PERFORMATIVE ARCHIVES: EMBODYING MEMORY, ENVIRONMENT, AND SPIRIT IN INDIA’S INDIGENOUS KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS

Summary

Indigenous knowledge systems in India resist translation into written archives; they are preserved through embodied practices such as ritual healing, martial movement, artisanal labour, ecological stewardship, and spirit-mediated communication. The paper argues that these practices function as living archives encoding ecological intelligence, historical memory, and ethical relationships with land and community. It criticizes mainstream epistemologies favoring textuality and scientism, showing how colonial and postcolonial paradigms splintered indigenous knowledge. The authors propose a pluralistic, practice-oriented model that treats embodiment as an epistemic situation, not a metaphor, and validates indigenous knowledge systems as legitimate epistemologies within contemporary India, offering insights for sustainable conservation and culturally sensitive policy.

Study at a glance

Abstract

In India, indigenous knowledge systems are complicated epistemic worlds that are difficult to translate into textual archives or codified information. This paper suggests that this kind of knowledge is preserved through embodied practices: ritual healing, martial movement, artisanal labour, ecological stewardship, and spirit-mediated communication, which serve as living archives. It uses several examples in the region to show how memory, body, environment, and cosmology are set up to encode ecological intelligence, historical memory, and ethical relationships with both the land and community. The research criticizes the mainstream epistemologies that favour textuality and scientism and shows how the colonial and postcolonial paradigm splintered indigenous knowledge. This paper suggests a pluralistic, practice-oriented model of knowledge, taking into account bodily, sensory, and environmental aspects by foregrounding embodiment as an epistemic situation and not as a metaphor. The paper methodologically shifts from a text-based approach to one that focuses on bodily, sensory, and environmental experiences in creating and sharing knowledge. Embodiment is viewed as an actual way of knowing (epistemology) where a person’s memories, skills, and environmental awareness are combined. The approach encourages practitioners of indigenous knowledge to consider their practical methods as the main source of their knowledge systems and accepts these systems as valid epistemologies within contemporary India. It also illustrates how these "archives in motion" (memories, rituals, and the body performing) are not only epistemic sovereignty, but also provide valuable information for sustainable conservation, healthy policy, and a culturally sensitive environment.