A sarong for Clio: Essays on the intellectual and cultural history of Thailand--inspired by Craig J. Reynolds Edited by MAURIZIO PELEGGI Ithaca: Cornell Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2015. Pp. 208. Appendix. This edited volume is a fitting tribute to Craig J. Reynolds, who for over four decades has influenced the field of Thai studies as a scholar, teacher, and mentor. The introduction, penned by volume editor Maurizio Peleggi, offers a brief but revealing assessment of Reynolds's career arc and commentary on his scholarship. Peleggi describes Reynolds as a master of the 'hermeneutical essay' which reinterprets historical facts in an attempt to tease out possible alternate readings of past narratives. In this volume, an impressive assembly of scholars has used a similar approach, isolating variables within Reynolds's own scholarship and re-calculating them to extract different meanings or pursue new directions. One of Reynolds's most important contributions to the field lies in his ability to shed light on the relationship between the Thai intellectual tradition and the hegemonic nature of the state. This thoughtful and provocative collection of essays raises two important questions related to that crucial intersection of ideas. What role has historical writing played in establishing systems that regulate the proper exercise of power in Thai society? And what intellectual strategies have been deployed to challenge the established order? Many contributors focus on the subversive. Reynolds himself has written on the lives of dissidents and intellectual mavericks in order to understand the condition under which they acquired these labels. Several essays in A Sarong for Clio take up this theme, examining how acceptable practices become subversive as cultural and intellectual paradigms shift from traditional to modern. One example is Thongchai Winichakul's essay on the case of Mr Kulap, a discredited Thai historian whose name became synonymous with the practice of 'fabrication'. Reynolds's own work on Mr Kulap argued that he was ostracised for transgressing class boundaries, since he helped break the royal monopoly on both printing technology and the production of historical knowledge. Thongchai, however, recasts the infamous writer as a casualty of the transition from folk writing towards a new historiography based on empiricism. Mr Kulap was guilty of employing a hybrid methodology that blended both western models and the traditional use of legend and chronicle that other intellectual elites had already abandoned. Likewise, James Ockey's biographic analysis of the Thai politician Kru Cham illustrates how premodern strategies for individual empowerment lost their potency in the scientific age. Kru Cham's erratic behaviour cultivated the impression that he was 'mad', which generated enormous publicity and helped him win provincial elections. His constituents interpreted this madness as a form of 'possession' and thus believed it gave him power to challenge ruling authority. Once psychiatry became the acceptable means of explaining madness, however, Kru Cham was diagnosed as an unstable and irrational character, unsuited to political life. A final subversive figure from this volume is the exiled Prince Prisdang, the subject of Tamara Loos's research on the distinction between Buddhist 'life-writing' and modern autobiography. Having fallen from royal grace, the Prince used biography as a means to restore his place in history, rather than to enact a moral display of penitence. This violation of the code of life-writing explains why his work was banned from the acceptable canon of Thai literature. Other scholars demonstrate how royalist power has proved surprisingly nimble as it neutralises potential intellectual threats to its dominance. …
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Jan 10, 2020
Marcus Morgan 
