Forget Tibet?

Absent from most considerations of Beijing's rule over the Tibet Autonomous Region and other territories claimed by Tibetan nationalists is the question of what precisely the restoration of a pre-1951 Tibet would entail. Those who call for a 'Free Tibet' and a state able to reassert 'cultural independence'—the seemingly more moderate claim made by the Dalai Lama—presumably do not also hope for a restoration of the rigidly stratified socioeconomy extant until Beijing forced land redistribution in Amdo and Eastern Kham in 1951 and throughout the territories in 1959.

Just how radical was the communist readjustment? Before the 1950s the vast majority of Tibet's population lived in hereditary serfdom, belonging by birth to landed estates run by lords (sger pa). 'With the exception of approximately 250-300 aristocratic families,' Melvyn Goldstein explains, the populace was made up of serfs (mi ser), who 'did not have freedom of movement' and were subject to forcible recapture if they attempted escape.*

Religion's epiphenomenality strikes again. Guess which stratum was not born into serfdom? Why, the monastic estate, of course. If one were born a mi ser, becoming a monk was the sole viable means of escape—though it could be done only with the sger pa's permission. One need not venture far here to understand the doctrinal and ideological implications of Tibetan Buddhist thought: While the epistemologic gestures of most Buddhist schools are those with which I happen to most closely sympathize, we can hardly ignore the relationship between the Tibetan social structure and a system of thought which, despite its internal heterogeneity, tends to emphasize quietism, acceptance of discomfort (meditation's object, if we are permitted to say that), and, of course, Samsara.

The notion of 'deserving' that inheres in any conception of karma or rebirth can hardly be characterized as an aleatory ideological development in a structurated socioeconomy. Can calming practices be viewed as independent of monastic efforts to supply a subjected populace with the cognitive tools with which to live and survive in such a system? (We know, for instance, that meditation's effects rival or exceed psychotropic interventions in terms of effectiveness.) The very notion of 'deserving,' which necessarily functions as a figment of legitimation, is coherent only in relation to a bourgeois subject. One can hardly conceal amusement at the doctrine's present resurgence (and remarkable financial success) in the U.S. in the form of such works as The Secret and its predecessor, You Can Heal Your Life.

Despite—or perhaps because of—the suppression of pre-occupation Tibetan 'cultural' practices, one can safely say that the life of the average citizen of the region is substantially improved. The region has experienced 12 percent GDP growth for most of this decade, and per capita income has increased at around ten percent for the same period, if we are to accept the official reports.

This is not to say that Beijing's occupation of and claim to the territories can be characterized as anything other than domination that is imperialist in practice and nationalist in ideology. Before the 18th century, the notion of Tibet as part of 'China' was hardly yet a Manchu fantasy. And yet nationalism's structure remains unaltered and unalterable. Domination is the precondition of territory in any place and at any time. To speak of 'legitimate' or 'illegitimate' borders and to speak of cultural 'rights' to self-determination is to make claims predicated on an originary and always elusive point of descent. Claims to nationhood enact an endless diachronic operation backwards. If we reject the foundationalist architecture surrounding claims to 'race,' 'ethnicity,' and 'culture'—each of which seeks to suppress heterogeneity while simultaneously reproducing marginal difference—the moral legitimacy of calls for national self-determination becomes less certain. As with any movement of signification, territory and borders are produced by words masquerading as descriptive utterances. They are the effect of what J.L. Austin would have called an illocutionary movement.

Much like sadism and masochism in Deleuze, no dialogue can be had between legitimacy and territory. Which 'Tibet' is to be 'freed' exactly? Are we to reject Chinese nationalism in favor of its Tibetan counterpart? It is useful to remember that the 'Tibet' envisaged by Tibetan exiles was nonexistent before the seventh century. Moreover, that imagined territory coincides with land claimed by India and, of course, by China (Arunachal Pradesh, for instance, while partly claimed by both, is administered by the former). The Tibet Autonomous Region, meanwhile, excludes Amdo and other territory claimed by Tibetan nationalists, which has been incorporated by several adjacent Chinese provinces.

In the end, nationalism lives and breathes through diffusive romance. Its power lies in its ability to seduce, particularly the subjects who are the object of its claims (in this case, the 'Tibetan people') and those who can legitimate those claims (the international audience). We finally might do well to view nationalism as a lover whose charms are best resisted.

*Melvyn C. Goldstein, 'Serfdom and Mobility: An Examination of the Institution of "Human Lease" in Traditional Tibetan Society,' The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 30, No. 3 (May, 1971), pp. 521-534.