Decolonial Methods in Precolonial History of Science
Lead Convenor: Shireen Hamza
The academic discipline of the history of science is increasingly focusing on “modern science”; in non-Western contexts, the modern is often defined in relation to European colonial history. In this session, we will focus on practices of researching and teaching about sciences in the periods before European colonialism. Unlike within the broader discipline of history, few historians of science have integrated the study of science in these periods with "postcolonial science studies" (Davis & Altschul 2009).
For this session, we have selected one historical "case study," which will provide us a common ground on which to discuss the methodological readings (Ragab 2015). As you read, please think of one phrase related to decolonial methods in the history of science, and draw one (quick) map relevant to the history of any scientific tradition/discipline you have studied or researched.
A fascinating, generative aspect of studying sources from this period is that knowledge about the natural world did not follow the disciplinary formations of science today. Historians must decide what to call science and why. What colonial and decolonial legacies inform the ways we define science (Harding 2011), especially in a period before our historical actors had to contend with that term? How does this relate to our contemporary ideas of who does science, as well as where and when? What definitions of science(s) can make this term inclusive of multiple ways of knowing and manipulating the natural world, across period and region?
In our last session, we discussed the ways some political and intellectual trends had informed various kinds of Pan-Asianisms in the last century. The geographies of various literate scientific traditions could also be a powerful resource for us in remapping historical connectivities -- as well as disconnections -- across Asia, over a longue durée (Pollock 2011; Subrahmanyam 2016). What if we take more shared cosmologies. philosophical methodologies, medical procedures or navigation techniques as the basis for mapping regions outside of colonial imaginaries? How can the critical scholar engage and subvert ethno-nationalisms based on particular visions within the histories of science? How do we study and teach about non-literate/indigenous knowledge traditions in these periods? Are there modes of “reading against the grain” relevant to pre-colonial archives? Continuing to learn with critical indigenous theory, we will also discuss the politics and ethics of this kind of scholarship (Smith 1999).
Case Study:
Ragab, Ahmed. "One, two, or many sexes: sex differentiation in medieval Islamicate medical thought." Journal of the History of Sexuality 24, no. 3 (2015): 428-454.
Methodology Readings:
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (Zed Books Ltd., 2013): 29-41 [Chapter One, especially the seciton "Is History Important for Indigenous Peoples?"]
Harding, Sandra, ed. The postcolonial science and technology studies reader (Duke University Press, 2011): 151-158. [Other Cultures' Sciences]
Pollock, Sheldon, ed. Forms of Knowledge in Early Modern Asia: Explorations in the Intellectual History of India and Tibet, 1500–1800 (Duke University Press, 2011): 1-16 [Introduction]
Subrahmanyam, Sanjay. "One Asia, or Many? Reflections from connected history." Modern Asian Studies 50, no. 1 (2016): 5-43.
Recommended Readings:
Park, Katharine, and Lorraine Daston, eds. Early modern science. Cambridge University Press, 2016. [The Age of the New]
Davis, Kathleen, and Nadia Altschul. Medievalisms in the postcolonial world: the idea of "the Middle Ages" outside Europe. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009.
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples (Zed Books Ltd., 2013): 1-18 [INTRODUCTION]
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