Events
Workshop: „After Eurocentrism, Beyond Decentring: Themes and Methodologies for an Interdisciplinary History of Ideas“ on July 1 & 2
 | The Department of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures cordially invites you to the workshop entitled “After Eurocentrism, Beyond Decentring: Themes and Methodologies for an Interdisciplinary History of Ideas” on July 1 and 2, 2016 at the Heinrich-Zimmer Reading Room, South Asia Institute. |
Benjamin Zachariah (University of Trier) and Hans Harder (Head of Department and Professor of Modern South Asian Languages and Literatures) will coordinate the workshop.
Further information regarding the schedule and the talks is available in the booklet and on the poster.
Further information regarding the schedule and the talks is available in the booklet and on the poster.
Summary:
The kernel of the workshop is to discuss the movement of ideas, and the difficulties, archival, methodological and disciplinary, of tracking them as they move. The workshop brings together a number of academics from two different area studies specialisations and several disciplines: South Asian Studies and East Asian Studies; historians, historians and philosophers of science, literary scholars, political scientists and sociologists, who have for some years been engaged in tracking ideas as they move across linguistic, state, national or ‘cultural’ boundaries in their work.
Our starting point is that a blanket critique of ‘Eurocentrism’, which is several decades old now, has by now lost its bite, and a contrary danger of indigenism has now to be confronted. This danger of indigenism has been acute in the two area studies specialisations represented at this workshop, East Asian Studies and South Asian Studies, the latter perhaps dominated slightly more by India than the former by China. A process of recovery of methodological discussions must take place that is no longer content merely with critique and rejection, but attempts to provide constructive suggestions as to how to write about moving ideas, their adoption, adaptation to different contexts, or appropriation to new purposes. Different disciplinary formations have been attuned to various factors which other disciplines could potentially learn from, and the workshop brings the disciplines into dialogue.
Posted on 22 Jun 2016
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