Sufi Saints Seated Around Holy Scriptures, nineteenth century gouache painting by an Indian painter. Wellcome Collection 575145i.
In Baba Farid: Poet of the Soul, a 2018 documentary film by Meera Dewan about the life and influence of the medieval Punjabi mystic and poet Baba Farid, the viewer is invited to imagine traveling in medieval times, when there were no borders, and when vast lands were inhabited by diverse communities. Only then, the viewer is told, can Baba Farid be understood. This article explores the circumstances and aftermaths of two shrines honoring this mystic: one in India, in the Punjabi town of Faridkot, and another in Jerusalem, in Palestine. In the world to which Baba Farid belonged, there was no India nor Palestine in the sense of twentieth- and nation-states. Yet, if looking closely, one can find links between them, both then and now; links that render these territories into cohesive polities by longue durée histories, shared personage, and cultural continuity.
Keto’s talk begins from the premise that Russia is both a cold and a continental empire. Sharing the same landmass with its colonies has long obscured its status as a colonial power. Since Russia’s territory isn’t divided by an ocean, it was difficult for this imperial power ‘to point to the place on the map where civilization ended and backwardness began.’ Instead, climate became the domain where such borders were drawn, enabling the violence of dispossession through climate determinism. The subtropics of the Caucasus therefore, embodied a climatic ‘otherness’ where imperial officials modelled their extractivism on Dutch and British colonies in Southeast Asia. In this sense, the framework of tropicality—the construction of regions as tropical through racialized accounts of Indigenous peoples, as was also the case in the Caucasus—can be a lens for rewriting histories of tropical violence, interweaving trans-imperial histories of domination and resistance.
Errant will be at numerous book fairs in the coming months. If you're in these cities, drop by to pick up your copy of Companions. We'll also have all other available issues for you to complete your Errant collection, as well as our tote bag. Come and say hello, we look forward to seeing you!
Offprint Art Book Fair 15–17 May, London
Notes to Other Futures Book Fair 23 May, Amsterdam
Miss Read Art Book Fair & Festival 26–28 June, Berlin
