I have been toying with the phrasing of this for a few days, because I want to present a number of questions in the hopes of gaining a better understanding of Dr Banerjee’s concept of “transversal history” and, while an assertion can be clumsily presented and written because it is a reflection of a reflexive writing/idea-formation process, to attempt to enter a discourse I need to try and communicate much more effectively than in other forms of writing. (Yes, this is the level of over analysis of the act of writing which occurs at this late an hour which inevitably leads me to pretentiousness)
Dr Banerjee’s piece for this week’s readings, Transversal histories and transcultural afterlives, inspired me in a number of ways. To make this relevant to the module, it has inspired me to attempt to implement more academic concepts to my analysis of the “big project” (as opposed to laying out a story of flows and discontinuities, I shall attempt to highlight the “discursive events” (this Foucauldian language is a tad intimidating) and see how these create new “afterlives” of ideas which then “die”). To this end, I wish to engage in a further discussion about the concepts presented within this piece, and so I shall attempt to layout my understanding of these concepts so that if I have misinterpreted anything (which will inevitably be the case) I can be corrected right away.
From my reading of the piece, I understand that “transversal history” is the analysis of the moment of intersection between a number of intellectual currents which run parallel to, or overlap, one another. At this point, the original currents die and are replaced by their reconceptualisations which offer a new outlook on the human experience: an afterlife to the original ideas. In this sense, an idea’s afterlife may have innumerable (or singular) origins while also contributing to potentially innumerable (or singular) posterities. Potentially my most significant question on this concept involves the idea of the “cultural”.
When deconstructing the monolith of “culture”, we create a number of discourses to analyse which exist independently of “culture”; my first question is, “without the institution of “culture” or any other structuralising binary agonisms, how do ideas retain historical continuity between transitions?” or, in other words, “what is the mechanism by which an idea attains “stickiness” across time and space?” Building upon this, I also ask whether ideas may be able to emerge ex nihilo or whether ideas may only gain legitimacy due to their connection to already existing ideas? I also ask, in an attempt to keep this blog relevant to the module requirements, “in discussing the opinion that over-contextualisation implies an anti-intellectualism, by saying that historical arguments have a form of validity due to their ability to talk to us in the modern-day, does that not suggest a form of intellectual fundamentalism, that there is a “right” and a “wrong” that underlines the ability for ideas to be able to be communicated across time and space?”
I do have many more questions, but I think I should keep them to myself, outside of this blog. I hope these made sense and that they can connect to other people in this module.