International Journal of Indonesian Studies Volume 1, Issue 3 | Page 66

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INDONESIAN STUDIES
SPRING 2016
Textiles
As previously mentioned, textiles are the dominant visual art in Eastern Indonesia. In
Kambera, the language of East Sumba, “cloth” is categorized as banda la uma meaning
“goods of the house” which are feminine and contrasted with banda la marada “goods of
the field” which are masculine (Adams 1969). The asymmetric unity between the male
speech and female cloth is also expressed in the words for weaving and ritual speech used
in negotiating marriages. The word wunangu means both the wooden heddle used to push
layers of cloth together and the representatives of the marriage groups who must speak in
couplets during negotiations. Additionally, a woman’s planning of the design of a textile,
called pahamburungu, is also the term used when arranging exchanges of only material
(Adams 1980, pp. 213).
Aside from how the cloth was produced and its association with gender, it expresses
the elements of the asymmetric marriage system in its formal composition. The textile
design contains both dyadic and triadic elements (see figure 3; bottom). The composition is
broken into three sections using two elements (facing-animals, ovals, facing-animals). This
also fits the pattern of the village-ship broken into three sections corresponding to the three
categories of an Austronesian boat in which the front and back are called the same things
because they are extended out of the water while the middle is closer to it (see figure 3;
top). Within each side tiles, the animals or trees face one another. This breaks down the
bilateral symmetry within that section (see figure 4) when the cloth is held horizontally.
However, the textile is a hinggi, which is draped over the shoulder and diagonally attached
to the opposite hip. When viewed on the wearing from the front and back as it is intended
to be, it presents the same image regardless of perspective. Within the animal tiles there
still remains that confrontational duality of the animals which is a near universal motif in
East Sumba (bottom of figure 4). According to Adams (1969), the formal patterning in
textiles represents the triadic, symmetric and asymmetric dyadic relationships, and unity
both as a whole and within oppositions, that comprise the symbolic ordering of the universe
from the asymmetric marriage system (see figures 2, 3 and 4).
Conclusion
There are three overarching insights from the structuralist studi es of Eastern Indonesia.
Firstly, culture as a totalized system of symbols shaping every aspect of social phenomena
was first developed within anthropology in the Leiden School from studies of Eastern
Indonesia. Secondly, the type of marriage arrangements structured other cultural forms that
altered society. Finally, the asymmetric marriage system was an alternative ordering of
reality creating different forms of concepts about how the world was ordered: concentric
dualism, symmetric dualism, asymmetric dualism, triadic relations and unity between and
among these concepts. The metaphors of ships, trees and bodies (all containing bilateral
symmetry) were used in cultural media such as speech, houses, villages and rituals. Just as
importantly for structuralism and insightful for anthropology, cultural formations in Eastern
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