Wayang Kulit – Ramayana or Mahabharata Episodes
Java and Bali, Indonesia – Shadow puppetry as a sacred act; metaphor for cosmic duality and dharma
Thinking Through Michel Foucault (1926-1984)’s Philosophy on the Art Essence
“Illuminating the Self Through Shadows”
1. Power and the Aesthetics of Duality
Wayang Kulit reveals a world where power is always mediated—never direct, never simple. The puppeteer (dalang) is not only the artist, but the philosopher-mediator of cosmic oppositions: light and darkness, hero and villain, life and death. For Foucault, this resonates with the concept that truth is produced through relations of power. The white screen becomes a plane of epistemic tension, where dharma and adharma are played out in allegorical dances.
In this theatre of silhouettes, every movement is a tension of control. The dalang controls dozens of characters, but remains unseen. Just as Foucault emphasizes that the self is constituted through discursive regimes, so too is the hero of Wayang never truly autonomous—his actions emerge through lineage, prophecy, and cosmological law.
2. Technologies of the Self as Ritual Shadowcraft
The dalang’s nightly labor—chanting, narrating, controlling light—is not merely performance, but ascetic discipline. In Foucault’s terms, this is a profound example of epimeleia heautou (care of the self): the puppeteer must fast, meditate, and memorize epics, not as entertainment, but as technē tou biou—a technology of living ethically within the cosmos.
The sacred shadow theatre thus becomes an embodied pedagogy. The audience is not passive; they meditate alongside the tale. Every flicker of the puppet becomes an invitation to reflect on how one conducts oneself in the face of passion, loyalty, betrayal, or fate.
3. Shadow as Truth’s Threshold
Foucault famously declared that “visibility is a trap.” In Wayang Kulit, this is inverted: truth emerges in the invisible, projected into silhouette. The screen is not just canvas—it is the limit of what can be known. What lies behind the screen is chaotic, wooden, and entangled. But what appears before the audience is illuminated, ordered, moralized. This aligns with Foucault’s view that knowledge is constructed through the spatial arrangements of visibility and invisibility—a regime of how we make subjects intelligible.