Location
German Historical Institute London
Join us on 19 May for the sixth lecture of our series on ‘Science, Knowledge, and the Legacy of Empire’ in collaboration with the Fritz Thyssen Foundation given by Helen Tilley (Northwestern University).
This talk uses the South Asian parable of “The Blind Men and the Elephant” as its point of departure to explore different fault lines in the science/knowledge divide in global history. I hope to prompt debate about the nature of empires and the blind spots they produce. At the heart of the talk are pressing concerns about planetary health and human values. It builds upon comparative work in Iberian, British, Belgian, and French empires and their links to African history in order to take up points relating to languages and translation, ontologies and unknowns, and personhood and legal fictions.
Some of the talk uses two works-in-progress as examples: an English translation of a 1910 Yorùbá reference book on healing (Ìwé Ìwòsàn) by Joseph Odùmósù (1863-1911). And a nearly complete book exploring the global history of traditional medicine as a legal and ethnographic construct. Because students of empire must train deeply and teach broadly, the talk will invite participants to think about how to trespass across disciplines and continents judiciously. I would like to generate deeper dialogue about different kinds of human conflict and consciousness that are often overshadowed in venues of global governance, but deserve more attention for those who seek to build a more just world.
Please sign up via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/1320061331979?aff=oddtdtcreator.
Image: Jalal al-Din Rumi, Walters Manuscript W.626, 1633