Kebisuan Tuhan

“Pertarunganku adalah dengan kekristenan di dalam jiwaku sendiri.”

Rodrigues, dalam Silence

Sudah lama saya ingin menulis tentang novel Shusaku Endo, Silence.  Sebab novel itu, cerita tentang kakure kirishitan, orang-orang Kristen Katolik awal di Jepang abad ke-XVI dan XVII yang harus menyembunyikan identitas mereka, sebagai akibat penindasan oleh para penguasa, sudah berbicara banyak pada diri saya.

Saya menemukan novel itu pertama kali di East Lansing, hampir 18 tahun lalu. Saya lupa apakah di Gibson’s bookstore, atau Archieves.  Itu dua nama second hand bookstore yang sering saya kunjungi. Di antara tumpukan begitu banyak buku, Silence menggoda saya. Lebih karena nama penerjemahnya, William Johnston, SJ, seorang Yesuit yang terkenal dalam dialognya dengan tradisi Zen.

Sejak itu, Silence menjadi salah satu “buku rohani” saya. Sebab Endo telah berhasil merumuskan pergumulan yang selalu menghantui setiap orang yang masih mau tetap beriman di tengah “kebisuan Tuhan”. Bukankah lebih mudah menyimpulkan bahwa Tuhan memang tidak ada karena, buktinya, kejahatan kemanusiaan dapat berlangsung sementara Dia justru diam saja? Itu pilihan mudah dan sah-sah saja. Tetapi saya ingin memilih sebaliknya: bahwa justru di tengah kebisuan-Nya, saya masih ingin beriman pada-Nya!

Pada Silence, pilihan kedua itu tampil lewat suara Yesus yang didengar Rodrigues ketika ia dipaksa menginjak fumie sebagai tanda bahwa ia sudah mengingkari imannya.

“Injaklah! Injak! Aku lebih tahu daripada siapa pun tentang kepedihan di kakimu. Injaklah! Aku lahir ke dunia memang untuk diinjak-injak manusia. Untuk menanggung penderitaan manusialah aku memanggul salibku.”

Saya bersyukur, akhirnya Gramedia menerbitkan edisi terjemahan Silence. Membaca novel itu lagi dalam edisi Indonesianya tetap begitu menyentuh. Apalagi saya membacanya ketika menjalani masa pra-Paskah. Dan saya tahu, kali ini saya harus menulis mengenai Silence. Paskah lalu, KOMPAS memuat tulisan saya, dengan sedikit suntingan yang justru bisa mengecoh. Bila Anda mau, teks asli tulisan saya bisa diunduh di sini.

Selamat Paskah. Ketika kita masih mengimani dan memperjuangkan kehidupan, bukan menyerah pada kematian, walau di tengah kebisuan Tuhan, kita sedang diundang untuk masuk ke dalam misteri Paskah: transformasi dari kematian pada kehidupan, dari keputusasaan pada harapan. Betapapun kecilnya harapan itu.

Sampah Para Caleg Kita…

Hari ini (16/3/09), menurut jadwal resmi KPU, dimulailah musim kampanye. Tetapi bagi para caleg (calon legislatif), musim kampanye sudah berlangsung lama. Apalagi sistem Pemilu kali ini berbeda total dengan sistem sebelumnya. Setiap caleg harus bertarung habis-habisan agar bisa dilirik masyarakat. Maklum, sekarang berlaku sistem suara terbanyak..

Maka mungkin ada baiknya mengikuti “kreativitas” para caleg dalam memasarkan diri lewat banner, stiker, spanduk, dll. Sudah pasti, tindakan mereka sering hanya merusak lingkungan, dan akan meninggalkan sampah bertumpuk. Meminta mereka bertanggungjawab atas sampah itu? Capeeee dehhhh.

Newsletter Lantan Bentala (bisa diunduh di sini) kali ini mengajak Anda merenungkan tingkah laku para caleg. Kebetulan ada teman-teman yang sudah berinisiatif mengumpulkan foto-foto dokumentasinya (tautannya di http://janganbikinmalu2009.com/web/galeri.php), sehingga bisa menjadi bahan kajian atau renungan kita semua: Apakah kita benar-benar sudah masuk “zaman edan”?

Selamat membaca. Bersyukurlah tertawa belum dilarang…

(dipetik dari e-newsletter Lantan Bentala, asuhan Evelyn Suleeman)

Menyeberangi Batas-Batas

Seorang teman meminta saya menulis pengalaman belajar dari tradisi pesantren yang sering saya kunjungi, dan merefleksikannya di dalam cara saya memahami masalah pluralisme. Saya menulis esei yang saya anggap sangat personal, dan diterbitkan dalam www.pondokpesantren.net tanggal 26 Februari lalu. Kutipannya:

ESEI ini merupakan catatan personal. Atau bahkan terlalu personal, sehingga saya sering berpikir apakah memang layak dipublikasikan. Akan tetapi, setidaknya saya sendiri percaya, apa yang sering diistilahkan sebagai ‘dialog antar-iman’ atau ‘pluralisme’—kata-kata yang sering menimbulkan, sengaja atau tidak, kesalahpahaman—sesungguhnya berangkat dari, dan merupakan cermin, pengalaman personal.

Saya lupa siapa yang pernah merumuskannya, bahwa dialog antar-iman tidak lain dari pengembangan suatu ‘percakapan di antara sahabat’. Memang ada semacam lingkaran tautologis di situ. Bukankah semangat dialog diandaikan sebagai titik awal membangun persahabatan? Tetapi, pada saat bersamaan, suatu dialog yang genuine, sungguh-sungguh, dan saling menghargai juga mengandaikan adanya relasi saling mempercayai—suatu persahabatan.

Pengalaman saya sendiri selama lebih dari sepuluh tahun merawat dan mengembangkan dialog antar-iman lewat MADIA (Masyarakat Dialog Antar Agama) makin menyadarkan saya tentang lingkaran tautologis itu. Dialog merupakan pertaruhan untuk membangun jalinan antar-individu atau kelompok, namun pada saat bersamaan mengandaikan keterbukaan awal yang dimulai dari perjumpaan-perjumpaan pada tataran personal. Tanpa kehendak baik itu, batas-batas antar-kelompok sungguh menjadi batas yang memisahkan. Apalagi jika pertaruhan itu menyangkut soal yang ultim: tradisi keyakinan dan keagamaan yang selama ini dihidupi seseorang atau suatu kelompok.

Esei ini mau mengelaborasi soal itu, dengan berangkat dari pengalaman personal, guna mencari model-model pluralisme yang lebih membumi. Karena dalam pertautan antar-kelompok itulah terletak nasib pertaruhan masyarakat multikultural kita, yakni Indonesia sebagai ‘rumah bersama’.

Jika tertarik membaca esei itu secara keseluruhan, silakan diunduh di sini. Semoga berguna

Hantu itu bernama kekerasan…

“A spectre is haunting Indonesia… the spectre of Violence.” Saya yakin, seandainya Karl Marx hidup di Indonesia sekarang, maka kalimat pembukaan The Communist Manifeto-nya yang sangat mahsyur akan dibuka dengan kalimat itu.

Pasca runtuhnya Orde Baru acap membuat kita terperangah. Tiba-tiba kita saar betapa ilusifnya “ke(ny)amanan” harmoni yang selama ini berhasil dijaga baik oleh Soeharto dan para jenderalnya. Sementara di arus bawah, proses-proses kekerasan terus berlangsung. Juga trauma kekerasan ketika setengah sampai dua juta orang (simpatisan) PKI dibantai. Itu semua rapi tersimpan di bawah permukaan serba tenteram yang dijaga oleh pertumbuhan fantastis ekonomi, pameran kekayaan OKB (orang kaya baru), maupun stabilitas Pancasila.

Lalu, Mei 1998, semuanya runtuh. Tiba-tiba bangsa Indonesia tidak lagi ramah. Malah begitu ganas. Begitu purba. Begitu tak beradab. Anda masih ingat foto yang sempat beredar dari konflik di Sambas, Kalimantan, ketika kepala orang-orang yang dipenggal dijejer di pinggir jalan? Atau foto konflik di Maluku yang sering dipakai untuk memanas-manasi salah satu kelompok yang bertikai? Atau foto dari Dili, Timtim, yang menampakkan tubuh tergeletak bersimbah darah di jalanan, sementara tentara bergerombol dan, mungkin, tertawa-tawa? Atau foto tubuh-tubuh orang miskin kota yang hangus akibat Jakarta yang membara pada Mei 1998? dstnya, dstnya.

Richard Lloyd Parry, koresponden The Times (London) mengikuti bagaimana monster kekerasan itu mulai tumbuh (bersama dengan penghancuran markas PDI-P di jl Diponegoro), membesar, menghancurkan, dan meneror siapa saja yang ada di dekatnya. Termasuk Parry yang, ketika kekerasan pecah di Dili pasca jajak pendapat, mengaku harus lari menyelamatkan diri, lalu menanggung trauma dan malu begitu lama.

Buku In Time of Madness yang ditulis Parry adalah proses terapeutis bagi traumanya. Ditulis dengan gaya bahasa ala realisme magis, genre yang lahir di benua Amerika Latin (benua yang juga dipenuhi hantu sejarah!), membaca buku ini membuat saya merenung panjang tentang proyek “menjadi Indonesia” kita yang berdarah-darah. (Saya menulis kesan-kesan saya di sini. Silakan diunduh, jika Anda merasa berguna.)  Jangan-jangan Parry benar, ketika ia mengatakan bahwa Indonesia dibangun di atas “lubang kelam sejarah”, yakni pembantaian PKI dan teror yang diciptakannya. Ke dalam lubang itulah tubuh-tubuh yang dibantai dibuang.

Lubang itu kini terbuka, bersamaan dengan proses demokra(tisa)si yang serba carut marut. Dan, sungguh, bau busuknya membuat kita pengap.  Juga hantu-hantunya memambangi perjalanan sejarah kita. Entah sampai kapan.

Eka Darmaputera In Memoriam

Salah seorang tokoh dan pemikir Protestantisme di Indonesia yang paling saya kagumi dan paling mempengaruhi pandangan saya, khususnya dalam persoalan Pancasila, adalah alm. Pdt. Eka Darmaputera, PhD. (1942 -2005). Berulang kali kami mendiskusikan pandangannya, terutama keyakinannya yang tak pernah goyah bahwa Pancasila merupakan “jalan pengelolaan kemajemukan terbaik” untuk Indonesia.

Kadang saya merasa dia terlalu naif. Bagi saya agaknya jelas, lewat pengalaman lebih dari tiga dekade pemerintahan otoriter Orde Baru, bahwa Pancasila merupakan “senjata ideologis” yang berbahaya. Dan ketika Soeharto tumbang, sepertinya kita semua enggan menengoknya lagi. Tetapi Eka mengingatkan saya, hanya soal waktu saja sebelum kita semua kembali merasakan kebutuhan bagi Pancasila. Masa-masa pasca-Mei 1998 merupakan–dalam istilahnya–masa “purifikasi Pancasila yang memang harus dijalani, sebelum ditemukan kembali.”

Agaknya Eka benar. Tilikan profetisnya memperlihatkan hanya kurang dari satu dekade kita kembali bergairah untuk “menggali Pancasila” (judul tulisan Goenawan Mohammad di TEMPO). Apalagi ketika kontroversi Ahmadiyah, kasus Lia Eden, RUU APP (sekarang UU Pornografi), Tragedi Monas, dan rentetan penutupan gedung gereja, membuat kita kembali–mau tidak mau, suka tidak suka–menengok Pancasila.

Karena itu saya kembali teringat pada Eka dan warisannya. Saya menulis teks ini, mulanya sebagai bahan diskusi dalam Seminar mengenang Eka tahun 2005 lalu. Baru beberapa waktu lalu, Jurnal PENUNTUN milik Sinode GKI Jabar memuat tulisan tersebut (silakan diunduh di sini). Saya memang berbicara “pasca-Eka”. Dengan itu saya mau membaca ulang secara kritis warisannya, sembari meneroka untuk mencari jalan guna melangkauinya. Tetapi, agaknya, kita masih bergerak di dalam horison yang disibakkannya.

Semoga berguna!

Di Seberang Senja…

Ini tulisan lama yang pernah saya posting di tempat lain. Saya menulisnya ketika ayah menyelesaikan peziarahannya di dunia ini, dan mencapai Sang Misteri yang tak terpermanai. Sengaja saya taruh di sini, sebagai penanda bahwa kita masih berjalan, menyusuri kelak-kelok kehidupan yang serba misterius, menjalani dari satu ambang batas ke ambang batas berikutnya…

===

Di seberang senja…

Dulu Chairil Anwar pernah berujar dalam salah satu sajaknya, “Hidup adalah menunda kekalahan…” Mungkin dia benar, jika dilihat dari sudut pandang kematian. Bukankah sang Maut selalu menanti di ujung perjalanan hidup? Dan kita semua tidak pernah dapat mengelakkannya–apalagi mengalahkannya?

Hari-hari terakhir ayah saya menceritakan hal lain. Hidup baginya bukan menunda kekalahan, tetapi menunda saat agar dia, pada titik terakhir, dapat berkata, seperti Yesus di ujung hidupnya, “Sudah genap!” Pegalaman menemani saat-saat terakhir kehidupannya sungguh bermakna bagi saya. Ijinkan saya membaginya pada Anda. Siapa tahu bisa berguna.

Ayah menghabiskan sisa-sisa terakhir hidupnya di Panti Werdha Kristen “Hana”, di daerah Kedaung, Ciputat. Itu memang pilihannya sendiri, setelah tahu betapa sulit jika dia tinggal entah bersama saya atau kakak saya. Perbedaan generasi yang sangat jauh, terutama dengan anak-anak kami, terbukti sangat sulit dijembatani, dan banyak menimbulkan salah paham yang menyakitkan. Suatu waktu, kami menyarankan tempat di PWK “Hana” padanya. Dengan seketika ia menyukai tempat itu. Di sana, selain perawat yang selalu siap sedia setiap saat, dia dapat bertemu dan ngobrol tentang masa lalu bersama orang-orang yang seusia dengannya. Dan itulah yang sangat dibutuhkannya: orang yang tidak hanya mau mendengar kisahnya, tetapi juga ikut serta dalam banyak peristiwa di masa lampau yang ia alami. Sejak saat itu dia tidak lagi mau pulang ke rumah kami, sebab dia telah menemukan komunitasnya dan, serentak dengan itu pula, “dunia” yang pernah ia kenal sebelumnya.

Akhir Februari lalu, ayah jatuh tergelincir. Pangkal pahanya retak. Kami berkonsultasi dengan dokter, apakah dia perlu dioperasi. Dokter menyarankan tidak. Usianya sudah terlalu lanjut, sehingga tindakan medis apapun–apalagi operasi!–tidak akan banyak membantu, bahkan dapat membahayakan jiwanya. Sejak itu ayah harus terbaring di ranjang, dan perlahan-lahan kondisi tubuhnya melemah. Awal Juli lalu kami harus membawanya ke RS Bintaro untuk mendapat transfusi darah, karena Hb-nya turun drastis. Sejak saat itu kami sadar, hari-hari akhir ayah sudah semakin dekat.

Dua minggu lalu ayah mengalami krisis. Nafasnya sesak, dan dia tidak mau makan. Dokter harus memasang selang bantu agar ia dapat makan. Ketika saya mengunjunginya, saya melihat tubuhnya yang dulu besar dan kekar (waktu saya kecil, ia sering menggendong saya) semakin keriput, hanya tersisa tulang belulang dan banyak luka di bagian belakang tubuhnya karena harus berbaring lama. Saya seperti melihat orang lain, bukan ayah yang pernah saya kenal. Tubuh itu sudah sedemikian rapuh, tergeletak tanpa daya dan tenaga di ranjang. Hati saya menjerit, “Tuhan, jika memang sudah saatnya, semoga itu semua berjalan tanpa harus melalui penderitaan yang panjang.” Saya berbisik padanya, bahwa semua anak dan cucunya akan berkumpul tanggal 6 Agustus nanti untuk berdoa baginya. Ia mengangguk lemah.

Hari Minggu, tanggal 6 Agustus, kami menepati janji. Kami semua–anak-anak, cucu, saudara, menantu, dan lainnya–berkumpul di ruang tempat ayah dirawat, membuat ibadah sederhana. Ayah hampir tidak lagi dapat mengenali kami semua. Ia bahkan tidak lagi mampu ikut menyanyikan lagu gereja yang sangat disukainya. Pandangannya menerawang jauh, seakan-akan melihat dunia di seberang sana. Selesai berdoa, saya berbisik padanya: “Ayah, jika saatnya sudah tiba, pergilah dalam damai. Pergilah, karena ayah nanti akan bertemu kembali dengan Ibu dan Sri Ekawati. Kami semua sudah siap dan merelakan ayah kembali pada Tuhan.” Saya melihat matanya basah. Mungkin ia menangis. Mungkin cuma karena keringatnya saja.

Senin sore, 7 Agustus, tepat 24 jam setelah ibadah itu, ayah tertidur lelap dan tidak bangun lagi. Ia sudah pergi, menjalani perjalanan lain menuju Penciptanya–perjalanan yang masih dan akan selalu menjadi misteri bagi kita, manusia yang terikat ruang dan waktu ini.

Saya yakin, ayah hanya menantikan saat-saat terakhir itu: ibadah yang menandai kerelaan kami, anak-anaknya, untuk membiarkan ia pergi mengarungi perjalanan baru menuju Penciptanya. Saya tidak tahu persis apakah dia akan bertemu lagi isterinya dan Sri Ekawati, kakak perempuan saya–dua orang yang sangat dicintainya, yang sudah lama mendahului dia–di dunia di seberang sana yang selalu merupakan misteri bagi kita. Mungkin memang begitu. Mungkin juga tidak. Sesungguhnya tidak ada satu orang pun yang tahu pasti. Tetapi gagasan bahwa ada pertemuan kembali di dunia seberang sana–the world beyond the sunset, kata sebuah syair lagu gerejawi–bisa menjadi sumber penghiburan yang sangat dibutuhkan, agar kematian–dan karenanya juga: kehidupan!– tidak lagi absurd. Agar kehidupan tidak lagi sekadar “menunda kekalahan”. Konon, karena alasan yang sama, kata Nietzsche, orang Yunani membuat “Tragedi”.

Yang jelas, saat-saat terakhir hidup ayah bukanlah “menunda kekalahan”, tetapi suatu penundaan sesaat agar dia dapat berkata, di ujung hidupnya, “Sudah genap!”

Selamat jalan, ayah. Semoga, suatu waktu, kita berjumpa lagi di dunia “di seberang senja”.

Jakarta, 11 Agustus 2006

Balada Sang Babi

Cerita di bawah ini pernah saya posting dulu di milis. Entah kenapa, balada sang babi selalu kembali terbayang. Mungkin karena saya memang si Obelix…he he he.

Silakan dinikmati. Komentar ditunggu.

==

Ini cerita tentang seekor babi. Sudah lama dia resah sekali, karena di daerahnya akan diterapkan Syariat Islam. Padahal, di kalangan binatang, dia adalah satu-satunya non-Muslim.

Ketika Idul Adha kemaren, sang babi berteriak senang. Dia meledek kambing, yang pasrah menerima nasib, begini: “Syukur, loe, pake syariat segala!”

Tapi kesenangannya cuma sehari. Esoknya, si empunya babi yang beragama Kristen dan orang Batak, mau menyembelih dia. Katanya mau untuk lapo yang dibuka olehnya di jalan Pramuka. Kata sang babi, “Dua agama ini emang cilaka!”

Maka pergilah dia meminta bantuan advokasi antar-agama. Datanglah dia ke Obelix, Direktur lembaga antar-iman, meminta nasihat. Jawab Obelix, “Lha, kamu ini makanan saya…”

Sang babi lari pontang-panting. Kemana lagi harus mengadu? Ia ingat Sang Buddha yang penuh welas asih. Kebetulan, minggu lalu, dia baru selesai membaca komik Buddha (8 jilid) terbitan KPG.

Di depan Sang Buddha, babi itu tersungkur, sembari mengadu, “Wahai Buddha yang penuh welas asih, dengarkanlah keluhanku. Aku tahu kamu nggak makan daging, apalagi daging babi. Jadi, bantulah aku, bikinlah tim advokasi para babi untuk membelaku dari dua agama lain yang suka menyembelih itu.”

Buddha tersenyum, lalu menjawab, “Babi yang malang, tidakkah kau sadar bahwa seluruh alam semesta ini saling berkaitan? Bahwa setiap makhluk hidup memang saling membutuhkan? Engkau memang ada dalam lingkaran kehidupan sebagai daging yang paling enak untuk disantap manusia. Sadarilah perananmu, dan terimalah dengan suka cita, maka engkau akan mencapai pencerahan, dan tidak lagi takut dikejar-kejar bayangan maut.” (KALIMAT BUDDHA INI DISARIKAN DARI 8 JILID KOMIK BUDDHA YANG DITERBITKAN KPG)

Maka seketika itu pula sang Babi mencapai pencerahan. Dia kembali ke tempat Obelix sembari berkata, “Karena kamu yang bisa hidup antar-iman, kuserahkan diriku untuk makananmu.”

Obelix tertawa riang. Katanya ke sang babi, “Pergilah pulang ke tempat tuanmu. Minta dia membuat babi panggang dan saksang yang enak. Nanti siang aku akan datang menyantapmu. “

Hidup memang lingkaran, bukan?

OBELIX

Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium

Seorang teman mengirimkan teks langka, dari dialog dengan Deleuze dan Guattari tentang sifat delirium Kapitalisme yang sangat spesial. Berhubung teks ini TIDAK memiliki copyright (kita semua copyleft, bung!), maka saya meletakkannya dalam blog ini agar Anda, siapapun Anda, dapat memakainya. Selamat membaca:

Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari – Capitalism: A Very Special Delirium

<!– @page { size: 8.27in 11.69in; margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>

QUESTION: When you describe capitalism, you say: “There isn’t the slightest operation, the slightest industrial or financial mechanism that does not reveal the dementia of the capitalist machine and the pathological character of its rationality (not at all a false rationality, but a true rationality of *this* pathology, of *this madness*, for the machine does work, be sure of it). There is no danger of this machine going mad, it has been mad from the beginning and that’s where its rationality comes from. Does this mean that after this “abnormal” society, or outside of it, there can be a “normal” society?

GILLES DELEUZE: We do not use the terms “normal” or “abnormal”. All societies are rational and irrational at the same time. They are perforce rational in their mechanisms, their cogs and wheels, their connecting systems, and even by the place they assign to the irrational. Yet all this presuposes codes or axioms which are not the products of chance, but which are not intrinsically rational either. It’s like theology: everything about it is rational if you accept sin, immaculate conception, incarnation. Reason is always a region cut out of the irrational — not sheltered from the irrational at all, but a region traveresed by the irrational and defined only by a certain type of relation between irrational factors. Underneath all reason lies delirium, drift. Everything is rational in capitalism, except capital or capitalism itself. The stock market is certainly rational; one can understand it, study it, the capitalists know how to use it, and yet it is completely delirious, it’s mad. It is in this sense that we say: the rational is always the rationality of an irrational. Something that hasn’t been adequately discussed about Marx’s *Capital* is the extent to which he is fascinated by capitalists mechanisms, precisely because the system is demented, yet works very well at the same time. So what is rational in a society? It is — the interests being defined in the framework of this society — the way people pursue those interests, their realisation. But down below, there are desires, investments of desire that cannot be confused with the investments of interest, and on which interests depend in their determination and distribution: an enormous flux, all kinds of libidinal-unconscious flows that make up the delirium of this society. The true story is the history of desire. A capitalist, or today’s technocrat, does not desire in the same way as a slave merchant or official of the ancient Chinese empire would. That people in a society desire repression, both for others and *for themselves*, that there are always people who want to bug others and who have the opportunity to do so, the “right” to do so, it is this that reveals the problem of a deep link between libidinal desire and the social domain. A “disinterested” love for the oppressive machine: Nietzsche said some beautiful things about this permanent triumph of slaves, on how the embittered, the depressed and the weak, impose their mode of life upon us all.

Q: So what is specific to capitalism in all this?

GD: Are delirium and interest, or rather desire and reason, distributed in a completely new, particularly “abnormal” way in capitalism? I believe so. Capital, or money, is at such a level of insanity that psychiatry has but one clinical equivalent: the terminal stage. It is too complicated to describe here, but one detail should be mentioned. In other societies, there is exploitation, there are also scandals and secrets, but that is part of the “code”, there are even explicitly secret codes. With capitalism, it is very different: nothing is secret, at least in principle and according to the code (this is why capitalism is “democratic” and can “publicize” itself, even in a juridical sense). And yet nothing is admissable. Legality itself is inadmissable. By contrast to other societies, it is a regime born of the public *and* the admissable. A very special delirium inherent to the regime of money. Take what are called scandals today: newspapers talk a lot about them, some people pretend to defend themselves, others go on the attack, yet it would be hard to find anything illegal in terms of the capitalist regime. The prime minister’s tax returns, real estate deals, pressure groups, and more generally the economical and financial mechanisms of capital — in sum, everything is legal, except for little blunders, what is more, everything is public, yet nothing is admissable. If the left was “reasonable,” it would content itself with vulgarizing economic and financial mechanisms. There’s no need to publicize what is private, just make sure that what is already public is beeing admitted publicly. One would find oneself in a state of dementia without equivalent in the hospitals.

Instead, one talks of “ideology”. But ideology has no importance whatsoever: what matters is not ideology, not even the “economico-ideological” distinction or opposition, but the *organisation of power*. Because organization of power– that is, the manner in which desire is already in the economic, in which libido invests the economic — haunts the exonomic and nourishes political forms of repression.

Q: So is ideology a trompe l’oeil?

GD: Not at all. To say “ideology is a trompe l’oeil, ” that’s still the traditional thesis. One puts the infrastructure on one side– the economic, the serious– and on the other, the superstructure, of which ideology is a part, thus rejecting the phenomena of desire in ideology. It’s a perfect way to ignore how desire works within the infrastructure, how it invests in it, how it takes part in it, how, in this respect, it organizes power and the repressive system. We do not say: ideology is a trompe l’oeil (or a concept that refers to certain illusions) We say: there is no ideology, it is an illusion. That’s why it suits orthodox Marxism and the Communist Party so well. Marxism has put so much emphasis on the theme of ideology to better conceal what was happening in the USSR: a new organization of repressive power. There is no ideology, there are only organizations of power once it is admitted that the organization of power is the unity of desire and the economic infrastructure. Take two examples. Education: in May 1968 the leftists lost a lot of time insisting that professors engage in public self-criticism as agents of bourgeois ideology. It’s stupid, and simply fuels the masochistic impulses of academics. The struggle against the competitive examination was abandoned for the benefit of the controversy, or the great anti-ideological public confession. In the meantime, the more conservative professors had no difficulty reorganizing their power. The problem of education is not an ideological problem, but a problem of the organization of power: it is the specificity of educational power that makes it appear to be an ideology, but it’s pure illusion. Power in the primary schools, that means something, it affects all children. Second example: Christianity. The church is perfectly pleased to be treated as an ideology. This can be argued; it feeds ecumenism. But Christianity has never been an ideology; it’s a very specific organization of power that has assumed diverse forms since the Roman Empire and the Middle Ages, and which was able to invent the idea of international power. It’s far more important than ideology.

FELIX GUATTARI: It’s the same thing in traditional political structures. One finds the old trick being played everywhere again and again: a big ideological debate in the general assembly and questions of organization reserved for special commissions. These questions appear secondary, determinded by political options. While on the contrary, the real problems are those of organization, never specified or rationalized, but projected afterwards in ideological terms. There the real divisions show up: a treatment of desire and power, of investments, of group Oedipus, of group “superegos”, of perverse phenomena, etc. And then political oppositions are bilt up: the individual takes such a position against another one, because in the scheme of organization of power, he has already chosen and hates his adversary.

Q: Your analysis is convincing in the case of the Soviet Union and of capitalism. But in the particulars? If all ideological oppositions mask, by definition, the conflicts of desire, how would you analyze, for example, the divergences of three Trotskyite groupuscules? Of what conflict of desire can this be the result? Despite the political quarrels, each group seems to fulfill the same function vis-a-vis its militants: a reassuring hierarchy, the reconstitution of a small social milieu, a final explanation of the world…. I dont’t see the difference.

FG: Because any resemblance to existing groups is merely fortuitous, one can well imagine one of these groups defining itself first by its fidelity to hardened positions of the communist left after the creation of the Third International. It’s a whole axiomatics, down to the phonological level — the way of articulating certain words, the gesture that accompanies them — and then the structures of organization, the conception of what sort of relationships to maintain with the allies, the centrists, the adversaries…. This may correspond to a certain figure of Oedipalization, a reassuring, intangible universe like that of the obsessive who loses his sense of security if one shifts the position of a single, familar object. It’s a question of reaching, through this kind of identification with recurrent figures and images, a certain type of efficiency that characterized Stalinism–except for its ideology, prescisely. In other respects, one keeps the general framework of the method, but adapts oneself to it very carefully: “The enemy is the same, comrades, but the conditions have changed.” Then one has a more open groupuscule. It’s a compromise: one has crossed out the first image, whilst maintaining it, and injected other notions. One multiplies meetings and training sessions, but also the external interventions. For the desiring will, there is — as Zazie says– a certain way of bugging students and militants, among others.

In the final analysis, all these groupuscules say basically the same thing. But they are radically opposed in their *style*: the definition of the leader, of propaganda, a conception of discipline, loyality, modesty, and the asceticism of the militant. How does one account for these polarities without rummaging in the economy of desire of the social machine? >From anarchists to Maoists the spread is very wide, politically as much as analytically. Without even considering the mass of people, outside the limited range of the groupuscules, who do not quite know how to distinguish between the leftist elan, the appeal of union action, revolt, hesitation of indifference…

One must explain the role of these machines.. these goupuscules and their work of stacking and sifting–in cr*shing desire. It’s a dilemma: to be broken by the social system of to be integrated in the pre-established structure of these little churches. In a way, May 1968 was an astonishing revelation. The desiring power became so accelerated that it broke up the groupuscules. These later pulled themselves together; they participated in the reordering business with the other repressive forces, the CGT [Communist worker's union], the PC, the CRS [riot police]. I don’t say this to be provocative. Of course, the militants courageously fought the police. But if one leaves the sphere of struggle to consider the function of desire, one must recognize that certain groupuscules approached the youth in a spirit of repression: to contain liberated desire in order to re-channel it.

Q: What is liverated desire? I certainly see how this can be translated at the level of an individual or small group: an artistic creation, or breaking windows, bnurning things, or even simply an orgy or letting things go to hell through laziness or vegetating. But then what? What could a collectively liberated desire be at the level of a social group? And what does this signify in relation to t”the totality of society”, if you do not reject this term as Michel Foucault does.

FG: We have taken desire in one of its most critical, most acute stages: that of the schizophrenic–and the schizo that can produce something within or beyond the scope of the confined schizo, battered down with drugs and social repression. It appears to us that certain schizophrenics directly express a free deciphering of desire. But now does one conceive a collective form of the economy of desire? Certainly not at the local level. I would have a lot of difficulty imagining a small, liberated community maintaining itself against the flows of a repressive society, like the addition of individuals emancipated one by one. If, on the contrary, desire constitutes the very texture of society in its entirety, including in its mechanisms of reproduction, a movement of liberation can “crystallize” in the whole of society. In May 1968, from the first sparks to local clashes, the shake-up was brutally transmitted to the whole of society, ing some groups that had nothing remotely to do with the revolutionary movement–doctors, lawyers, grocers. Yet it was vested interests that carried the day, but only after a month of burning. We are moving toward explosions of this type, yet more profound.

Q: Might there have already been a vigorous and durable liberation of desire in hostpry, apart from brief periods. a celebration, cartnage, war, opr revolutionary upheavals? Or do you really believe in an end of history. after millenia of alienation, social evolution will suddenly turn around in a final revolution that will liberate desire forever?

FG: Neither the one nor the other. Neither a final end to history, nor provisional excess. All civilizations, all periods have known ends of history–this is not necessarily convincing and not necessarily liberating. As for excewss, or moments of celebration, this is no more reassuring. There are militant revolutionaries who feel a sense of responsibility and say: Yes excess “at the first stage of revolution,” serious things… Or desire is not liberated in simple moments of celebration. See the discussion between Victor and Foucault in the issue of *Les Temps Modernes* on the Maoists. Victor consents to excess, but at the “first stage”. As for the rest, as for the real thing, Vicotr calls for a new apparatus of state, new norms, a popular justice with a tribunal, a legal process external to the masses, a third party capable of resolving contradictions among the masses. One always finds the old schema: the detachment of a pseude-avant-garde capable of bringing about syntheses, of forming a party as an embryo of state apparatus, of drawing out a well brought up, well educated working class; and the rest is a residue, a lumpen-proletariat one should always mistrust (the same old condemnation of desire). But these distinctions themselves are another way of trapping desire for the advantage of a bureaucratic caste. Foucault reacts by denounding the third party, saying that if there is popular justice, it does not issue from a tribunal. He shows very well that the distinction “avant-garde-lumpen-proletariat” is first of all a distinction introduced by the bourgeoise to the masses, and therefore serves to crush the phenomena of desire, to *marginalize* desire. The whole question is that of state apparatus. It would be strange to rely on a party or state apparatus for the liberation of desire. To want better justice is like wanting better judges, better cops, better bosses, a cleaner France, etc. And then we are told: how would you unify isolated struggles without a party? How do you make the machine work without a state apparatus? It is evident that a revolution requires a war machine, out this is not a state apparatus, it is also certain that it requires an instance of analysis, an analysis of the desires of the masses, yet this is not an apparatus external to the synthesis. Liberated desire means that desire escapes the impasse of private fantasy: it is not a question of adapting it, socializing it, disciplining it, but of plugging it in in such a way that its process not be interrupted in the social body, and that its expression be collective. What counts is not hte authoritarian unification, but rather a sort of infinite spreading: desire in the schools, the factories, the neighborhoods, the nursery schools, the prisons, etc. It is not a question of directing, of tatalizing, but of plugging into the same plan of oscillation. As long as one alternates between the impotent spontaneity of anarchy and the bureaucratic and hierarchic coding of a party organization, there is no liberation of desire.

Q: In the beginning, was capitalism able to assume the social desires?

GD: Of course, capitalism was and remains a formidable desiring machine. The monary flux, the means of production, of manpower, of new markets, all that is the flow of desire. It’s enough to consider the sum of contingencies at the origin of capitalism to see to what degree it has been a crossroads of desires, and that its infrastructure, even its economy, was inseparable from the phenomnea of desire. And fascism too–one must say that it has “assumed the social desires”, including the desires of repression and death. People got hard-ons for Hitler, for the beautiful fascist machine. But if your question means: was capitalism revolutionary in its beginnings, has the industrial revolution ever coincided with a social revolution? No, I don’t thing so. Capitalism has been tied from its birth to a savage repressiveness; it had it’s organization of power and its state apparatus from the start. Did capitalism imply a dissolution of the previous social codes and powers? Certainly. But it had alread established its wheels of power, including its power of state, in the fissures of previous regimes. It is always like that: things are not so progressive; even before a social formation is established, its instruments of exploitation and repression are already there, still turning in the vaccuum, but ready to work at full capacity. The first capitalists are like waiting birds of prey. They wait for their meeting with the worker, the one who drops through the cracks of the preceding system. It is even, in every sense, what one calls primitive accumulation.

Q: On the contrary, I think that the rising bourgoisie imagined and prepared its revolution throughout the Enlightment. From its point of view, it was a revolutionary class “to the bitter end”, since it had shaken up the *ancien regime* and swept into power. Whatever parallel movements took place amomng the peasantry and in the suburbs, the bourgeois revolution is a revolution made by the bopurgoiseie–the terms are hardly distinguishable–and to judge it in the name of 19th or 20th centurey socialist utopias introduces, by anachronism, a category that did not exist.

GD: Here again, what you say fits a certain Marxist schema. At one point in history, the bourgoisie was revolutionary, it was even necessary–necessary to pass thorugh a stage of capitalism, through a bourgois revolutionary stage. It’S a Stalinist point of view, but you can’t take that seriously. When a social formation exhausts itself, draining out of every gap, all sorts of things decode themselves, all sorts of uncontrolled flows start pouring out, like the peasant migrations in fudal Europe, the phenomenona of “deterritorialization.” The bourgoisie imposes a new code, both economic and political, so that one can believe it was a revolution. Not at all. Daniel Guerin has said some profound things about the revolution of 1789. The bourgoisie never had illusions about who its real enemy was. Its real enemy was not the previous system, but what escaped the previous systems’s control, and what the bourgoisie strove to master in its turn. It too owed its power to the ruin of the old system, but this power could only be exerciced insofar as it opposed everything else that was in rebellion against the old system. The bourgoiseie has never been revolutionary. It simply made sure others pulled of the revolution for it. It manipulated, channeled, and repressed an enormous surge of popular desire. The people were finally beaten down at Valmy.

Q: They were certainly beaten down at Verdun.

FG: Exactly. And that’s what interests us. Where do these eruptions, these uprisings, these enthusiasms come from that cannot be explained by a social rationality and that are diverted, captured by the power at the moment they are born? One cannot account for a revolutionary situation by a simple analysis of the interests of the time. In 1903 the Russian Social Democratic Party debated the alliances and organization of the proletariat, and the role of the avant-garde. While pretending to prepare for the revolution, it was suddenly shaken up by the events of 1095 and had to jump on board a moving train. There was a crystallization of desire on board a wide social scale created by a yet incomprehensible situation. Same thing in 1917. And there too, the politicians climbed on board a moving train, finally getting control of it. Yet no revolutionary tendency was able or willing to assume the need for a soviet-style organization that could permit the masses to take real charge of their interests and their desire. Instead, one put machines in circulation, so-called political organizations, that functioned on the model elaborated by Dimitrov at the Seventh International Congress–alternating between popular fronts and sectarian retractions–and that always led to the same repressive results. We saw it in 1936, in 1945, in 1968. By their very axiomatic, these mass machines refuse to liberate revolutionary energy. It is, in an underhanded way, a politics comparable to that of the President of the Republic or of the clergy, but with red flag in hand. And we think that this corresponds to a certain position vis-a-vis desire, a profound way of envisioning the ego, the individual, the family. This raises a simple dilemma: either one finds a new type of structure that finally moves toward the fusion of collective desire and revolutionary organization: or one continues on the present path and, going from repression to repression, heads for a new fascism that makes Hitler and Mussolini look like a joke.

Q: But then what is the nature of this profound, fundamental desire which one sees as beeing constitutive of man and social man, but which is constantly betrayed? Why does it always invest itself in antinomic machines of the dominant machine, and yet remain so similar to it? Could this mean that desire is condemned to a pure explosion without consequence or to perpetual betrayal? I have to insist: can there ever be, one fine day in history, a collective and during expression of liberated desire, and how?

GD: If one knew, one wouldn’t talk about it, one would do it. Anyway, Felx just said it: revolutionary organization must be that of the war machine and not of state apparatus, of an analyzer of desire and not an external systhesis. In every social system, there have always been lines of escape, and then also a rigidification to block off escape, or certainly (which is not the same thing) embryonic apparatuses that integrate them, that deflect or arrest them in a new system in preparation. The crusades should be analysed from this point of view. But in every respect, capitalism has a very particular character: its lines of escape are not just difficulties that arise, they are the conditions of its own operation. it is constituted by a generalized decoding of all flux, fluctuations of wealth, fluctuations of language, fluctuations of art, etc. It did not create any code, it has set up a sort of accountability, an axiomatic of decoded fluxes as the basis of its economy. It ligatures the points of escape and leaps itself having to seal new leaks at every limit. It doesn’t resolve any of its fundamental problems, it can’t even forsee the monetary increase in a country over a single year. It never stops crossing its own limits which keep reapperaing farther away. It puts itself in alarming situations with respect to its won production, its social life, its demographics, its borders with the Third World, its internal regions, etc. Its gaps are everwhere, forever giving rise to the displaced limits of capitalism. And doubtless, the revolutionary way out (the active escape of which Jackson spoke when he said: ” I don’t stop running, but while running, I look for weapons”) is not at all the same thing as other kinds of esacpe, the schizo-escape, the drug-escape. But it is certainly the problem of the marginalized: to plug all these lines of escape into a revolutionary plateau. In capitalism, then, these lines of escape take on a new character, a new type of revolutionary potential. You see, there is hope.

Q: You spoke just now of the crusades. For you, this is one of the first manifestations of collective shizohrenia in the West.

FG: This was, in fact, an extraordinary schizophrenic movement. Basically, in an already schismatic and troubled world, thousands and thousands of people got fed up with the life they led, makeshift preachers rose up, people deserted entire villages. It’s only later that the shocked papacy tried to give direction to the movement by leading it off to the Holy Land. A double advantage: to be rid of errant bands and to reinforce Christian outposts in the Near East thretened by the Turks. This didn’t always work: the Venetian Crusade wound up in Constantinople, the Childrens Crusade veered off toward the South of France and very quickly lost all sympathy: there were entire villages taken and burned by these “crosses” children, who the regular armies finally had to round up. They were killed or sold into slavery.

Q: Can one find parallels with contemporary movements: communities and by-roads to escape the factory and the office? NAd would there be any pope to co-opt them? A Jesus Revolution?

FG: A recuperation by Christianity is not inconceivable. It is, up to a certain point, a reality in the United States, but much less so in Europe or in France. But there is already a latent return to it in the form of a Naturist tendency, the idea that one can retire from production and reconstruct a little society at a remove, as if one were not branded and hemmed in by the capitalist system.

Q: What role can still be attributed to the church in a country like ours? The church was at the center of power in Western civilization until the 18th Century, the bond and structure of the social machine until the emergence of the nation-state. Today, deproved by the technocracy of this essential function, it seems to have gone adrift, without a point of anchorage, and to have split up. One can only wonder if the church, pressured by the currents of Catholic progressivism, might not become less confessional than certain political organizations.

FG: And ecumenism? In’t it a way of falling back on one’s feet? THe church has never been stronger. There us bi reasiob ti oppose church and technocracy, there is a technocracy of the church. Historically, Christianity and positivism have always been good partners. The development of positive sciences has a Christian motor. One cannot say that the psychiatrist has replaced the priest. Nor can one say the cop has replaced the priest. There is always a use for everyone in repression. What has aged about Christianity is its ideology, not its organization of power.

Q: Let’s get to this other aspect of yopur book: the critique of psychiatry. Can one say that France is already covered by the psychiatry of *Sectuer*–and how far does this influence spread?

FG: The structure of psychiatric hospitals essentially depends on the state and the psychiatrists are mere functionaries. For a long time the state was content to practice a politics of coercion and didn’t do anything for almost a century. One had to wait fot the Liberation for any signs of anxiety to appear: the first psychiatric revolution, the opening of the hospitals, the free services, instituional psychotherapy. All that has led to the great utopian politics of “Sectorization,” which consisted in limiting the number of internments and of sending teams of psychiatrists out into the population like missionaries in the bush. Due to lack of credit and will, the reform got bogged down: a few model services for official visits, and here or there a hospital in the most underdeveloped regions. We are now moving toward a major crisis, comparable in size to the university crisis, a disaster at all levels: facilities, training of personnel, therapy, etc.

The instituional charting of childhood is, on the contrary, undertaken with better results. In this case, the initiative has escaped the state framework and its financing to return to all sorts of associations–childhood protection or parental associations…. The establishments have proliferated, subsidized by Social Security. The child is immediately taken charge of by a network of psychologists, tagged at the age of three, and followed for life. One can expect to see solutions of this type for adult psychiatry. In the face of the present impasse, the state will try to de-nationalize institutions in favor of other institutions ruled by the law of 1901 and most certainly manipulated by political powers and reactionary family groups. We are moving toward a psychiatric surveillance of France, if the present scrises fail to liberate its revolutionary potentialities. Everywhere, the most conservative ideology is in bloom, a flat transposition of the concepts of Oedipalism. In the childrens’s wards, one calls the director “uncle,” the nurse, “mother.” I have even heard distinctions like the following: group games obey a maternal principle, the workshops, a paternal one. The psychiatry of *Secteur* semms progressive because it opens the hospital. But if this means imposing a grid over the neighborhood, we will soon regret the loss of the closed asylums of yesterday. It’s like psychoanalysis, it functions openly, so it is all the worse, much more dangerous as a repressive force.

GD: Here’s a case. A woman arrives at a consultation. She explains that she takes tranquilizers. She asks for a glass of water. Then she speaks: “You understand I have a certain amount of culture. I have studied, i love to read, and there you have it. Now I spend all my time crying. I can’t bear the subway. And the minute I read something, I start to cry. I watch television; I see images of Vietnam: I can’t stand it …” The doctor doesn’t say much. The woman continues: “I was in the Resistance… a bit. I was a go-between.” The doctor asks her to explain. “Well, yes, don’t you understand, doctor? I went to a cafe and I asked, for example, is there something for Rene?” I would be given a letter to pass on.” The doctor hears “Rene”; he wakes up: “Why do you say “Rene”? It’s the first time he asks a question. Up to that point, she was speaking about the metro, Hiroshima, Vietnam, of the effect all that had on her body, the need to cry about it. But the doctor only asks: “Wait, wait, ‘Rene’ … what dies ‘Rene’ mean to you?” Rene–someone who is reborn [re-n'e]? The Renaissance, this fits into a universal schema, the archetype: “You want to be reborn.” The doctor gets his bearings: at last he’s on track. And he gets her to talk about her mother and her father.

It’s an essential aspect of our book, and it’s very concrete. The psychiatrists and psychoanalysts have never paid any attentiaon to delirium. It’S enough just to listen to someone who is delirious: it’s the Russians that worry him, the Chinese; my mouth is dry; somebody buggered me in the metro; there are germs and spermatozoa swimming everywhere; it’s Franco’s fault, the Jews, the Maoists: all a delirium of the social field. Why shouldn’t this concern the sexuality of the subject–the relations it has with the Chinese, the whites, the blacks? Whith civilization, the crusades, the metro? Psychiatrists and psychoanalysts hear nothing of this, on the defensive as much as they are indefensible. They crush the contents of the unsoncious under prefab statements: “You speak to me of the Chinese, but what about your father? No, he isn’t Chinese? THen , do you have a Chinese lover?” It’s atz the same level of repressive work as the judge in the Angela Davis case who affirmed: “Her behavior can only be explained by her beeing in love.” ANd what if, on the contrary, Angela Davis’s libido was a social, revolutionary libido? What if she were in love because she was a revolutionary?

That is what we want to say to psychiatrists and psychoanalysts: yopu don’t know what delirium is; you haven’t understood anything. If our bnook has a meaning, it is that we have reached a stage where many people feel the psychoanalytif machine no longer works, where a whole generation is getting fed up with all-purpose schemas–oedipus and castration, imaginary and symbolic–which systematically efface the social, political, and cultural contents of any psychic disturbance.

Q: You associate schizophrenia with capitalism; it is the very foundation of your book. Are there cases of schizophrenia in other societies?

FG: Schizophrenia is indissocialble from the capitalist system, itself conceived as primary leakage (fuite): and exclusive malady. In other societies, escape and marginalization take on other aspects. The asocial individual of so-called primitive societies is not locked up. The prison and the asylum are resent notions. One chases him, he is exiled at the edge of the village and dies of it, unless he is integrated to a neighboring village. Besides, each system has its paricular sickness: the hysteric of so-called primitive societies, the manic-depressive paranoiacs of the great empires… The capitalist economy preoceeds by decoding and de-territorialization: it has its exterme cases, i.e., schzophrenics who decode and de-territorialize themselves to the limit; but also it has its extreme consequences–revolutionaries.

["Chaosophy", ed. Sylvere Lothringer, Autonomedia/Semiotexte 1995]

no copyright 2002 textz.com

Membaca Politik Identitas Keagamaan

Sudah lama, “politik identitas” meresahkan kita. Apalagi semenjak jatuhnya rezim otoriter Soeharto, yang kemudian membuka ruang-ruang ekspresi politik sangat luas. Di situ, jalinan identitas primordial–suku, agama, dan ras–menjadi pertaruhan yang, acap kali, diwarnai kekerasan. Sebagian kalangan malah sudah memberi prediksi apokaliptis: inilah tanda-tanda zaman tentang bangkrutnya konsep nation-state NKRI, dan Indonesia akan mengalami apa yang sering disebut “balkanisasi”.

Tetapi, pengalaman memperlihatkan, proses “balkanisasi” yang mengerikan itu tidak terjadi. Ada keliatan tersendiri yang masih mampu menjaga kesatuan negara kepulauan yang, memang, penuh ancaman jadi cerai berai ini. Pada pihak lain, nafsu politik identitas–khususnya yang berbaju agama–menjadi semakin kentara. Pertarungannya sungguh membuat kita sering merasa khawatir.

Apalagi pertarungan politik dalam tubuh Islam–agama yang dipeluk oleh mayoritas penduduk dan, karena itu, paling rentan dipakai sebagai basis penggalangan massa demi kepentingan perebutan kekuasaan. Gejolak akhir-akhir ini makin memperlihatkan bagaimana wajah Islam yang “warna-warni” (ingat iklan publik yang dulu dihebohkan?) mau diseragamkan, kalau perlu dengan memakai jalur kekerasan, dan menodai pesan damai yang justru menjadi saripati agama itu.

Tetapi sejak kapan, sesungguhnya, identitas keagamaan (dalam Islam) menjadi pertaruhan ultim di negara ini? Sulit mencari titik historis yang serba pasti. Kajian praktik-praktik keagamaan di negara ini masih jauh dari pertimbangan sosiologis-historis yang dapat memberi kita bahan-bahan memadai guna merefleksikannya.

Salah satu dari karya langka itu disediakan sejarawan beken Ricklefs lewat proyek ambisius tiga jilidnya yang mau menapaki alur-alur sejarah peng-Islam-an Nusantara sejak abad ke-XIV sampai sekarang. Dua jilid bukunya sudah terbit, tentang “sintesa mistik”, dan “polarisasi masyarakat Jawa”. Masih harus ditunggu jilid ketiga kajiannya yang akan menyentuh pertarungan kontemporer.

Saya membuat review atas buku kedua Ricklefs. Anda dapat mengunduhnya di sini. Teks tersebut merupakan versi ringkas dari bahan yang lebih luas, yang disajikan dalam diskusi di Utan Kayu beberapa waktu sebelumnya (jika tertarik, silakan diunduh). Ada anekdot dari buku itu yang paling memikat saya:

INI anekdot lucu yang diceritakan Ricklefs. Konon, pada
tahun 1870-an, ada seorang Bupati di Jawa yang sangat
mengagumi budaya, cara hidup, dan pendidikan Belanda,
sampai-sampai pernah berujar bahwa ia ingin hidup
seperti seorang Belanda. Padahal ia seorang Muslim. Ada
yang bertanya padanya, apakah itu berarti ia akan pindah
dan memeluk agama Kristen? “Ah,” jawabnya, “kalau
mau jujur, saya lebih suka memiliki empat orang isteri
dan satu Tuhan, ketimbang seorang istri dan tiga Tuhan.”

Membaca anekdot itu, membuat saya kembali bertanya-tanya: sejak kapan, sesungguhnya, identitas keagamaan menjadi pertaruhan ultim di negeri ini? Apalagi pada masyarakat Jawa yang kerap menyebut “agama” sebagai sekadar “baju” saja, bukan soal-soal doktriner yang membuat kepala pusing. Coba, mana yang lebih enak, percaya pada trinitas (dengan tiga pribadi-tapi-satu, yang kerap jadi perdebatan teologis) atau monoteis-tetapi-dapat-poligami? Dalam pertimbangan itu, sudah tentu, tidak ada urusan dengan apakah masuk sorga atau tidak…

Selamat merenung, sembari merayakan hari di mana kita kembali pada fitrah kita yang sesungguhnya! Mohon maaf lahir dan batin…..walau ucapan ini terasa klise.

Horison Ketakterbatasan

Nietzsche adalah sosok pemikir yang selalu menggoda untuk digumuli. Tetapi, sekaligus, sungguh menakutkan. Ia menggoda, sekaligus juga memperdaya. Berulang kali saya sengaja mengelak untuk memasuki pengembaraannya yang menembus hampir seluruh kemungkinan ambang batas pemikiran, keyakinan, atau bahkan petualangan.

Tetapi Seminar Agama-Agama (SAA) ke-XVII lalu memaksa saya untuk membaca Nietzsche, sekalipun dengan gemetar dan tertatih-tatih (teksnya bisa diunduh di sini). Sebab membaca Nietzsche berarti bersiap mengarungi petulangan, melayari segala kemungkinan “di dalam horison ketakterbatasan” yang diungkap dengan bagus dalam The Gay Science #124 ini:

Dalam horison ketakterbatasan.—Kita telah meninggalkan daratan dan sudah berangkat. Kita sudah membakar jembatan di belakang kita—malah, kita juga sudah menghanguskan daratan di belakang kita. Dan kini, kau kapal mungil, waspadalah! Samudera raya mengelilingimu: memang benar, dia tidak senantiasa mengaum, dan kadang-kadang dia tampak lembut seperti sutera, emas dan mimpi yang indah. Namun akan tiba waktunya, bila kau ingin tahu, bahwa dia itu tak terbatas, dan bahwa tidak ada yang lebih menakjubkan ketimbang yang tak terbatas. O burung yang malang yang merasa bebas dan kini menabrak dinding-dinding sarangnya! Ya, bila kau merasa rindu akan daratanmu yang seolah menawarkan kebebasan lebih banyak—dan tak ada ‘daratan’ lagi.

Esai yang saya tulis memang baru catatan-catatan awal. Suatu pencarian pintu(-pintu) masuk untuk membaca Nietzsche dan mengarungi pergulatannya. Saya akan melanjutkan pengembaraan itu lain kali.

Kali ini, selamat membaca!