Thinking the 'question' of religion
The aporia of Buddhism and its democratic heritage in Sri Lanka
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4372260 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Ananda Abeysekara (Virginia Tech, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 38 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 174-180 |
| Publication date | 2008-06-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Religion (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0048-721X • E-ISSN: 1096-1151 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1016/j.religion.2008.05.001 |
| OpenAlex | W2052624584 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 12 |
(If an abstract can ever be ‘abstract’?) Buddhism (and, more generally, religion) has never been thought as a question ‐ that is, as a question inseparable from the question of the political. The academic study of Buddhism continues to be dominated by an empiricist, humanist, and even humanitarian project, shackled by modes of knowledge production, within the garrisons of colonialist area studies. No textualizing, anthropologizing, historicizing approach ‐ however, critical it may be ‐ can avoid the trap of humanism. To think the question of religion, one must begin to think it and its heritage as an aporia, an irreducible contradiction. In reading Qadri Ismail's Abiding by Sri Lanka, I argue that reflecting on the aporia of religion ‐ whose legacy is not a ‘problem’ to be solved, inherited, or abandoned ‐ might well enable us to imagine a notion of the political hitherto unheard of
Buddhism · Contradiction · Democracy · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Humanism · Political science · Politics · Sociology · South asia · Sri lanka · Theology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Anthropology · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Indian and Buddhist Studies · Law · Philosophy
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2010 - 2016 (7) |
| Highly cited | No |