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Magic's Translations: Reality Politics in Colonial Indonesia
Duke University Press
Copyright:
This content is made freely available by the publisher. It may not be redistributed or altered. All rights reserved.
ISBN electronic:
978-1-4780-6071-0
Publication date:
2025
Book Chapter
Dangerous Liaisons Available to Purchase
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Published:April 2025
After 1870, relationships between white men and Javanese or Eurasian women led to talk of guna-guna, Indonesian vernacular for a compulsive attraction that Europeans increasingly translated as “black magic.” This chapter tracks concerns about guna-guna in colonial popular culture, mainly in genres of personal experience. A particularly striking account of an affected European in a 1930s travel book shows how stories of sorcery subverted the racialized distinctions underlying colonial rule, transgressing divides between gullible Indonesians and skeptical Europeans. In contrast to the ambiguity pervading such tales, the few colonial scholars who commented relegated guna-guna’s effects to toxic substances or abnormal psychology.
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