Migrant Techniques and Subversive Milieus

On the Absence of Technics in India

Abstract

How do we conceive diversification in the milieu of technics? Though associated-milieu is a useful concept, the Indian terrain of techniques impels one to underscore the notion as a milieu of subversion. The paper begins with a reading of the seminal work done by Debiprasad Chattopadhaya analyzing the impediments in writing a history of ancient Indian science and technology. Whether his effort resuscitating a history of materialism succeeds in interpolating a history of techniques in India is a critique this paper explores, taking cues from Yuk Hui’s incisive reading of the perceived absence of traditions of technical thinking in China, or broadly Asia. Present paper builds on Hui’s concept of “cosmotechnics” alongside the notion of “associated milieus” of counter-cultural techniques of Yoga and Tantra. In the second half, the paper brings into view how these Indian thought and practice traditions of Tantra and Yoga as techniques of the cosmic self and the body are woven into counter-cultures eliciting a critical framework for thinking these associated-milieus as exiled and migrated milieus.