Codex: Entangled Histories, Relational Methodologies, and Worlding Imaginaries: A Collaborative Review of Amitav Ghosh's Historical Fictions

Abstract

Codex:Entangled Histories, Relational Methodologies, and Worlding Imaginaries: A Collaborative Review of Amitav Ghosh's Historical Fictions Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François, Turni Chakrabarti (bio), Abdur Rahoof Ottathingal (bio), Kirk B. Sides (bio), and Anuj Vaidya (bio) Entangled Histories, Relational Methodologies, and Worlding Imaginaries: A Collaborative Review of Amitav Ghosh’s Historical Fictions Emmanuel Bruno Jean-François to what extent does our approach to history and our definition of historical archives impact our understanding of the past and of its bearing on our present and future? How can we retrieve, imagine, or even chronicle the world's entangled histories—its infinite temporalities, porous geographies, and fluid ecologies—in opposition to the linear narratives and teleological historiographies forged by modern nations and communities? And how can writers, intellectuals, and scholars address the blind spots of prescribed methodologies, normative discourses, and established genres that largely circumscribe history, to think of the world in more inclusive terms? Considered by many as an Indian Ocean writer par excellence, Amitav Ghosh, in his literary works, historical fictions, and nonfictional texts, has long grappled with these questions, bringing to the fore the numerous commercial, cultural, or linguistic connections that have shaped the societies of this region. For that reason, the Codex feature of this special issue is dedicated to some of his prominent works, including In an Antique Land (1992), The Hungry Tide (2004), the Ibis trilogy (2008, 2011, 2015), and The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable (2016). Evincing the profoundly enmeshed, cosmopolitan, and creolized histories of the Indian Ocean world, Ghosh's works consistently challenge monolithic or unified accounts of history, making visible the material and immaterial traces of marginal and disenfranchised peoples—slaves, indentured servants, or low-caste communities—whose lives are still [End Page 24] excluded from the official archives. Stories of subaltern communities remain crucial to a more nuanced and expansive understanding of this oceanic region's cultural, political, economic, and ecological dynamics. By bringing to life such stories, Ghosh's novels, for instance, generate critical awareness about how the past itself is imagined, remembered, and told, by whom and for whom. By asking whose history counts as history and by challenging the very parameters that have confined the practice, telling, and recollecting of world histories, his works indeed invite us to reconsider the role of subjectivity and creativity in decolonizing historical accounts. In response to universalist discourses and approaches, his literary intervention thus reimagines the world we know through the decentering of perspectives and voices and the multiplication of worldviews and epistemologies. Ghosh's intellectual trajectory and his methodology as a historical fiction writer are themselves located at the crossroads of various disciplinary formations, including history, anthropology, and creative writing. Often characterized as unclassifiable or hybrid, his texts bring together oral traditions, myths and legends, written archives, works of fiction, and travelogues. As such, they reveal the dead zones of teleological reconstitutions of history; emphasize the limits of prescriptive methods and scientific rationalism; and underscore the critical importance of creativity and imagination in recovering the past, understanding the present, and envisioning the future. Because Ghosh's depiction of Indian Ocean relations, exchanges, and cosmopolitan expressions does not rely merely on the "hard" evidence of colonial, conventional, and written archives, it also sheds light on the long-silenced—albeit undeniable—contribution of unrecognized, marginal, or liminal communities and people who enhanced the cosmopolitan dynamics of this region. With its inventive take on the historical movements, circularities, and diasporic trajectories of the oceanic region, Ghosh's writing is profoundly relational, whether in its content, form, or approach. This collaborative review features discussions by scholars from various disciplines to emphasize better such relationalities, including comparative literature; South Asian studies; history; and arts, media, and performance studies. Through their original readings of Ghosh's oeuvre, these scholars illustrate how his works offer expansive ways of approaching the historical, cultural, and ecological entanglements of the Indian Ocean world. The feature begins with Turni Chakrabarti highlighting the writer's vision of "history from below" and Ghosh's "palimpsestic" approach to transnational movements and oceanic imaginaries. Then Abdur Rahoof Ottathingal examines Ghosh's creative engagement with archival and ethnographic material and [End Page 25] his...