Organizer: Elisabeth Benard, University of Puget Sound
Chair: Francoise Robin, INALCO
Discussant: Edwina Williams, CUNY, Lehman College
“Methodological diversity stretches our ability to imagine. It encourages
us to consider the evidence from many angles.” (Women in Tibet: 24)
This panel will examine the role of Tibetan women
from different disciplines—literature,
medicine, music, and religion—and will include diverse methodological
methods, literary, ethnographic, and historical. By examining the role of women
as poets, doctors, singers, and nuns, one is presented with women’s agency
in varied societal positions. With the selection of these specific lenses,
one is compelled to reflect upon cultural assumptions underlying studies of
and by Tibetan women, and to realize that Tibetan society is rapidly changing.
A consistent theme in these papers is that in contemporary Tibet, more women
from many sectors of society are gaining opportunities to public roles as doctors,
writers, etc. Prior to 1959, women faced many obstacles if they chose to
occupy public roles. They were encouraged to remain in the background. In this
panel, we will look at how women chose to come to the foreground, the circumstances
that promoted this shift, and the impact these changes have had in Tibetan
society. There are two papers about women in Amdo or northeast Tibet, one from
Lhasa, and one from Sakya (central south Tibet), illustrating regional differences
and influences among Tibetans. Such a diversity of scholarship will promote
a wide and innovative intellectual exchange amongst the panelists and the
audience.
s
Elisabeth Benard, University of Puget Sound
In the 11th century, the eminent Sakya Khon family began in Tibet and continued
to the present. Though the Sakya Principality and its male religious and political
leaders are well documented, the female members who are referred to as Jetsunmas
or holy ones are scarcely recorded. Even amongst the most illustrious ones,
such as Jetsunma Wangmo or Pema Trinley, there is scant information. Most of
my information has come from interviews with members of the two palaces, Phuntsok
and Dolma Palaces, and people who lived in Sakya prior to 1959.
I argue that the Sakya Jetsunmas’ position had similarities to the male-dominated
prestigious tulku (recognized reincarnation) system in Tibet. Prior to 1959,
Jetsunmas were encouraged to remain nuns to pursue religious practice. Both
the Sakya government and their families provided residences (labrang) reserved
exclusively for the Jetsunmas to study, meditate, and perform religious rituals.
Everything was provided for them including servants, food, and status. It
is notable that Jetsunmas received a portion of all offerings that were presented
to the Sakya Temple. They also were given equal opportunity to study with
all the religious preceptors (lamas) with whom their brothers studied. The present
Jetsunma Chimey Luding likes to emphasize that she received the same teachings
and did the same retreats as her brother, the present or 41st Sakya Trizin.
Analyzing the importance of Sakya Jetsunmas helps to further understand the
varied roles of women in Tibetan Buddhism.
Anne-Laure Cromphout, L'Université Libre de Bruxelles
Across the spectrum of Tibetan Music -- from traditional folk music to modern
pop songs -- different representations of the Tibetan feminine are sung,
enacted, and embodied. Male singers often represent women as the girl of the
grassland, the girl of Lhasa, the missed mother, using these as repository objects
for their feelings of longing or love for an imagined traditional home in opposition
to their own embracing of modernity. This follows the trope of female exoticization
in minority cultures, which appeals to Han Chinese and the urban minority
male (Schein 1999). In contrast, female singers represent themselves as more
active subjects, enacting and encouraging changes in their lives without undermining
their loyalty to tradition. In this paper, I analyze the lyrics and musical
styles of folk and pop artists alongside visual elements in videos and performances,
such as clothing, gestures, and dancing styles. In addition, I explore stances
on cultural preservation and adaptation through interviews of women artists,
including some singers from the first all-female VCD “Tibetan Girls”.
Looking at representation of self and identity, female singers oscillate
between a strong Tibetan identity through adhering to traditional values and
an appeal to modernity often embodied through Chinese or Western paradigms,
thus creating new and hybrid ways of being-in-the-world for Tibetan women. In
this paper, my aim is to highlight the agency of female singers who create,
interpret and transform representations of the female in the emergent public
arena of pop and folk music videos.
Francoise Robin, INALCO
For centuries, Tibetan women have virtually been present in (mainly Buddhist)
literary texts as passive subject matter. But for the last 25 years, they
have begun to endorse a more active role. At the present time, one can find
women poets, fiction writers, essayists, publishers, and editors, both in "Chinese" Tibet
and in exile. Most of them endeavor to talk about women in a radically new
tone and with a radically new perspective: letting their readers see or feel
what being a woman means in Tibet today, i.e. asserting their own agency and
writing back to the male-dominated center. The hard life of women, their selflessness,
their silent suffering have become standard and key topics in their writings.
In a parallel move, these women have also gradually taken the command of
the publishing process, thereby ensuring their voices are heard. This paper
aims at asserting the gradual empowering process and increasing role of women
in literary circles, who now claim the status of autonomous subjects who matter
in Tibetan society.
Sienna Craig, Dartmouth College
The history of Tibetan medicine from the seventh century to the present is
primarily a masculine narrative. From Yuthog Yontan Gompo the Elder, to Desi
Sangye Gyatso, Khyenrab Norbu, and contemporary figures such as Akong Rinpoche
or Yeshi Dhonden, nearly all of the major “founding figures” and
agents of structural change within Tibet’s “science of healing” have
been men. This is a product of the commingling of monastic and medical education,
and the prevalence of knowledge transmission modes based on patrilineage. Men
either learned the science of medicine in the context of more catholic studies
in Tibetan sciences in a monastery, or they became healer-physicians by apprenticing
a male relative or teacher in a specific milieu. The Chinese “peaceful
liberation” of Tibet in the 1950s, and subsequent decades of social, economic,
and political upheaval and transformation in China and across the greater Tibetan-speaking
world have begun to shift this gender balance. Drawing on ethnographic research
conducted among Tibetan medical institutions in Nepal and the Tibet Autonomous
Region and analysis of women physician’s biographies from the Tibetan
past, this paper explores the changing roles of women in Tibetan medical education
and practice. I examine how women’s access to medical education has changed
in recent years, and discuss socio-cultural tensions that arise about the salience
of lineage in this context. I also discuss the place female practitioners are
coming to occupy in contemporary formulation of “integrated” public
health programs in Tibetan areas, particularly those with a focus on maternal
and child health.
|
