Complicating Senses of Gender and Islam in East Java

• In Event: From Hinduism to Islam: Performing Gender and Religion in Indonesia - Sponsored by the Indonesia and Timor Leste Studies Committee (ITLSC)

Abstract

Foregrounding individual agency, this paper explores some of the ways in which musicians and dancers complicate senses of gender and Islam on- and offstage in the regency of Malang in east Java. I argue that in complicating senses of masculinity and femininity, performers contribute to the continuous cultural processes by and through which the expression and experience of Islam is continuously shaped. My analysis focuses on the cultural work performers are doing to this effect in the socio-historical context of the Reformation era (1998-present), a context in which debate and discussion about the place of Islam in Indonesia has intensified (Harnish and Rasmussen 2011: 8). I build from the work of a number of scholars who emphasize the agency of individuals as gendered actors who shape the practice and expression of Islam in Indonesia as they make sense of gender in their own ways, in effect negotiating Islam and dominant gender ideologies (e.g., Brenner 1996; Boellstorff 2005; Blackburn, Smith, and Syamsiyatun 2008; Rasmussen 2010; Weintraub 2011). Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Malang spanning from 2005 to 2007, I first establish the strong presence of Islam in the performing arts. Then, through analysis of performers’ verbal discourse, I show that through their personal approaches to Islam, performers make and maintain cultural space for cross-gender dance (males performing female style dance and females performing male style dance), thereby making and maintaining cultural space in which senses of gender may be simultaneously reinforced and subverted.

Author

• Christina Sunardi, University of Washington