Chora of the River, Cosmic Body, and Sacred Reproduction: A Synthesis of Lacan, Kristeva, and Javanese Pengkon in an Ethnographic Study of Sand Labor at the Krasak River, Central Java, Indonesia

Authors

  • Apollo Accounting Department, Mercu Buana University, Jakarta, Indonesia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.38035/dijms.v7i6.7287

Keywords:

Chora, Javanese Cosmology, Sacred Labor, Lacanian Real, Ethnographic Phenomenology

Abstract

In global capitalism’s extractive machine, sand mining appears as repetitive, mute labor divorced from meaning. Yet along the volcanic banks of the Krasak River in Central Java, sand workers practice labor not as mechanical repetition, but as sacred choreography. This ethnographic study explores how embodied practices attuned to lunar calendars (pengkon), cosmological codes, and ancestral rhythms render sand mining a medium of sacred reproduction. Drawing on Julia Kristeva’s notion of chora, Jacques Lacan’s psychoanalytic register of the Real, and Javanese cosmology, the article proposes a theoretical synthesis where labor is not only symbolic but cosmological. Within this matrix, the river is not a resource, but a maternal force that disciplines, gives, and withdraws. The miner’s body is not only productive, but ritually affective: a rhythmical vessel of reproduction beyond capital. By engaging in reflective ethnography from June to September 2024, this study contributes to decolonial anthropology, spiritual labor studies, and environmental phenomenology. It proposes the concept of Embodied Sacred Reproduction as a framework that rethinks work beyond instrumentality, and offers an epistemic alternative rooted in Nusantara cosmology and metaphysical praxis

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Published

2026-08-25

How to Cite

Apollo, A. (2026). Chora of the River, Cosmic Body, and Sacred Reproduction: A Synthesis of Lacan, Kristeva, and Javanese Pengkon in an Ethnographic Study of Sand Labor at the Krasak River, Central Java, Indonesia. Dinasti International Journal of Management Science, 7(6), 1505–1514. https://doi.org/10.38035/dijms.v7i6.7287

Issue

Vol. 7 No. 6 (2026): Dinasti International Journal of Management Science (July - August 2026)

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Articles

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