When the ‘Buddha’s Tree Itself Becomes a Rhizome’: The Religious Itinerant, Nomad Science and the Buddhist State
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is a thoroughly researched and perceptive paper and draws on a broad range of literature, in addition to the key work of Deleuze and Guattari. However, this study of the religious nomad in Thailand limits analysis to ascetic forest monks to the exclusion of hermits. Justin McDaniel emphasizes the ubiquity of the hermit (phra reusi) in Thai iconography and literature and the hermit as an integral part of Thai Buddhism ("This Hindu holy man is a Thai Buddhist" South East Asia Research 21(2) 2013). The author claims that nomadism need not be confined to physical wandering but should also include "mobile thought" (p.3,l.74) and "liminal thinking" (p.5/l.167). In this respect the work of Shigeharu Tanabe on the hermits of King's Mountain in northern Thailand is germane. Tanabe applies the Deleuze and Guattari concept (in A Thousand Plateaus, 1987) of "becoming" (devenir) to the hermits' practice of meditation as a means of liberation from suffering, oppression and rationalized modern knowledge and associated power structures (such as the modern nation-state and state sangha). See S. Tanabe "Resistance through Meditation: Hermits of King's Mountain in Northern Thailand" in Oscar Salemink ed. Scholarship and Engagementnin Mainland Southeast Asia: A Festschrift in Honor of Achan Chayan Vaddhanaphuti, Silkworm Press, 2016). I recommend that the author include some discussion, at least in an extended footnote, of hermits in Thailand as religious nomads.
Author Response
Most appreciate the constructive comments by this reviewer and these suggestions for improvement have been taken on board with an inclusion made in the paper dealing with Professor Tanabe's work at the King's Mountain hermitage and the deterritorialised notion of the hermit/ruesii. I have also footnoted McDaniel's earlier paper on the eclectic nature of wandering Hindu-Brahman hermits and how these beliefs were readily integrated and normalised in the totalty of popular Buddhism.
Reviewer 2 Report
This article applies Deleuze and Guattari's figure of the nomad to Buddhist religious leaders in and around Thailand. It makes a compelling case that, though Deleuze and Guattari are primarily focused on the desert asceticism of Christianity, the forest can also be thought of as a smooth space. Within the smooth space of the forest the nomadic monk shows the limits of the striated state apparatus. Of course, the tendency of the state is to attempt to striate these smooth spaces, which it does by appropriating the legacies of these religious figures.
Overall this strikes me as a good extension of Deleuze and Guattari into religious studies. I appreciate the use of concrete historical examples and found them enlightening. What I think might be helpful for the reader is a discussion of the advantages of using Deleuze and Guattari in this way. Given that it's possible to read religious itinerancy in this way, what do we gain here that's not gained from other theoretical approaches?
The other issue that might be helpfully addressed is Deleuze and Guattari's discussion of religion as territory in the Refrain plateau. This complicates the relation between religion and the state.
Author Response
Most appreciate the comments made by this reviewer which enabled me to rethink my argument based on D&G pertaining to the smooth space of the interstices of the state (i.e., mountains/forests). The notion of itineracy is dealt with in the paper though I cannot elaborate on alternative approaches in the space provided. A good point made by the reviewer about their (complex) argument in (musical) Refrain Plateau. I use a similar, if not mentioned, religious intermezzo [becoming-Buddhist nomad]; an improvisation almost as found among the nomadic monk/hermit (as I showed in the case of Ajaan Man's haphazard wanderings in NE Thailand). The Refrain is a territorial assemblage (which connects to the comments of the previous reviewer), sanctified spaces made through these wandering practices. (D&G 1987, 312).
