Neelima Jeychandran | Virginia Commonwealth University (original) (raw)
Drafts by Neelima Jeychandran
Kaleidoscope, 2022
Kaleidoscope is a short book series of 20,000 to 50,000 words designed as an experimental and cro... more Kaleidoscope is a short book series of 20,000 to 50,000 words designed as an experimental and cross-disciplinary platform that documents and forges an innovative path forward for ethnography in a precarious era. Our interest to initiate Kaleidoscope emerges from a desire to provoke the junctures of physical and social sciences, as both a life practice and as a self-critical engagement. We welcome innovative approaches to the study of people, societies, environments, multispecies worlds, epistemologies, scapes, things, performances, and expressions that probe the potentials and limits of ethnography. The series seeks to foreground the junctures between ethnography and other disciplinary intersections.
Kaleidoscope particularly welcomes manuscripts at the intersections of archaeology, art, architecture, performance, design, and the environmental humanities that experiment with fieldnotes, fictocritical writing, lyrical sociology, flash ethnography, micro-essay, embodied phenomenology, reflexive memoir, ethnographic and auto-archaeology, the curation of hyperobjects, and conversations with the feuilleton. We are also open to manuscripts that are collaborative, co-authored, processual, performative, multimodal or push the boundaries between the ethnographer, the ethnographed, and the scene of writing. Manuscripts can be immersive, meditative, investigative, interrogative or speculative but also rigorous. Writing that addresses humans, non-humans, and the unhuman are of particular interest.
Papers by Neelima Jeychandran
Verge: Studies in Global Asias
Verge: Studies in Global Asias
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint
Verge: Studies in Global Asias
Matatu, 2021
In the coastal regions of Kochi in Kerala, memories of forced African migration to India are pres... more In the coastal regions of Kochi in Kerala, memories of forced African migration to India are preserved through shrines dedicated to African or Kappiri spirits, belief in their mischievous acts, and their intercessory powers. Shrines for African spirits are eclectic and modest, and they operate as indexical reminders of the troubled African pasts during the colonial occupation of Kerala. For most local people, Kappiri is a spectral deity, figureless and seemingly abstract, and a pervasive spirit who inhabits the coastal landscape. By studying vernacular histories, tales of spirit sightings, and worship practices surrounding the spectral figure of Kappiri, I have analysed how African spirits manifest their phantom presences and channel their spectral powers to those who seek to believe in their histories, which otherwise are obliterated from institutional discourses. Focussing on different material and intangible manifestations of African spirits, I discuss how different recollective ...
South Asian History and Culture
ABSTRACT African presence in the western Indian states of Gujarat and Kerala is remembered and re... more ABSTRACT African presence in the western Indian states of Gujarat and Kerala is remembered and revived by different subaltern communities through the palimpsestic spatial layering of sacred landscapes and geographies of death. In the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, there are several small mazars (shrines) dedicated to deceased African martyrs and saints. In addition to these small shrines, there are also a few mausoleums from the sixteenth century dedicated to African martyrs. On the other hand, in coastal Kochi in southern India, African memoryscapes survive through shrines dedicated to Kappiris (Africans) in Hindu sacred groves where benevolent African spirits continue to intercede in the lives of their devotees. While African cultural memories in the states of Gujarat and Kerala are fragmented, these dispersed and far-flung sacred edifices constructed to commemorate the lives of deceased Africans serve as active sites of memory. Employing ethnographic methodologies, I demonstrate how multiple narratives of African pasts are constructed by invested stakeholders through ritual transactions and memory-making practices at these spirited topographies in Kerala and Gujarat.
This paper examines how colonial fortresses in coastal Ghana and the museums inside them function... more This paper examines how colonial fortresses in coastal Ghana and the museums inside them function as memoryscapes where narratives of the pasts are represented and reproduced in the context of the exhibition space. Although small in area, museums within the former “slave castles” play a crucial role in recounting the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and in visualizing the fraught past in the present. These museums present the narrative of capture, confinement and enforced transportation of native Africans to plantations in the Americas through a range of displays. Treating the colonial fortresses and museums as theatres of memory, I discuss how such spaces function as realms of memory for visitors, especially for the African diaspora. By examining the transformation of Cape Coast Castle as a lieux de memoire and commodified “heritage”, I show how pasts are repurposed, reinvented and choreographed by various agencies and actors.
Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds
The Postcolonial Museum, Feb 17, 2016
Journal of Africana Religions
African sacred spaces in India are carved and maintained by mortal beings mostly hailing from the... more African sacred spaces in India are carved and maintained by mortal beings mostly hailing from the Sidi African-Indian community and from other subaltern communities, and these spaces are perpetually protected by African spirit beings. Thriving as marginal spaces in the overcrowded Indian cities, coastal towns, and villages, these African sacred topographies are continuously reimagined and reinvented by invested stakeholders to suit contemporary purposes. While addressing the complex connections of some of these sacredscapes with the African Indian Ocean slave trade, this paper examines how shrines dedicated to African Sufi saints and spirits keep African memories alive as devotees continue to seek the intercessions of these saints and spectral deities. By studying the spiritual beliefs and practices at these shrines, I discuss how African sacred geography in India prevails as a relational space connected to the Indian Ocean littoral through the intercessory powers of the African sai...
Kaleidoscope, 2022
Kaleidoscope is a short book series of 20,000 to 50,000 words designed as an experimental and cro... more Kaleidoscope is a short book series of 20,000 to 50,000 words designed as an experimental and cross-disciplinary platform that documents and forges an innovative path forward for ethnography in a precarious era. Our interest to initiate Kaleidoscope emerges from a desire to provoke the junctures of physical and social sciences, as both a life practice and as a self-critical engagement. We welcome innovative approaches to the study of people, societies, environments, multispecies worlds, epistemologies, scapes, things, performances, and expressions that probe the potentials and limits of ethnography. The series seeks to foreground the junctures between ethnography and other disciplinary intersections.
Kaleidoscope particularly welcomes manuscripts at the intersections of archaeology, art, architecture, performance, design, and the environmental humanities that experiment with fieldnotes, fictocritical writing, lyrical sociology, flash ethnography, micro-essay, embodied phenomenology, reflexive memoir, ethnographic and auto-archaeology, the curation of hyperobjects, and conversations with the feuilleton. We are also open to manuscripts that are collaborative, co-authored, processual, performative, multimodal or push the boundaries between the ethnographer, the ethnographed, and the scene of writing. Manuscripts can be immersive, meditative, investigative, interrogative or speculative but also rigorous. Writing that addresses humans, non-humans, and the unhuman are of particular interest.
Verge: Studies in Global Asias
Verge: Studies in Global Asias
Devotional Spaces of a Global Saint
Verge: Studies in Global Asias
Matatu, 2021
In the coastal regions of Kochi in Kerala, memories of forced African migration to India are pres... more In the coastal regions of Kochi in Kerala, memories of forced African migration to India are preserved through shrines dedicated to African or Kappiri spirits, belief in their mischievous acts, and their intercessory powers. Shrines for African spirits are eclectic and modest, and they operate as indexical reminders of the troubled African pasts during the colonial occupation of Kerala. For most local people, Kappiri is a spectral deity, figureless and seemingly abstract, and a pervasive spirit who inhabits the coastal landscape. By studying vernacular histories, tales of spirit sightings, and worship practices surrounding the spectral figure of Kappiri, I have analysed how African spirits manifest their phantom presences and channel their spectral powers to those who seek to believe in their histories, which otherwise are obliterated from institutional discourses. Focussing on different material and intangible manifestations of African spirits, I discuss how different recollective ...
South Asian History and Culture
ABSTRACT African presence in the western Indian states of Gujarat and Kerala is remembered and re... more ABSTRACT African presence in the western Indian states of Gujarat and Kerala is remembered and revived by different subaltern communities through the palimpsestic spatial layering of sacred landscapes and geographies of death. In the city of Ahmedabad in Gujarat, there are several small mazars (shrines) dedicated to deceased African martyrs and saints. In addition to these small shrines, there are also a few mausoleums from the sixteenth century dedicated to African martyrs. On the other hand, in coastal Kochi in southern India, African memoryscapes survive through shrines dedicated to Kappiris (Africans) in Hindu sacred groves where benevolent African spirits continue to intercede in the lives of their devotees. While African cultural memories in the states of Gujarat and Kerala are fragmented, these dispersed and far-flung sacred edifices constructed to commemorate the lives of deceased Africans serve as active sites of memory. Employing ethnographic methodologies, I demonstrate how multiple narratives of African pasts are constructed by invested stakeholders through ritual transactions and memory-making practices at these spirited topographies in Kerala and Gujarat.
This paper examines how colonial fortresses in coastal Ghana and the museums inside them function... more This paper examines how colonial fortresses in coastal Ghana and the museums inside them function as memoryscapes where narratives of the pasts are represented and reproduced in the context of the exhibition space. Although small in area, museums within the former “slave castles” play a crucial role in recounting the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and in visualizing the fraught past in the present. These museums present the narrative of capture, confinement and enforced transportation of native Africans to plantations in the Americas through a range of displays. Treating the colonial fortresses and museums as theatres of memory, I discuss how such spaces function as realms of memory for visitors, especially for the African diaspora. By examining the transformation of Cape Coast Castle as a lieux de memoire and commodified “heritage”, I show how pasts are repurposed, reinvented and choreographed by various agencies and actors.
Reimagining Indian Ocean Worlds
The Postcolonial Museum, Feb 17, 2016
Journal of Africana Religions
African sacred spaces in India are carved and maintained by mortal beings mostly hailing from the... more African sacred spaces in India are carved and maintained by mortal beings mostly hailing from the Sidi African-Indian community and from other subaltern communities, and these spaces are perpetually protected by African spirit beings. Thriving as marginal spaces in the overcrowded Indian cities, coastal towns, and villages, these African sacred topographies are continuously reimagined and reinvented by invested stakeholders to suit contemporary purposes. While addressing the complex connections of some of these sacredscapes with the African Indian Ocean slave trade, this paper examines how shrines dedicated to African Sufi saints and spirits keep African memories alive as devotees continue to seek the intercessions of these saints and spectral deities. By studying the spiritual beliefs and practices at these shrines, I discuss how African sacred geography in India prevails as a relational space connected to the Indian Ocean littoral through the intercessory powers of the African sai...