Abstract
This talk stages a dialogue between the global history of science and the history of sexuality to consider a body of work I describe as “Hindu sexology”, borrowing from its theorists and practitioners in India at the turn of the twentieth century. Within the subcontinent, the new science concerned with human sexuality loomed large amongst political and cultural leaders debating India’s place in the world in the decades leading to decolonization. Beyond tracing sexology’s place in the imagination of the Indian nation, this talk will address the promises and limits of the “global turn” in the history of sexology, and in the history of sexuality as such. What can we learn of the new science by moving beyond a familiar cast of characters from London and Berlin and looking towards Lahore and Calcutta? What can we glean from the shadow archives of global sexology? Does a global history of science have room for texts and bodies that did not circulate freely? What happens to Foucault’s four figures of sexuality in their colonial career?
