This volume started out as a doctoral dissertation and has been a long time in the making. Progressing in fits and starts, it endured extended periods of dormancy interspersed with intense periods of activity and is the product of an extensive journey that took me through libraries, universities, jobs, academic contexts and countries. I have incurred a great number of debts of gratitude in its many stages of inception, research, writing and revision, and would in the first instance like to thank Sarat Maharaj for being an inspiring teacher and thinker, and the students I taught at Goldsmiths College when the ideas for this project were taking shape. Their voracious intellectual appetite and excited discussions of ‘A Thousand Plateaus’ carried over into this project. I am also immensely grateful to Howard Caygill who most generously commented on drafts of this project in its PhD stages, who oversaw the birth of Rikki T, never wavered in his encouragement and patiently discussed ideas over many cups of coffee at the Russell Square Café. But I owe profound thanks and gratitude to many more individuals. To Dr Francoise Barbara Freedman for initially drawing my attention to Shipibo-Conibo art, to Angelika Gebhart-Sayer for her encouragement and generous access to private notes and photographs of the Shipibo-Conibo Indians, and immensely so to Bruno Illius. He most generously shared knowledge, photos and advice, carefully read and commented on the doctoral incarnation of this book, was unfailingly supportive of my unorthodox approach to the question of how to interpret Shipibo-Conibo designs and took the words that I put in his mouth in Faction 3 in good humour. I wish to thank him for wonderfully animated discussions and his friendship. I furthermore owe thanks to Michael O’Hanlon for bringing the article ‘Could Sangama Read?’ to my attention, and to Arnd Schneider for his expertise and inspiration.
I am also indebted to Susanne Hermann and Britta Busch who unwittingly introduced me to Indian threshold designs when they showed photos from their research trip to South India to a group of family and friends. The images of their exploits had most unusual drawings in the margins that caught my attention but to which, as social scientists, they had paid little attention. Curious about these designs, I ventured to the library only to realize that references to the practice were few and far between and constituted snippets of information at best. My solution to this perceived lack seemed obvious at the time – I had to go to India and see for myself. A lively research trip followed that took me to Chennai and then further inland to the small town of Tiruvannamalai where a friend had established links with a local primary school that served as my point of contact with the local community.
I owe immense gratitude to the women of Tiruvannamalai who were eager to tell me all they knew about their tradition. But they also chided me for coming at the wrong time of the year when only everyday kolam (Tamil for threshold designs) could be seen on the streets. To alleviate this careless timing, a kolam competition was held so that I could sample the more sumptuous festival designs reserved for special occasions. I was also given the role of judge of the best kolam and to my great embarrassment I fell, in hindsight rather predictably so, short of expectations: my choice of winners did not meet with approval and the community saw undeserving winners venture home clutching the much-coveted kitchen implements given as prizes. This first lesson in the difficulties and failures of intercultural aesthetic encounters launched a long process of thinking about the designs that soon turned into a search for modes of intellectual address able to approach and positively navigate the processes of cultural translation and the post-colonial predicament this aesthetic enquiry, as I began to realize, entails.
I am grateful for the invitation to participate in the AHRB Research Project ‘Art and National Identity: Mexico, Japan, India, 1860s–1940s’, University of the Arts, London, and a research fellowship at the Ferguson Centre for African and Asian Studies at the Open University that greatly expanded my horizon. Among the many scholars, writers and colleagues from whom I have benefited in this period and whose insights, conversations and support I have valued, I owe particular gratitude to Debashish Banerji, Alison Blunt, Partha Mitter, Emma Tarlo and Toshio Watanabe for their interest and encouragement. I also wish to thank my students at the World Arts and Artefacts Programme of Birkbeck College and the British Museum for the lively class discussions on the thorny issues of art and anthropology as well as Ben Burt with whom I co-taught. I also want to thank Fiona Candlin for giving me the opportunity to participate in the shaping of this curriculum and to benefit from the extensive debates this entailed.
I am also indebted to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette for granting me a period of research leave. This much-needed time off launched the long process of transforming my doctoral thesis into the present volume. I also owe thanks to the Open University which gave financial support in the final stages of the book’s production.
For granting image reproduction rights I want to express my gratitude to Angelika Gebhart-Sayer, Bruno Illius, Barbara Keifenheim, Benoit Pailley, Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, as well as to Andreas Zobe. I am also grateful to the following individuals and institutions for permitting the inclusion of text excerpts in the dossier sections of this volume: Angelika Gebhart-Sayer, Bruno Illius, Peter Roe and the American Anthropological Association, Journal of Latin American Lore, Steve Stiles (Matteson Estate), Bernd Brabec de Mori and Viennese Ethnomedicine Newsletter, Franz Steiner Verlag/Deutscher Apotheker Verlag, Anna Laine, Sage Publications and The Hindu.
I also want to thank Liza Thompson from I.B.Tauris for convincing me that my doctoral thesis was perfectly publishable and for enthusiastically supporting the long process of rewriting the original text. I am also indebted to Anna Coatman who took over as editor and patiently helped with remaining hurdles and the tying up of loose ends. Her guidance made the book a better project. And last but not least to Bailie Card who saw the book through its final stages. I also thank Ignacio Acosta for his help with the book cover.
I also wish to extend sincere thanks to Matthias Schwabe for his support, Natasha Eaton for her encouragement and sustained interest in the project, and Rosemary and David Seton for their friendship and generous assistance throughout. I also wish to thank my parents for believing in me.