mamakk!!!

[pic source]

Farish A. Noor wrote:

The keris, she remarked, was a beautiful object: Graceful, elegant and curiously feminine. Yet I was not surprised. This was not the first time I heard the keris described as a feminine object; indeed many of my European friends had uttered similar remarks. Their observations were not unwarranted: Even to the seasoned eye of the keris lover, the keris is an object of beauty – and its discreet, unstated charm lay precisely in the fact that it was slender, willowy, almost vulnerable and rendered all the more dignified with the patina of time-worn antiquity.

The feminine Keris: Not a macho symbol.

To unsheath the keris was an affront to society, the keris and the keris-owner. It was an expression of crude, brutish masculinity that bordered on the uncivilised and bestial. Yet tell that today to those demagogues who brandish the keris in public as soon as a camera is pointed at them. By taking the keris out of the sheath and separating it from its feminine counterpart, the sarong, they have rendered the feminine secondary. Here lies the symbolic machismo of the act, and in this singular gesture a feminine object of reverence and beauty has been transformed into a masculine symbol of power, aggression and violence. This marks the first epistemic violation of the keris, though sadly there are many more…

The universal keris: Not a racial symbol.

Interesting post about the “keris”, a distinctive, asymmetrical dagger endemic to Malaysia and Indonesia.

Link