Abstract
This essay explores the mediation of modernity in Bali through wayang puppet theatre and political cartoons. The representational practices of puppeteer and political cartoonist provide revealing comparisons of 'traditional' and 'modern' forms of mediation. Through these agents of popular culture and local critical discourse, the paper traces the interface between the monologic aspects of globalization and modernity - the expansion of capital and the rhetoric of progress - and the heteroglossic and carnivalesque preferences of the two popular genres. In this context, it pursues a particularly Bakhtinian interest in the relationship between elite and mass cultures at a crossroad of globalizing cultural and political forces. At another level, the paper points to theoretical problems raised by these mediating traditions for the analytic practices of ethnography and cultural studies.
Published Version
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