Abstract In this essay I engage with the writings of the Argentine-Mexican Marxist philosopher Enrique Dussel for a multifaceted understanding of transmodernity and its value as a theoretical paradigm for reading and interpreting literary and cultural texts. Transmodernity, for Dussel, is a global phenomenon that subsumes and transcends European Modernity of the last five centuries and rejects the latter’s epistemological hegemony in favor of a vaster, more ancient imaginary that includes the nondominant, the exteriorized, and the neglected majority of the world. In contextualizing Eurocentric modernity and repudiating its hegemony and pernicious developmentalism, transmodernity zooms out of EuroAmerica to refocus attention on frameworks of contact and multiplicity that do not rely upon the hierarchization of modernities as dominant, on the one hand, and derivative, on the other. By disengaging from the center-periphery model, transmodernity foregrounds laterality, relationality, and adaptation as potential theorizations for how cultures and languages in contact emerge and function. The essay explores dimensions of transmodernity by examining four crucial terms in Dussel’s thought: people, exteriority, transversal, and analectical. Dussel’s lifelong commitment to the indigenous and the marginalized cultures of Latin America provides us, I argue, a model for imagining regional, South-South interculturalities that can be, on their own terms, fully modern.

Abstract Over recent decades, studies on the Jesuits’ activities in China and elsewhere have been considerably facilitated by collated and published correspondence written in Western languages. In order to broaden this scholarly discussion by including more sources from the Chinese side, this article makes a modest contribution by translating and analyzing two letters from Zhu Shi 祝石 (1602–after 1689), a remnant of the Ming dynasty and a Chinese Catholic, to Lodovico Buglio (1606–1682) and Ferdinand Verbiest (1623–1688), two Jesuit missionaries at the Manchu court. Transcriptions of the two letters are found in the collected works of Zhu, Zhi hao hao xue lu 知好好學錄 (Records of knowing how to appreciate good learning; n.d.). Noteworthy subjects reflected in the letters include, among others, Zhu’s involvement in the translation and revision of Buglio’s Chaoxingxue yao 超性學要 (Essentials of transcendental nature studies; 1654–1677), a contemporary explanation of the obstacles facing evangelism in China, and Verbiest’s cannon-casting activities during the Revolt of the Three Feudatories (or the San-Fan War; 1673–ca. 1681). A close examination of these two letters not only broadens the understanding of the social networks of the two missionaries and provides supplementary historical details, but also calls attention to the value of correspondence between Chinese literati and the missionaries.

Abstract This article takes up Michael Pearson’s concept of littoral societies and discusses how it provides us with a lens to study a specific estuarine place, a mangrove forest called Sundarbans that is found along the coastlines of India and Bangladesh and opens onto the Bay of Bengal. Inhabitants cope with constant risks and hazards, maintaining distinctive folk traditions practiced by both the region’s Hindus and Muslims. This article discusses the outsider and insider perceptions of this place and its distinctive material culture, which may provide a window for studying other littoral cultures across the Indian Ocean basin.

print) 2287-9811 (online) This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC BY 4.0 license.

Abstract This review article emphasizes the importance of using the idea of material culture as a tool for writing global histories of the maritime world. Taking the Indian Ocean as a case study, the article contends that the multiple, diverse avenues of communication reaching across its waters profoundly affected religions, cultures, and languages by way of texts and music, and through various types of imaginings like myths and invocations of sacred landscapes and seascapes. Investigations into these ideas and things not only direct our attention away from trade histories in the seas, they also counteract the maritime blindness that prevails in the academy, because the histories that result from these investigations are much more nuanced in their understanding of space/place. Material culture, through flows that are considered to be pluricultural in nature, can therefore provide a useful lens for studying the relationship between the local and the global.