Post-cosmopolitical Theories: Sexual Difference, Vernacularisation and the Fabric of Cambodia

Dr. Ashley Thompson

This talk will attempt to gauge the limits of the subaltern promise of the Post-Angkorian period in Cambodian history. After the fall of the Brahmanic-Sanskritic empire, one might have hoped to see what Spivak has called “the sheer heterogeneity of decolonised space,” the emergence of the voice of the people, women and men, in vernacular expression as supported, even inspired by Theravada Buddhism. Indeed, this is a common historiographical interpretation. Yet, with reference to a Derridian critique of the post-colonial, the argument will be made that space was never without inscription, that is space was never decolonized, and the inscription was always already phallocratic. If vernacular expression was also colonial, it was the woman who bore the brunt of violence, who was excluded, or more precisely, included as the excluded. That is, woman was the very condition of possibility of territorial delimitation.

Bio

Ashley Thompson is a specialist in Southeast Asian Cultural History, with a focus on classical and pre-modern art and literature. Her main research and teaching interests involve questions of memory and cultural transition, particularly as revealed, or not, by language and textuality in the broadest sense. Much of her work concerns Hindu and Buddhist sculpture and painting, cult or ritual practices and texts, as well as issues related to gender and sexual difference. She is a Lecturer in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies at the University of Leeds.

Contact email: N.S.Al-Ali@soas.ac.uk