Joseph Walser, Genealogies of Mahāyāna Buddhism: Emptiness, Power, and the Question of Origin. Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2018. 288 pages. IBSN: 978-1-13-895556-1. . Since Talal Asad’s landmark work Genealogies of Religion, some scholars in the humanities have slowly begun…
Review – Altered States: Buddhism and Psychedelic Spirituality in America (Roger Green)
Osto, Douglas. Altered States: Buddhism and Psychedelic Spirituality in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. ISNB 10: 0231177305 Hardcover, e-book. 328 pages. In recent years, the amount of published scholarly work on psychedelics, religion, and spirituality has grown enormously.…
Biopolitics and Vajrayana Buddhism, Part 3 (Padraic Fitzgerald)
The following is the third and final installment in a three-part series. The first installment was published on May 27, 2016 and can be found here. The second installment was published on June 13. Despite the longstanding presence of the…
Biopolitics and Vajrayana Buddhism, Part 1 (Padraic Fitzgerald)
The following is the first of a 3-part series. Biopolitics, as Michel Foucault argued, views populations through an economic lens, as capital to be preserved and multiplied to keep the nation or tradition afloat and strong. In the secular sphere,…