ISSN:
1035-8811
Language:
English
Titel der Quelle:
The Australian journal of anthropology : official journal of the Australian Anthropological Society
Publ. der Quelle:
Malden, MA : Wiley-Blackwell
Angaben zur Quelle:
Vol. 28, No. 2 (2017), p. 210-224
DDC:
590
Abstract:
This article focuses on the question of the establishment of a Catholic monastic tradition, shaped by its Western creation and subsequent exportation to an Asian society. In 1954 the French Benedictine Congregation of St. Bathilde of Vanves founded a monastery in Central Vietnam. The circumstances of the Vietnam war, coupled with a holistic implementation plan instigated by the nuns, enabled the establishment of a small, but sedentary and durable, community, organised within Benedictine structures involving a girls’ hostel, plantation agriculture and catechism instruction. Choosing a life of self‐denial alongside the indigenous people, they eventually formed a ‘Benedictine community village’, implementing a non‐monastic but austere and disciplined life. However, these Benedictine nuns continuously self‐transformed and re‐defined themselves vis‐à‐vis their ‘spiritual tradition’. The pursuit of a life of interiority produced a form of rupture with older forms of evangelisation and with established clergy, reflecting the way in which these nuns conceived their alternative role in the Benedictine tradition. I interrogate here the Benedictine ascetic form and the place given by the Order to new alternative subjectivities.
Note:
Copyright: © 2017 Australian Anthropological Society
,
Copyright: © COPYRIGHT 2017 Wiley Subscription Services, Inc.
URL:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/taja.12240/abstract
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