apr 24, 2012 - Resorting to Violence: Technologies of Exception, Contingent States and the Repression of Buddhist Lamas in 1930s Mongolia

Description:

Drawing upon extensive archival research, in this paper I re-examine the relationship among political violence, sovereignty and the state of exception through the lens of ‘the question of the lamas’, a power struggle between the early Mongolian socialist state and the Buddhist establishment in the 1920s–1930s. I use the Mongolian case to argue for a revisioning of the state of exception as ‘technologies of exception’, to better highlight the fluid nature of the exception. These technologies of exception were a range of policies, propaganda and forms of violence that were enacted at various times. It was only with the failure of all prior technologies of exception that mass killing was taken up. Mongolia thus offers a useful case study in the relationship among sovereignty, exception and political violence in contingent states.

Volume 77, 2012