Dear list members,
The keynote speaker for the Gender in Southeast Asian Art Histories
symposium, Ashley Thompson (SOAS), will examine the historical unfolding
of the Buddha’s story in a range of Cambodian contexts, its various
portrayals that render it beyond traditional gender binaries, and the
social challenges that come with this.
When: Wednesday, 11 October, 6–7.30pm
Where: Woolley Common Room, Level 4, John Woolley Building A20, The
University of Sydney
Register: eventbrite.com.au
We hope you can attend.
Kind regards,
AABS Executive
ABSTRACT
Siddhartha Gotama is a model of sovereign monarchical power, but also,
and inseparably, of heteronormative masculine privilege. His is a
princely power and privilege that is represented by the Buddhist canon in
patriarchical, phallocratic and starkly gendered terms—wife, child,
harem, prostitutes, and of course kingdom, are his to dispose of as he
wishes. But in a supremely ambivalent gesture, the future Buddha leaves
behind the many subaltern women who literally define his princely
existence to seek a new transcendent state. Is this a protofeminist act
or simply another in the apparently limitless reinventions of
phallocentrism? Women are, to begin with, so many foils—the condition of
possibility—for this model man to surpass himself in obtaining
perfection. Once the Buddha becomes Enlightened, however, his historical
subjectivity, experienced and exposed as an artifice, is transformed and
subsumed into the manifestation of a cosmic order: in the place of his
self comes the paradoxical concept of the non-self. Thus, in the body of
the Buddha, the ultimate realisation of masculine domination meets its
own deconstruction: the Buddha can be variously characterised, in
textual, visual and ritual terms, as hyper-masculine, effeminate,
feminine, or beyond binary. This lecture examines the historical
unfolding of the Buddha’s story in various Cambodian contexts. Statuary
and performance art emerge as privileged media by which to challenge
societal constraints.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Ashley Thompson is Hiram W. Woodward Chair in Southeast Asian Art at the
School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. She
is a specialist in Southeast Asian cultural histories, with particular
expertise on Cambodia. Thompson is co-founder and editor (with Ang
Choulean) of Udaya,
a tri-lingual journal of Khmer Studies. Her publications include Engendering the Buddhist State:
Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference in the Inventions of Angkor
(2016); Angkor: A
Manual for the Past, Present and Future (with E. Prenowitz
and Ang Choulean, 2006); Calling
the Souls: A Cambodian Ritual Text (2005); and Dance in Cambodia
(with T. Shapiro-Phim, 1999). Thompson was Historical and Linguistic
Director for the Khmer language production of Hélène Cixous’ epic
‘Cambodia’ play, The
Terrible but Unfinished Story of Norodom Sihanouk, King of Cambodia,
first staged in Europe in 2013, by a 32-member Cambodian troupe from
Phare Ponleu Selpak (Battambang) directed by Georges Bigot and Delphine
Cottu under the aegis of Ariane Mnouchkine’s Théâtre du Soleil, Paris.
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Gold leaf covered schist reliquary in
the form of a stupa. Kusana period, North Western India. National
Museum, Karachi, Pakistan. Copyright: Huntington, John C. and Susan L.Huntington Archive
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