@article{Pandey_2021, title={Rethinking Medieval Japan, Provincializing Europe}, url={https://praticasdahistoria.pt/article/view/24203}, DOI={10.48487/pdh.2021.n11.24203}, abstractNote={<div class="page" title="Page 2"> <div class="layoutArea"> <div class="column"> <p>Drawing on the insights offered in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s <em>Provincializing Europe</em>, this essay seeks to inquire into both the possibilities and limits of using modern categories of thought, which have emerged out of a specifically Western tradition, for an analysis of medieval Japanese texts. It questions the purpor- ted universalism of the categories body, gender, sex and agency – all of which are central to feminist analysis – for reading texts that emerged from within the East Asian religious and philosophical traditions. It argues that sex and gender, which are premised in modern thinking upon a division between natural attributes and social roles, have little valence in medieval Japanese writings because ‘nature’ and ‘society’ were not constituted as two separate spheres; and suggests that modern liberal conceptions of agency are inadequate for they cannot take into account gods and buddhas, who were seen as central actors in the cosmological/social world of medieval Japan.</p> </div> </div> </div>}, number={11}, journal={Práticas da História. Journal on Theory, Historiography and Uses of the Past}, author={Pandey, Rajyashree}, year={2021}, month={Apr.}, pages={35–51} }