Exposing the Female Sex: Further Reflections on the babil, a Cambodian Ritual Accessory

Ashley Thompson (SOAS)

Abstract

This paper reconsiders the form, iconography and function of the Cambodian babil, a ritual candle-holder used, roughly speaking, to demarcate sacred space. In previous research, I have examined analogies between the babil-candle ensemble and the Shaivite linga-yoni, as both operate territorial and/or social delimitation through the artistically manifested metaphor of sexual difference. The ground, in the form of the pedestal or the candle-holder is associated with the feminine, while the figure emerging against this ground - the king, the monk, the Buddha, the community, the sovereign individual… in the form of the linga or the candle or the Buddha statue -, is associated with the masculine. In such, they comprise at once a highly abstract means of thinking figure and ground, and of figuring that thought. This paper pursues these considerations in sharpening the focus on the babil’s iconography and form to broaden the comparative range, notably highlighting relations with Buddhist boundary markers known as sima.

Bio

Ashley Thompson is Hiram W. Woodward Chair in Southeast Asian Art at SOAS, University of London. Before emerging as a leading specialist in Southeast Asian Cultural Histories, she spent ten years in Thailand and Cambodia working in post-war reconstruction in the fields of education, art, archaeology and cultural heritage research and management. Her work stretches from classical and pre-modern arts and literatures to the contemporary period, with a focus on Cambodia and on such objects as Hindu and Buddhist sculpture, cult or ritual practices and texts. Her research is informed by deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and post-colonial critical perspectives, and revolves around questions of memory, political and cultural transition, sexual difference and subjectivity. Her latest book is Engendering the Buddhist State: Territory, Sovereignty and Sexual Difference in the Inventions of Angkor (Routledge, 2016).