Except for those rare instances when the curtain is momentarily parted, the [Page 330] relatively uncensored subculture of subordinate classes must be sought in those locales, behind the scenes, where it is created-in all those social situations outside the immediate surveillance of the dominant class. Given its shadowy but palpable existence in informal discourse, this subculture is unlikely to be a systematic refutation of the dominant ideology. One does not expect Das Kapital to come from working-class pubs, although one may get something quite close to the labor theory of value! Unless the curtains are parted by open revolt, political freedoms, or a revolution that allows the subculture to take on a public, institutionalized life, it will remain elusive and masked. What is certain, however, is that, while domination may be inevitable as a social fact, it is unlikely also to be hegemonic as an ideology within that small social sphere where the powerless may speak freely.
My argument to this point has focused on the danger of equating the possible fact of inevitability with the norms of justice and legitimacy, even though the ethnographic record may encourage it. I have also stressed the importance, in anything short of total institutions, of an autonomous sphere in which the values of elites may be contested despite their practical inevitability. Completing this critique requires that I also reexamine the concept of inevitability itself, a term I have thus far taken for granted. The question is not whether or not a given structure of domination is inevitable at a factual level, since no historically contingent state of affairs is inevitable in that sense. The question is rather the extent to which a system of domination can be made to appear inevitable to those who live in it and under it.
The first problem is to specify exactly what it is that is “inevitable.” If it is taken to mean a pattern of domination in all its historical particulars, then it is clear that no system is inevitable to its subjects in this sense. To imagine that long-established systems such as feudalism or slavery were, even in their heyday, so inevitable that those who lived within them were not constantly tryingand succeeding-to modify their contours is to ascribe an unwarranted “thingness” to any social order.
If, however, by “inevitable” we mean the central features of a mode of domination, not just its details, then the argument for perceived inevitability becomes far more plausible. From one perspective, the argument is in fact both self-evident and coercive. How would it be possible for a thirteenth-century French serf or an eighteenth-century Indian untouchable, neither of whom we may assume had any experience of any social order other than the one into which he was born, to conceive of anything else than what he knew, namely, feudalism or the caste system? It is but a short logical step to claim that these cognitive limitations rule out, in principle, any possible revolutionary consciousness. If the fish do not talk about the water, how can we expect them to talk about the air? Such reasoning seems to lie behind Jean-Paul Sartre’s position:
For it is necessary to reverse the common opinion and acknowledge that it [Page 331] is not the harshness of a situation or the sufferings it imposes which lead people to conceive of another state of affairs in which things would be better for everybody. It is on the day when we are able to conceive of another state of affairs, that a new light is cast on our trouble and our suffering and we decide that they are unbearable.59
This position is, I believe, quite wrong. On my reading of the evidence it is in fact more plausible to contend that so far as the realm of ideology is concerned, no social order seems inevitable, even in this larger sense, to all of its subjects. The fact that serfs, slaves, or untouchables have no direct knowledge or experience of other social orders is, I believe, no obstacle to their creating what would have to qualify as “revolutionary” thought. To argue along these lines is not so much to refute Sartre as it is to show that the imaginative capacity of subordinate groups to reverse and/or negate dominant ideologies is so widespread-if not universal-that it might be considered part and parcel of their standard cultural and religious equipment. Here again we may stand Gramsci on his head; subordinate classes-especially the peasantry-are likely to be more radical at the level of ideology than at the level of behavior, where they are more effectively constrained by the daily exercise of power.
The argument against inevitability may be made at two levels. As I have made this case at much greater length elsewhere, I shall confine myself to a summary exposition.60 The first point to be made is that, even if one accepts that the serf, the slave, and the untouchable will have trouble imagining social arrangements other than feudalism, slavery, or caste, they will certainly not find it difficult to imagine reversing the distribution of status and rewards within that social order. In a great many societies, such a simple feat of the imagination is not just an abstract exercise: It is historically embedded in existing ritual practice. To mention but a few, the Feast of Krishna (Holl) in large parts of India, Carnival in Western and Latin American Roman Catholic societies, Saturnalia in Roman society, the variant of the water festival in Buddhist Southeast Asia, Dionysian cults in antiquity-all involve to a considerable extent a reversal of status, the breaking of routine codes of deference, and the profanation of the existing social order. In some forms, these rituals of reversal may be seen as a sanctioned and contained ritual effort to relieve temporarily the tension unavoidably produced by a rigid hierarchy. To stop here, however, would ignore both the degree to which such rituals often get out of hand and the strenuous attempts made by dominant elites to eliminate or restrict them. The centuries-long campaign of Roman Catholic authorities to eliminate the pagan aspects of carnivalburlesques of the mass, hedonism-and to replace them with the passion plays and more orthodox ritual is a striking example.
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If it requires no great leap of the imagination to reverse the existing social order, then it should come as no surprise that it can as easily be negated. This is precisely what is involved in nearly all of the millennial religious ideologies that have formed the normative underpinning of a host of large-scale peasant revolts throughout history. Such movements are often closely linked to the reversals discussed earlier, but they are not so easily dismissed as empty rituals, given their practical consequences for political control. The radical vision contained in millennial and utopian ideologies can best be understood as a negation of the existing pattern of exploitation and status degradation as it is experienced. At the risk of overgeneralizing, one can say that this reflexive symbolism often implies a society of brotherhood in which there will be no rich or poor and no distinctions of rank (save those between believers and nonbelievers). Property is typically, though not always, to be held in common and shared. Unjust claims to taxes, rents, and tribute are to be nullified. The envisioned utopia may also include a self-yielding and abundant nature as well as a radically transformed human nature in which greed, envy, and hatred will disappear. While the earthly utopia is an anticipation of the future, it often harks back to a mythic Eden from which mankind has fallen away. It is no exaggeration to see in such historically common ideologies a revolutionary appropriation of religious symbolism in the service of class interests.
Millennial and utopian thought typically make their appearance in the archives only when they take the form of sects or movements that pose a threat to the state. In this respect, the written record is as negligent of ordinary forms of symbolic resistance as it is of everyday material resistance. The prophetic tradition that underlies such sects may remain dormant and peripheral for long periods. But, as Marc Bloch observed, the tradition is both continuous and deeply rooted in popular culture. Citing peasant revolts in France from 821 through “the blazing summer of 1789,” which Taine had described as “spontaneous anarchy,” Bloch writes:
But there was nothing novel about this “anarchy.” What appeared a newlyminted outrage in the eyes of the ill-instructed philosopher was little more than the recurrence of a traditional phenomenon which had long been endemic. The forms rebellion took (and they were nearly always the same) we
re also traditional: mystical fantasies: a powerful preoccupation with the primitive egalitarianism of the Gospels, which took hold of humble minds well before the Reformation.61
The circumstances under which these beliefs triggered mass action had, to modern eyes, all the marks of revolutionary crises. Thus, in Europe and elsewhere, famines, plagues, wars, invasions, crushing new taxes, subsistence crises, or [Page 333] periods when “traditional social bands were being weakened or shattered and the gap between rich and poor was becoming a chasm”62 might form the backdrop against which millennial expectations become mobilizing myths. The deroutinization of daily life, in which the normal categories with which social reality is apprehended no longer apply, appears to be as important as material deprivation in creating the social soil for millennial activity.
It has occasionally been assumed that millenarianism is a particular product of the prophetic and apocalyptic tradition of the Judeo-Christian world. And yet we find parallel religious traditions in both the Buddhist and Islamic regions of Southeast Asia, as well as in the largely Christian Philippines. In Burma, for example, a belief in the return of a just king (Setkya min) who will return to set things aright exists side by side with a belief in a Buddha-Deliverer (Buddha yaza) who will usher in a Buddhist millennium. In Islamic Indonesia, we encounter both a traditional belief in a returning monarch-savior (ratu adil) and a traditional belief in an Islamic conqueror who will sweep away the heathen and restore justice. The belief in a returning just king, similar to that of the tsardeliverer in Russia, represents a striking example of how an erstwhile conservative myth of divine kingship can, in the hands of the peasantry, be turned into a revolutionary myth by a kind of symbolic jujitsu. While kingship per se is symbolically maintained, both the actual king and the social order he represents are negated. It goes without saying that these religious traditions in Southeast Asia have also formed the ideological basis for countless rebellions.63
The paradox of millennial beliefs is of course that they typically envision the most radical change in the distribution of power, status, and wealth-not to mention human nature-while at the same time being very much leadership centered. At the center of virtually all such movements is a leader, a prophet, a just king, a savior, who will set things right. Compared to everyday forms of resistance that avoid direct symbolic confrontations in the interest of concrete, piecemeal gains, millennial beliefs are all-or-nothing affairs64 which, once activated, aim at changing the society root and branch. As such they are inherently extralocal and depend on a shared collective history, with its antiestablishment symbols and myths.
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In Sedaka itself, one can hardly speak of a lively millennial tradition. There is evidence, however, that religious prophecies are far from entirely dormant. Four or five villagers spoke to me of predictions made by religious men (orang alim) who teach at the various informal religious schools (pondok) in the region. Such prophesies were typically vague and predicted much bloodshed, the punishment of the wicked, natural disturbances (earthquakes, flood) as well as often naming the Islamic year in which all this would come to pass. Occasionally, prophesies circulate in the form of “flying letters” (surat layang) of anonymous authorship-letters purportedly written at some sacred Islamic site in the Middle East under the inspiration of a vision or dream. (One such surat layang came into my hands and is reproduced in translation in appendix E.) In 1969, after racial riots had erupted in several Malaysian cities, a climate of fearful anticipation swept much of Kedah. Local religious figures, politicians, and those versed in the traditional Malay art of self-defense (silat) joined a group called the Red Sash Society (Pertubohan Selendang Merah), a body with shadowy connections to UMNO politicians in the national capital. Its purpose was to defend the race and the religion. To this end, an “oathing” ceremony was held for at least forty men from Sedaka and Sungai Tongkang in the house of Haji Salim, now a prominent UMNO official in the district. Someone claiming to have been sent from Kuala Lumpur conducted an initiation, using chants (jampi), anointment with lime juice and water, and a demonstration of how the red sash worn by members would render them invulnerable to wounds from a machete (golok). In the end, the unrest did not spread to Kedah and the group never went into action.
The point of this brief account of prophesy and religious mobilization in Sedaka is not to claim that such exceptional events preoccupy villagers. They do not. It is rather to suggest only that prophesy and religious mobilization are a part, however dormant in relatively ordinary times, of the cultural equipment of the Malay peasantry. In 1979 a shadowy organization (Nasrul Haq) which, it was said, had thirty thousand members in Kedah was banned. The government claimed that it had political connections as well as teaching silat (self-defense) and that its “un-Islamic” promotion of magical chants, trances, and female participation as well as unorthodox dress made it a threat to public order. A mystical cult named Auratis mailiyyah, which developed in the poor Kedah district of Sik and about which far less is known, was outlawed by an Islamic (Syariah) court at about the same time.65 For Malaysia as a whole, Stockwell has documented the reappearance of millennial and ecstatic Islamic cults during virtually every episode of historical crisis.66 Had I attended more carefully to it, [Page 335] I am certain that I would have uncovered more surat layang and local prophesies.67 Under exceptional circumstances it is entirely possible that such marginal phenomena could move quickly to the center of the political stage.68
My concern here has been exclusively directed to the issue of whether or not a subordinate class, having no experience or knowledge of other social systems, can conceive of the domination under which they live as anything other than completely inevitable. The historical fact is that they can and do. All three of the claims examined in this section have proved to be untenable. There is no basis for supposing that subordinate classes equate the inevitable with the just, although the necessity of pragmatic resignation may often make it seem so. There is no basis for imagining that any of the common historical patterns of domination so completely control the social life of subordinate classes as to rule out the creation of partly autonomous and resistant subcultures. Finally, there is no reason to assume that the lower orders are so encompassed by an existing system of domination that they cannot either imagine its revolutionary negation or act on that negation.
Conflict within Hegemony
For the sake of argument, I have thus far taken for granted what I believe to be the core assumption of the case for hegemony and false-consciousness. Put bluntly, the assumption is that, to the extent dominant classes can persuade subordinate classes to adopt their self-serving view of existing social relations, the result will be ideological consensus and harmony that will in turn block the perception of conflicting interests, let alone class conflict. Hegemony is, after all, fundamentally about the misrepresentation of “objective” interests. Once this assumption is granted, we find ourselves inquiring if and how subordinate classes can penetrate, neutralize, and negate that hegemony. But is the initial premise credible? I believe it is not credible for at least three reasons, one of which is theoretical or conceptual and two of which are empirical. The theoretical problem requires our prior attention, as it stems from what I take to be a misunderstanding of the nature of any purported hegemonic ideology.
This misunderstanding can best be grasped by recalling the basic feature of [Page 336] ideological struggle in Sedaka: the fact that it takes place almost entirely within the normative framework of the older agrarian system. The struggle is, in other words, within what most observers would call an existing hegemony.69 Smallholders, petty tenants, and landless laborers are continually using the values and rationale of that earlier social order to press their claims and disparage the claims of their opponents. They make abundant use of the values of help (tolong) or assistance that rich villagers have typically used to describe their own behavior. They stigmatize the rich as stingy and hardhearted, thereby turning the values of generosity and li
berality against those who justified their property and privilege in just such terms. They insist, albeit in vain, on their right to employment and to tenancies, which the large landowners once claimed to bestow upon them out of a sense of helpfulness. In each respect, the claims of the poor derive their normative force and strategic value from the fact that lip service is still being paid to them by the locally dominant elite. There is virtually no radical questioning of property rights or of the state and its local officials, whose policies are designed to further capitalist agriculture. Almost everything said by the poor fits easily within the professed values-within the hegemony—of local elites. And if the ends sought by the village poor are modest, so are the means used to accomplish them. The modesty of means, however, is less a consequence of small ambitions than of other givens-the presence of economic alternatives, the fact of “dull compulsion,” and the knowledge of probable repression.
Short of the deroutinizing crises that are said to touch off millennial expectations, such modest claims may be found at the core of most class conflict. Nor are such small demands incompatible with more violent and even revolutionary action when conditions permit. There is, in other words, no necessary symmetry between modesty of ends and modesty of means. The claims can be said to arise from the inevitable gap between the promises that any hegemony necessarily makes and the equally inevitable failure of the social order to fulfill some or all of these promises. Properly understood, any hegemonic ideology provides, within itself, the raw material for contradictions and conflict.
To appreciate why this is so, we need only turn to the implications of the passage from The German Ideology quoted at length earlier. “The ruling ideas [that is, the hegemonic ideology] are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships.” Gramsci understood, far better than many of his successors, precisely what was involved in idealizing the dominant material relationships:
Weapons of the Weak- Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance Page 53
