Close Encounters of the Orientalist Kind: Ambivalence and Desire in Buddhist Studies

Ambivalence–simultaneous love and hate of an object of desire–is a recurrent concept in Curators of the Buddha (1995): it is mentioned explicitly in Donald Lopez Jr.’s introduction as well as the essays written by Luis Gómez and Lopez. While it has been given explicit theoretical treatment in postcolonial studies by authors like Homi Bhabha, such analysis has not yet been adequately applied to Buddhist Studies. This paper revisits ambivalence in order to better understand the “logics of representation” (11) and how this applies to the current state of Buddhist Studies. It argues that the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein is best suited for analyzing ambivalence for its object relations theory as an analysis of Desire. In doing so, this paper aims to not only contribute to ‘postcolonial’ Buddhist Studies but to postcolonial critique more generally through the use of the psychoanalytic theory of Melanie Klein.

In the context of Orientalism, as described by Edward Said in his titular work (1978), the field of Buddhist Studies in Europe and North America developed as a series of encounters with the ‘Oriental’ or Asian ‘Other’. While Said’s work focuses on European colonialism and the study of Islam, the authors in Curators extend its general reflections to Buddhist Studies. One critical collective intervention is in representing the development of Buddhist Studies as a process that both ‘Orientalist’ and ‘Oriental’ participated in as they encountered each other. Indeed, Charles Hallisey’s notion of ‘intercultural mimesis’ (33) in Curators captures the notion of competing interests. As Peter Flügel’s review of Curators (1997) points out, the encounter generated ambivalences on all sides. 

The authors of Curators tend to focus on the ambivalence of the so-called ‘curators’ of Buddhist Studies in imperial contexts given that theirs is a postcolonial study of Buddhism. Lopez’s essay, “Foreigner at the Lama’s Feet,” states that Tibetan Buddhism inherited a legacy of ambivalence, one “marked by a nostalgic longing and a revulsion” (252). Lopez goes on to present an overview of ambivalence of Europeans towards Tibetan Buddhism through the figures of Ippolito Desideri, Alexander de Kőrös, and L. Austine Waddell. Lopez would also later write an article on the ambivalence of Brian Hodgson for the edited volume The Origins of Himalayan Studies (2005). Gustavo Benavides in his essay on Giuseppe Tucci and fascism, while not referring to ‘ambivalence’ specifically, he does refer to an “ambiguity towards the East (163) and describes the Orient of 20th-century European intellectuals as a site of projection of a mix of “contempt” and “longing” (162). 

Within Curators, ambivalence is most central in Gómez’s essay. Gómez carefully analyzes Carl Jung and his ambivalence towards the East; that is, Jung as both “a defender and a detractor of the Asia he envisioned” (198). Taking into account power in his final analysis of ambivalence, Gómez comes to identify “three movements” in the process of Orientalism: “recognition, appropriation, and distancing” (229). As Jan Nattier’s review of Curators (1997) points out, ambivalence is the common element in Gómez’s analysis of Jung such that its ubiquity resists a historical interpretation. Gómez does not engage in an outright psychoanalytic reading, but his analysis does make some interesting points: namely, that Jung was seeking a self-confirmation in the Other, “almost as if one needed to recognize in an other parts of oneself that could not be seen as self, and would otherwise remain totally other, inaccessible, and unacceptable” (211). 

Furthermore, Gómez makes the move that opens up his study beyond Orientalism when he wonders if there is an ambivalence with every encounter of the Other, not just the Orientalist kind (231). This addresses what Said referred to as the ‘personal dimension’ in Orientalism, citing Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks and adding Gramsci’s conclusion that “‘it is imperative at the outset to compile such an inventory’” (25). That inventory, that battery of desires, is very much one that psychoanalytic theory can contribute to with conceptions like ambivalence. 

Ambivalence has been a primary concept of postcolonial analysis outside of Curators. Bernard Faure highlights the ambivalence of D.T. Suzuki towards Zen throughout his life in Chan Insights and Oversights: An Epistemological Critique of the Chan Tradition (1993). It is central to Homi Bhabha’s The Locations of Culture (1994) and has been cited for its treatment of ambivalence in later postcolonial scholarship related to Buddhist Studies and Buddhism (e.g., Peter Hansen’s article “The Dancing Lamas of Everest: Cinema, Orientalism, and Anglo-Tibetan Relations in the 1920s” (1996), Richard King’s Orientalism and Religion: Postcolonial Theory, India, and ‘The Mystic East’ (1999)). Bhabha builds on Fanon and Lacan’s treatments of ambivalence. He cites Lacan specifically on ambivalence in terms of mimicry and also connects it to hybrid cultural formations. 

This paper seeks to add to the ‘inventory of the self’ by considering the contributions of Melanie Klein to psychoanalytic theory, specifically as a theory of object relations: whereas Bhabha used on Lacan’s theory of mimicry as a means to address ambivalence, Klein directly treats the topic as a central concept in her works. Ambivalence is a prevalent concept in postcolonial studies and better understanding its place in the legacy of Buddhist Studies can help us better understand what decolonizing Buddhist Studies might mean in terms of the orientation of the academic to its object of study. As Bhabha stated in The Locations of Culture, doing so can help scholars in general learn how to “avoid the increasingly facile adoption of the notion of a homogenized Other” (52).