Wildman

Abstract

Wildman refers to a widespread image whose ontological status is unclear. We don't really know what wildmen are, whether or not they exist, or in what sense they could exist. Are they purely imaginary categories (as cultural anthropologists, historians and other practitioners of the humanities have usually supposed) or do they have a substantial grounding in empirical, or zoological, reality? What is their relation to beings that anthropologists usually call spirits, which have typically been conceived as the very opposite of the empirical? This is the abridged introductory lecture to the IIAS masterclass 'Images of the Wildman in Southeast Asia'.