Overview

Destined to become a key work of subaltern studies and a crucial intervention in postcolonial scholarship, Stitches on Time probes the relationships between empire and modernity, nation and history, the colonial and the postcolonial, and power and difference. Saurabh Dube combines history and anthropology to provide critical understandings of the theory and practice of historical ethnography and contemporary historiography. Drawing on extensive archival research and innovative fieldwork as well as political economy and social theory--including considerations of gender--Dube analyzes and traces the implications of specific Indian pasts from the middle of the nineteenth century through the end of the twentieth century. Rigorously thinking through categories such as modernity, colonialism, the West, and the nation, he develops the concept and practice of a ""history without warranty."" Dube provides incisive accounts of the interactions between North American evangelical missionaries and central Indian Christian converts and between colonial legal systems and Indian popular laws.He reflects on the difficulties of history writing by considering the production and reception of recent Hindu nationalist histories. Evaluating the work of the South Asian Subaltern Studies Collective, he offers substantial, critical readings of major writings by Ranajit Guha, Dipesh Chakrabarty, Partha Chatterjee, and others. In Stitches on Time, Dube not only reveals the pervasive problems inherent in such concepts as the nation and the postcolonial but also indicates their particular possibilities.

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Modernity has defined itself against enchantment, yet continually produced new enchantments. Saurabh Dube helpfully establishes this pattern, and especially sheds light on the ways in which colonial and postcolonial power relationships are interwoven with spiritual meanings. He rightly and persuasively brings such apparently marginal actors as evangelical missionaries and native Indian Christians onto center stage, and he does so with grace, lucidity, and insight. --Craig Calhoun, president of the Social Science Research Council Saurabh Dube's book will make a signal contribution to the political and theoretical legacy of South Asian subaltern studies. Based at the Colegio de Mexico and in conversation with scholars and intellectuals based in Latin America, Dube's book will enhance the dialogue between Latin American critical social thought and subaltern studies already underway. Historically grounded and theoretically sophisticated, Dube's book conveys the feeling of a new gaze in the tradition of subaltern studies, an awareness of a daily life out of place in relation to the subject of scholarly pursuit. --Walter D. Mignolo, Duke University

Author Information

Saurabh Dube is Professor of History in the Center for Asian and African Studies at El Colegio de MÉxico in Mexico City. His books include Untouchable Pasts: Religion, Identity, and Power among a Central Indian Community.

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