Peirce among the Muslim saints' graves in Java

Abstract

This chapter introduces the philosophical pragmatism initiated by Charles Sanders Peirce and its approach to semiotics, the study of signs, starting from the axiom that “a conception … lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life.” Drawing on these resources, it looks at the popular veneration of Muslim saints’ graves in Java, Indonesia. Grave veneration is politically fraught, prompting aggressive criticism by religious purists, yet the practice is booming. To gain insight into the practices and resulting controversies, the chapter moves from the grave as a static material object, to the presence of the saint interred within it, and then to the words and performances that surround them, the genealogies linking saint to Prophet, and the clashes of semiotic ideologies and political conflicts they provoke. It concludes that the potential for conflict is inherent to semiosis (semiotic processes). Simultaneously realist and anti-foundationalist, pragmatism invites us to start as the fieldworker does – which is as anyone does – already in the midst of things.