senjabiru

Tentang Rasa

2009-02-10T05:40:00.000-08:00

"..Anyone who seen us
Knows what's going on between us
It doesn't take a genius
To read between the lines Brad: ohh
And it's not just wishful thinking
Or only me who's dreaming
I know what these are symptoms of...we could be in love"

Rasa itu ada tapi tak gegap gempita
Rasa itu nyata dan sungguh buat bahagia
Maka duduk saja dan nikmati perjalanannya
Karena rasa itu tidak akan sia-sia
…

pulang

2009-01-27T12:04:00.000-08:00

Ku layangkan pandang ku.
melalui kaca jendela,
dari tempat ku bersandar seiring laju kereta
membawaku melintasi tempat-tempat yang indah
membuat isi hidupku penuh riuh dan bermakna,...

ku alunkan rinduku selepas aku kembali pulang
tak akan ku lepaskan dekapku
karena...
ku tahu pasti aku menginginkanmu
seumur hidupku, selama-lamanya
(Padi)

bila rindu sudah mengerayangiku. Setelah alpaku akan waktu, bergegas ku menghitung waktu. Menunggu esok, akankah dia ada untuk aku? Akankah masih sama seperti yang kukenal dulu? Ah, waktu, jangan kau bunuh cintaku.

Sexual Politics

2009-01-27T11:02:00.000-08:00

Is it possible to regard the relation of the sexes in a political light at all? It depends on how one defines politics. I do not define the political area here as that narrow and exclusive sector known as institutional or official politics of the Democrat or Republican--- we have all reason to be tired and suspicious of them. By politics I mean powerstructured relationships, the entire arrangement whereby one group of people is governed by another, one group is dominant and the other subordinate.

It is time we developed a more cogent and relevant psychology and philosophy of power relationships not yet considered in out institutional politics. It is time we gave attention to defining a theory of politics which treats of power relationships on the less formal than establishmentarian grounds of personal intercourse between members of well defined and coherent groups-- races, castes, classes and sexes. It is precisely because such groups have no representation in formal political structures that their oppression is so entire and so continuous.

In the recent past, we have been forced to acknowledge that the relationship between the races in the United States is indeed a political one-- and one of the control of collectivity defined by birth, or another collectivity also defined by birth. Groups who rule by birth are fast disappearing in the West and white supremacists are fated to go the way of aristocrats and other extinct upper castes. We have yet one ancient and universal arrangement for the political exploitation of one birth group by another-- in the area of sex.

Just as the study of racism has convinced as that there exists a truly political relationship between races, and an oppressive situation from which the subordinated group had no redress through formal political structures whereby they might organize into conventional political struggle and opposition--just so any intelligent and objective examination of our system of sexual politics or sex role structure will prove that the relationship between the sexes now-- and throughout history-- is one of what Max Weber once termed "Herrschaft"-- or dominance and subordination-- the birthright control of one group by another-the male to rule and the female to be ruled. Women have been placed in the position of minority status throughout history and even after the grudging extension of certain minimal rights of citizenship and suffrage at the beginning of this century. It is fatuous to suppose that women-- white or black-- have any greater representation now that they vote -- than that they ever did. Previous history has made it clear that the possession of the vote for 100 years has done the black man precious little good at all.

Why, when this arrangement of male rule and control of our society is so obvious -- why is it never acknowledged or discussed? Partly, I suspect because such discussion is regarded as dangerous in the extreme and because a culture does not discuss its most basic assumptions and most cherished bigotries. Why does no one ever remark that the military, industry,the universities, the sciences, political office and finance (despite absurd declarations to the contrary on the evidence that some little old lady owns stock over which she has no control). Why does no one ever remark that every avenue of power in our culture including the repressive forces of the police -- entirely in male hands? Money, guns, authority itself, are male provinces. Even God is male -- and a white male at that.

The reasons for this gigantic evasion of the very facts of our situation are -many and obvious. They are also rather amusing. Let's look at a few of the thousand defenses the masculine culture has built against any infringement or even exposure of its control: is to react with ridicule and the primitive mechanism of laughter and denial. Sex is funny -- it's dirty -- and it is something women have. Men are not sexual beings -- they are people -- they are humanity. Therefore, any rational discussion of the realities of sexual life degenerate as quickly as men can make them into sniggering sessions, where through cliché so ancient as to have almost ritual value, women who might be anxious to carry on an adult dialogue are bullied back into "their place".

At the level of common attitude -- sex and particularly that very explosive subject of the relationship of the sexes -- is a subject closed to intelligent investigation and accessible only to persiflage and levity.

The second evasion our culture has evolved is via folk myth. From Dagwood to the college professor, sex is folklore and the official version of both is that the male is the "victim" of a widespread conspiracy. From the folk figure of Jiggs or Punch to the very latest study of the damage which mothers wreak upon their sons, we are assailed by the bogey of the overbearing woman -- woman as some terrible and primitive natural evil -- our twentieth-century remnant of the primitive fear of the unknown, unknown at least to the male, and remember, it is the male in our culture who defines reality. Man is innocent, he is put upon, everywhere he is in danger of being dethroned. Dagwood -- the archetypal henpecked husband -- is a figure of folk fun only because the culture assumes that a man will rule his wife or cease to be very much of a man. Like a dimwitted plantation owner who is virtually controlled by his far-cleverer steward or valet, Dagwood is a member of the ruling class held up both to scorn and to sympathy-scorn for being too human or too incompetent to rule, yet sympathetic because every other member of the privileged group knows in his heart how burdensome it is to maintain the illusory facade of superiority over those who are your natural equals.

The phantasy of the male victim is not only a myth, it is politically expedient myth, myth either invented or disseminated to serve the---political end of a rationalization or a softening and partial denial of power. The actual relation of the sexes in our culture from the dawn of history has been diametrically opposite to the of official cult of the downtrodden. Yet our culture seeks on every level of discussion to deny logical charge of oppression which any objective view of the, sex structure would bring up, masculine society has a fascinating tactic of appropriating all sympathy for itself. It has lately taken up the practice of screaming out that it is the victim of unnatural surgery . . . it has been "castrated". Even Albert Shanker. has discovered of late that black community control, the Mayor, and the Board of Education have performed this abomination upon his person. To those in fear of castration word one word of comfort. The last instance of its practice on a white man in western culture was the late l8th century when the last castrati lost a vital section of his anatomy in the cause of the art of music --at the hands of another male, I must add. For castration is an ancient cruelty which males practice on each other. In the American South it was as a way to humiliate black victims of the Klan. In the Ancient East it was a barbarous form of punishment for crime. In the courts of the Italian Renaissance castration was a perverse method of providing soprano voices for the Papal Choir. It was felt that women were too profane to sing the holy offices so to supply the demand for the higher musical register, eunuchs were created through putting young men to the knife

As the practice of physical castration has been abolished clear that the word in current usage must be accepted in a metaphoric rather than literal connotation, if we are to any sense of the fantastic anxiety contemporary male egos, for on every hand, in the media and in the culture both high and low, men today have come to see the terrible specter of the "castrating female" all about them, their paranoiac delusions are taken for social fact. Having in a confused way, associated his genitals with his power, the- male -now bellows in physical pain and true hysteria every time his social and political prerogatives are threatened. If by castration is meant a loss through being forced to share power:with oppressed groups deprived of power- or even of human status, then there are many white men in America who will suffer this psychic operation,-but it will be the removal of a cancer in the brain and heart not of any. pleasurable or creative organ. To, argue that any woman who insists on full human, status is a "castrating bitch" or guilty of the obscure- evil: of "penis envy" (only the consummate male chauvinist could have imagined this term)'is as patently silly as to argue that dispossessed blacks want to become white men-- issue is not to be Whitey, but to have a fair share of what Whitey has - - the whole world of human possibility

While I am fully aware that equal rights entail equal responsibility there are some things Whitey has which I- am very sure I don't want, for example, a Green Beret, a Zippo for burning down, villages the ear of a dead of peasant, the burden of the charred flesh a Vietnamese child. Nor do I have an any interest in acquiring the habits of violence, warfare-' (unless in the just cause of self-defense -- a cause I cannot foresee ever happening-in American foreign policy) ), or the white man's imperialist racism, or rape or the capitalist exploitation of poverty and ignorance.

Because of the smoke-screen of masculine propaganda one hears endless cant about castration--whereas real and actual crimes men commit against women are never mentioned. It is considered bad taste, unsportsmanlike ---to refer to the fact that the are thousands of rapes-or crimes against the female personality--in New-York City every year--I speak only of those instances which are reported--probably one tenth of those which occur. It is also generally accepted that to regard Richard Speck and so many others like him in anything. but the light, of exceptional and irrelevant instances of individual pathology, is another instance of not playing that Speck merely enacted the presupposition of the majority male supremacists of the sterner sort--and they are -legion. That his murders echo in the surrealist chambers of masculine phantasy and wish fulfillment is testified to by every sleazy essay into sadism and white slave traffic on the dirty movie belt of 42nd St. and anti-social character of hard core pornography. The Story of O tells it like it is about masculine phantasy better than does Romeo and Juliet. So does the -Playboy, chortling over the con-game he has played on that Rabbit, he dreams of screwing ---the Bunny, or woman reduced to a meek and docile animal toy.

For the extent and depth -of the male's hatred and hostility toward his subject colony of women is a source of continual astonishment.' Just as be hind the glowing' mirage 'of "darkeys"crooning in the twilight --is reality the block, the whip and the manacle, the history of women is full of colorful artifact. ...the bound feet of all of old China's women---women deliberately deformed- that they might be the better controlled -- (you can work with those useless feet, but you cannot run away) -- the veil of Islam (or an attenuated existence as a human soul condemned to wear a cloth sack over her head all the days of her half-life) ;-- the lash, the rod, domestic imprisonment through most of the world's history -rape, concubinage, prostitution . Yes, we have our own impressive catalogue of open tyrannies. Woman are still sold in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. In Switzerland, they are even today disenfranchised. And in nearly every rod of ground on this earth they live only via the barter system of sex in return for for food of the latter. Like every system of oppression male supremacy rests finally on force, physical power, rape, assault and the threat of assault. A final resource when all else has failed the male resorts to attack. But the fear of force is there before every woman always as a deterrent-- dismissal, divorce, violence --personal sexual or economic.

As in any society in a state of war, the enforcement of male rule which euphemism calls "the battle of the sexes", is possible only through the usual lies convenient to' countries at war-- The Enemy is Evil---the Enemy is not Human. And men have always been able to believe in the innate evil of women. Studies of primitive societies just as studies of our own religious texts -- illustrate over and over-the innumerable instances of taboos practiced against women. A group of aborigines agree with Judaism in the faith that a menstruating, woman is "unclean," taboo, untouchable. Should she have access to weapons or other sacred and ritual articles the male, she will place a hex or spell upon them that their "masculine" owners will not survive. Everything that pertains to her physical make-up or function -is despicable or subversive. Let side the village and inhabit a hut alone and without food during her period - let her be forbidden the temple -- even those outer precincts assigned to her for a-specified number of-days after, as the Gospels-coolly inform us she has given birth to the very savior of the world'-- for she is still, dirty. Dirty and mysterious. Have you ever thought it curious that 'nocturnal' emissions were not regarded as either dirty -or mysterious, that the penis was (until Industrialism decided to veil it again for greater effect) never considered as dirty-- but so regal and imperious that its shape is the one assigned to scepters, bombs, guns, and airplanes?

In history; vast numbers of peoples have worshipped the phallus openly. It may also be true that ever larger numbers of peoples once worshipped the womb or the fertility powers of the earth. It may also be true that one of the-many causes for the commencement of that now-universal oppression and contempt for women lay in the male's very fear of the female powers of giving life and perhaps inspired that enormous change in world affairs we call the patriarchal take-over. Living so close to the earth, without having yet developed toys of his own in warfare and the rise of princely city-states full of toiling slaves building him empty monuments, and unaware of his own vital role in conception the male may well have past glances of envy on the woman and what was -- in those conditions-- her miraculous capacity to bring another human life out of her very belly-and seen in it a connection with the phases of the moon, and the seasons of the earth's vegetation -- and stood both in awe and terror -- and finally in hatred -- and decided to cast this function down from what he rather naturally I assumed was its collusion with the supernatural, the terrible, the uncontrollable forces of nature -- and denigrate it to the level of the the bestial, the pernicious and the obscene. And thus the filthy totem was,appropriated by the male and taboo assigned in a thousand ways to operate against the female.

Having vitiated all effects of the female power the male set about aggrandizing his own. Having finally appropriated all access to the supernatural for himself he established an alliance with the new male god (both his brother his father, depending on auspicious or inauspicious circumstance), he then proceeded to announce his kinship with the divine through a long and impressive list of patriarchs and prophets, high priests and emperors. Now that he had gone into partnership with God, the male set himself up as God to the female. Milton puts it this way: "He for God only, she. for God in him".

In some cultures females were allowed to participate on an inferior level as figures of identification for human females-- useful in encouraging them to an enforced cooperation in their own control. So they can see themselves as honored through the rapes of Jove on Europa and Leda, favored in divine seduction scenarios as an endless series of wood nymphs, possibly debased versions of other tribal goddesses at loose ends now their matriarchal reign had ended -- or incarnate in that first troublesome woman, Juno - the insubordinate wife.

But in sterner patriarchal societies such as the Judaic and Christian, there was never any kidding around about goddesses. Christianity did not elevate the Virgin to goddess status until the 12th Century and the Protestants dethroned her a mere 4 hundred years later. The device of making her both virgin and mother not only excites admiration for its ingenuity but astonishment as its perfection of effect -- here is divine or nearly divine woman completely relieved of that insidious sexuality by which woman herself has always been defined.

Mere mortal women in the Christian ages were continuously assured of their inherent evil and inferiority by a whole procession of fanatic mile supremacists--from Paul who found even the exhibition of their hair in church a powerful provocation and an indelicate enticement to hellish practices more apparent in his mind than in others-- (such it is to represent the sexuality of the whole race in only one half of it)-- to Jerome, Augustine, Aquinas and a whole parade of ascetics, hermits, and other non-participating types who have projected their own teeming sexuality onto the female. For so strong is the hold of the Christian assumption through Eve and other notable exempla that the "evil" of sex was introduced via the female alone-- that today even Women think of Women when they think of sex, sexiness, sex objects, sexuality and sex symbols -- a state of rather surprising paradox in a society which rigidly enforces heterosexuality for women.

Judaism is even more punctilious than Christianity in the matter of male supremacy. First thing in the morning every male Jew is enjoined to thank God for creating him a male and therefore a superior order of being. I have never been informed as to what Jewish women are instructed to say on such occasions of coming to consciousness--perhaps it is some little bit of advice to themselves not to fall into the much-satirized posture of the overbearing Jewish mother.

Of course it is not surprising that religion as we know it takes the enforcement of male supremacy by divine fiat as part of its function in a patriarchy -- so too does literature, all traditional and contemporary notions of government, those platitudes which currently pass for social science --and even--despite the influence of the Enlightenment--science itself cooperates in a number of transparently expedient rationalizations in maintaining the traditional sexual politics on grounds so specious as to have a certain comic charm.

A further way in which contemporary masculine culture refuses to face the issue of sexual politics is through the reduction of the two sexual collectivities of male and female into an endless variety of purely individual situations, whereby all cases are unique --each a delicate matter of adjustment of one diverse character to another --all of them merely the very private matter of one-to-one. relationships. That this is so largely our favorite method of portraying sexual relationships today --since Freud and the development of that very private science of psychoanalysis - is probably due in good part to the convenience it offers in shielding us from the unpleasant reality of sexual relations should we begin to view them on general or class/caste terms as we have learned to see race. For we know very well now that race is not a matter between one employer and his "boy" or one family and its "maid", but it is to be perceived in the far more pertinent light of one race's control over the other

The Individual Case translates our older myth of the dangerous Female into a newer but by now rather shop-worn cliché of the bitch stereotype --the most stock figure of the contemporary media. It is interesting to note how this bitch leads one to fancy - without ever coming right out and saying it -- that all women are bitches. It is puzzling too how, as woman -- with woman's minority status and therefore a creature completely out of the male power structure-- she is arbitrarily and unjustly blamed for nearly every fault in American life today -- and turned into a veritable symbol of the Hateful Establishment. As beauty queen, the male establishment is willing to allow woman a place as mascot or cheerleader--but it is a long way from admitting her to any personal stake in the establishment's show. As a girlfriend or a wife, she may participate vicariously for a time, --but she is easy to replace and the trade-in on old models of wife and mistress is pretty brisk. She may sleep with so many thousands a year or such and such an office, but she is dreaming if she ever fancies such glory is her own.

For the purpose of male propaganda, one of the most felicitous effects of the Individual Case myth is that it immediately translates any resistance to the present political situation in sex relations into a damning conviction of the sin of neurosis. As Psychology has replaced religion as the conformist in social behavior, it has branded any activity at odds with the force quo (which, by the way, it has taken to be "normality") as deranged, pitiable or dangerous behavior. By this criteria, current "normality" in the United States is racism, police brutality and ruthless economic exploitation.

This is what happens, if, like the Shrinks, you take 19th Century social life as both the State of Nature and the State of a Healthy Society. Any woman who fails to conform to the sterile stereotype of wife and motherhood as all and only, or who fails to bow in elaborate deference to male authority and opinion on any and all questions ---is clearly off her nut. Men have said it.

One other device to maintain the current and traditional sexual politics is to claim that the whole thing has already been settled a long time ago "we gave you the vote" as the male authoritarian puts it with such stunning arrogance —we went to the polls and elected you into the human race because one day you mentioned the oversight of your exclusion and, obliging fellow that we are, we immediately rectifies this very trivial detail .

The foregoing is both a distortion of history and a denial of reality. Women fought hard and almost without hope, driven to massive and forceful protest which has served as a model both for the labor movement and the black movement. They struggled on against overwhelming odds of power and repression for over one hundred and fifty years to get this worthless rag known as the ballot. We got it last of all,-- black and white-- women are the last citizens of the United States'-- and we had to work hardest of all to get it.

And now we have it we realize how badly we were cheated--we had fought so long, worked so hard, pushed back despair so many times that we were exhausted-- we just said then give us that and we will do the rest ourselves. But -we didn't realize, as perhaps blacks never realized until the Civil Rights Movement, that the ballot is no real admission to civil life in America; it means nothing at all if you are not represented in a representative democracy. And we are not represented now any more than black people...both groups have only one senator --- one Tom apiece. The United States has fewer women in public office than hardly any nation in the world--we are more effectively ostracized from political life-in this country than any other constituency in America --and we are 53% of its population. Political nominees announced their intention of helping asthmatic children and the mentally retarded of every age, if elected-- but not a word about women half the population- but not a word --the largest minority status group in history. But not one word.

It is time the official fallacy of the West and of the United States particularly - that the sexes are now equal socially and politically - be exploded for the hoax it really is. For at present any gainsaying of this piety is countered with the threat that "women have got too much power I they're running the world", and other tidbits of frivolity which the speaker, strange as it may seem, might often enough believe. For the more petty male ego(like that of the cracker or the Union man..in the North who voted for Wallace) - in his paranoia is likely to believe that because one woman or one black man in millions can make nearly or even a bit more than he does -- the whole bunch are taking over that sordid little corner of the world he regarded as his birthright because the was white and male -- and on which he had staked his very identity-just because it prevented him from seeing himself as exploited by the very caste he had imagined he was part of and with whom, despite all evidence to the contrary, he fancied he shared the gifts of the earth and the American dream--. Nightmare that it is.

The actual facts of the situation of woman in America today are sufficient evidence that, white or black, women are at the bottom unless they sleep with the top. On their own they are Nobody and taught every day they are Nobody and taught so well they have come to internalize that destructive notion and even believe it. The Department of Labor statistics can't hide the fact that this is a man's world --- a white man's world: the average year-round income of the white male is $6,704, of a black male $4,277, of a white I female $3,991, and of the black woman $2,816. As students you live in a Utopia--enjoy it, for it is the only moment in your lives when you will be treated nearly as equals. When you get married or get a job you will be made to see where power is, but then it will be too late. That is why you should organize now: look at your curriculum and look at your housing rules,--that's a start at realizing how-you are treated unfairly.

But the oppression of women is not only economic; that's just a part of it. The oppression of women is Total and therefore it exists in the mind, it is psychological oppression. Let's have a look at how it works, for it works like a charm. From earliest childhood every female child is carefully taught that she is to be a life-long incompetent at every sphere of significant human activity therefore she must convert herself into a sex object -- a Thing. She must be pretty and assessed by the world: weighed, judged and measured by her looks alone. If she's pretty, she can marry; then she can concentrate rate her energies on pregnancy and diapers. That's life --that's female life. That's what it is to reduce and limit the expectations and potentialities of one half of the human race to the level animal behavior.

It is time we realized that the whole structure of male and female personality is arbitrarily imposed by social conditioning a social conditioning which has taken all the possible traits of human personality-- which Margaret Mead once, by way of analogy, compared to the many colors of the rainbow's spectrum --and arbitrarily assigned traits into two categories; thus aggression is masculine, passivity-feminine violence- masculine, tenderness feminine, intelligence masculine' and emotion feminine, etc., etc....arbitrarily departmentalizing human qualities into two neat little piles which are drilled into children by toys, games, the social propaganda of television and the board of education's deranged whim as to what is proper male - female Role- Building. What we must now set about doing is to reexamine this whole foolish and segregated house of cards, and pick from it what we can use: Dante, Shakespeare, Lady Murasaki and Mozart, Einstein and the care for life which we have bred into women -- and accept these as human traits. Then we must get busy to eliminate what are not properly humane or even human ideas -- the warrior, the killer, the hero as homicide, the passive, dumb cow victim.

We must now begin to realize and to retrain ourselves to see that both intelligence and a reverence for life are HUMAN qualities. It is high time we began to be reasonable about the relationship of sexuality to personality and admit the facts -the present assignment of temperamental traits to sex is moronic, limiting and hazardous. Virility - the murderer's complex- or self definition in terms of how many or how often or how efficiently he can oppress his fellow --- This has got to go. There is a whole generation coming of age in America who have already thoroughly sickened of the military male ideal, who know they were born men and don't have to prove it by killing someone or wearing crew cuts. There is also a vast number of women who are beginning to wake out of the long sleep known as cooperating in one's own oppression and self-denigration, and they are banding together, in nationwide chapters of the National Organization for Women -- in the myriad groups of Radical Women springing up in cities all over the country and the world, in the women's liberation groups of SDS and in other groups or, on campus, and they are joining together to make the beginnings of a new and massive women's movement in America and in the world -- to establish true equality between the sexes, to break the old machine of sexual politics and replace it with a more human and civilized world for both sexes, and to end the present system's oppression of men as well as women.

There are other forces at work to change the ;whole face of American society: the black movement to end racism, the student movement with its numbers and powers for spreading the idea of a new society founded on democratic principles, free of the war reflex. free of the economic and racial exploitation reflex. Black people, students and women --that's alot of people with -our combined numbers it is probably 70% of the population or more. It is more than enough to change the course and character of our society -- surely enough to cause a radical social revolution. And maybe it will also be the first Revolution to avoid the pitfall of bloodshed, a mere change of dictators and the inevitable counter-revolution which follows upon such betrayal and loss of purpose.

We are numbers sufficient to alter the course of human history -by changing fundamental values by affecting an entire change of consciousness. We cannot have such a change of consciousness unless we rebuild values---we cannot rebuild values unless we 'restructure personality.' But we cannot do this or solve racial and economic crimes unless we end the oppression of all people- unless we end the idea of violence, of dominance, of power, unless we end the idea of oppression itself -- unless we realize-that a revolution in sexual policy is not only part of but basic to any real change in the quality life. Social and cultural revolution in America and the world depend on a change of consciousness of which a new relationship between the sexes and a new definition of humanity and human personality are an integral part.

As we awake and begin to take action, there will be enough of us and we will have both a purpose and a goal -- the first truly human condition, the first really human society. Let us begin the revolution and let us begin it with love: All of us, black, white, and gold, male and, female, have it, within our power to create a world we could bear out of the desert we inhabit for we hold our very fate in our hands.

Seperti itu ?

2009-01-19T10:50:00.000-08:00

Kuingin bertanya,
apakah kau tahu rasanya kehilangan ?

Apakah seperti bocah umur lima tahun,
menjatuhkan gulali rasa Chery,
yang baru dihisap sekali,
ketika berlary ?

Ataukah Seperti capung di gengaman,
yang setelah dengan susah payah kau tangkap,
lalu tiba-tiba terbang ?

Ataukah gigi yang tanggal,
ketika kau bermain kasti
di sekolah pagi ?

ataukah seperti terbangun di malam hari,
mendapati lampu mati,
dan kau seorang diri ?

Atau tersengat lebah,
ketika kau asyik meminum madunya ?

apakah seperti itu ?

SEPERTI ITU ?

Karena ku merasa itu, enam jam lalu,
termangu menahan sedu ditengah deru mesin dan puluhan manusia berdebu,
membatu, membisu.

Seperti itu.

What is an Ontology?

2009-01-19T10:46:00.000-08:00

An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization.
The word "ontology" seems to generate a lot of controversy in discussions about AI. It has a long history in philosophy, in which it refers to the subject of existence. It is also often confused with epistemology, which is about knowledge and knowing.
In the context of knowledge sharing, I use the term ontology to mean a specification of a conceptualization. That is, an ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can exist for an agent or a community of agents. This definition is consistent with the usage of ontology as set-of-concept-definitions, but more general. And it is certainly a different sense of the word than its use in philosophy.
What is important is what an ontology is for. My colleagues and I have been designing ontologies for the purpose of enabling knowledge sharing and reuse. In that context, an ontology is a specification used for making ontological commitments. The formal definition of ontological commitment is given below. For pragmetic reasons, we choose to write an ontology as a set of definitions of formal vocabulary. Although this isn't the only way to specify a conceptualization, it has some nice properties for knowledge sharing among AI software (e.g., semantics independent of reader and context). Practically, an ontological commitment is an agreement to use a vocabulary (i.e., ask queries and make assertions) in a way that is consistent (but not complete) with respect to the theory specified by an ontology. We build agents that commit to ontologies. We design ontologies so we can share knowledge with and among these agents.
This definition is given in the article:
T. R. Gruber. A translation approach to portable ontologies. Knowledge Acquisition, 5(2):199-220, 1993. Available on line .
A more detailed description is given in
T. R. Gruber. Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing. Presented at the Padua workshop on Formal Ontology, March 1993, to appear in an edited collection by Nicola Guarino. Available online .
With an excerpt attached.

Ontologies as a specification mechanism
A body of formally represented knowledge is based on a conceptualization: the objects, concepts, and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of interest and the relationships that hold among them (Genesereth & Nilsson, 1987) . A conceptualization is an abstract, simplified view of the world that we wish to represent for some purpose. Every knowledge base, knowledge-based system, or knowledge-level agent is committed to some conceptualization, explicitly or implicitly.
An ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization. The term is borrowed from philosophy, where an Ontology is a systematic account of Existence. For AI systems, what "exists" is that which can be represented. When the knowledge of a domain is represented in a declarative formalism, the set of objects that can be represented is called the universe of discourse. This set of objects, and the describable relationships among them, are reflected in the representational vocabulary with which a knowledge-based program represents knowledge. Thus, in the context of AI, we can describe the ontology of a program by defining a set of representational terms. In such an ontology, definitions associate the names of entities in the universe of discourse (e.g., classes, relations, functions, or other objects) with human-readable text describing what the names mean, and formal axioms that constrain the interpretation and well-formed use of these terms. Formally, an ontology is the statement of a logical theory.[1]
We use common ontologies to describe ontological commitments for a set of agents so that they can communicate about a domain of discourse without necessarily operating on a globally shared theory. We say that an agent commits to an ontology if its observable actions are consistent with the definitions in the ontology. The idea of ontological commitments is based on the Knowledge-Level perspective (Newell, 1982) . The Knowledge Level is a level of description of the knowledge of an agent that is independent of the symbol-level representation used internally by the agent. Knowledge is attributed to agents by observing their actions; an agent "knows" something if it acts as if it had the information and is acting rationally to achieve its goals. The "actions" of agents---including knowledge base servers and knowledge-based systems--- can be seen through a tell and ask functional interface (Levesque, 1984) , where a client interacts with an agent by making logical assertions (tell), and posing queries (ask).
Pragmatically, a common ontology defines the vocabulary with which queries and assertions are exchanged among agents. Ontological commitments are agreements to use the shared vocabulary in a coherent and consistent manner. The agents sharing a vocabulary need not share a knowledge base; each knows things the other does not, and an agent that commits to an ontology is not required to answer all queries that can be formulated in the shared vocabulary.
In short, a commitment to a common ontology is a guarantee of consistency, but not completeness, with respect to queries and assertions using the vocabulary defined in the ontology.
Notes

Structuralism/Poststructuralism

2009-01-19T10:43:00.000-08:00

Structuralism is appealing to some critics because it adds a certain objectivity, a SCIENTIFIC objectivity, to the realm of literary studies (which have often been criticized as purely subjective/impressionistic). This scientific objectivity is achieved by subordinating "parole" to "langue;" actual usage is abandoned in favor of studying the structure of a system in the abstract. Thus structuralist readings ignore the specificity of actual texts and treat them as if they were like the patterns produced by iron filings moved by magnetic force--the result of some impersonal force or power, not the result of human effort.
In structuralism, the individuality of the text disappears in favor of looking at patterns, systems, and structures. Some structuralists (and a related school of critics, called the Russian Formalists) propose that ALL narratives can be charted as variations on certain basic universal narrative patterns.
In this way of looking at narratives, the author is canceled out, since the text is a function of a system, not of an individual. The Romantic humanist model holds that the author is the origin of the text, its creator, and hence is the starting point or progenitor of the text. Structuralism argues that any piece of writing, or any signifying system, has no origin, and that authors merely inhabit pre-existing structures (langue) that enable them to make any particular sentence (or story)--any parole. Hence the idea that "language speaks us," rather than that we speak language. We don't originate language; we inhabit a structure that enables us to speak; what we (mis)perceive as our originality is simply our recombination of some of the elements in the pre-existing system. Hence every text, and every sentence we speak or write, is made up of the "already written."
By focusing on the system itself, in a synchronic analysis, structuralists cancel out history. Most insist, as Levi-Strauss does, that structures are universal, therefore timeless. Structuralists can't account for change or development; they are uninterested, for example, in how literary forms may have changed over time. They are not interested in a text's production or reception/consumption, but only in the structures that shape it.
In erasing the author, the individual text, the reader, and history, structuralism represented a major challenge to what we now call the "liberal humanist" tradition in literary criticism.
The HUMANIST model presupposed:
1.) That there is a real world out there that we can understand with our rational minds.
2.) That language is capable of (more or less) accurately depicting that real world..
3.) That language is a product of the individual writer's mind or free will, meaning that we determine what we say, and what we mean when we say it; that language thus expresses the essence of our individual beings (and that there is such a thing as an essential unique individual "self").
4.) the SELF--also known as the "subject," since that's how we represent the idea of a self in language, by saying I, which is the subject of a sentence--or the individual (or the mind or the free will) is the center of all meaning and truth; words mean what I say they mean, and truth is what I perceive as truth. I create my own sentences out of my own individual experiences and need for individual expression.
The STRUCTURALIST model argues
1.) that the structure of language itself produces "reality"--that we can think only through language, and therefore our perceptions of reality are all framed by and determined by the structure of language.
2.) That language speaks us; that the source of meaning is not an individual's experience or being, but the sets of oppositions and operations, the signs and grammars that govern language. Meaning doesn't come from individuals, but from the system that governs what any individual can do within it.
3.) Rather than seeing the individual as the center of meaning, structuralism places THE STRUCTURE at the center--it's the structure that originates or produces meaning, not the individual self. Language in particular is the center of self and meaning; I can only say "I" because I inhabit a system of language in which the position of subject is marked by the first personal pronoun, hence my identity is the product of the linguistic system I occupy.
This is also where deconstruction starts to come in. The leading figure in deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, looks at philosophy (Western metaphysics) to see that any system necessarily posits a CENTER, a point from which everything comes, and to which everything refers or returns. Sometimes it's God, sometimes it's the human self, the mind, sometimes it's the unconscious, depending on what philosophical system (or set of beliefs) one is talking about.
There are two key points to the idea of deconstruction. First is that we're still going to look at systems or structures, rather than at individual concrete practices, and that all systems or structures have a CENTER, the point of origin, the thing that created the system in the first place. Second is that all systems or structures are created of binary pairs or oppositions, of two terms placed in some sort of relation to each.
Derrida says that such systems are always built of the basic units structuralism analyzes--the binary opposition or pair--and that within these systems one part of that binary pair is always more important than the other, that one term is "marked" as positive and the other as negative. Hence in the binary pair good/evil, good is what Western philosophy values, and evil is subordinated to good. Derrida argues that all binary pairs work this way--light/dark, masculine/feminine, right/left; in Western culture, the first term is always valued over the second.
In his most famous work, Of Grammatology, Derrida looks particularly at the opposition speech/writing, saying that speech is always seen as more important than writing. This may not be as self-evident as the example of good/evil, but it's true in terms of linguistic theories, where speech is posited as the first or primary form of language, and writing is just the transcription of speech. Derrida says speech gets privileged because speech is associated with presence--for there to be spoken language, somebody has to be there to be speaking.
No, he doesn't take into account tape recordings and things like that. Remember, a lot of what these guys are talking about has roots in philosophic and linguistic traditions that predate modern technology--so that Derrida is responding to an opposition (speech/writing) that Plato set up, long before there were tape recorders. Just like poor old Levi-Strauss talks about how, in order to map all the dimensions of a myth, he'd have to have "punch cards and an IBM machine," when all he'd need now is a home computer.
Anyway, the idea is that the spoken word guarantees the existence of somebody doing the speaking--thus it reinforces all those great humanist ideas, like that there's a real self that is the origin of what's being said. Derrida calls this idea of the self that has to be there to speak part of the metaphysics of PRESENCE; the idea of being, or presence, is central to all systems of Western philosophy, from Plato through Descartes (up to Derrida himself). Presence is part of a binary opposition presence/absence, in which presence is always favored over absence. Speech gets associated with presence, and both are favored over writing and absence; this privileging of speech and presence is what Derrida calls LOGOCENTRISM.
You might think here about the Biblical phrase "Let there be light" as an example. The statement insures that there is a God (the thing doing the speaking), and that God is present (because speech=presence); the present God is the origin of all things (because God creates the world by speaking), and what God creates is binary oppositions (starting with light/dark). You might also think about other binary oppositions or pairs, including being/nothingness, reason/madness, word/silence, culture/nature, mind/body. Each term has meaning only in reference to the other (light is what is not dark, and vice-versa), just as, in Saussure's view, signifiers only have meaning--or negative value--in relation to other signifiers. These binary pairs are the "structures," or fundamental opposing ideas, that Derrida is concerned with in Western philosophy.
Because of the favoring of presence over absence, speech is favored over writing (and, as we'll see with Freud, masculine is favored over feminine because the penis is defined as a presence, whereas the female genitals are defined as absence).
It's because of this favoring of presence over absence that every system (I'm referring here mostly to philosophical systems, but the idea works for signifying systems as well) posits a CENTER, a place from which the whole system comes, and which guarantees its meaning--this center guarantees being as presence. Think of your entire self as a kind of system--everything you do, think, feel, etc. is part of that system. At the core or center of your mental and physical life is a notion of SELF, of an "I", of an identity that is stable and unified and coherent, the part of you that knows who you mean when you say "I". This core self or "I" is thus the CENTER of the "system", the "langue" of your being, and every other part of you (each individual act) is part of the "parole". The "I" is the origin of all you say and do, and it guarantees the idea of your presence, your being.
Western thought has a whole bunch of terms that serve as centers to systems --being, essence, substance, truth, form, consciousness, man, god, etc. What Derrida tells us is that each of these terms designating the center of a system serves two purposes: it's the thing that created the system, that originated it and guarantees that all the parts of the system interrelate, and it's also something beyond the system, not governed by the rules of the system. This is what he talks about as a "scandal" discovered by Levi-Strauss in Levi-Strauss's thoughts about kinship systems. (This will be covered in detail in the next lecture).
What Derrida does is to look at how a binary opposition--the fundamental unit of the structures or systems we've been looking at, and of the philosophical systems he refers to--functions within a system. He points out that a binary opposition is algebraic (a=~b, a equals not-b), and that two terms can't exist without reference to the other--light (as presence) is defined as the absence of darkness, goodness the absence of evil, etc. He doesn't seek to reverse the hierarchies implied in binary pairs--to make evil favored over good, unconscious over consciousness, feminine over masculine. Rather, deconstruction wants to erase the boundaries (the slash) between oppositions, hence to show that the values and order implied by the opposition are also not rigid.
Here's the basic method of deconstruction: find a binary opposition. Show how each term, rather than being polar opposite of its paired term, is actually part of it. Then the structure or opposition which kept them apart collapses, as we see with the terms nature and culture in Derrida's essay. Ultimately, you can't tell which is which, and the idea of binary opposites loses meaning, or is put into "play" (more on this in the next lecture). This method is called "Deconstruction" because it is a combination of construction/destruction--the idea is that you don't simply construct new system of binaries, with the previously subordinated term on top, nor do you destroy the old system--rather, you deconstruct the old system by showing how its basic units of structuration (binary pairs and the rules for their combination) contradict their own logic.

Rapuh ku

2009-01-07T11:34:00.000-08:00

Mungkin terasa sedikit setimentil jika aku berkeluh kesah disini. bukan apa-apa hari hari berat menati di depan mata. sekripsi yang belum terkejar, tugas kuliah menumpuk.
hih...aku merinding jika harus mengingat semuanya.
kepala ini buntu, harus aku mulai dari mana ya ?

Pagi biru Sbelum tahun baru

2008-12-30T15:58:00.000-08:00

aku ingin menutup kisah di tahun 2008 dengan berlibur ke bandung
mengenang pagi-pagi biru di atap langit
yah...mungkin hanya akan jadi lamunan ku

bukan apa-apa..
beberapa hari ini mendung terus mengelayut di langit
kadang malah diselingi rintik hujan

hmmm....
apa perlu aku minta sang pawang untuk mengusirnya
mungkinkah ?
"jangan merengek pada mereka..."
..........
.....................

*ini bukan puisi (catatan bingung)

Sekilas "biru" 2008

2008-12-30T11:59:00.000-08:00

berkutat dengan masalah proposal dan penelitian ---> (melelahkan *_*)
mencari pantai-pantai baru di selatan ----> (semua yang belum terjamah oleh tangan-tangan jahil sudah kami indentifikasi,.. hmmm....tunggu aja peta lokasinya)
menemukan film-film prancis kesukaan ----> (trims tuk para penjual DVD)
berebut tahu bakar di dieng ---> (yami, hahss..... panas)
berburu orang gila di jogja ---> (fiuuh akhirnya dapat, walau cuman satu... hhiiiii)
camping di lawu ----> (thanks to kak adri)
gagal ke ternate ----> (hik..hik.... sedihnya masih berasa)
membuat film dokumenter ----> (walau sudah beberapa kali mencoba tapi gagal, susahnya)
mencoba paralayang ----> (asyik, walaupun dak..dik...duk)
maaf untuk kebengalanku ----> (untuk kedua orang tuaku, dan terimakasih untuk kesabarannya)

tidak bisa disebut catatan akhir tahun karena memang tidak akan muat bila 2008 saya rangkum disini, tapi semoga mewakili. thanks ^_*

Feminism, Ideology, and Deconstruction: a Pragmatist View

2008-12-22T14:06:00.001-08:00

Most intellectuals like to find ways of joining in the struggle of the weak against the strong. So they hope that their particular gifts and competences can be made relevant to that struggle. The term most frequently used in recent decades to formulate this hope is "critique of ideology." The idea is that philosophers, literary critics, lawyers, historians, and others who are good at making distinctions, redescribing, and recontextualizing can put these talents to use by "exposing" or "demystifying" present social practices.

But the most efficient way to expose or demystify an existing practice would seem to be by suggesting an alternative practice, rather than criticizing the current one. In politics, as in the Kuhnian model of theory-change in the sciences, anomalies within old paradigms can pile up indefinitely without providing much basis for criticism until a new option is offered. "Immanent" criticism of the old paradigm is relatively ineffective. More specifically, the most effective way to criticize current descriptions of a given instance of the oppression of the weak as "a necessary evil" (the political equivalent of "a negligible anomaly") is to explain just why it is not in fact necessary, by explaining how a specific institutional change would eliminate it. That means sketching an alternative future and a scenario of political action that might take us from the present to that future.

Marx and Engels make this point in The German Ideology when they criticize Feuerbach for changing "the word communist', which in the real world means the follower of a definite revolutionary party, into a mere category" (Tucker 1978, 167). Their confidence that their criticisms of the German philosophical tradition substituted reality for illusion, science for fantasy, was greatly strengthened by the fact that they had a revolutionary party and a program - a concrete proposal about how to provide empirical verification of their claim that certain contemporary evils (e.g., income differentials, unemployment) were unnecessary ones. The difference between their situation and ours is principally that no one now wants the revolution they had in mind; no longer does anyone want to nationalize the means of production or to abolish private property. So the contemporary Left lacks the sort of party and the sort of scenario that backed up Marx and Engels's claim that their thought was "scientific" rather than "utopian" - the voice of reality rather than fantasy.(1)

The closest we leftist intellectuals in the rich democracies come nowadays to having such a party and a program is the feminist movement. But on its political side feminism looks like a reformist rather than a revolutionary movement. For its political goals are fairly concrete and not difficult to envisage being achieved; these goals are argued for by appeals to widespread moral intuitions about fairness. So contemporary feminist politics is more analogous to eighteenth-century abolitionism than to nineteenth-century communism. Whereas it was very difficult in the nineteenth century to envisage what things might be like without private ownership, it was relatively easy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries to envisage a world without slaves and to see slavery as just a left over of a barbarous age - morally repugnant to widely held intuitions. Analogously, it is relatively easy to envisage a world with equal pay for equal work, equally shared domestic responsibilities, as many women as men in positions of power, etc., and to see present inequities as repugnant to widely-shared intuitions about what is right and just. Only insofar as feminism is more than a matter of specific reforms is it analogous to nineteenth-century communism.

Feminists are in the following situation: like Marx and Engels, they suspect that piecemeal reforms will leave an underlying, and unnecessary, evil largely untouched. But unlike Marx and Engels, they cannot easily sketch a revolutionary political scenario or a post revolutionary utopia. The result is a lot of talk about philosophical revolutions, revolutions in consciousness; these revolutions, however, are not reflected at anything that Marx and Engels would recognize as "the material level." So it is easy to imagine Marx and Engels making the same kind of fun of a lot of contemporary feminist theory that they made of Hegel, Feuerbach, or Bauer. The feminist theorists, they might say, have made "feminist" into "a mere category"; nor can they hope to do more, as long as the term does not signify "follower of a definite revolutionary party."

These considerations lead one to ask whether feminists can keep the notion of "critique of ideology" without invoking the distinction between "matter" and "consciousness" deployed in The German Ideology. There is a large and depressing literature about the equivocity of the term "ideology," the latest example of which is the first chapter of Terry Eagleton's Ideology.(2) Eagleton rejects the frequent suggestion that the term has become more trouble than it is worth and offers the following as a definition: "ideas and beliefs which help to legitimate the interests of a ruling group or class specifically by distortion and dissimulation." As an alternative he suggests "false or deceptive beliefs" that arise "not from the interests of a dominant class but from the material structure of society as a whole" (Eagleton 1991, 30).(3) The latter formulation incorporates the material/non-material contrast central to The German Ideology. But it is difficult for feminists to appropriate this contrast, which got whatever concrete relevance it had from the explication of "material change" by reference to Marx's eschatological history of changes in the organization of mechanisms of production. That history is largely irrelevant to the oppression of women by men.(4)

If, however, we drop the matter-consciousness distinction and fall back on the first of the two definitions of "ideology" I quoted from Eagleton, we come into conflict with the philosophical views about truth, knowledge, and objectivity held by most of the contemporary feminist intellectuals who hope to put their gifts and competences to work criticizing masculinist ideology. For "distortion" presupposes a medium of representation which, intruding between us and the object under investigation, produces an appearance that does not correspond to the reality of the object. This representationalism cannot be squared either with the pragmatist insistence that truth is not a matter of correspondence to the intrinsic nature of reality, or with the deconstructionist rejection of what Derrida calls "the metaphysics of presence."(5) Pragmatists and deconstructionists agree that everything is a social construct and that there is no point in trying to distinguish between the "natural" and the "merely" cultural. They agree that the question is which social constructs to discard and which to keep, and that there is no point in appealing to "the way things really are" in the course of struggles over who gets to construct what. Both philosophical schools can agree with Eagleton that "if there are no values and beliefs not bound up with power, then the term ideology threatens to expand to the vanishing point" (Eagleton 1991, 7). But, unlike Eagleton, both find this a reason to be dubious about the utility of the notion of "ideology" (at least if it is supposed to mean more than "a set of bad ideas").

The distinction that runs through The German Ideology between Marxist science and mere philosophical fantasy is an excellent example of a claim to have reached what Derrida calls "a full presence which is beyond the reach of play" (1978, 279). As a good Marxist, Eagleton has to echo the standard right-wing criticisms of Derrida when he says that "the thesis that objects are entirely internal to the discourses which constitute them raises the thorny problem of how we could ever judge that a discourse had constructed its object validly" and goes on to ask "if what validates my social interpretations are the political ends they serve, how am I to validate those ends?" (Eagleton 1991, 205). You cannot talk about "distorted communication" or "distorting ideas" without believing in objects external to discourses, and objects capable of being accurately or inaccurately, scientifically or merely fantastically, represented by those discourses.

Something, therefore, has to give. Feminist intellectuals who wish to criticize masculinist ideology, and to use deconstruction to do so, must either (1) think of something new for "ideology" to mean; or (2) disassociate deconstruction from anti-representationalism, from the denial that we can answer the question "have I constructed the object validly (as opposed, for example, to usefully for feminist purposes)?" or (3) say that the question of whether their criticisms of masculinist social practices are "scientific" or "philosophically well grounded," like the question of whether masculinism has "distorted" things, is beside the point.

The best option is the last one. The first option is simply not worth the trouble, and I do not think that the second can be done at all. It seems to me unfortunate that some people identified with deconstruction have tried to reconstitute the Marxist matter-consciousness distinction - as when de Man said that "it would be unfortunate to confuse the materiality of the signifier with the materiality of what it signifies" and went on to define "ideology" as "the confusion of linguistic with natural reality, of reference with phenomenalism" (de Man 1986, 11). The way to rebut the accusation that literary theory, or deconstruction, is "oblivious to social and historical reality" is to insist that "constitution of objects by discourse" goes all the way down, and that "respect for reality" (social and historical, astrophysical, or any other kind of reality) is just respect for past language, past ways of describing what is "really" going on.(6) Sometimes such respect is a good thing, sometimes it is not. It depends on what you want.

Feminists want to change the social world, so they cannot have too much respect for past descriptions of social institutions. The most interesting question about the utility of deconstruction for feminism is whether, once Nietzsche, Dewey, Derrida, et al. have convinced us that there is nothing "natural" or "scientific" or "objective" about any given masculinist practice or description, and that all objects (neutrinos, chairs, women, men, literary theory, feminism) are social constructs, there is any further assistance that deconstruction can offer in deciding which constructs to keep and which to replace, or in finding substitutes for the latter. I doubt that there is.

Cerita di pagi hari !

2008-12-21T13:40:00.000-08:00

rupanya pagi ini aku dapat berkah.
mungkin keberuntungan
aku bisa membuat blog yang cantik
tentu bukan murni hasil kerjaku
dan thanks !

adakah "orisinalitas" di cyberia?

2008-12-21T11:50:00.001-08:00

Konon, segala sesuatu berasal dari sesuatu. sebuah orisinalitas. dan sebuah orisinalitas berkilauan orisinalitasnya oleh pendalaman. seperti sebuah kolam, sebuah lubuk sungai mungkin, kedalaman menandakan bahwa ada sesuatu yang dikandung, bisa ditemukan, dalam sebuah orisinalitas dimaksud. di kolam, atau lubuk sungai, mungkin banyak ikannya. mungkin juga ada mayat penyair wiji thukul di sana sementara pada sebuah orisinalitas, pendalaman/kedalaman mengisyaratkan terdapatnya "makna" yang wah. yang ok's bang-get. dan mesti diingat, sebuah orisinalitas tidak diciptakan dengan mudah, dengan seenak udelmu aja. sebuah orisinalitas memerlukan ritual darah, pembaptisan dalam api dan airmata. sebuah aku ini binatang jalang dari kumpulannya terbuang. sebuah filsafat eksistensialisme yang penuh dengan nausea samadhi bulan di atas daun lotus. ning. om.

lalu, kini, saat ini, di cyberia yang punya hari siang lebih daripada 24 jam ini, di mana malam begitu pendek, white nights walau terkotak-kotak dalam segi empat ruang warnet yang penuh pecahan meteor garden, terdengar teguran, sayup-sayup sampai dari masa lampau yang radio transistor. kenapa segala sesuatu mesti diphotocopy, tidak adakah lagi yang mampu menyalin, seperti para empu dulu menyalin epik mahabharata yang panjang itu, berbulan-bulan purnama, bergerhana-gerhana matahari? kini, saat ini, speed telah jadi tuhan kehidupan, bukan lagi alon-alon asal kelakon, nyampe di alun-alun keraton. photo
copy! fetishisme bayangan! tak ada lagi penghormatan pada nenek moyang. tak ada lagi orisinalitas! ini karena darah, api dan airmata sudah kehilangan simbolismenya. sudah cuma jadi sekedar tanda, yang split-personality pada dirinya. schizofrenia. sybilisme. repro telah melecehkan pro, melecehkan orisinalitas. retro telah menggantikan penciptaan kanon baru, borobudur baru. tak ada lagi manusia, cuma cyborg. separoh freud, separoh pinokio. presesi simulakra manusia. tidak perlu lagi menulis surat cinta di atas kertas warna merah muda,
kirim aja e-cards! atau sms! ada kalimatnya, ada gambarnya, malah ada
musiknya lagi! apik tenan, wes ewes ewes, bablas pak posnya.

orisinalitas adalah sebuah konsep fascis. dan rasis. kemurnian diri, the purity of the race, adalah sebuah utopia yang diciptakan untuk menghadirkan kematian, bagi the self, dan juga bagi the other. orisinalitas adalah sebuah kebohongan, dibungkus dengan kebohongan lain. ritual darah, api dan airmata adalah kebohongan yang disodorkan oleh para fascis sadomasochis. kebohongan tentang orisinalitas telah menciptakan feodalisme budaya, feodalisme pemikiran dan feodalisme penindasan. kasta dan kelas sosial adalah bukti bahwa orisinalitas itu adalah kebohongan sistematis, kejahatan struktural. kaum modernis mengklaim sebuah style sebagai sebuah orisinalitas, maka segala sesuatu yang tidak punya style mesti disingkirkan, dikucilkan, dimampuskan. dimassakan. dipopkan. jadi popcorn, dimakan berbunyi pop! hanya simulasi rasa jagung teringat oleh memori lidah. style menyatakan,"yang bukan penyair tidak ambil bagian"! jadilah kau terkutuk, jadilah penyair sekedar! orisinalitas mendirikan benteng-benteng kraton di jogja dan solo. dan tembok cina. tetaplah kau diluar segala sesuatu yang asing dan liar. segala sesuatu yang mengancam. yang membongkar kebohongan. orisinalitas telah melahirkan psikoanalisis, kerna rumah sakit hanya mampu merawat populisme, bukan elitisme.

sebuah lukisan dibaca oleh sebuah, atau dua buah, atau berbuah-buah puisi maka tidak orisinalkah puisi itu? apakah puisi itutidak "memakai" lukisan itu hanya sebagai bahan baku untuk membuat bakmi airmata, atau pangsit cinta, atau malah sangsang heroik pahlawan tak dikenal? dari manakah, sebenarnya, sebuah puisi mesti membeli bahan baku masakannya? dari samadhi keheningan tengah malam di pucuk wuwungan rumah pak lurah kah? atau di atas daun jengkol di kuburan umum di pinggir kota? dari wangi alkohol dan tembakau yang bersenggama di sekeliling botol bir kosong? dari tuhan?

sebuah teks bernama "hamlet" ternyata kampungnya bukan di jenius kepala botak shakespeare, tapi dari sabrang lor, dari dongeng denmark. begitu juga dengan "macbeth" dan "julius caesar". sebelum goethe, marlowe dari inggris sudah ratusan tahun menulis drama "faustus". siapakah orisinalitas di sini? tidak orisinalitas kah baratayudha dan ramayana jawa, karena ada mahabharata dan ramayana india ?

dan versi mana yang punya kedalaman? nilai-nilai adiluhung?

sebuah teks adalah orisinalitas itu sendiri. orisinalitas yang tidak orisinalitas. sebuah teks adalah anak kawin silang teks-teks lain. teks-teks lain adalah anak kawin silang teks-teks lain. dan seterusnya. mempertanyakan orisinalitas adalah mempertanyakan silsilah "ayam/telur dan telur/ayam". dan kedalaman tak ada hubungannya dengan orisinalitas! kedalaman adalah anak kawin silang kedalaman-kedalaman lain.

sebuah puisi digital yang mempuisikan sebuah lukisan, atau sebuah musik, atau sebuah foto dan mengikutsertakan lukisan, musik atau fotoitu dalam kehadirannya di monitor sebuah komputer adalah sebuah orisinalitas yang tidak orisinalitas. sebuah lukisan yang dipuisikan oleh sebuah puisi adalah sebuah orisinalitas yang tidak orisinalitas. sebuah musik pun begitu. sebuah foto pun. imaji bentuk, kelebat sapuan kuas, cahaya warna adalah sebuah peristiwa mimesis, yang diterjemahkan ke dalam sebuah bentuk lain tapi tetap masih mimetik. makanya bisa dikenali, bisa dinikmati, bisa dibeli.

orisinalitas adalah sebuah kebohongan dari sebuah ketakjujuran. sebuah ketidakadilan. sebuah mitos yang terlanjur percaya bahwa dia adalah realitas. sebuah tahyul.

budaya konsumer bukanlah budaya parodi, karena tidak ada yang sedang diketawai. sebuah parodi adalah sebuah srimulat atas "oedipus rex" bengkel teater. sebuah pastiche memakan parodi dan yang diparodi. budaya konsumer adalah budaya pastiche yang tidak melihat ada apa(apa) dengan ketawa, meski ketawa tuhan sekalipun. mcdonald's adalah sebuah pastiche rumah makan padang, bukan parodinya. orisinalitas budaya konsumer adalah konsumerismenya. orisinalitas budaya feodal adalah bakul jamunya. budaya konsumer adalah juga budaya produktif, budaya para produsen yang tidak lagi hanya memikirkan kepentingan para priyayi, para elit, para kepala suku, tapi kepentingan konsumen. mereka yang membeli karena punya duit untuk membeli, termasuk membeli dengan kredit. tidak membeli dengan sejarah silsilah, atau karat di
keris pusaka.

sebuah puisi digital bukanlah sebuah puisi sekali-cetak-tetap-begitu- selamanya seperti yang ada di koran atau buku. sebuah puisi digital bisa dibuat sama seperti yang di koran atau buku, tapi tidak hanya itu saja. sebuah puisi digital bisa dibuat menyalahi grammar membaca konvensional dengan manipulasi ukuran, jenis, dan warna font teks, dengan manipulasi visual lain memakai gambar atau bayangan teks tulisan yang ada, dengan manipulasi bunyi dan musik, atau ketiganya. karena sifat khas digital inilah maka puisi digital tidak bisa sekedar dibaca seperti membaca terjemahan kahlil gibran itu! sebuah lukisan kolase pun masih cukup sederhana kalau dibandingkan dengan sebuah puisi digital karena sebuah puisi digital bisa dibuat untuk bergerak semua elemennya di monitor komputer, tuan sejarawan yang terhormat. dan jangan menyangka bahwa puisi digital itu cuma yang bisa dibuat oleh power points saja. kegagapan teknologi semestinya membuat seseorang tidak sok pintar, apalagi patronising. kemana perginya kerendahan hati yang konon dimiliki oleh mereka yang hidup dalam dunia seni! sebagai sejarawan anda mungkin telah pernah melihat
perubahan-perubahan pada bentuk dan isi dari apa itu yang disebut sebagai sastra. kalau anda lupa, baiklah saya refresh memori anda. dulu ada pantun dengan bentuk persajakannya yang sangat ketat, seketat rumus fisika einstein malah! chairil anwar memperkenalkan bentuk sajak bebas dengan isi yang ternyata lebih menawan daripada yang sanggup ditawarkan amir hamzah. lalu rendra dengan blues untuk bonie memperpanjang nafas kalimat puisi indonesia. oleh si tukang mantra dari riau sana, apa yang sudah dikerjakan rendra itu dilibas
sampai tinggal cuman... pukimaknya saja! dari puing-puing amuk kucing
pukimak yang mengiau di kertas penuh sinar harapan keluar seorang sintong, seorang bocah ajaib yang seperti adam seneng banget menamai benda-benda domestik dengan nama-nama mereka sendiri, seolah-olah mereka itu tidak punya nama sebelumnya! genealogi puisi indonesia secara sintak bisa dilihat dari perspektif demikian. bisa juga dilihat dari medium publikasinya, majalah kecil, stensilan, koran, radio sampai internet. dan tentu saja, medium yang dipilih, walau tidak mesti, akan bisa mempengaruhi tampilan visual puisi yang
ditulis. ya, bapak, puisi itu masih tetap ditulis meski sebenarnya
diketik. mesin tik jugakan menghasilkan "tulisan" yang diketik, bukan? dan semuanya disebut "tulisan" walau tidak semuanya ditulis halus-kasar pakai pensil atau bolpoin. selama ada "tulisan" maka akan adalah puisi. yang penting adalah, sudah samakah pengertian kita akan makna "tulisan", bapak sejarawan sastra yang terhormat?