The Tarob and the Sacred Oath. Liminal Spirits and Stories Creating Heterotopic Spaces in Dusun Culture

Martin Potter

doi:10.25120/etropic.16.1.2017.3569

Abstract

This article explores two stories told during the production of the transmedia documentary project Big Stories, Small Towns: Bongkud-Namaus in the Dusun villages of Bongkud and Namaus in Sabah, Malaysia. Both stories relate to hungry and sacred entities – an atomised, monstrous moon-eating spirit called the Tarob, and a sacred oath bound in blood, which eats anyone who breaks it. The article will introduce the Big Stories, Small Towns project, the process that underpins this project and the site of production in Sabah of one iteration of the Big Stories, Small Towns, before analysing heterotopic conceptions associated with aspects of folklore in the Southeast Asian region. Providing a theoretical framework that reflects upon a key text by Evans (1953) – an early translator of Dusun folklore for Western audiences – aspects of Dusun culture will be explored that illuminate details of the two case study stories. An historical and theoretical treatment of the stories will frame a fusion of transmedia and folklore in manifesting liminal beings to emergence. This fusion of transmedia and folklore facilitates representation and remediation of cultural identities, thus enabling a wider society – in this case Malaysian society – to develop a more nuanced cultural awareness of itself.

Highlights

I n this article I explore two stories told during the production of the transmedia documentary project Big Stories, Small Towns in the villages of BongkudNamaus in Sabah, Malaysia
The stories and folklores, their expression within everyday life and their remediation into new mediums of transmission, enable the potential amplification of what Reid (1997) describes as an “endangered identity” into an engaged, socio-cultural struggle. In applying this theoretical lens that is based in Lefebvrian concepts of heterotopia to Dusun culture, it is hoped that an alternate and agentive framework might be established
This framework is based in autogestion, emerging from the everyday cultural practices and stories of Dusun people, such as those observed in the Big Stories, Small Towns: Bongkud-Namaus project

Summary

Introduction

I n this article I explore two stories told during the production of the transmedia documentary project Big Stories, Small Towns in the villages (kampung) of BongkudNamaus in Sabah, Malaysia. With Evans’ text as a foundational document I will explore particular aspects of Dusun culture that will serve to illuminate details of the two stories produced within the Big Stories, Small Towns: Bongkud-Namaus project that eTropic 16.1 (2017): ‘Tropical Liminal: Urban Vampires & Other Bloodsucking Monstrosities’ Special Issue | 113 are case studies for this article. During the Big Stories residency in Bongkud village, numerous stories relating to the broader belief system and cosmography of the Dusun people were recounted to the filmmakers-inresidence. Two of these stories were defined by sacred and hungry entities. In the context of Kadazandusun culture, a key question must be how competing forms of self and society are repressed, or exploit opportunities in the liminal spaces that exist beyond Malaysian state and market-based practices

The moon eaters

The sacred oath that eats people

Findings

Conclusion