Vinay Lal - The Epistemic Other: India, Europe, and the Politics of Knowledge Part 1, September 2025
This is the lecture I delivered at Karnavati University, Gandhinagar (in the proximity of Ahmedabad) in September 2025, at the invitation of its UnitedWorld School of Liberal Arts and Mass Communication (USLM).The talk was intended mainly for a large body of undergraduates though there were some faculty present as well. The talk is both scholarly and polemical; I range over a number of subjects on which I have written and spoken before, including knowledge systems, the imperialism of categories, history and temporality, and so on. I draw upon examples that I've discussed many times before, such as the tripartite division of the study of history into the ancient, medieval, and modern; James Mill's history of India; the reluctance of modern science to concede the plurality of sciences, and so on. There is another video which has a conversation between me and my host, Dr. Himanshu Parcha, followed by a Q & A with students.
This is the lecture I delivered at Karnavati University, Gandhinagar (in the proximity of Ahmedabad) in September 2025, at the invitation of its UnitedWorld School of Liberal Arts and Mass Communication (USLM).The talk was intended mainly for a large body of undergraduates though there were some faculty present as well. The talk is both scholarly and polemical; I range over a number of subjects on which I have written and spoken before, including knowledge systems, the imperialism of categories, history and temporality, and so on. I draw upon examples that I've discussed many times before, such as the tripartite division of the study of history into the ancient, medieval, and modern; James Mill's history of India; the reluctance of modern science to concede the plurality of sciences, and so on. There is another video which has a conversation between me and my host, Dr. Himanshu Parcha, followed by a Q & A with students.