© 2015 – Routledge
Drawing from more than a decade of field and archival research, this monograph concerns Cambodian history and historiography, with an ultimate aim to broadening and deepening bases for understanding the Cambodian Theravadin politico-cultural complex. The book takes the form of an interdisciplinary cultural analysis of a number of performative and representational strategies for constituting social collectivities. This analysis involves extended close readings of a wide range of cultural artifacts including epigraphic and manuscript texts, sculpture and ritual practices. Thompson proposes a critical reevaluation of dominant paradigms of Cambodian historiography in view of engendering new histories, or hybrid histories, which make room for previously absent perspectives and voices, while developing new theoretical tools engaging with and partially derived from 'indigenous' narrative practices in the broadest sense. In this history-making process the historical event is shown to never be entirely separable from its aesthetic representation. Particular attention is paid to the roles of sexual difference in such (re)constructions of history.
Introduction: Reinventing the Wheel Part 1: Early Geobodies 1. Textual Foundations 2.Sovereign Arts 3. Bodily Remains Part 2: Post-Angkor 4. The Fate of the Linga-Yoni Ensemble 6. From Temple to Text: Reconstructing Angkor Vat 7. Normative/Performative: On the Ramayana in Cambodia 8. Verbose Silencing: On the Genre of Cpap’
Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism is a comprehensive study of the Buddhist tradition. The series explores this complex and extensive tradition from a variety of perspectives, using a range of different methodologies. The series is diverse in its focus, including historical, philological, cultural, and sociological investigations into the manifold features and expressions of Buddhism worldwide. It also presents works of constructive and reflective analysis, including the role of Buddhist thought and scholarship in a contemporary, critical context and in the light of current social issues. The series is expansive and imaginative in scope, spanning more than two and a half millennia of Buddhist history. It is receptive to all research works that are of significance and interest to the broader field of Buddhist Studies.
Some of the titles in the series are published in association with the Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, which conducts and promotes rigorous teaching and research into all forms of the Buddhist tradition.
Editorial Advisory Board:
James A. Benn, McMaster University, Canada
Jinhua Chen, The University of British Columbia, Canada
Rupert Gethin, University of Bristol, UK
Peter Harvey, University of Sunderland, UK
Sallie King, James Madison University, USA
Anne Klein, Rice University, USA
Lori Meeks, University of Southern California, USA;
Ulrich Pagel, School of Oriental and African Studies, UK
John Powers, Australian National University, Australia;
Juliane Schober, Arizona State University, USA
Vesna A. Wallace, Oxford University, UK
Michael Zimmermann, University of Hamburg, Germany