When the sun's rays are as shadows - The nechung rituals and the politics of spectacle in Tibetan exile

This dissertation is a contemplation of the meaning of a Tibetan Buddhist monastic ritual within its transnational context of exile. The meaning of the ritual, for the monks who performed it, ranged from its meaning expounded within relevant Tibetan Buddhist discursive traditions, to conceptions of the ritual as a political act akin to those of anti-colonial and anti-occupation struggles, to conceptions of the ritual as an onerous duty to be perfunctorily performed even though it disallowed a monk's pursuit of his own "talent." These heterodox conceptions point to the diversity of the contexts of the ritual performance in exile.;I propose a conception of the spectacle as a means of constructing a commensurability across the contexts of the ritual performance, linking the chronotopes performatively constructed within the ritual with the exigencies of exile. There was the local spectacle of the ritual chronotopes (discursive time-spaces), rooted in Tibetan Buddhist ontologies. It involved beseeching various divinities to annihilate Enemies of the Teachings, and the articulating of a Tibetan collectivity founded in ritual instantiations of a collective karma (spyi-mthun gyi las). Then there were other spectacles, rooted in diverse logics of global flows of capital, images, ideas, people. These included the mass-mediated spectacles of news reportage, of advertising, of films, etc. These other, mass-mediated spectacles interfered within the local spectacle of the ritual chronotopes, instantiating a politics of spectacle -- as when the deity called upon to annihilate Enemies of the Teachings oracularly pronounced his support for the Dalai Lama's policy of peace. The politics of spectacle thus involved strategic espousals of specific discursive elements of different spectacles, by specific actors, in specific contexts. The ritual, within the wider contexts of its performance, was involved in the politics of spectacle, which in turn shaped its meaning.;My ethnographic focus is on the kang-so (bskang gso) ritual performed daily to propitiate the protective deity of Nechung, at Nechung monastery, re-established in exile at Dharamsala, north India. Through a study of this ritual performance, I thus propose a conceptualization of the meaning of religious ritual, as shaped by heterodox logics within the present global conjuncture.