Lecture
LUCIP Lecture "Queer Desires and Buddhist Asceticism: Negotiating Dharma and Diverse Embodiments"
- Date
- Friday 14 April 2023
- Time
- Location
-
Lipsius
Cleveringaplaats 1
2311 BD Leiden - Room
- 2.28
The Leiden University Centre for Intercultural Philosophy is pleased to announce a JEDI funded talk by Prof. Bee Scherer.
Queer Desires and Buddhist Asceticism: Negotiating Dharma and Diverse Embodiments
Abstract
This lecture looks at queer subjectivities and belongings within Buddhist contexts from the perspective of the tension between embodied desires and the soterio-psychological frameworks of overcoming of (sensory and affective) attachment.
The starting vignette provides a queer (re)reading of a narrative from the early Pāli Buddhist Birth Stories (jātakas), using illustrations from contemporary Buddhist paintings by the Dutch artist Patrick de Vries (*1976).
The main body of the talk will address the question of the available spaces and limits of trans*/queerversity within Buddhist philosophical and organisational dimensions.
Adding to this, the potential of the meeting between Buddhist philosophies and intersectional Queer Theory will be gauged.
The lecture concludes with reflections on trans*/queer Buddhist embodiment, diversity, and activism.
* This talk is part of the event series “Emotion and Embodiment at the Intersections” under the auspices of the JEDI grant of the Faculty of Humanities, in collaboration with Symposion.
About
Prof. Dr. Bee Scherer (they/their) is a non-binary trans* scholar of Buddhist Studies and Gender Studies (with specialisation in Queer Theory). The founder of the long running Queering Paradigms book and conference series, Scherer currently holds the Chair of Buddhist Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Amsterdam Free University, VU) with direct responsibility for the national Dutch Buddhist seminary (Buddhist Chaplaincy education).
All are welcome!