I had a discussion with Josef Prijotomo in mid-November 2008. A particular character in wayang (Javanese shadow puppetry), Semar, was brought up during the talk. In wayang play, Semar is a character like no other. He is the main, most prominent divine figure, and simultaneously an ugly, even grotesque-looking character with an acute pot-belly who ranks among the punakawans.[1] Semar is therefore simultaneously sacred and profane.

Being such a character, Semar possesses his ultimate weapon: his fart. Sounds profane it may be. But this suggests something about “space” in Javanese sense.

A fart is formless (an ignored example of Battaille’s l’informe, perhaps). In fact, it cannot be seen. Yet its sound and smell define a space. The boundary of the space is defined by the outmost point(s) the sound can be heard and the smell can be smelled.

From the story of Semar, we may draw some comparison between Javanese space and Western space.[2] When Plato conceived his idea about space, this space is something produced in one’s mind.[3] Yet Semar’s space is something produced in real world, not in the ideal realm. Semar’s space is not a chora. As such, “space” in Western, platonic sense is something produced in an ideal setting. It is a product of the intellect. On the other hand, Javanese “space” (at least as seen from Semar’s angle) is a space produced in the world. It is produced through a profane manner in this world by a figure who embodies the sacred and the profane at once. The Serat Jatimurti (although it does not mention Semar) mentions that space (or volume) can be present through existence (kajaten). At a glance, this may remind one with Heidegger’s account of being-in-the-world. But Javanese space does not exist in order to try making sense out of its presence. Javanese space probably exists for this reason: to accommodate the rendez-vous between the sacred and the profane, the divine and the dirty, the ideal and the real. Or perhaps it is not so much a rendez-vous. It is where the profane and the sacred dwell as a knitted entity.


[1] A group of low-class wayang characters, whose roles is to act as objects for audience’s laugh, while symbolize ordinary people.
[2] For the sake of the discussion, let us temporarily omit the fact that in the West there is no one notion of space; there are several. The notion of “space” and the notion of “raum” for instance,a re not exactly the same.
[3] Recall Plato’s privileging of the ideal over the profane; the ideal realm over the real one.