public.project.abstract

This historically informed anthropological study of three apparently discrete locations or fields commences from a recognition that the apparent challenge to, if not outright collapse of, liberalism across the world, the rise of populist nationalisms, theologically inflected violences (or fundamentalisms), indicate that the dominant epistemological certainties of our world are at an end. This project aims to provide an intellectual framework and discourse that will enable us to make sense of these changes while also offering possibilities for the future. Focused on Goa, the project draws from the larger Portuguese imperial experience to offer a different reading of the world. The three fields to be studied are the place of Islam in Goa, the response of Catholicism in Goa to Indian nationalism, and Empire