Dr. Neelima Jeychandran and Prof. Dr. Clarissa Vierke on the circulation of objects in the Indian Ocean
Media records
Abstract
- Abstract
- Neelima Jeychandran is an Assistant Professor of African Visual Culture in the Department of Art History at Virginia Commonwealth University, Qatar. In this episode, she talks with her host Clarissa Vierke (Professor of Literatures in African Languages at the University of Bayreuth) about Jeychandran's work on oceanic crossovers and material histories of West and East Africa and western India. She is an ethnographer, editor, scholar, and was a fellow at the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence from May until July 2024.
People & roles
Origins & context
- Title
- Dr. Neelima Jeychandran and Prof. Dr. Clarissa Vierke on the circulation of objects in the Indian Ocean
- Language
- English
- Podcast series
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Cluster Conversations
- Date
- September 26, 2024
Rights & access
- Extent
- 29 minutes, 55 seconds
Identifiers & sources
Further details
- Episode number
- 27
Full text
- Transcript
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Speaker 1: Cluster Conversations, a podcast by Africa Multiple.
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Speaker 1: Welcome to a new episode of Cluster Conversation. My name is Clarissa Vierke. I am professor of African Language Literatures at the University of Bayreuth and PI of the cluster Africa Multiple. And it's my absolute pleasure to be together with Nelima Jayachandran today, who is at the moment a fellow at the cluster and in our research section Arts and Aesthetics. Welcome, Nelima.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Clarissa. And I'm happy to be part of this Cluster Conversation. I think it is a great platform to kind of jam our own intellectual ideas and projects. And I'm happy to chime into the conversation for people here in Bayreuth and also those who are tuning in from all parts of the world. So thank you for the brief introduction. My name is Nelima Jayachandran and I am an assistant professor of African arts at the University of Virginia Commonwealth in Qatar. And I'm someone who looks at Africana visual cultures. I work in the Indian Ocean and I also work in West Africa. So I kind of look at a broad swath of geography, particularly interested in the circulation of objects, but also how these objects tell us more about the circulation of people and other formats of migration. So that is what I am particularly interested in studying. And I'm here because I know that you are also someone who works in the Indian Ocean and have similar inquiries. And that is one particular interest of mine that aligns with the interest of the cluster, but also some of your works.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much. I find your work extremely impressive because you manage to combine so many different places, so many different, I think I should say visual and material culture and also even taking historical perspective and anthropological perspective. You're an art historian, you're a curator. So you have all my admiration because I always feel I'm already, I will never be able to kind of grasp the small little area of the Swahili coast and its oceanic relations in its entirety. And entirety already sounds like that's not possible, of course, at all. So I very much admire your work and I even wonder how you are able to combine all of this. Probably kind of let me add a question to that. Could you probably talk briefly about your latest book project, which you also introduced in the context of the Fellow Lunch as well as in the context of our research section? And I think that really made an impression on lots of people.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you for the question. As for me, I am trained in multidisciplinary practices. And it is because I did my PhD at the University of California Los Angeles from the department of World Arts and Cultures. So it gave us a very cross-disciplinary training. And from my PhD, I have been looking both at West Asia, but also West Africa and the broader Swahili Coast. So in a way, the Western Indian Ocean and as I said, West Africa. But because of my training, I combine anthropological inquiry, art historical inquiry, but also grounded practices. So yes, it is a very interdisciplinary method to study a big swath of geography. And I look at archives and the multiple archives, the more established historical archives, but also the peopled archives and the lived archives and memory practices to understand really complex histories and the way in which many invisibilized stories are carried and remembered by people in the community. And to tell the stories, we always have to look at other archives or alternative archives. So from the very beginning of my career, that is my methodology. And as I'm advancing my research and now trying to complete my manuscript, which is trying to look at the circulation of objects from Western India and how it actually links Western India with Sahel, but also with West Africa. I'm trying to write a history of the circulation of Africans from pre-modern times.
Speaker 1: to the contemporary time by tracing the circulation of objects. So yes, uh in a way, I am trying to follow the objects to write a story that is hardly known. Uh and the idea is to use objects itself as a text and to see what kind of relationalities these objects tell us. And I'm able to do all this just because I am born in a port city. My family comes from a port city in southwestern India. And I always tell people that if you live in a coastal town, your perspective of cosmopolitanism, your perspective of interculturalism and how cultures meet and how cultures absorb each other is very different if you perhaps are born in an inland town or if you perhaps has been born in a terrestrial inland geography. So I guess my very upbringing in a port city gave me a different insight into the oceanic lives, oceanic histories, but also understanding how different oceans meet whether it is the Atlantic meeting the Indian Ocean or if it's the Indian Ocean meeting the Arabian Gulf.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think the Indian Ocean in a sense came probably naturally to you in a way, but of course that's not not not all to your story. I mean there is also of course, I don't want to kind of diminish the scholarship that is in your in your work at all. Um so I see several strands actually that I want to ask you about. First, I think one thing is, I mean still kind of going back to the question of your own up upbringing and growing into Indian Ocean studies in a way, but also your very early experiences as well of this coastal city. Did you already in the context you grew up in, did you already encounter then the African communities, the Siddi communities which you later then published on and worked on so much?
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for the question. And the interesting answer is no. When you grow up in a coastal town, you see that city as your hometown. You're particularly not interested in studying your own backyard. So that's what happened to me. I was not at all looking at the place that I grew up or the southwestern India, particularly Malabar coast, which has centuries of history because the town that I grew up grew up is the town where Vasco da Gama came and hence it has a longer Indian Ocean but also longer colonial history. But I never looked at it from a very critical perspective. Interestingly, I came into the study of Indian Ocean through the Atlantic. That's when I got interested in the field of Indian Ocean studies. Because when I went to UCLA, there were a fantastic group of professors but also students who studied both West Africa, Indian Ocean and also other all kinds of artistic practices. So it is very different to enter the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic. And that gave me a completely different perspective. And I have to say that that also had an inflection in the kind of methodology that I took. For instance, I moved away a lot from the established historical inquiry and not particularly looking at the established archives. My entire research is about looking into alternative archives. Because to write a story of the African descent community, which you were saying that is the Siddi community, they are called different names in different parts of India. In some places they are called as the Siddi community, uh in Gujarat. In if you come to a place like Hyderabad, they're also called as Siddi, uh but you also find an Afro Arab community in Hyderabad. In a place like Kerala, it is very difficult to trace an African diaspora because of years of interculturalism and intermingling. So to write such a complex history, you have to go beyond the archive and to see that where these stories have settled. And these stories have settled through ritual practices. These stories seems to be generated in through intergenerational memories of the community. But these stories of African arrivals and African presences in western India seems to be retained through cultural memories, sacred shrines, ritual practices, but also marginalized communities.
Speaker 1: poetry, also their own myths and things like that. So I look at all these aspects of cultural retention as lived archives to understand the story of African arrival, African integration into Western India, and how can we as scholars use a different methodology to tell these stories because these stories are there. And the challenge is for us as scholars to derive a method that is non-conventional to write these stories and to visibilize them and give them proper attention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. And I think you are doing a wonderful job here also really thinking about alternative archives. I think the historian Edward Alpers very early said that the Atlantic works very differently from the Indian Ocean if it comes to archives, but also in a sense the theorization of even this oceanic existences because I mean, in the Indian, I mean, there is for the Caribbean we have people like like Glissant for instance who kind of early on even think about the two monde as a particular kind of existence as well. And and that is not so for the for the Indian Ocean we have just a completely different kind of situation and partly he links it to the I mean to the different kind of cultural practices of and and the dominance actually of the mission and the mission education in the on the on the western side of the Atlantic in comparison to the Indian Ocean which is just much more diverse in terms of religion, languages and so on. So and I think you are doing also in in this important book that you co-edited Reimagining the Indian Ocean really making a point about really going, I mean, kind of finding alternative archives, alternative histories and also working more ethnographically in a way because as you said the stories are there. So it's more like endorsing what you said. It's a very important kind of kind of intervention. Is that something let me add a question also in regard to that. Is that something that you think Indian Ocean studies is is in the moment at the moment actually kind of developing more? I mean, this kind of perspective and can then also make a contribution in a sense to other oceanic studies? What what what do you think where where are we going in a sense with Indian Ocean studies?
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for the question. And let me try to answer each section of your multi-part question. So to answer your question about Indian Ocean studies, Indian Ocean studies for a long time has been driven by historians. Indian Ocean studies at least for the last two decades have been predominantly historical inquiry. And then there had been some fantastic contributions by comparative literature scholars, scholars like you even. And then came the literary historians. Unfortunately, the ethnographic studies of the Indian Ocean has been a little limited. But in the last few years, we see some fantastic books which is embedded in ethnographic research. And with the book that I co-edited with Smriti Srinivas and Bettina Ngweno both at University of California Davis, the idea was to center ethnography and to center a certain kind of research inquiry in which we are trying to move away from the earlier tracks which are either historical or which are embedded in the comparative literature studies. So we had articles from looking at inland port cities. We had articles of scholars who were looking at casinos. So hence we were trying to move away from the earlier established format of Indian Ocean studies. One of the other things with the Indian Ocean studies was Indian Ocean studies always tried to look at trade histories or for instance the circulation of objects, empire. And in my study through the circulation of objects, I'm trying to move away from the empire. And I'm trying to look at what were other kinds of networks that coexisted and facilitated a certain kind of transcontinental interactions. Now coming to your second question as to the comparison of the Atlantic with the Indian Ocean, I would often...
Speaker 1: I would often tell my colleagues and those interested in comparing the Atlantic and Indian Ocean, yes, we can use the Atlantic model, but we have to be very cautious in doing that. We shouldn't juxtapose that model, that is the Atlantic model, onto the Indian Ocean because as you said, Indian Ocean is far more complex and far more diverse. But so is the Atlantic. What one can do is pull certain strands of inquiry such as what you talked about, Glissant, but also those scholars who are writing about the way memories are retained, the histories of maronnage, but also ways in which spirited beings, ritual practices, tell a complex stories of enslavement, but also histories of enslaved people in the Atlantic. That method can be very useful for Indian Ocean scholars to study histories of bondage, unfreedom, and processes of memory retention. So that is what I do. I pull a particular strand of inquiry from the Atlantic to understand invisibilized histories of indentured people and unfreed people. Now, to your other question as to where is the Indian Ocean studies going, I think the Indian Ocean studies is opening up to a lot of new possibilities and one of that is yes, a lot of young graduate students but also established scholars are now interested in looking at very situated practices, but also interested in a very cross disciplinary method. And that is very promising.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. And well, thank you for a very differentiated answer and for keeping track of all the multiple questions I asked you in one probably or in a long passage. I am going to be now very precise with another question I wanted to ask you is, now you, in a sense, when you moved to Ghana as well with your research or to West Africa, but because your perspective is even bigger than Ghana with some of the networks you are looking at, how did this perspective, I mean, now coming to the Sahel and extending the Indian Ocean in a sense to the Sahel and the Saharan kind of networks, how did your perspective on the Indian Ocean change or did it even change by bringing in the West African perspective as well?
Speaker 1: Well, thank you for that question. To give some context, since you know that I work in western India and how in the pre-modern times trade objects from Gujarat and other parts of Malabar coast kind of entered the Horn of Africa and were moved along the Sahelian routes to West African markets is certainly one of my interests. And I was trying to understand this pre-modern circulation of objects and people from Africa primarily to show that globalization or the idea of globality kind of existed far beyond empire. And when we are trying to understand transcontinental exchange, we need to center that kind of relationship. Yes, the entire global connectivity changed with the arrival of European ships and the oceanic sea lanes that was kind of linking different port cities in Africa and the Indian Ocean world. But there was a very early form of globality which helped people understand distant land and distant practices through secondary networks, but also through the objects that arrived in their markets, in their hometowns. But also it helped them shaped a certain imaginary and a sensory understanding of a very, very distant place through the objects they had in their hand, that they wore, such as textiles. So I am trying to tell a story that there was a certain global understanding right from the pre-modern times. So it was not with the arrival of the European seaborne empire that a global connection between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean was made.
Speaker 1: My second reason for doing so, to show the connection between Western India, the Sahel and West Africa, is also to show the circulation of Africans from different parts of Africa to Southwestern India. They were free people, they were saints, they were traders, they were also enslaved people. So a range of Africans were mobile right from the pre-modern times. They not only brought with them their knowledge faculties, but they also brought with them objects. They also brought with them a certain idea of the very designing of certain practices, especially when some of the African saints came, they had great idea of bead making, they had knowledge of lapidary. So you see a certain kind of skill transfer happening. And that's what I'm interested in, this kind of extended transfer that you see. And how then we can write a story of African arrival in India which is not just limited to a story of enslavement, but which gives a larger picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's very fascinating how you bring in agency as well and how also Africans really shaped their lifeworlds in the Indian diaspora. I think that's something that I find very unique in some recent works and I think yours in particular. Let me add another question that is linked to your own trajectory now, so to say, coming from a coastal city in India, then so to say your experience in the US and now being in Qatar. So you have kind of worked on the Indian Ocean, experienced the Indian Ocean as well from very different perspectives. And thinking about how Qatar in a sense also reshapes or shapes its own understanding, it's happening now that it's also becoming more conscious or staging itself more also as a kind of an actor in an important platform if it comes to scholarship, but also if it comes to art collection and particularly with regard to the Indian Ocean. How would you say has your perspective also changed since you arrived in Qatar, which is only recently? So there is probably we're also more talking about the future, but I would really love to hear more from the Qatari, from your own Qatari perspective.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you. It is very interesting to do your research in a situated geography than sitting in an inland territory or perhaps sitting here in Bayreuth. And talking about the Indian Ocean where we cannot see any water body near us. So when you are sitting on an oceanic side and when you are thinking about people and things on the move, it is very interesting to be in Qatar because Qatar in many ways is a transit geography. It is a hub, it is at the cusp of many worlds, the Middle East, the Swahili region. So also Qatar has some fantastic resources when it comes to Indian Ocean. It has a very interesting museum on Indian Ocean slavery, which does a very good inquiry into the premodern times Indian Ocean exchanges and histories of Indian Ocean slavery. So having such resources on the ground also helps your individual research. So hence being in Qatar is very interesting. And I said some of these cities in the Arabian Gulf are transit geographies, Dubai, Abu Dhabi or for that matter Doha brings in so many people from so many worlds and hence they have become these large cultural hubs which oceanic port cities have always been. So you see that kind of dynamism in Qatar. So hence it is very interesting to sit in Qatar and think of oceanic practice, but also it makes a certain kind of resonance to talk about it because when I say something, people immediately resonate because they are living in such kind of a cultural hub rather than probably if you sit in a very inland remote cold town and talk about oceanic exchange, probably people may not have an idea. But the moment I say, well, things arrive with people in a port city, they are immediately able to understand what I say. So hence it is very interesting to sit in Qatar.
Speaker 1: And talk about these many connections that an ocean brings to your cultural geography.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you. I mean, that's a very exciting perspective. And I think in a coal town in Upper Franconia, one can however cherish lots of desires for the ocean and the imagination probably grows bigger even the more distant you are from the ocean. But of course, so to say, I am more than envious, so to say, about the coastal city and the coastal perspective that you have looking at the world from Qatar. And I still hope that you enjoy your stay here at the Bayreuth cluster, far from any oceanic waters. The lakes, I think, don't really qualify in the area. Thank you very much, Nelima, for this conversation as well as for all the other conversations we have had. It's been a really enriching experience, a really relational one. And thank you for being such a generous person also in terms of sharing your research, sharing all the conversations. And thank you in particular for being with us today.
Speaker 1: Well, thank you, Clarissa. And if I may get the last word, I want to say that one of my research inquiries about the Indian Ocean is how Indian Ocean is very porous, that how it flows into the inland geography. It flows into the inland geographies in many ways through people. That is one of my arguments. And it flows into this inland geography of Bayreuth again through people, through the intellectual engagements that they have and through the intellectual engagements that they bring with them. And I must say although you might be far removed from any water body or an ocean, I think the intellectual conversations that you're having here is pretty much resonating in a lot of port cities in the Indian Ocean. So sitting here in Bayreuth, you are making great sense to a lot of people, I have to say, in the Swahili coast, but also in the Indian Ocean littorals. So thank you for doing that. And perhaps we can end our conversation on the note that we are in fact having a vibrant discussion through our mutual interest in the Indian Ocean, but also in the many ways that Africa meets. So I'm extremely happy to be a part of the cluster and meet some amazing people like you who are doing some really important work, not only in the Indian Ocean, but also in understanding the plurality of Africa and how Africa should be approached in many ways. So thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you so much. And well, I guess I'm just speechless after such a beautiful last word. And I am now adding a last word which probably shouldn't be there. So let's finish on this note. Thank you.
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