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Paper short abstract:

Indonesians describe the imitation of foreign cultural forms through the idiom of latah (a syndrome characterised by compulsive imitation following startle). This is leading to new ways of pathologising and experiencing both cultural transformation and neuropsychiatric difference.

Paper long abstract:

Latah is an ostensibly ‘culture-bound’ neuropsychiatric syndrome found across the Malay World. The classic form of latah that has preoccupied researchers to date involves a heightened startle response followed by compulsive imitation and/or a state of high suggestibility. Yet Indonesians also speak of a ‘second type of latah’ hitherto unacknowledged in the literature, in which the startle of novelty leads to the (allegedly) mindless and compulsive imitation of foreign cultural forms. This paper investigates what it is at stake in using the idiom of latah to comment on cultural transformations, and how such usage can influence attempts to mould or safeguard Indonesian futures.

For some Indonesians, the latah idiom grounds globalisation in such an inherently mimetic ethnopsychology that the only way to protect Indonesian culture is to shelter its population from foreign startle. Others use hypnosis to propagate Islamic forms of latah as a prophylactic against the imitation of immoral foreignness. The paper thus shows the navigation, evaluation and affective experience of cultural transformation to be significantly mediated by ethnopsychologies of imitation and the neuropsychiatric ecologies that give rise to them. At the same time, however, the use of the idiom of latah to comment on globalisation is changing attitudes towards ‘classic latah’ sufferers, who are increasingly viewed as themselves ‘following a trend’ and subjected to treatment regimes that seek to interrupt that behavioural pathway. The pathologisation of globalisation is thus leading to new ways of pathologising – and experiencing – neuropsychiatric difference.