Table Of Contentautobio gr a ph y
of a n a rch i ve
CULTURES OF HISTORY
CULTURES OF HISTORY
Nicholas Dirks, Series Editor
The death of history, reported at the end of the twentieth century,
was clearly premature. It has become a hotly contested battleground
in struggles over identity, citizenship, and claims of recognition and
rights. Each new national history proclaims itself as ancient and uni-
versal, while the contingent character of its focus raises questions
about the universality and objectivity of any historical tradition. Glo-
balization and American hegemony have created cultural, social, local,
and national backlashes. Cultures of History is a new series of books
that investigates the forms, understandings, genres, and histories of
history, taking history as the primary text of modern life and the foun-
dational basis for state, society, and nation.
Shail Mayaram, Against History, Against State:
Counterperspectives from the Margins
Tapati Guha-Thakurta, Monuments, Objects, Histories:
Institutions of Art in Colonial and Postcolonial India
Charles Hirschkind, The Ethical Soundscape:
Cassette Sermons and Islamic Counterpublics
Ahmad H. Sa’di and Lila Abu-Lughod, editors, Nakba:
Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory
Prachi Deshpande, Creative Pasts:
Historical Memory and Identity in Western India, 1700–1960
Todd Presner, Mobile Modernity: Germans, Jews, Trains
Laura Bear, Lines of the Nation: Indian Railway Workers,
Bureaucracy, and the Intimate Historical Self
Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali Zamindar, The Long Partition and the
Making of Modern South Asia: Refugees, Boundaries, Histories
Bernard Bate, Tamil Oratory and the Dravidian Aesthetic:
Democratic Practice in South India
AUT OB IOGRAPHY
o f an
A RC H I V E
t
,
A Scholar’s Passage to India
n i c ho l a s b. d i rk s
columbia university press new york
Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
cup.columbia.edu
Copyright © 2015 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dirks, Nicholas B., 1950–
Autobiography of an archive : a scholar’s passage to India /
Nicholas B. Dirks
pages cm. — (Cultures of history)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-231-16966-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-16967-7
(pbk. : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-231-53851-0 (e-book)
1. Anthropology and history—India. 2. Anthropological archives—
India. 3. Education, Higher—Philosophy—United
States. 4. Interdisciplinary research—Philosophy. I. Title.
GN345.2.D57 2015
301.0954—dc23
2014020993
Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent
and durable acid-free paper.
This book is printed on paper with recycled content.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Cover design: Jordan Wannemacher
References to websites (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing.
Neither the author nor Columbia University Press is responsible for URLs
that may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.
Cooonnnttttents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Passage to India 1
Part I. Autobiography
1. Annals of the Archive:
Ethnographic Notes on the Sources of History 27
2. Autobiography of an Archive 50
3. Preface to the Second Edition of The Hollow Crown 70
Part II. History and Anthropology
4. Castes of Mind: The Original Caste 83
5. Ritual and Resistance: Subversion as a Social Fact 109
6. The Policing of Tradition:
Colonialism and Anthropology in Southern India 132
VI CONTENTS
Part III. Empire
7. Imperial Sovereignty 171
8. Bringing the Company Back In:
The Scandal of Early Global Capitalism 199
9. The Idea of Empire 211
Part IV. The Politics of Knowledge
10. In Near Ruins: Cultural Theory at the End of the Century 231
11. G. S. Ghurye and the Politics of Sociological Knowledge 249
12. South Asian Studies: Futures Past 265
Part V. University
13. Franz Boas and the American University: A Personal Account 293
14. Scholars and Spies:
Worldly Knowledge and the Predicament of the University 303
15. The Opening of the American Mind 321
Notes 339
Permissions 371
Index 373
Acknowwwllllleeeedgments
T he essays and lectures that make up this book have been writ-
ten over many years, beginning with a paper that started life as
a “job talk” in 1987 for a tenured position at the University of Michi-
gan. That paper, entitled “Castes of Mind,” was expanded and fi nally
revised for publication in the journal R epresentations and is included
here because of its centrality to much of the scholarly work I did dur-
ing the decade I spent in Michigan. I am grateful to my colleagues in
the departments of history and anthropology at Michigan not just for
hiring me but for offering an extraordinarily stimulating environment
in which to think about the history and anthropology of caste in India
as well as the larger comparative and interdisciplinary questions that
enabled the writing both of numerous essays (many of them published
here) and the book I subsequently wrote by the same title. Among many
Michigan colleagues, I would like especially to thank Tom Trautmann,
Bill Sewell, Sherry Ortner, Geoff Eley, (the late) Fernando Coronil, and
Terry McDonald. I was delighted when Val Daniel and Ann Stoler came
to Michigan two years after I arrived. Val has always been my advisor in
matters anthropological, and both Val and Ann played important roles
in helping me launch the interdepartmental program in anthropology
and history; I owe Ann special thanks for her role over many years in
helping me think through critical issues in the anthropology of empire
VIII ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
and the ethnography of archives. I have also been indebted to many
other colleagues, most importantly Gyan Prakash and Partha Chatter-
jee, for intellectual exchange, support, and sustenance over the years.
David Ludden has been a friend, critic, and resource. I am also grateful
to Arjun Appadurai, Chris Fuller, Sheldon Pollock, and Peter van der
Veer for their insights and inspiration over the course of my career.
This book also owes a great deal to colleagues at Columbia University,
where I taught from 1997 until 2013. In addition to some names already
mentioned, I would like to thank David Cohen and Jonathan Cole, who
recruited me to chair the legendary department of anthropology, and,
among many valued colleagues, offer special thanks as well to Akeel
Bilgrami, Mark Mazower, Martha Howell, Alan Brinkley, Tim Mitchell,
Mahmood Mamdani, Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, Claudio Lomnitz,
Jean Howard, Ira Katznelson, and Peter Bearman.
My ethnographic encounters with academic administration would
never have been possible without the trust, support, and counsel of Lee
Bollinger.
In the end, my closest interlocutor for everything written here since
1994 has been my colleague and wife, Janaki Bakhle. She reads every-
thing I write and always has the wisest, the sharpest, and most generous
advice. She has sustained me through each one of these autobiographi-
cal experiments, in every possible way, and I will never be able to thank
her enough.
I look back on some of my writings—covering as they do a span of
twenty-five years—with mixed feelings and responses, including aston-
ishment at some of my early concerns and on occasion dismay at some
of my early ways of writing. When I think, however, of the scholarly op-
portunities I have had, across disciplines, continents, institutions, and
friendships, I have only deep gratitude and a sense of enduring good
fortune for my life in the academy.
As I note in my introduction, my parents have had enormous influ-
ence on my life. I dedicate this book to my mother, Annabelle V. Dirks,
who played a critical role in supporting me during many stages of my
autobiography of an archive, and for much else as well.
autobio gr a ph y
of a n a rch i ve
Description:The decades between 1970 and the end of the twentieth century saw the disciplines of history and anthropology draw closer together, with historians paying more attention to social and cultural factors and the significance of everyday experience in the study of the past. The people, rather than elite
