Imperial driftwood
Decolonising migration with Amitav Ghosh
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24226286 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tugba Basaran (0000-0003-3612-5019, University of Cambridge) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-22 |
| Publication date | 2026-05-20 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | New Community (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0047-9586 • E-ISSN: 1469-9451 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1369183x.2026.2669015 |
| OpenAlex | W7161839856 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 23 |
If archives serve as active sites of knowledge production and exercise of power, how can we conduct research that disrupts the imperial archives and their enduring legacies? This article reads Amitav Ghosh's Ibis Trilogy as a critique and methodology for reconceptualising human movement. Ghosh offers valuable insights for scholars confronting and challenging the legacies of empire on human movement, whether for refuge, migration or other forms of mobility. Following journeys within the imperial periphery, Ghosh demonstrates how to write vernacular archives and historical fiction to retrieve subaltern worlds erased from imperial records. Ghosh's subaltern can – and does – speak, asserting their agency where traditional archives remain silent. This article not only offers insights into alternative archives and subaltern agency but also proposes methodologies for conducting contemporary research and writing differently. It explores how vernacular narratives challenge standard social science methods through the (re)creation of archives erased and thus allow for witnessing in the absence of firsthand experience, enabling a rewrite from the margins. This article challenges scholars to shift away from perspectives centred on governance and the governed subject, the migrant, and instead to conduct research and write stories that focus on the human, the human condition and humanity.
alternative archives · Amitav Ghosh · Decolonization · historical fiction · human movement · Ibis trilogy · imperial archives · Migration · subaltern agency · subaltern narratives · witnessing · Decolonial Thought and Epistemologies · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · South Asian Studies and Diaspora
Deepening Divides
The Cambridge Handbook of Material Culture Studies
Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor
The Empire Writes Back
Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law
International Political Sociology
Trade and Civilisation in the Indian Ocean
Liberalism and Empire
Introduction
Between the Walls of Archives and Horizons of Imagination
Material Culture and (Forced) Migration
Lascars and Indian Ocean Seafaring, 1780-1860
A Hundred Horizons
Connected Histories
Colonial archives and the arts of governance
Citizenship in the International Management of Populations
Global History, Imperial History and Connected Histories of Empire
Amitav Ghosh's zubben
| Highly cited | No |
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