Devotion in Ambivalence, Diaspora in Situ

This article discuss the essays of Baimanazhen (Tib. པདྨ་ལྷ་མཛེས། , Chn. 白玛娜珍, b. 1967), a celebrated Tibetan author who writes exclusively in Chinese. We read Baimanazhen’s works not simply as polemics against or mockeries of Buddhism or Tibetan culture, nor as a total acceptance of her Tibetan upbringing. Rather, as an exophonic Tibetan writer, her attitude toward Tibet and Tibetan Buddhism reveals an ambivalence that stays true to the unique experience of Tibetans, especially bilingual Tibetans, navigating the clash of the two cultures in their day-to-day lives, and the transformations in Tibetan society that leave one feeling neither fully Tibetan nor fully Chinese, a phenomenon that we refer to as “diaspora in situ .” Baimanazhen’s complex relationship to Tibetan Buddhism is not anti-Buddhist, but reflects her practice of Tibetan Buddhism both through irony and ambivalence, and through traditional religious activities like devotion and worship. We term this approach “ambivalence as devotion.”