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.