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X-WR-CALNAME:13th Frank H. Golay Memorial Lecture: Restitution in the Makin
 g of Southeast Asia Today
X-WR-TIMEZONE:Eastern Time (US & Canada)
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20261012T205242Z
UID:tag:localist.com\,2008:EventInstance_50782117630273
DTSTART:20251106T213000Z
DTEND:20251106T223000Z
DESCRIPTION:Join us for a talk by Ashley Thompson\, Hiram W Woodward Chair 
 of Southeast Asian Art at SOAS University of London. \n\nThis lecture will
  take place at The Physical Sciences Building 120 with light reception to 
 follow in Baker Portico. For questions\, contact seap@cornell.edu. To atte
 nd via Zoom\, please register here.\n\nEstablished in 1992–93 to honor e
 conomist and Southeast Asia scholar Frank H. Golay\, the Memorial Lecture 
 reflects his enduring legacy of interdisciplinary research and commitment 
 to the vitality of Cornell’s Southeast Asia Program.\n\nAbstract\n\nTher
 e is a revealing episode in the Buddha’s life story\, one that\, like ma
 ny others is about the revelation that the vision of the Buddha entails\, 
 but which is also about the dubious virtuosity of replication\, the revela
 tory power of return and techniques for expanding territorial dominion –
  and\, that these are all of a piece. Following the successful show of the
  Twin Miracle at Savatthi\, where the Buddha has beaten off rivals by prov
 ing his special powers to shoot water and fire from his body aloft in the 
 sky\, illuminating the cosmos for the gathered crowds\, and twinning this 
 brilliant self to provide at once questions and answers…\, he travels to
  the heavens to teach his mother. The Buddha is missed dearly on earth. So
 me traditions have it that during his time away a replica was made of him 
 – the first Buddha statue – to soothe a king grieving his absence. Ent
 reated to return\, the Buddha is supplied a red ruby ladder flanked by a g
 old and a silver one for his entourages. As beings watch\, expectantly\, t
 he progress of the brilliant body down the rungs reveals the cosmos again:
  all of space and time is there for all to see. This vision is only fleeti
 ng\, and the Buddha’s return bolsters a certain socio-political order or
 ganised around the dissemination of his image.\n\nThis talk will contempla
 te restitution in Southeast Asia today in the shadow of this story and wit
 h an anxious eye on our times.  What affects does absence evoke\, and how?
  What expectations arise in the progress of return\, on whose part and why
 ? What transformations take place in the comings and goings? How\, when an
 d where? Why and how do these processes constitute identifications at shif
 ting scales\, from the individual to the communal to the national to the r
 egional to the international to the global to the cosmic\, at once closing
  down histories and borders and carrying the potential for visionary unifi
 cation? Do they reproduce Hindu-Buddhist hegemonies made as much in the 
 ‘Sanskrit-Pali cosmopolis’ as in colonial knowledge production? Are we
  witnessing the reconsolidation of the commercial wing of an ever-expandin
 g global conglomerate surveying borders between subject and object? Or are
  we catching glimpses of another time and space\, where ‘animism’ migh
 t win the day? \n\n \n\nAbout the Speaker\n\nAshley Thompson is Hiram W Wo
 odward Chair of Southeast Asian Art at SOAS University of London. She main
 tains a sustained research focus on premodern Cambodian arts and literatur
 es\, and complements this with more punctual work on the contemporary peri
 od and the arts of the larger Southeast Asian region. Her research revolve
 s around questions of memory\, political and cultural transition\, embodim
 ent\, sexual difference and subjectivity. She leads Circumambulating Objec
 ts: Paradigms of Restitution of Southeast Asian Art\, and is the editor of
  a special issue of Art History on decoloniality in Southeast Asian arts f
 ields\, forthcoming 2025.
LOCATION:Physical Sciences Building 120
SUMMARY:13th Frank H. Golay Memorial Lecture: Restitution in the Making of 
 Southeast Asia Today
URL;VALUE=URI:https://events.cornell.edu/event/13th-frank-h-golay-memorial-
 lecture-restitution-in-the-making-of-southeast-asia-today
CATEGORIES:Lecture
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