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ISSN 2084–1418
The paper edition of the Anthropology of History Yearbook is the definitive version

2014, No. 2 (7), History and Gender

Zbigniew Szmyt
Between deification and symbolic violence: on the ambivalent practices lamas performed on the body of the Russian president

PDF version
Keywords: Buryatia, Buddhism, post-socialism, political anthropology

Abstract:
In 2009, during the visit of President Dmitry Medvedev in Buryatia, Buddhist authorities proclaimed him an emanation of White Tara - female enlightened energy. Enthronement of the President of the tantric goddess was an attempt at restitution relationship ‘patron-teacher’ formed in the thirteenth century between the rulers of the Mongol Yuan Dynasty and Tibetan lamas of the Sakya linage and sometimes used by Buryats in relation to the Russian tsars. Both the local community and the Russian public opinion received this event ambiguously. For some it was an act of total submission of the central government, the other sacrilegious bordering on the absurd. In my opinion, it was one of the episodes of the practice of taming the ruler by subaltern communities. This paper presents the interpretation that enters an event in a number of practices to tame and manipulate Russian hegemony. My argument is that the ambiguity of many social practices is not only a manifestation of cultural pluralism in Buryatia. Rather, it is a strategy of the weak, which allows keeping agency in a situation of enormous disproportion of forces.

About Author:
SZMYT ZBIGNIEW – ethnologist, Assistant Professor in the Institute of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology of the Adam Mickiewicz University.

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