ABSTRACT
Western collections, however, contain only malanggan figures that are carved from wood as part of the three-phase ritual process that culminates in the death and decomposition of the artefacts. Instead of being left to rot, the ‘finished’ remains of ritual work can be sold to collectors or visitors to the island. The inseparable part that decomposition plays in ritual work has implications for how knowledge is conceived, owned and transmitted; this is because, in being rendered absent, objects come to form images that are possessed as mental resources or assets. Malanggan figures carved from wood, in fact, are significant from a religious and economic point of view, not because of their capacity for revelation, but because they can be ‘killed’ (luluk). The source of malanggan on Tabar island could not be further removed from that of the shell-money known as burut, and it is in this physical distance of their sources that the dynamic of malanggan resides.
