[Buddha-l] "Western Self, Asian Other"

[Richard Hayes]

On Jan 1, 2010, at 10:29 AM, Curt Steinmetz wrote:

> Take "Prisoners of Shangrila", please.

One of the best books on Buddhism written in the past twenty years.

> According to Robert A.F. Thurman 
> "The book is fundamentally marred by the usual trademarks of a polemic: 
> mere assertions paraded as evidence, confused distortions in reasoning, 
> and an authorial pose of scholarly self-righteousness.

Interestingly enough, Thurman's attack on Lopez is flawed by exactly the features of which he criticizes Lopez. Many of those who saw Thurman denounce Lopez at the American Academy of Religion described it as a painfully embarrassing episode in which one highly regarded scholar overreacted to the work of another highly regarded scholar and delivered a series of completely unsubstantiated accusations. Trivialities were magnified into major issues.

> The most damning thing that Thurman says, though, is this: "I was 
> dismayed at the intensity of the resentment of the Tibetan people that 
> leaps from every page and surprised by the unself-consciousness that 
> gives that resentment such free reign. Most of all, I was saddened by 
> his joining, however unwittingly, the apologists for China in Tibet."

Of all the things Thurman said, this was seen as the most embarrassingly wide of the mark. Hardly anyone else saw Lopez's book as resentful in any sense of the word, nor was there seen any denigration of the Tibetan people. This careless accusation was Thurman at his very worst.

> It's really too bad that Thurman's critique of Lopez is not freely 
> available online!

It is freely available to academics. most of whom dismiss it as an unfortunate diatribe in which the reviewer lost control of himself and substituted vitriol for substance. But it's good to know that someone liked Thurman's review.


Richard Hayes
Department of Philosophy
University of New Mexico
http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes
rhayes at unm.edu