KATO IN MINANG’S THOUGHT: BASICS CONSTRUCTION OF LITERARY INDIGENOUS MULTICULTURAL THEORY

India, the caribbean, and africa already have their own literary and cultural theory, while indonesia is still consuming theories made of europe. with this basis, it’s time to build criticism theory from one’s own body of knowledge as analytical tool to study literature or culture. critique of cultural theory is certainly in the perspective of science paradigms that have been changed, among other postpositivisme paradigm. thus, this study is an endeavor to formulate theory of multicultural literature, namely, kato in the sense that word contains stories, history, politic, ideology, philosophy, spiritual and nation identity concept. as word is social and cultural constructs, it has powers. in this sense, kato is beyond word to distinguish linguistic meaning, but it is about the actual ‘existence.’ it conveys the truth which could stand by itself. literature is a world of words and human being exist in the words. this is the epistemology of kato.