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ABSTRACT
This brief essay uses Pandurang Khankhoje, an Indian scientist and political refugee in Mexico, as an example of the value of using a largo dislocare approach to write histories of science. Largo dislocare is an invitation to dislocate known histories not just geographically but also chronologically to better understand the motion of people, ideas and objects. By examining the largo (long) trajectory of science in spaces that do not conform to traditional history of science markers we acknowledge that our established chronologies are in need of expansion. For the where with which we begin these histories is as essential as when we begin them. In addition, this approach challenges us to consciously and constantly search for evidence to write about how those on the fringes of society – migrants, refugees, members of ostracized ethnic groups, etc. – in the so-called global margins produce science.
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank all the participants of the April 2017 Harvard workshop Remapping and (Dis)Locating Histories of Science and Medicine for two days of enthusiastic conversations that eventually sparked this piece. I also thank Pablo Gómez, Amy Slaton, Warwick Anderson and an anonymous reader for incisive comments on earlier drafts. My thinking for this essay benefitted greatly from seminar conversations with Juanita Becerra, Jordan Howell, Angélica Marquez-Osuna, and Dwai Banerjee. Any errors are my own.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
References
Archival sources
Biblioteca Archivo, Universidad Autónoma de Chapingo, Mexico.
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi, India.
Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, New York, USA.
Notes
1. Nehru Library, “Manuscripts, P.S. Khankhoje”, subfile 6.
2. To cite only a few: Cañizares -Esguerra, Nature, Empire and Nation; Quijano, “Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America,” 533–580; Secord, “Knowledge in Transit”; Turnbull, “Local Knowledge”; Chambers and Gillespie, “Locality in the History of Science”; Anderson, “From Subjugated Knowledge”.
3. As Walter Mignolo reminds us in his eloquent piece “Coloniality of Power and Subalternity”, 424–444.
4. Trouillot, Silencing the Past, 45.
5. Cullather, The Hungry World, 43–71 and Stretching the Surface, 107–109.
6. Sawney. I Shall Never Ask.
7. He would eventually obtain his agronomist degree from the University of Oregon.
8. See note 6 above
9. Khankhoje, Algunos productos, 359.
10. “Re-apertura de la Escuela Agricola”.
11. Nehru Library, “Manuscripts, P.S. Khankhoje”, subfile 4, 67.
12. Ibid., 70−71.
13. Handwritten comments on inside cover of book belonging to P.S. Khankhoje dated October 1974 found in the Nehru Library. The book appears to be a bound compilation of the circulars the Khankhoje wrote and published for peasants as he traveled the rail line. The spine of the book identifies it simply as: Pandurang Khankhoje, “Circulares S.P.M”.
14. Rockefeller Archive Center, RG 6, Series 1.1, Box 33, folder 366:26.
15. He was also photographed with his hybrid crops by the famous photographer Tina Modotti.
16. Art historians have described the person at the head of the table as Carrillo Puerto but this version has been disputed for as Uschmany and others note the red star on the lapel. Moreover, Khankhoje’s daughter and biographer, detailed in an oral history how her father sat for Diego and helped him mix the paints for the fresco.
17. The excellent Alabama in Africa, for example, examines the impact of African-American scientists in German Togo. Zimmerman. Alabama in Africa.
18. Lee and Wallerstein, The Longue Duree and World Systems.
19. In a recent issue of Colonial Latin America Pimentel and Pardo put forth that we need to “deproblematize” Iberian Science in order to move forward. Pimentel and Pardo-Tomás. And, 133–147.
20. To cite a few: Norton, Marcy. Subaltern technologies; Gómez, The Experiential Caribbean; Bauer and Norton, “Introduction: entangled trajectories”; Portuondo, Maria. Secret Science; Bleichmar. Science in the Spanish; de Vos, Paula. Methodological Challenges.