[Buddha-l] Another query

[Richard Nance]

On 7/23/05, StormyTet at aol.com <StormyTet at aol.com> wrote:

> If he
> had not gotten into a polemic regarding Tibet, would you agree with his
> assessment that popular Buddhist practice in America is fetishistic?

I don't know enough to say. That is, I don't know enough about what is
entailed by the particular notion of the fetish on which Zizek is
relying (I would need to spend some time reading up on Freud and
Lacan). I also don't know much about what current American Buddhists
think about the nature of their own practice or tradition. Zizek might
be right or he might be wrong; what he undoubtedly is, though, is
irresponsible. Not because of what he's attempting; there's nothing
wrong with trying to understand the nature of "Western fantasies"
regarding Buddhism (Don Lopez's work *Prisoners of Shangri-La* is an
example of how one might go about doing so). But the statement I've
quoted from Zizek reveals what a ridiculous charade he's attempting to
pull: it appears to be based on a *single* source, published in 1924,
in which a *single* Tibetan official's incredulity is noted by what
Zizek would call a "Westerner."  Examining the footnotes, it becomes
clear that Zizek didn't even bother to read the source he's quoting;
instead, he has pulled the citation from Orville Schell's *Virtual
Tibet.* From this, he claims to have insight into "what was and is
absolutely foreign to Tibet." Ludicrous.

What Zizek is doing isn't scholarship. And if he isn't claiming to be
a scholar, but rather a critical theorist, he fails on that count too:
by confining himself to sources composed by "Westerners" in English,
Zizek runs the real risk of manifesting the very fantasies he claims
to be diagnosing.

>I guess I am wondering about this because I feel as if he has
> not gone to far in speaking to the popular conceptions of Buddhist thought
> and practice in the West -- that hybrid form.   

I have no problem with the notion of hybridity; I'm just not sure how
far the notion serves to explain in this case (more on this point
below). To be honest, "hybridity" seems like little more than a prose
generator at this point: X claims that some cultural form is hybrid; Y
responds by claiming that the notion of hybridity is problematic,
insofar as it must always at some level presuppose two relata that are
"pure" -- i.e., *not* hybrid -- and that the opposition between purity
vs. impurity is one that calls for critique.  (Yes, this all may sound
a bit like Naagaarjuna. But Naagaarjuna aimed for liberation from
suffering, not tenure. The two goals are not the same.)  The result:
many trees are felled, much ink is spilled, a few careers are
furthered, and no one goes home the wiser.

I'm sorry if I sound dismissive or harsh; I've just run across a
disheartening amount of this kind of thing in the past. Postmodern
critique is, in one sense, very easy -- much easier than attempting to
make sense of a text written in Tibetan (or Sanskrit, or Pali, or
Chinese, etc.) hundreds of years ago!

Back to hybridity: if you find the notion of hybridity useful, then by
all means use it. The reason that I find it less than useful in this
case is that Buddhism has *always* been hybrid. And by that, I mean
something rather simple and, I think, uncontroversial: Buddhism has
always drawn on elements from whatever cultural framework it lands in
(or, indeed, originates from -- going all the way back to India).
Charting the ways that this has played out (and is playing out) in
different cultures is very interesting and useful work; a great deal
remains to be done. I just hope that those who opt to engage in it
don't fall prey to the tendency I see in Zizek: the tendency to
substitute sweeping ex cathedra generalization for what is admittedly
slow, painstaking and often frustrating work, whether in the field or
in the library.

Good luck in your studies, Stormy.

  
R. Nance