Transgressing "Tantra"

This round table brings together authors of recent or forthcoming monographs on esoteric or tantric Buddhism broadly conceived and invites them to reflect on how "esoteric" or “tantric” Buddhism formed and transformed both as emic doxographic and as etic scholarly categories, as well as on the ways in which the interplay of these two levels influences their scholarly work. The round table focuses on esoteric or tantric traditions of Buddhism spanning geographically from India via Central and southeast Asia to Japan, and historically from their inception into the early modern period. It thus seeks to contribute to the wider field of tantric studies by moving beyond the emphasis on Indian or Indo-Tibetan forms of tantra and by thereby stimulating debate on the ways in which the "esoteric" or "tantric" has always been a translocally, even globally, entwined and contentious arena for the articulation of religious and scholarly identities.