In 2003 and 2005, Richard Fox published a pair of articles in which he argued that the practices of classical philology reify the text as a static repository of ideas and information, thus constituting textuality in a way that obscures indigenous understandings of what texts mean or do. He argued that much philological scholarship on ‘the Old Javanese text’ discursively excluded Balinese readings from what counted as valid commentary, even as these Old Javanese sources were understood as an index of contemporary Balinese religion;Footnote ¹ and that the same philological practices have continued to haunt the discipline.Footnote ² Building on these earlier ideas and developing them further, Fox's recent monograph, More than words: Transforming script, agency and collective life in Bali, focuses on the different uses and understandings of Balinese script to fundamentally challenge conventional understandings of the interlocking of text and cultural context, pointing instead to the irreducible complexity of textual and cultural practices. Fox's ground-breaking work has implications not only for the study of Bali, but for Southeast Asian Studies more broadly.

Fox begins his book with the observation that there are two rival conceptions of Balinese tradition—one that is aligned with the bureaucratic imperatives of the Indonesian state, and another that understands Balinese letters to be ‘alive’ and to possess a potency of their own. In light of this plurality of understandings of writing and tradition, chapter 2 argues that our received critical terminology of ‘practice’ as ‘grounded’ in a ‘way of life’ or ‘cultural formation’ cannot do justice to the actual complexity on the ground. Chapter 3 explores the notion that Balinese letters are ‘alive’, showing that they not only possess agency but are also able to participate in social relations, proving inadequate reductive notions of letters as cultural symbols or media for transmitting information. Returning to the issue of multiplicity, chapter 4 argues that the two conceptualisations of writing are, in fact, even more complex, criss-crossed by a wide array of often contradictory purposes. Chapter 5 then asks how a theory of practice could do justice to this complexity by comparing the approaches of two well-known theorists: Pierre Bourdieu and Alisdair MacIntyre. Critiquing the former as falling victim to an overdeterministic understanding of ‘social structure’ that cannot accommodate complexity, Fox argues that MacIntyre's teleological understanding of practice, and his recognition that culture can hold together competing ideals, is a more productive avenue for studying non-Western life-worlds. Chapter 6, in turn, points to ways in which Balinese controversies of the legitimate meanings and uses of script can provide nuance to MacIntyre's theory, which retains a residual essentialism. In the final chapter, Fox asks what the complexity of Balinese social life means for translation, problematising the understanding of translation as a ‘carrying across’ of meaning from one medium into another, which assumes a conduit between bounded social worlds. In his concluding remarks, Fox calls for a critical attitude toward received assumptions regarding the complexity of practices and ideals related to language and writing, and the often competing styles of reasoning of which they are a part.

The idea to convene an interdisciplinary group of Southeast Asianists to discuss the significance of Fox's book for their own work and the wider field began to take shape when Thomas Hunter brought together a group of scholars for a roundtable discussion on More than words at the AAS Annual Meeting of 2021. For this special section that is now being published, we were joined by several other scholars with an interest in the issues raised by Fox's work. Thomas Hunter's contribution reflects on the reductive tendencies of Old Javanese philology by addressing the erasure of Balinese commentary in the academic study of kakawin. Penny Edwards shows how Fox's analysis of the multiple meanings and uses of the Balinese script also pertains to Theravada Southeast Asia. Focusing again on Bali, Kaja McGowan reflects on this multiplicity by discussing the spiritual power of ‘attiring texts’ and ‘wearing letters’ that defy conventional categorisation into discrete religious traditions. Laurie Sears draws on her literary training in Sanskrit and Javanese to reflect on Fox's diagnosis of totalising presuppositions of conventional understandings of translation. Also focusing on Javanese, Verena Meyer asks what Fox's problematisation of translation means for processes of transliterating from one script into another. Moving once again to the Theravada mainland of Southeast Asia, Thomas Patton compares the life and agency of Balinese letters to examples from Burmese Buddhism. The forum is concluded by Fox's reflections on and responses to these essays.