-bureaucratic articulation of reform Hinduism, for which Balinese letters figure primarily as a symbol of cultural heritage. But there is also the broadly western philological assumption that script serves as a neutral medium for the expression and transmission of textual meaning—an idea that has long defined scholarly approaches to religious traditions in the wider region. Balinese practices of apotropaic writing – on palm-leaves, amulets and bodies – challenge both of these notions, and yet they coexist alongside them. The question is how to theorize the coexistence of these seemingly contradictory sensibilities.