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Abstract:
The current moment, seen by some as an interregnum between societies of discipline and control, is marked by intense forms of religious fanaticism and iconoclasm that are striving to create new forms of the state. This is evident in the militancy and political engagement of Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka, who promote war against Tamil separatists as well as violent resistance to the proselytization identified with global civil society agencies that, due to the war and the 2004 tsunami disaster, have been active in the country. The article looks at this rising Buddhist militancy, which is associated with a political party that is linked to the more famous party known as the JVP. It argues that instead of resisting the formation of the new global civil society, the iconoclasm of this Buddhist political formation is facilitating its establishment.
Keywords: anti-conversion, Buddhist militancy, civil war, fanaticism, global civil society, iconoclasm, Sri Lanka
The history of the Crusades is marked by the most astonishing series of directional changes: the firm orientation towards the Holy Land as a center to reach often seems nothing more than a pretext. But it would be wrong to say that the play of self-interest, or economic, commercial, or political factors, diverted the crusade from its pure path. The idea of the crusade in itself impUes this variability of directions, broken and changing, and intrinsically possesses all these factors or all these variables from the moment it turns religion into a war machine and simultaneously utilizes and gives rise to the corresponding nomadism.
- Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus
Contemporary Buddhist militancy or fanaticism in Sri Lanka reacts against Christian evangelism and Tamil separatism as it articulates with broader global discourses concerning so-called civil society. It thus reveals features of the relationship between complicity and resistance in the formation and re-formation of current global singularities. The idea of global singularity will be discussed below, but first I will expand on fanaticism and its connection to civil society. I derive the idea from Dominique Colas (1997), who argues that European history is marked by moments of fanatical iconoclasm - the smashing or destruction of ideal representations of the seemingly 'natural' order of the state. These moments are occasioned by...