Through an examination of post-1997 Thai cinema and video art Arnika Fuhrmann shows how vernacular Buddhist tenets; stories; and images combine with sexual politics in figuring current struggles over notions of personhood; sexuality; and collective life. The drama; horror; heritage; and experimental art films she analyzes draw on Buddhist-informed conceptions of impermanence and prominently feature the motif of the female ghost. In these films the characters' eroticization in the spheres of loss and death represents an improvisation on the Buddhist disavowal of attachment and highlights under-recognized female and queer desire and persistence. Her feminist and queer readings reveal the entangled relationships between film; sexuality; Buddhist ideas; and the Thai state's regulation of heteronormative sexuality. Fuhrmann thereby provides insights into the configuration of contemporary Thailand while opening up new possibilities for thinking about queer personhood and femininity.
#1637190 in Books Duke University Press Books 2002-08-30 2002-08-30Original language:EnglishPDF # 1 9.00 x .86 x 6.13l; 1.28 #File Name: 0822329433344 pages
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. Flim-flam a la MexicanaBy Sam DiegoFor certain historians; the intensive study of nineteenth and twentieth century topics would appear to mask a subconscious hostility to its reality-- and a cloying desire that it be different from what it was. An inclination rather like this would appear to have animated this curious work on the history of the Roman Catholic Church’s relations with elites and masses in Mexico. The author posits the existence in the 1800s of an unexpectedly “liberal†Catholicism that promoted an inclusive; warm-handed relation with Mexicans high and low. This bizarre assertion challenges; but never comes close to overthrowing; the standard depiction of the Church; which holds that the Mexican clergy defended a bastion of reaction unequalled even by Rome itself. To argue otherwise would seem to offer a novel contribution to the topic; and it’s thus unfortunate that the author fails to make her case. Sadly; it’s not difficult to see why. Whenever the empirical evidence cannot be twisted into supporting her broader thesis; Voekel takes refuge in the many culs-de-sac of “postcolonial†jargon; an approach that will perhaps dazzle some readers but will confuse everyone else. In the end; her effort to project the reforming zeal of Vatican II back into the early 1800s; and to find a sweet-soulfulness among ultramontane Mexican Catholics looks like wishful thinking. And it is more than simply far-fetched: it is sad. It strips from adamantine reactionaries all the hardness that they strove so hard to construct in themselves; and seeks to replace their ardor with an unconvincing moderation. The Mexican Catholics of the nineteenth century would never recognize themselves in such a depiction; and no amount of doublespeak --and de-contextualized archival citations-- can turn their character from obsidian black to powder-puff blue.3 of 4 people found the following review helpful. An engaging and much needed work on Bourbon Colonial SocietyBy A CustomerVoekel uses crisp prose and clever nuance to craft a much needed book on piety and modernity in Bourbon Mexico. The importance of the Bourbon era is underdeveloped or misunderstood in strictly economic terms by current authors; and Voekel shatters that type. The author takes a mundane item like burial reform and creates a sharp; well documented and clear argument about piety; reform; modernity and power. Five well-deserved stars to Voekel for this work
