Literary Reading and Epistemic Survival in the Pesantren: Integrating Indigenous Islamic Pedagogy into Decolonial Cultural Resilience

Abstrak

This conceptual study examines how reading practices associated with Javanese pesantren may inform a framework of decolonial cultural resilience. Scholarship has explored decolonial literary pedagogy, the politics of language, and the transmission of classical Islamic texts; however, these conversations are not always brought together to explain how culturally situated reading practices may support readers’ epistemic agency. Drawing on decolonial thought (Mignolo, 2009; Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 1986; Bradfield, 2024; Scott, 2026), cultural resilience (Clauss-Ehlers, 2008, 2010; Kumpfer, 2002), and scholarship on pesantren literacy (Dhofier, 1980; van Bruinessen, 1990; Faqziaty et al., 2021; Husniyah et al., 2026), the paper develops an interpretive framework linking epistemic recognition, situated meaning-making, and cultural continuity. It considers the study of kitab kuning, Pegon annotations, bandongan, and sorogan as related but distinct practices through which textual knowledge is mediated, interpreted, and transmitted. The paper uses “epistemic survival” as a provisional analytical term for sustaining the capacity to interpret and reproduce culturally grounded knowledge while remaining open to reflection and change. As a conceptual inquiry, it does not claim to demonstrate causal effects on readers. Instead, it proposes that pesantren literacy offers a productive context for thinking about decolonial reading as a potential resource for cultural resilience and for reconsidering how literary pedagogy recognizes plural ways of knowing.