On Rewriting Buddhism

Or, How Not to Write a History

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4314710
AutoresAnanda Abeysekara (autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume13
Fascículo1
Páginas39-80
Data de publicação2022-09-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoReligion and Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 2150-9298 • E-ISSN: 2150-9301
EditoraBerghahn Books (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.3167/arrs.2022.130104
OpenAlexW4377008572
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas52

Through a detailed reading of a recent study of medieval Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka in conjunction with a number of other works, this article explores the troubling legacy of translating the historical questions of subjectivity into the modern language of 'agency', 'autonomy', 'innovation', and 'creativity'. This legacy cannot easily be separated from the politics of white privilege in post-colonial studies of Buddhism and South Asian religion. The problem with trying to expose creativity, so pervasive in the studies of South Asian religion, is not merely a matter of anachronistic conceptualization of divergent historical forms of religious practice and subjectivity. It is that the very possibility of translating subjectivity into easily digestible aestheticized modes of being (e.g., creativity) is predicated on an uninterrogated assumption about the self-evidence of such concepts independent of temporal forms of power encountered in forms of life

Aesthetics · Anachronism · Buddhism · Conceptualization · Creativity · Epistemology · Hinduism · Linguistics · Political science · Political subjectivity · Politics · Sociology · Subjectivity · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · History · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Law · Philosophy