The aesthetics of in/authenticity

Description

This paper investigates how the cultural politics of ethnoreligious belonging are played out at a market for Tibetan Buddhist objects in Chengdu, China, a multi-ethnic place that is perceived and experienced as “Tibetan” by the Tibetans and Chinese who work, live, and shop there. It takes as its point of departure an episode in 2015 during a walk through the market with a young Tibetan urbanite, Lhamo, who made it a game to point out whether a shop was Chinese or Tibetan, whether the people there were Buddhist or not, and whether its goods were authentic. Lhamo, like many other Tibetans I met, was laying claim to an aesthetic habitus through which she asserted the authority to define what and who belonged as Tibetan Buddhist—an ability to feel the in/authentic acquired through being born and raised as a Tibetan (itself an embodiment of a religious authenticity excluding ethnic others). Based upon ethnographic research conducted over ten years in Chengdu, I argue that an ability to sense the in/authentic works as a compass for Tibetans like Lhamo as they navigate the sensorially intense market, sorting its sights, sounds, and smells, such as Buddhist objects stacked and displayed on the sidewalks and in shop after shop, maroon-robed figures, prayer beads around a shopkeeper’s neck, Buddhist chanting over loudspeakers, the wafting of sweet incense. Yet, many Tibetans fear this ability is becoming eroded; it is no longer clear who and what belongs, creating anxieties about their survival as a distinct ethnoreligious community. Although such anxieties are more widely felt among Tibetans in China, I argue that they are magnified through the sensory overload of this “Tibetan” place in the urban metropolis of Chengdu where Tibetan Buddhist aesthetics are intensely entangled with business, and ethnoreligious identities are blurred.

Period	21 Feb 2020
Event title	The 4th Contemporary Buddhist Studies writing workshop
Event type	Workshop
Location	Copenhagen, DenmarkShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International