Dibyesh Anand - Geopolitical Exotica

Shuttleworth,

Simla Talks,

Sino-Indian relations, xv,

Sino-Western relations, xv

Smith, A.,

Smith, S.,

Snow Leopard, The,

Snyder, R. S.,

sovereignty, xvi, xviii,

Sperling, E.,

Spivak, G. C.,

stereotype,

stereotyping, xvii,

Strasbourg Proposal,

strategic essentialism

strategies of representation,

See also representational strategies

subjectivity,

Tibetan, xv,

surveillance,

suzerainty, xvi, xviii,

Sylvester, C.

Tashi Lama,

See also

Teshoo Lama Teshoo Lama,

See

also Tashi Lama

Thargyal, R.

theosophist

third debate, xiv

Third Eye, The,

Thurman, R. A. F.,

Tibetan Books of the Dead, The,

Tibetan Buddhism,

; comparison with classical Buddhism,; as idealized Buddhism, 49; as impure Buddhism

Tibetan Review,

Tibet mission of 1903-4

. See also British expedition of Tibet of 1903-4

Tibetophilia

Tibet question

Tibet support groups

Tintin in Tibet,

transnationalism,

truth claims,

tsampa,

Tsering, L.

Turner, S.,

UN General Assembly, 82, 133 UN Security Council

Unveiling of Lhasa

veil

Venturino, S.,

"victimisation paradigm,"

Waddell, L. A.

Waever, O.,

Ward, F. K.,

Weldes, J.,

Wellby, M. S.,

white man's burden,

Willoughby, M. E.,

Wilson, A.,

Wolff, Joesph,

yeti,

Younghusband expedition, See also British expedition of

Tibet of 1903-4

Zizek, S.

David Campbell and Michael J. Shapiro, series editors

Volume 30 Dibyesh Anand, Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination

Volume 29 Prem Kumar Rajaram and Carl Grundy-Warr, editors, Borderscapes: Hidden Geographies and Politics at Territory's Edge

Volume 28 Louiza Odysseos, The Subject of Coexistence: Otherness in International Relations

Volume 27 Denise Ferreira da Silva, Toward a Global Idea of Race

Volume 26 Matthew Sparke, In the Space of Theory: Postfoundational Geographies of the Nation-State

Volume 25 Roland Bleiker, Divided Korea: Toward a Culture of Reconciliation

Volume 24 Marieke de Goede, Virtue, Fortune, and Faith: A Genealogy of Finance

Volume 23 Himadeep Muppidi, The Politics of the Global

Volume 22 William A. Callahan, Contingent States: Greater China and Transnational Relations

Volume 21 Allaine Cerwonka, Native to the Nation: Disciplining Landscapes and Bodies in Australia

Volume 20 Simon Dalby, Environmental Security

Volume 19 Cristina Rojas, Civilization and Violence: Regimes of Representation in Nineteenth-Century Colombia

Volume 18 Mathias Albert, David Jacobson, and Yosef Lapid, editors, Identities, Borders, Orders: Rethinking International Relations Theory

Volume 17 Jenny Edkins, Whose Hunger? Concepts of Famine, Practices of Aid

Volume 16 Jennifer Hyndman, Managing Displacement: Refugees and the Politics of Humanitarianism

Volume 15 Sankaran Krishna, Postcolonial Insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the Question of Nationhood

Volume 14 Jutta Weldes, Mark Laffey, Hugh Gusterson, and Raymond Duvall, editors, Cultures of Insecurity: States, Communities, and the Production of Danger

Volume 13 Frangois Debrix, Re-Envisioning Peacekeeping: The United Nations and the Mobilization of Ideology

Volume 12 Jutta Weldes, Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Volume 11 Nevzat Soguk, States and Strangers: Refugees and Displacements of Statecraft

Volume 10 Kathy E. Ferguson and Phyllis Turnbull, Oh, Say, Can You See? The Semiotics of the Military in Hawai'i

Volume 9 Iver B. Neumann, Uses of the Other: "The East" in European Identity Formation

Volume 8 Keith Krause and Michael C. Williams, editors, Critical Security Studies: Concepts and Cases

Volume 7 Costas M. Constantinou, On the Way to Diplomacy

Volume 6 Gearoid O Tuathail (Gerard Toal), Critical Geopolitics: The Politics of Writing Global Space

Volume 5 Roxanne Lynn Doty, Imperial Encounters: The Politics of Representation in North-South Relations

Volume 4 Thom Kuehls, Beyond Sovereign Territory: The Space of Ecopolitics

Volume 3 Siba N'Zatioula Grovogui, Sovereigns, Quasi Sovereigns, and Africans: Race and Self-Determination in International Law

Volume 2 Michael J. Shapiro and Hayward R. Alker, editors, Challenging Boundaries: Global Flows, Territorial Identities

Volume 1 William E. Connolly, The Ethos of Pluralization

Dibyesh Anand is an Associate Professor at London's Westminster University, an expert on majority-minority relations in China and India, and the author of Geopolitical Exotica: Tibet in Western Imagination

Dibyesh Anand is a reader in international relations at the Centre for the Study of Democracy at the University of Westminster in England. He has published on postcolonial international relations, the Tibet question, and Hindu nationalism.

[1] Though critical international theories have questioned mainstream International Relations (IR) on epistemological, ontological, and methodological grounds, they remain largely focused on the "West." I contend that the parochial character of IR can be effectively challenged by a postcolonial IR based on conversations between critical international theories and postcolonialism. Adopting a historical analytical perspective, I examine "Exotica Tibet" (henceforth used as a shorthand for Western exoticized representations of Tibet and Tibetans) and its constitutive significance for the "Tibet question." [1] Exotica Tibet is interrogated in terms of its poetics (how Tibet is represented) and its politics (what impact these representational regimes have on the identity discourses of the represented). While Tibet excites the popular imagination in the West, it has been treated cursorily within political studies. I contextualize the empirical study of the Tibet question to put forward more general arguments that may apply to other parts of the postcolonial world and provide new insights into themes of representation and identity. I use the term "Tibet question" to refer to Tibet as an issue in world politics. By using the interrogative word, I foreground the Tibetan issue as a "problem," in line with the "Palestine question" or the "Irish question." It is more than "the conflict over the political status of Tibet vis-a-vis China" (Goldstein in Goldstein and Kapstein 1998, 14; see also Heberer 1995). Crucially, it includes an examination of the very categories of "Tibet" and "Tibetans."

[2]One other reason for this could be what Chan argues is IR's paucity in understanding matters of religions and religious values contributing to the fact that it "has nothing to say about the contest between China and Tibet to ordain and maintain Lamas" (2000, 566). The most famous of these contests is over the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama, usually considered as second in religious hierarchy within Tibetan Buddhism (at least within the dominant Gelugpa sect), next only to the Dalai Lama.

[3]The International Commission of Jurists (http://www.icj.org) in Geneva brought out two early reports on Tibet-"The Question of Tibet and the Rule of Law" (1959) and "Tibet and the Chinese People's Republic" (i960)-and continues to issue reports. The UN General Assembly has passed three resolutions on Tibet: 1353 (XIV) 1959; 1723 (XVI) 1961; 2079 (XX) 1965. For details on these as well as other international resolutions on Tibet, see Department of Information and International Relations (1997).