On Paths from Angst to Redemption: Southeast-Asian Root Metaphors and Key Scenarios

The Javanese philosophy of Kejawen, translated loosely as 'worldview' promises, albeit not unproblematically, to be a meaningful paradigm in appropriating Southeast-Asian voices emerging from the shadows of modern forgetting.This is the type of forgetting which Connerton identifies as "constitutive in the formation of a new identity…providing a living space for new projects…not so much a retention of relatedness as rather a creation of relatedness between those who were previously unrelated" (Connerton 2011:36, 37).It needs to be re-appropriated and transmitted not just through the making of institutional memories but from the markings of the region's ancient past.If, as Ingold (2021) proposes, 'knowledge is forged through movements, through paths of life,' I trace these paths to look for answers as to why being alive is being thrown into a walog (Cebuano, that which is neither place nor non-place); a being-against specters of nothingness in the constitution of the colonial and postcolonial subjects in anthropological discourse.I question the darkness with which these post-this-life futures have been enshrouded.Were that veil lifted, one would glimpse at kamurawayan (Bikol, glory) aflame in indigenous souls; that light they are capable of.This aporia is explained by the context of places I have worked in, which I deem as excelente zona social (Taussig 2012): a human 'creation of nothingness' mirrored in projects