ReintroducIng CIirculatIons: Historiography and the Project of Global Art History
World art history has gained much attention in recent years, opening many new possibilities for the discussion of the history of art in general. There are myriad ways to approach envisaging a history that is truly global, also meaning universal or comprehensive, an Enlightenment project that may perhaps no longer seem so utopian. This book suggests how a revival of attention to circulations can renew the practice of art history and contribute to the discussion of world, global art history. It proposes that following the transnational circulations of artists, artworks, and styles provides a means not only to escape from the national narratives in which previous approaches had been enmeshed, but also to write a global history of art for a globalized world. We still employ the word " art, " although we recognize that the concept of art may be relativized, that for instance it might be conceived differently in one place than in another, that its meaning changes in time, and that this concept might not even be expressed in certain times and places. We advocate an approach to transnational, global history through the study of circulations for several reasons. In the first place, and most important,global history as we understand it has to include the entire world, and not be the history of oneself and of "others." Approaches toward the comprehension of circulations appear to us to be the only ones that have so far succeeded in taking into account "others" without shutting them inside the prison of the notion of alterity or dismissing them as peripheral. Attention to the constant operation of circulations indicates that what are usually designated "cultures" in effect result from the ceaseless transformation of the circulations and adaptations of ideas, objects, and images originating elsewhere, notably including regions that a point of view governed by a paradigm of center periphery relations would deem "peripheral." Hence, only an understanding of history as a result of the continuing circulation of materials, people, and ideas can escape from the hypostasis of cultural entities such as "Western and non Western," which derive from a priori essentialist definitions, and which also supply grist to the mill of politicized interests, themselves perhaps not even consciously articulated.