Open AccessZen og kunsten at spejlvende orientalisme
Author(s) -
Jørn Borup
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
religionsvidenskabeligt tidsskrift
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.111
H-Index - 3
eISSN - 1904-8181
pISSN - 0108-1993
DOI - 10.7146/rt.v0i32.3847
Subject(s) - orientalism , buddhism , dichotomy , perspective (graphical) , reciprocal , order (exchange) , sociology , epistemology , religious studies , philosophy , history , art , theology , linguistics , visual arts , finance , economics
This article intends to put into perspective the critique on Orientalism raised by Edward Said with a case story (beyond Said's Orient) exemplifying how the Orientalist discourse has been inverted, serving as a means of religious and cultural identification. Focusing on the religious environment around the Japanese interpreter and poluparizer of Zen Buddhism., D. T. Suzuki, it is argued that a genealogical network of interrelated persons and a reciprocal exchange of ideas and representations, placed within certain historical contexts, made it possible for him to systematically invert those Orientalist ideas, turning them into new East-West dichotomies. It is argued that neither Suzuki-zen nor Orientalism nor inverted Orientalism must be ignored but recognized and contextualized in order to reconstruct Buddhist studies as a natural and important field within the comparative study of religion.