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Introduction: Cultural History as a History of Encounters - A “Contact Perspective”
Abstract This introductory essay lays out the conceptual framework for approaching the complex cultural history of the Eastern Himalayan town of Kalimpong and its neighbours as a history of encounters. Taking Mary Louise Pratt’s influential concept of a “contact zone” as a departure point, it scrutinizes current trends in the field of Transcultural Studies to develop a nuanced analytical perspective that highlights and takes in the culturally productive forces of encounters of various sorts. In particular, this approach focuses on the circulatory nature of knowledge production, and acknowledges shifting and multilateral asymmetries of power as driving forces of a vast array of strategies such as the appropriation, translation, and transformation of knowledge, but also of acts of resistance or rejection.
In so doing, it underlines the connected nature of the cultural history of the Eastern Himalayas and its relevance for global affairs in the first half of the twentieth century, and contributes to counterbalancing the region’s relative neglect in the academic research of the past decades.
