Event From Date:
Wednesday, 18 April 2018
Event End Date:
Wednesday, 18 April 2018
Event Title:
CSSS organises GSP Annual Lecture by Pradeep Jeganathan
Event Details:
Global Studies Programme
Centre for the Study of Social Systems
GSP Annual Lecture
When Words Will Not Do: Theravada Buddhism and the Emergence of Violence
Speaker:
Pradeep Jeganathan
(Professor & Head, Department of Sociology, Shiv Nader University)
Abstract: This paper revisits the relationship of "Theravada Buddhism" and "violence." This remains in one register an intractable problem, for it is usually thought that Buddhist locution advocates non-violence, not its opposite. Conventionally the problem is treated as one of the 'politicization' of Buddhism, given its alliance with the State, or given subaltern Buddhist revival movements. In this paper, I attempt to find another way into this problem by examining the imbrications of Buddhist locution and gesture, and the relationship of this matrix to latent force. I argue that shifts in locations of sovereignty from pre-colonial to colonial Kingship, produce the conditions of possibility of force breaking through its legitimizing frame into violence. The paper works with Sri Lankan ethnological materials, pertaining to the genealogy of the iconography of Buddha and the Sanga (Monkhood).
Date & Time: 18th April 2018 (Wednesday), 4PM
Venue: Lecture Hall 3, Convention Centre, JNU
About the Speaker: Pradeep Jeganathan is Professor & Head, Department of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Science, Shiv Nader University, Delhi NCR, India.
He is the author of Living with Death (2006), At the Water’s Edge (2004) and co-editor of Unmaking the Nation (1995/2009/2019) and Subaltern Studies X1 (2002), and a number of articles on violence, grief, subaltern nationalism, and cyber subjectivity. Previously he was Senior Fellow, International Center for Ethnic Studies, Colombo, and McKnight Professor, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
All are cordially invited