Dipesh Chakrabarty

by

Saurabh Dube, Eduardo Eguiarte Ruelas

• LAST REVIEWED: 27 November 2023
• LAST MODIFIED: 27 November 2023
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0131

Introduction

Dipesh Chakrabarty (b. 1948) is widely recognized as a cultural historian and postcolonial theorist of immense acuity and formidable imagination. Known especially for his critical coinage of “provincializing Europe” and cross-disciplinary considerations of the Anthropocene, Chakrabarty has variously contributed to the rethinking of subaltern historiography and working-class culture, modernity and history, and climate change and planetary subjects. Dipesh was born and raised in the city of Calcutta. He received a BSc (honors) in physics from Presidency College, University of Calcutta, a master’s in business management from the Indian Institute of Management (Calcutta), and his PhD in history from the Australian National University, Canberra. Chakrabarty is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor in History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College at the University of Chicago.

General Overviews

While there are no systematic, authored book-length accounts of Chakrabarty’s overall corpus, Dube 2020; Dube, et al. 2020; Kamal 2023; and Roger-Lacan 2021 provide useful introductions to his work. Also, given the wide-ranging nature of Chakrabarty’s writings, discussing them chronologically under separate rubrics in the sections that follow crucially unravels their arguments and emphases as well as the conversations and discussions they have fomented.

• Dube, Saurabh. “Histories, Dwelling, Habitations: A Cyber-Conversation with Dipesh Chakrabarty.” In Dipesh Chakrabarty and the Global South: Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Perspectives, and the Anthropocene. Edited by Saurabh Dube, Sanjay Seth, and Ajay Skaria, 56–72. London: Routledge, 2020.

  This cyber-conversation, conducted online over two decades, offers a sustained discussion of Dipesh Chakrabarty’s work at large, from the 1980s through to time of publication.

• Dube, Saurabh, Sanjay Seth, and Ajay Skaria, eds. Dipesh Chakrabarty and the Global South: Subaltern Studies, Postcolonial Perspectives, and the Anthropocene. London: Routledge, 2020.

  This collective volume covers the wide range of Chakrabarty’s work, also offering a panoramic picture of his writings and their influences across disciplines, regions, and subjects—from subaltern pasts to disciplinary histories to the Anthropocene and climate change.

• Kamal, Ahmed, ed. Somoyer Kuyashay: Dipesh Chakrabartyr Sommane Probondhoguchho. Dhaka, Bangladesh: University Publishers, 2023.

  A collection of Bengali essays in Chakrabarty’s honour (title translates as “In the Mists of Time: Essays in Honor of Dipesh Chakrabarty”).

• Roger-Lacan, Baptiste. “‘Nous assistons à la mort d’un certain type d’histoire’, conversation avec Dipesh Chakrabarty.” Le Grand Continent, 13 April 2021.

  The interview in French covers a broad range of Chakrabarty’s work, from his engagements with the Subaltern Studies Group, to his current perspectives on the West in relation to the idea of “provincializing Europe,” through to his work on climate change.