Critical Connections: Forum on Cultural Studies in Asia and Beyond
16 March 2012, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand
CONFERENCE KEYNOTE SCHOLAR AND GUEST SPEAKER
Assoc. Professor John Whalen-Bridge (National University of Singapore)
email: <ellwbj@nus.edu.sg>
"Postmodern Pilgrims to Impossible Places: the Construction of Imaginary Tibets in India"
Cultural studies, an academic field grounded in critical theory and literary criticism, generally concerns the political or ideological nature of contemporary culture. Cultural practices such as religious travel would seem to be apart from political or ideological struggle, but upon examination it becomes clear that these practices are subject to the pressures of modernity and that traditional religious practices must reconfigure themselves in order to survive such pressures. To show how this works, I will examine texts concerning Buddhist travel in India. These travels might be considered “tourism” or “pilgrimage.” We think of “pilgrimage” as something that exists in the past, as a traditional practice that is very likely subverted by the pressures of modernity, but there is a contemporary set of texts that present pilgrimage as a response to—rather than a flight from--modernity.
My argument is in three parts. Part One examines texts as Martin Brauen’s Dreamworld Tibet to demonstrate that the “Tibet of the Mind” has become a commonplace non-place. Part Two examines the concept of “power places” in forms of travel literature that extend, through written texts, the sacred valence of certain locations for the sake of contemporary pilgrims. This genre might be called “Power Travel Writing,” and Thurman & Wise’s Circling the Sacred Mountain is the primary example. Part Three speculates about the way Tibetans outside of Tibet are reframing “pilgrimage” in light of the possibility that they may not be returning to Tibet any time soon. Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche’s guidebook about pilgrimage as a spiritual practice entitled What to Do at India’s Buddhist Holy Sites and his film The Cup can be understood specifically in relation to this anxiety. Ancient tradition, it would seem, is being (re)formed in response to a contemporary crisis.
JOHN WHALEN BRIDGE is currently Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature and Language at National University of Singapore. His major publications include Political Fiction and the American Self. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), and numerous articles on cultural studies, such as “Absolutely Dauntless: a Quarter-century of Sex, God, Politics, and Fame” in New Essays on Norman Mailer: the Late Fiction, Ancient Evenings through Castle in the Forest (Palgrave 2010) and “Introduction: American Buddhism as a Way of Life,” with Gary Storhoff, in American Buddhism as a Way of Life (Albany: SUNY Press, 2010). In addition, he is the co-editor of many books, such as American Buddhism as a Way of Life, co-edited with Gary Storhoff (SUNY Press, 2010) and New Essays on Norman Mailer: the Late Fiction, 1983-2007 (Palgrave, 2010). |