ART AS RESISTANCE: A PROPOSED STUDY ON KUDA KEPANG PERFORMANCE AND THEIR MOTIVATIONS

Abstract

Scholarship on the Islamic resurgence in Singapore and beyond have often talked about piety in very specific forms This has neglected the ways in which piety can also be interpreted differently and Muslims do not simply follow norms but are also in the process of negotiation. The Islamic resurgence can thus affect a practice in sometimes contradictory ways – deeming it problematic but also furnishing it with new terrain to refashion itself. In the quest to reinterpret and refashion kuda kepang however, certain aesthetics endure. Whether one believes in spirit possession or not, it is the aesthetical choices and performance of the uncanny that sustains the supernatural. The following chapters illustrate how the discourse about kuda kepang have developed and shifted, how practitioners themselves resist and reenforce some of these discursive elements, and how aesthetics sustain the supernatural but also provides new ways to showcase taste and artistic creativity.