Colors of the Robe (Studies in Comparative Religion): Religion, Identity, and Difference (Studies in Comparative Religion)

Abeysekara, Ananda

ISBN 10: 1570037876 / ISBN 13: 9781570037870

Published by University of South Carolina Pre, 2008

About this Item

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: Colors of the Robe (Studies in Comparative Religion): Religion, Identity, and Difference (Studies in Comparative Religion)
• Publisher: University of South Carolina Pre
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1570037876
• ISBN 13: 9781570037870
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

A compelling case study of Buddhism in contemporary Sri Lanka

Colors of the Robe probes the Sri Lankan world of Buddhism and politics and suggests innovative directions for the global study of religion, culture, and violence. In a volume that surpasses other studies in locating Sri Lankan Buddhism in its sectarian, ethnic, cultural, social, and political constructions, Ananda Abeysekara illuminates the shifting configurations that animate the relations connected with postcolonial religious identity and culture.

Drawing on extensive field research in Sri Lanka, Abeysekara illustrates how differing discourses about Buddhism come into central view and then fade. He develops the concept of "minute conjunctures of contingency" and places it in modest opposition to the Foucauldian (and postcolonial) conceptions of history and identity. Abeysekara suggests that the conjunctures of contingency help realize that Buddhism, identity, and difference do not remain simply available for disciplinary apprehension. This way of thinking about the unavailability of Buddhism, he contends, has profound political implications for how we might more generally think about and begin to disrupt entrenched presumptions of postcolonial cultural difference.

About the Author

Ananda Abeysekara is an associate professor of religious studies at the Center for Interdisciplinary Studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. He is the author of The Politics of Postsecular Religion: Mourning Secular Futures.