ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is concerned with the existence and dynamics of a transient, sometimes humorous, often dangerous, and periodically cruel intercultural space— generated in situations governed by misrepresentation or representational excess. It focuses on the existence of a transient intercultural space because of its special interstitial qualities, its rootedness in contested or destabilized territorial zones, and its links to patterns of misrepresentation and misinterpretation. The book suggests that transcultural spaces can sometimes be produced by representational dislocations or incomplete transformations in systemically based circuits of representation that have been deployed or that operate interculturally. It also focuses on a series of disconnected events that transpired on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal between the late eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries, as they appeared in travel literature, ships' logs, journals of surveying expeditions, or administrative reports.
