Papers by Francesca Tarocco
Philosophy and Social Criticism , 2019
European and North American cultures are awash in stereotypes about religion. The recently publis... more European and North American cultures are awash in stereotypes about religion. The recently published volume Stereotyping Religion: Critiquing Clichés (2017) tackles several of these and shows why scholars find them to be clichéd. By describing their origins and elucidating the social or political work they rhetorically accomplish in the present, the authors of the volume address some important clichés, namely, that religions are belief systems, that religion is a private matter or that it exclusively concerns the transcendent. In the same way, scholars of religion in the Chinese speaking world find themselves often having to dispel the many myths that surround it. Does China have religion? What does it look like? And where does it stand vis-à-vis religious tolerance? In this short article, I take a comparative look at the late imperial period in China and the substantive changes that took place at the end of it. What does religious tolerance-and its opposite-mean in the context of China's modern epistemic order?
For many Chinese speakers in China and elsewhere, experiencing or connecting with matters of reli... more For many Chinese speakers in China and elsewhere, experiencing or connecting with matters of religion often includes mediation through or with material objects. Such mediation is readily accessible to larger and larger audiences and often occurs through the consumption of religious material goods, thanks also to media technologies and the Internet. In this article, the author seeks to complicate the notion that the production and consumption of novel Buddhist religious goods can be analyzed solely in terms of 'market theory.' While on the one hand the author shows that Buddhist technologies of salvation are historically associated with materiality, she also contends that the 'aura' of Buddhist-inspired modern religious goodsin the spirit of Walter Benjamin's essay 'On Some Motifs in Baudelaire' (1939)is not so much effaced as it is reconfigured and transformed by technological mediations. KEY WORDS Chinese Buddhism; religious goods; media and religion; consumption For many people, experiencing or connecting with matters of religion includes mediation through or with material objects or religious goods. In modern China, such mediation, often intensely personal, is readily accessible to larger and larger audiences. But what religious goods are consumed and who consumes them? At the more general level, a growing body of evidence suggests that religious goods are reaching millions of Chinese and Sinitic-language-speaking audiences both in their homes and hand-held devices, through all manner of audiovisual digital production and dissemination (Chandler 2004; Tarocco 2012). By beginning to map out the diffusion of some Buddhist-inspired religious goods, practices and strategies, I wish to complement ongoing research on the qualitative/symbolic significance of religious goods and shed further light on material religion in China. I will show that modern technologies and socioeconomic factors have contributed to the multiplication, accessibility and variety of Buddhist-inspired religious goods. By focusing on a few specific case studies related to the practice of Chinese Buddhism, I will argue that religious consumption is not a new or recent phenomenon. I will argue, too, that the production and consumption of religious goods defy a simple 'market-theory' model because it also encompasses Buddhist technologies
The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, an indigenous Chinese composition written in the... more The Treatise on the Mahāyāna Awakening of Faith, an indigenous Chinese composition written in the guise of an Indian Buddhist treatise, is one of the most influential texts in the history of East Asian Buddhism. Its outline of the doctrines of buddha nature (foxing), buddha bodies (foshen), and one mind (yixin), among others, served from the medieval period onwards as one of the main foundations of East Asian Buddhist thought and practice. The Treatise is putatively attributed to the Indian writer Aśvaghoṡa, and its current Chinese version was traditionally conceived of as a translation from an original Sanskrit text. In the course of the twentieth century, however, many important scholars of Buddhism have called into question the textual history of the Treatise. Even if the specific circumstances of its creation are still largely unknown, the view that the Treatise is an original Chinese composition (not necessarily written by a native Chinese) is now prevalent among scholars. Meanwhile, and for more than one hundred years, the text has also become a source of knowledge of Buddhism in the West thanks to a number of English translations. After examining the early textual history of the two existing versions of the text, this article will offer some examples of its modern appropriation by a novel group of readers and interpreters, an appropriation that took place during the first decades of the twentieth century amidst efforts to re-envision Chinese and East Asian Buddhist history and the place of Buddhism in modern society.
Journal of Global Buddhism , 2017
The study of the communicative fabric of the social media life of elite clerics sheds light on th... more The study of the communicative fabric of the social media life of elite clerics sheds light on the role that digital technology plays in the processes of re-articulation of their relationship with practitioners. Examining the spheres of pious self-making and social imaginary that are opened up by Buddhist technoculture, this article suggests that deep-rooted attitudes towards the circulation of knowledge and charisma inform the current recuperation of monastic ideals and the production of digital " dharma treasures " (fabao 法 宝). These are key to establishing and maintaining local, trans-regional, and international networks of online and offline followers. The hyperspace-biased conversations within and around urban Buddhism represent a development of significance and complexity. Buddhist lives, I argue, are produced and mediated by the ever-expanding incidence of clerical blogging and engagement with the smartphone-based social media platform WeChat (weixin 微信).
Religion, 2011
For many Chinese speakers in China and elsewhere, experiencing or connecting with matters of reli... more For many Chinese speakers in China and elsewhere, experiencing or connecting with matters of religion often includes mediation through or with material objects. Such mediation is readily accessible to larger and larger audiences and often occurs through the consumption of religious material goods, thanks also to media technologies and the Internet. In this article, the author seeks to complicate the notion that the production and consumption of novel Buddhist religious goods can be analyzed solely in terms of ‘market theory.’ While on the one hand the author shows that Buddhist technologies of salvation are historically associated with materiality, she also contends that the ‘aura’ of Buddhist-inspired modern religious goods – in the spirit of Walter Benjamin's essay ‘On Some Motifs in Baudelaire’ (1939) – is not so much effaced as it is reconfigured and transformed by technological mediations.
Bulletin of The School of Oriental and African Studies, 2008
Books & Book Chapters by Francesca Tarocco
Books by Francesca Tarocco
Conferences Organized by Francesca Tarocco
The two-day symposium brings to NYU Shanghai an international group of scholars, including art hi... more The two-day symposium brings to NYU Shanghai an international group of scholars, including art historians, anthropologists and intellectual historians, to look at and think with objects across the Buddhist world. Participants will use a wide range of methodologies to consider the lives and travels of Buddhist objects and icons, their engagement of viewers, modes of experiencing, collecting practices, embodiment, and knowledge making. Drawing on a variety of case studies, the symposium aims to stimulate cross-disciplinary and trans-regional dialogues and map out possible trajectories surrounding the on-going debates on Buddhist material culture and art history.
art criticism by Francesca Tarocco
e-book: 'Haze and Fog' by Cao Fei, Nov 2013
Book Reviews by Francesca Tarocco
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Papers by Francesca Tarocco
Books & Book Chapters by Francesca Tarocco
Books by Francesca Tarocco
Conferences Organized by Francesca Tarocco
art criticism by Francesca Tarocco
Book Reviews by Francesca Tarocco