The Waves of Heterotopia: Toward a Vernacular Intellectual History of the Indian Ocean

Vernacular Capitalism and Intellectual History in a Gujarati Account of China, 1860–68

“…Although Ishwardas's Gujarati text may productively be brought into conversation with studies of “vernacularization” and “vernacular literature” in the historiography of South Asia (Busch 2011; Mir 2010; Pollock 2006, 2013; Sartori 2014; Shulman 2016), this article positions it primarily in the rising subfield of “vernacular intellectual history.” To speak of vernacular intellectual history as a subfield is apt given that it is a self-conscious corollary of the growing discipline of global intellectual history. Recently, Nile Green (2018) has elaborated a sophisticated framework for vernacular intellectual histories of the Indian Ocean by conceiving of that space as one not of cosmopolitanism, but rather of “heterotopia.” Adapting Michel Foucault's idea of the hétérotopie , Green (2018, 848–49) defines heterotopia as “a space that entrants find disturbingly incompatible with their more familiar social, and thence conceptual, arenas of experience,” thereby foregrounding the multiple ways in which actors wrestled with difference.…”

“…Finally, given the central role of the “epistemology of direct observation” (Green 2018, 259) in Ishwardas's text, to say that he was operating primarily through a “colonial episteme” would not only fail to give Ishwardas his rightful due as an enterprising intellectual but, more seriously, would necessitate an abnegation of conscientious methods of historical inquiry. Following Norbert Peabody (2012), the historiographical emphasis on the maximal effect of colonial epistemes has both downplayed the participation of indigenous actors in generating knowledge and ignored how novel administrative structures and technologies of rule functioned as arenas for the articulation of vernacular ideas.…”

The languages of Indian Ocean studies: Models, methods and sources

“…The chief influence of Braudel came through his model of historical geography, of an interconnected maritime space whose climate and environment created a "physical unit" that by fostering in turn a corresponding "human unit" structured the enduring patterns he classified as "collective destinies and general trends" (Braudel, 1949(Braudel, : 1966. This unitary model was subsequently transposed onto the far more complex and diverse geographies of the Indian Ocean, by heuristically reproducing a similarly singular "world" from what can perhaps more accurately be conceived as a congeries of interconnected seas, each with their own distinct characteristics (Green, 2018). In contrast to these sweeping geographic vistas, the Mediterranean vision of Goitein emerged from the grainy paleographical details of the fragmentary geniza documents, an empirical approach that would ultimately prove less influential than his early emphasis on economic ties.…”

The Politics of “Greater India,” a Moral Geography: Moveable Antiquities and Charmed Knowledge Networks between Indonesia, India, and the West

“…Much consulted, influential studies are Ho 2004; 2006; 2017; Subrahmanyam 2005; 2016; Bose 2006; Duara 2010; Amrith 2011; 2014; and, building on the concept “Sanskrit Cosmopolis,” Pollock 1995; and Ricci 2011. See, more recently, among others, Acri 2016; Green 2018; and Alexander 2019.…”