How to Write the Global History of Knowledge-Making: Interaction, Circulation and the Transgression of Cultural Difference (Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 53)

"This multidisciplinary collection of essays provides a critical and comprehensive understanding of how knowledge has been made, moved and used, by whom and for what purpose. To explain how new knowledge emerges, this volume offers a two-fold conceptual move: challenging both the premise of insurmountable differences between confined, autarkic cultures and the linear, nation-centered approach to the spread of immutable stocks of knowledge. Rather, the conceptual focus of the book is on the circulation, amalgamation and reconfiguration of locally shaped bodies of knowledge on a broader, global scale. The authors emphasize that the histories of interaction have been made less transparent through the study of cultural representations thus distorting the view of how knowledge is actually produced. Leading scholars from a range of fields, including history, philosophy, social anthropology and comparative culture research, have contributed chapters which cover the period from the early modern age to the present day and investigate settings in Africa, Asia, and Europe. Their particular focus is on areas that have largely been neglected until now. In this work, readers from many disciplines will find new approaches to writing the global history of knowledge-making, especially historians, scholars of the history and philosophy of science, and those in culture studies."--Back cover Contents 6 Chapter 1: Introduction: Interaction, Circulation and the Transgression of Cultural Differences in the History of Knowledge-Making 8 1.1 The History of Knowledge-Making in a New Key 9 1.2 The Habsburg Experience 11 1.3 Non-binary Approaches and Practices: Similarities and Pluriculturality 13 1.4 Modernization 14 1.5 Reflexive Postmodernism 15 1.6 Habsburg Orientalism: The Representational Versus the Agency-Related Approach 17 1.7 Scope of the Book 22 References 28 Part I: Knowledge Production Beyond the Logic of Cultural Difference 34 Chapter 2: The Role of Exiles in the History of Knowledge: Two Cases 35 2.1 Three Functions of Exiles 36 2.2 French Protestants 37 2.2.1 Journalism 38 2.3 The Great Exodus 39 2.3.1 Sociology 40 2.3.2 Art History 41 2.3.3 Problems of Reception 43 2.4 Conclusions 46 References 47 Chapter 3: Interactive Knowledge-Making: How and Why Nineteenth-Century Austrian Scientific Travelers in Asia and Africa Overcame Cultural Differences 51 3.1 Carl Hügel 54 3.2 Joseph Russegger 55 3.3 The Travelogues 56 3.4 Motivation for Traveling 57 3.5 Napoleonic Discourses and the Colonial Aftermath 58 3.6 Science in Practice 62 3.7 Science in Discourse 64 3.8 Hügel, the Map Episode, and Colonialism 66 3.9 “... and Knowledge I Must Gain on My Journey”. Russegger and the Interior of Africa 68 3.10 Transgressing Differences? 70 References 72 Source Material 73 Part II: Mobilizations of Knowledge Reconsidered 76 Chapter 4: How Romance Studies Shaped the Ukrainian Language and How the Ukrainian-Romanian Conflict Helped to Create Ladinian: A (Very) Entangled History of A-Political Science 77 4.1 Historicizing Language Research 78 4.2 Politics of Linguistics in Vienna: Habsburg Slavic Studies 80 4.3 Politics of Linguistics II: Chernivtsi’s Romanists 84 4.4 Imperial Itinerary of a Linguist: Theodor Gartner 85 4.5 Conclusions 90 References 91 Chapter 5: A Spiritual Unity of Europe and the Yugoslav Politics of Knowledge in the Interwar Period: A Philosophical Enhancement of the ‘Slavic Spirit’ 95 5.1 The Slavs and “The West”: The Question of Belonging 97 5.2 The Post-War Crisis and the Fantasy of Cultural Autocracy 98 5.3 The Future of Europe Is Outside Europe 100 5.4 Culture of New Horizons and distentio animi 102 References 107 Part III: Shifting Positions of and for Knowledge Production 108 Chapter 6: A History of Circulation vs. an ‘Episodic’ History of Mathematics in South Asia: Titrating the Historiography and Social Theory of Science and Mathematics 109 6.1 The Historiography of Non-Western Mathematics 110 6.2 The Dilemmas of Global and Transnational History of Science 113 6.3 South Asia and the Itineraries of Calculus 117 6.4 The ‘Working Worlds’ of Mathematics 123 References 126 Chapter 7: Shaping Newtonianism: The Intersection of Knowledge Claims in Eighteenth-Century Greek Intellectual Life 130 7.1 Centers and Peripheries 130 7.2 Ambiguous Modernity 132 7.3 New Painting on Old Canvas 135 7.3.1 Experiment and Mathematics 135 7.3.2 Induction in Renaissance Philosophy 137 7.3.3 Induction and Mathematics 138 7.4 Eclecticism 142 7.5 Conclusion 145 References 146 Sources 148 Part IV: Writing a Shared History of Knowledge Production 150 Chapter 8: Queer Diasporic Practice of a Muslim Traveler: Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Chacha Kahini 151 8.1 Queer Diasporic Practice and Syed Mujataba Ali 151 8.2 Indian Diasporas to German-Speaking Europe 153 8.3 Syed Mujtaba Ali’s Chacha Kahini (The Story of Chacha) 156 References 164 Archives 164 Sources 164 Chapter 9: Shared Village Stories: How (Not) to Disentangle Literary Historiography from ‘Modernization’ 167 9.1 “Modernization” 169 9.2 Ujamaa 173 9.3 Maendeleo 177 References 180 Chapter 10: Can Black Folk Dream—in Theory? Psychoanalysis and/of/in Coloniality—Anamnesis of a Failed Encounter 184 References 198 Chapter 11: Positivist Worldmakers: John Stuart Mill’s and Auguste Comte’s Rival Universalisms at the Zenith of Empire 200 11.1 Positivism Re-particularized 201 11.2 Universals and Particulars in Positivist Worldmaking 203 11.3 The Posterities of Comte’s and Mill’s Universalisms 208 11.4 Conclusion 212 References 214 Chapter 12: Afterword 218 12.1 Afterword: Similarities and Pluriculturality 218 References 224