The Journal of Transcultural Studies

Editorial Note

Monica Juneja, Joachim Kurtz — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Asouzu’s Ibuanyidanda Ontology and Heidegger’s Ontology of “Dasein-with-Others”

Anthony Chimankpam Ojimba — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This paper examines Asouzu’s ibuanyidanda ontology and Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein-with-Others, with a view to showing how convergence and divergence of thought in the Asouzuan and Heideggerian philosophies can inform transcultural philosophizing. Asouzu’s ibuanyidanda ontology conceptualizes reality from the perspective of missing links, mutual interdependency, and complementarity, while Heidegger’s Dasein-with-Others constructs an ontology of mutual and interdependent existence as he interprets our Being-in-the-world as already a Being-together-with Others. The paper highlights the dynamics of Asouzu’s ibuanyidanda ontology and articulates the basic principles of Heidegger’s ontology of Dasein-with-Others in a fruitful encounter between the Igbo tradition of thought to which Asouzu belongs and the German tradition of thought to which Heidegger belongs. These two traditions will be critically examined to show their implications for transcultural philosophy.

Transcultural Mobility: Cosmopolitan Artefacts, Artists, and Intellectuals across the Global Muslim World

Yuka Kadoi — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This contribution introduces the themed section "Transcultural Mobility: Cosmopolitan Artefacts, Artists, and Intellectuals across the Global Muslim World," and summarises the articles that appear within.

Of Texts and Objects: Perceptions of “Persian” Art from Later Byzantium to Modern Greece

Nikolaos Vryzidis — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This article aims to trace the evolution in the perception of Persian art, broadly conceived, from later Byzantium to modern Greece through the perspective of historical archaeology. Through a comparison of the ways in which Persian art was viewed in texts versus the material evidence, a development of three successive and differing contexts may be traced. In the later Byzantine context, Persian and Persianate cultures held a central position in cultural memory, while bearing potential undertones of otherness. Then, aspects of post-Byzantine culture began to adopt an Ottoman filter toward Persian art and material culture. Finally, the relocation of Persian objects from Anatolia/Asia Minor to Greece, alongside the Greek Orthodox communities they belonged to, points to a process of heritagization. The shifting perceptions of Persian art reflect the specificity of each context, identifying three distinct periods for cross-cultural study.

Inter-pictorial Religious Discourse in Mughal Paintings: Translations and Interpretations of Marian Images

Alberto Saviello — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

The Mughal Emperor Akbar and his court are known for a tolerant religious policy and a general openness to the various religions of the empire. Moreover, Akbar and his son and successor, Jahangir, also cultivated an intense interest in European art, especially religious images. The article argues that in engaging with European Christian art, the painters of the Mughal court reflected on its significance as a medium of religious content and critically implemented these reflections in their own works. The Mughal artists’ reception and reinterpretation of the European Christian pictorial tradition thus represent a transreligious pictorial discourse, one that paralleled the religious debates held at the court.

Embracing Islam: Okakura Tenshin at the Limits of His Alternative Orientalism

Yuka Kadoi — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

This paper scrutinizes the entangled encounters between the early twentieth-century Japanese cultural theorist Okakura Kakuzō 岡倉覚三 (1863–1913), Euro-American Orientalist cultural norms, and Islam. It argues that Okakura overlooked Islam as a dominant religion in Asia. While Okakura questioned the existential justification of Japanese visual culture and its ambiguous position between East and West at the turn of the twentieth century, he viewed Islam through a Christian ideological lens and positioned it in binary opposition to polytheistic beliefs in Asia, chiefly Buddhism. Okakura’s failure to embrace Islam as a religion of Asia was therefore due to the fact that Islam emerged in Europe during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as part of the universal category of "world religions," and was not properly understood as an indigenous tradition of the non-Western world alongside Buddhism and Hinduism.

The Significance of Mobility and the Artistic Practice of Zahoor ul Akhlaq

Simone Wille — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100

Mobility informs the work of the Pakistani artist and teacher Zahoor ul Akhlaq (1941–1999), who developed an aesthetic that is marked above all by his endless explorations of space as an abstract system. Through study visits to London and Yale, and exploratory travel in South, Central, and West Asia, the artist developed a visual language based on the spatial and structural division of a Mughal miniature painting and a traditional manuscript page, the foundation of which is a gridded pictorial ground and a rectangular frame. This article analyzes the way that mobility inscribed itself onto Akhlaq’s works by viewing his work in terms of its processual, dynamic, transgressive, and transcultural qualities. Given the diversity of the cultural and historic background that informs Akhlaq’s art practice and his conceptual approach to art making, this paper demonstrates that Akhlaq’s grid and frame can be seen as the formal properties that transcend national confines and the then prevalent ideas of a self-contained culture.

Cover and Front Matter

Sophie Florence — Fri, 10 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100