States of Mind and Exception: Enactments of Buddhist Ontological Truth and Purification in Thai Religious Nationalism in the mid 20th and Early 21st Centuries
Thai Buddhism; Religious nationalism; state of exception; state racism; politics of truth; violence; Agamben; Schmitt; Zizek
摘要
The following is a meditation upon a particular nationalist use and performance of Theravada Buddhism. It explores some of the interconnections and interdependencies between religion, identity politics and political violence in Thailand, an exemplary Buddhist nation. Anti-government demonstrators, ‘communists’ in the 1970’s, Muslims in 2004 and ‘Red Shirts’ in 2010, were killed in the name of defending sacred Thai institutions of Nation, Religion and Monarchy. Is Buddhism implicated in such political violence? If so, how does a spiritual practice prohibiting the taking of life lend itself to justifying killing? This article suggests that Buddhism is translated, qua transformed and betrayed, by the Thai State and politics. Buddhist truth, in the thrall of nationalist ideology in times of emergency and national insecurity, can legitimate ‘states of exception’, which suspend the law and moral constraint, making it permissible to kill impure enemies in defense and with good intentions.
目次
Buddhist monk as nationalist warrior? 136 When killing with pure intention is not murder 137 Buddhism in Question 138 Thai Buddhist soldier-monk 141 National Buddhist Imaginary 143 Radical Thai Buddhism: Buddhadasa 149 All in the Mind 151 Purity in the Modern State conservative version of Thai Buddhism 152 On the Way to Nihilism? 158 Notes 163
