History and the Idea of Public Sphere in India

Eine gemeinsame Vortragsreihe von: Exzellenzcluster ?Asia and Europe? der Universität Heidelberg & Deutsch-Amerikanisches Institut Heidelberg

This talk will focus on the process by which old documents acquired the status of ?historical records? in early twentieth-century India and use that example to discuss how the idea of the public archive ? as essential ingredient of ideal of the public sphere – was articulated in Indian historians? debates and practices. Dipesh Chakrabarty will also take this opportunity to present some reflections on the global relevance or otherwise of the concept of the public sphere, a category, after all, of ?bourgeois society?.

Dipesh Chakrabarty is the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History and South Asian Studies at the University of Chicago. He is a founding member of the editorial collective of Subaltern Studies, a founding editor of Postcolonial Studies, and a co-editor of Critical Inquiry. His publications include Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (2000, 2007). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.