The Lama Question: Violence, Sovereignty, and Exception in Early Socialist Mongolia. By Christopher Kaplonski. University of Hawaii Press, November 30, 2014. 280 pages. ISBN-10: 0824838564 ISBN-13: 978-0824838560
摘要
In this remarkable book that fuses in‐depth archival research with a sophisticated reinterpretation of Giorgio Agamben's theory of the exception, Christopher Kaplonski not only rewrites the early history of communist Mongolia but also forces us to rethink the nature of states and their use of political violence. To do so, he explores in fascinating detail the internal Mongolian debates about the “lama question,” namely the question of how this fledgling socialist state could break the power of the Buddhist establishment and thereby not only shore up its own legitimacy but also do so in a manner that would not alienate the vast majority of Mongols. In particular, he asks the counterintuitive question: Why did it take so long for the Mongolian People's Revolutionary Party to finally turn to political violence? In so doing, he is therefore able to show not only that the Mongolian case is contrary to Agamben's claim that the exception is dealt with only by extraordinary means but also contradicts much current anthropological theorizing about states carrying out violence simply since it is deemed “effective” or a “practical tool.” Rather, the case of Mongolia reveals precisely why and how states do not resort to political violence, and in this way sheds much needed light on the realities of state terror, its origins, and its consequences.
