Roger Behrens

Kai Kresse

Ronnie Michael Peplow

kulturphilosophische Streifzüge : Festschrift für Heinz Paetzold zum 60

Symbolisches Flanieren

Edward Simpson

Struggling with History compares anthropological and historical approaches to the study of the Indian Ocean by focusing on the conflicted nature of cosmopolitanism. Essays contribute to current debates on the nature of cosmopolitanism, the comparative study of Muslim societies, and the examination of colonial and postcolonial contexts. Few books combine a comparable level of interdisciplinary scholarship and regional ethnographic expertise.

Islam and Cosmopolitanism in the Western Indian Ocean

Struggling with History

Abdoulaye Sounaye

As far too many intellectual histories and theoretical contributions from the ‘global South’ remain under-explored, this volume works towards redressing such imbalance. Experienced authors, from the regions concerned, along different disciplinary lines, and with a focus on different historical timeframes, sketch out their perspectives of envisaged transformations. This includes specific case studies and reflexive accounts from African, South Asian, and Middle Eastern contexts. Taking a critical stance on the ongoing dominance of Eurocentrism in academia, the authors present their contributions in relation to current decolonial challenges. Hereby, they consider intellectual, practical and structural aspects and dimensions, to mark and build their respective positions. From their particular vantage points of (trans)disciplinary and transregional engagement, they sketch out potential pathways for addressing the unfinished business of conceptual decolonization. The specific individual positionalities of the contributors, which are shaped by location and regional perspective as much as in disciplinary, biographical, linguistic, religious, and other terms, are hereby kept in view. Drawing on their significant experiences and insights gained in both the global north and global south, the contributors offer original and innovative models of engagement and theorizing frames that seek to restore and critically engage with intellectual practices from particular regions and transregional contexts in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. This volume builds on a lecture series held at ZMO in the winter 2019-2020

Decolonial Challenges to the Humanities and Social Sciences from Africa, Asia and the Middle East

Thinking the Re-Thinking of the World

Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience is an exploration of the ideas and public discussions that have shaped and defined the experience of Kenyan coastal Muslims. Focusing on Kenyan postcolonial history, Kai Kresse isolates the ideas that coastal Muslims have used to separate themselves from their "upcountry Christian" countrymen. Kresse looks back to key moments and key texts—pamphlets, newspapers, lectures, speeches, radio discussions—as a way to map out the postcolonial experience and how it is negotiated in the coastal Muslim community. On one level, this is a historical ethnography of how and why the content of public discussion matters so much to communities at particular points in time. Kresse shows how intellectual practices can lead to a regional understanding of the world and society. On another level, this ethnography of the postcolonial experience also reveals dimensions of intellectual practice in religious communities and thus provides an alternative model that offers a non-Western way to understand regional conceptual frameworks and intellectual practice.

Swahili Muslim Publics and Postcolonial Experience

Philosophising in Mombasa provides an approach to the anthropological study of philosophical discourses in the Swahili context of Mombasa, Kenya. In this historically established Muslim environment, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, philosophy is investigated as social discourse and intellectual practice, situated in everyday life. This is done from the perspective of an 'anthropology of philosophy', a project which is spelled out in the opening chapter. Entry-points and guidelines for the ethnography are provided by discussions of Swahili literary genres, life histories, and social debates. From here, local discourses of knowledge are described and analysed. The social environment and discursive dynamics of the Old Town are portrayed, firstly, by means of following and contextualising informal discussions among neighbours and friends at daily meeting points in the streets; and secondly, by presenting and discussing in-depth case studies of local intellectuals and their contributions to moral and intellectual debates within the community. Taking recurrent internal discussions on social affairs, politics, and appropriate Islamic conduct as a focus, this study sheds light on local practices of critique and reflection. In particular, three local intellectuals (two poets, one Islamic scholar) are portrayed against the background of regional intellectual history, Islamic scholarship, as well as common public debates and private discussions. The three contextual portrayals discuss exemplary issues for the wider field of research on philosophical discourse in Mombasa and the Swahili context on the whole, with reference to the lives and projects of distinct individual thinkers. Ultimately, the study directs attention beyond the regional and the African contexts, towards the anthropological study of knowledge and intellectual practice around the world.

Kai Kresse

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