Please join us on November 17th at 4:00 pm for the next event in our Centre for the History of Medicine in Ireland (CHOMI) Autumn seminar series:
“Decolonising drugs history? Lessons from the Islamicate lifeworld of intoxication”
Maziyar Ghiabi (University of Exeter)
The aim of this paper is to provide a conceptual approach to writing decolonial drug histories and, at the same time, to attempt moving beyond decolonisation itself. Firstly, it invites to rethink the names and words we use in writing drug histories, making a case for an alternative (decolonial) philology. Secondly, the paper reclaims the historical centrality of the ‘everyday’ as a site and time to understand the histories of ‘drugs’ and alcohol in the Islamicate (and colonial) world. Thirdly, the paper unearths a historical and epistemic figure of intoxication from 13th century Iran, known as the rend as bearing the potential to move beyond contemporary West-centric scripts while also being a paradigm beyond decolonisation. By going beyond ‘decolonisation’ this paper refers to the urgency to not comfortably seat upon decolonial critique as moral indignation towards the past, but to show that drug histories subsume radically different epistemologies and ontologies from those enunciated by coloniality/modernity. The paper presents data from early modern to contemporary sources.
Register here to attend digitally: https://ucd-ie.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_GAmgbcScQRGnsxo3Vi7ThA
For in-person attendees, seminars will take place between 4 and 5pm Dublin Time at the UCD School of
History, Newman Building, Room K114.
You can find the full research seminar programme here: https://www.ucd.ie/chomi/research/sems/
HSTM Network Ireland 