ABSTRACT
Do concepts and arguments move like objects? Are there special furrows traced for them by social processes, which they are conditioned to follow? Can actors transform concepts and arguments, or are their decisions overdetermined by transformations which exceed individual agency? Do concepts breathe the air of specific cultural locales? What happens when texts and arguments are moved out of their historical contexts and revivified by other voices in other climes and times? Can we speak then about the transcultural afterlives of concepts? These are only some of the questions which recent debates in the discipline of global intellectual history have brought to the fore, and which this chapter seeks to negotiate, by bringing European-origin debates into dialogue with intellectual approaches originating from South Asia.
