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Journal of Material Culture
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The Secret Life of Sarongs

Manggarai Textiles as Super-Skins

Catherine Allerton

London School of Economics, UK

Studies of Indonesian textiles have predominantly focused on their symbolic and religious aspects, ignoring their everyday use as clothing. This article reveals the sensual, intimate life of Manggarai sarongs as everyday garments, a life that has remained a ‘secret’ in the academic literature. Sarongs, with their capacities to wrap, protect and hide, accentuate the properties of skin and can therefore be considered ‘super-skins’. As artefactual extensions of their wearer's body they absorb substances and intentions, offer comfort at times of upset or illness, and transmit social and emotional messages. As burial objects, sarongs index the close kinship performed in everyday acts of feeding, comforting and protecting. However, there is no single ‘social life’ or ‘career’ of a sarong. Instead, sarongs as super-skins have a range of possibilities of becoming, in connection with the varied fates and projects of human lives.

Key Words: clothing • eastern Indonesia • personhood • sarongs • the senses • skin

Journal of Material Culture, Vol. 12, No. 1, 22-46 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1359183507074560
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