| Sumario: | This thinkpiece draws attention to a recent trajectory in television studies that wishes to reframe the axiomatic of the discipline for the purpose of locating television as a key player in larger historical processes. Arguing that such a shift could not be imagined without a crisis of the discipline's excessive reliance on Anglo-American experiential spheres, the article examines how scholars of non-Western – particularly South Asian – television can critically engage with this moment to theoretically intervene into the discipline. Surveying disciplinary debates across literature, history, media studies and culture studies, the article problematizes the comparativist approach as well as the tenors of multiculturalism and postmodernism in the recent efforts to revisit television's location in history. The imperative of negotiating two orders of the ‘modern’ (the European modern and the twentieth-century ‘communicative modernity’ of the global north), a creative challenge posed broadly to the non-Western media scholar, has never been significantly addressed by the discipline of television studies. The article proposes that any attempt to locate television in history and envisage a broader interdisciplinary dialogue must address such an imperative and not be content merely with presenting differences.
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