Drawing on extensive field research in Sri Lanka, Abeysekara illustrates how differing meanings of such religious and national concepts come into central view and then fade, denying them fixity. Proposing an alternative, he develops the concept of "minute conjunctures of contingency" and places it in modest opposition to the work of Michel Foucault and other leading postmodern thinkers.
Abeysekara attends to these minute conjunctures of contingency to understand such categories as religion and difference, Buddhism and politics, civilization and terror. He thereby resists today's antiessentialist arguments without falling back on yesterday's foundationalist claims. Viewing religion through this lens, Abeysekara contends, has profound political implications for how we might more generally think about and begin to disrupt entrenched presumptions of postcolonial cultural difference.
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"Colors of the Robe is a subtle and critical inquiry into the agonistic space of discourse about Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka. A fascinating work of multiregistered sophistication, it challenges the ready-to-hand assumptions that guide much of the contemporary study of religion, culture, and violence in the postcolonial world."--David Scott, Columbia University
"This book is a rewarding study of the manifold ways in which monastic identities, as well as Buddhism and Buddhist identities, have unfolded in late twentieth-century Sri Lanka."--Journal of Religion
"This work will be a catalyst for further analysis and debate for some time to come."--Choice
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Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. Seller Inventory # Abebooks368161
Book Description Hardcover. Condition: New. New. book. Seller Inventory # D7S9-1-M-1570034672-6