ABSTRACT
While postcolonial critique of the study of religion and Buddhism was mainly focused on the cultural context of Orientalist power regimes and epistemological distortions and asking for theoretical reorientations, decolonial critique is more focused on identity (especially race) and asking for institutional, social and epistemological change. Decolonial critique is still in the making within the general study of religion, and primarily performed in the English-speaking world (mainly the USA, Canada and the United Kingdom). Within Buddhist studies it is often paralleled with or even identical to developments within ‘post-global’ Buddhism itself, thus underlining its appeal to transcend secular and objectivist studies of religion. This chapter describes new tendencies of identity-based movements within American Buddhism. It analyses the contours of a new decolonial and identity-based turn within the study of Buddhism, including critical race studies and slogans of letting the (white/Western) studies die.
