Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia

L. Ayu Saraswati

L. Ayu Saraswati

Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia

In: Southeast Asia: Politics, Meaning, and Memory, 51

Edited by: David P. Chandler and Rita Smith Kipp

University of Hawaii Press | 2013

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780824837877

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Contents

About this book

In Indonesia, light skin color has been desirable throughout recorded history. Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race explores Indonesia’s changing beauty ideals and traces them to a number of influences: first to ninth-century India and some of the oldest surviving Indonesian literary works; then, a thousand years later, to the impact of Dutch colonialism and the wartime occupation of Japan; and finally, in the post-colonial period, to the popularity of American culture. The book shows how the transnational circulation of people, images, and ideas have shaped and shifted discourses and hierarchies of race, gender, skin color, and beauty in Indonesia. The author employs “affect” theories and feminist cultural studies as a lens through which to analyze a vast range of materials, including the Old Javanese epic poem Ramayana, archival materials, magazine advertisements, commercial products, and numerous interviews with Indonesian women.

The book offers a rich repertoire of analytical and theoretical tools that allow readers to rethink issues of race and gender in a global context and understand how feelings and emotions—Western constructs as well as Indian, Javanese, and Indonesian notions such as rasa and malu—contribute to and are constitutive of transnational and gendered processes of racialization. Saraswati argues that it is how emotions come to be attached to certain objects and how they circulate that shape the “emotionscape” of white beauty in Indonesia. Her ground-breaking work is a nuanced theoretical exploration of the ways in which representations of beauty and the emotions they embody travel geographically and help shape attitudes and beliefs toward race and gender in a transnational world.

Reviews

This book, authored by Indonesian scholar L. Ayu Saraswati, has made a significant contribution to the representation of emotions about people of different race, gender, and skin color in beauty advertising . . . This book shows us how the issue of skin color can be a very global issue and socially contribute to the problem of discrimination. It is pivotal to translate this book into the Indonesian language in order to deliver the message to audiences, in particular to Indonesian audiences, that the skin color issue is also a social issue within the society.

Frontmatter Free access PDF PDF	i
Contents Free access PDF PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Free access PDF PDF	ix
Introduction. Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	1
CHAPTER 1. Rasa, Race, and Ramayana: Sensing and Censoring the History of Color in Precolonial Java Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	15
CHAPTER 2. Rooting and Routing Whiteness in Colonial Indonesia: From Dutch to Japanese Whiteness Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	36
CHAPTER 3. Indonesian White Beauty: Spatializing Race and Racializing Spatial Tropes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	60
CHAPTER 4. Cosmopolitan Whiteness: The Effects and Affects of Skin- Whitening Advertisements in a Transnational Women’s Magazine Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	83
CHAPTER 5. Malu: Coloring Shame and Shaming the Color of Beauty Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	108
Conclusion. Shades of Emotions in a Transnational Context Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	129
Notes Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	137
References Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	143
Index Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	163
About the Author Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	175
Other Volumes in the Series Access restricted Content is available PDF PDF	177

Seeing Beauty, Sensing Race in Transnational Indonesia

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