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summary
During the nineteenth century, Lemuria was imagined as a land that once bridged India and Africa but disappeared into the ocean millennia ago, much like Atlantis. A sustained meditation on a lost place from a lost time, this elegantly written book is the first to explore Lemuria’s incarnations across cultures, from Victorian-era science to Euro-American occultism to colonial and postcolonial India. The Lost Land of Lemuria widens into a provocative exploration of the poetics and politics of loss to consider how this sentiment manifests itself in a fascination with vanished homelands, hidden civilizations, and forgotten peoples. More than a consideration of nostalgia, it shows how ideas once entertained but later discarded in the metropole can travel to the periphery—and can be appropriated by those seeking to construct a meaningful world within the disenchantment of modernity. Sumathi Ramaswamy ultimately reveals how loss itself has become a condition of modernity, compelling us to rethink the politics of imagination and creativity in our day.

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
  2. p. 1
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  1. Title Page, Copyright, Dedication, Quote
  2. pp. 2-9
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  1. CONTENTS
  2. pp. ix-11
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  1. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
  2. pp. xi-xii
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  1. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  2. pp. xiii-xvi
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  1. NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
  2. pp. xvii-19
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  1. 1. Placing Loss
  2. pp. 1-18
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  1. 2. Science in the Service of Loss
  2. pp. 19-52
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  1. 3. Occult Losses
  2. pp. 53-96
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  1. 4. Living Loss at Land’s End
  2. pp. 97-136
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  1. 5. Flooding History
  2. pp. 137-181
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  1. 6. Mapping Loss
  2. pp. 182-222
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  1. 7. Laboring against Loss
  2. pp. 223-234
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  1. NOTES
  2. pp. 235-296
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  1. BIBLIOGRAPHY
  2. pp. 297-324
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  1. INDEX
  2. pp. 325-334
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