In this Book
- The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories
- Book
- 2004
- Published by: University of California Press
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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- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
- pp. xi-xii
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
- pp. xiii-xvi
- NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION
- pp. xvii-19
- 1. Placing Loss
- pp. 1-18
- 2. Science in the Service of Loss
- pp. 19-52
- 3. Occult Losses
- pp. 53-96
- 4. Living Loss at Land’s End
- pp. 97-136
- 5. Flooding History
- pp. 137-181
- 6. Mapping Loss
- pp. 182-222
- 7. Laboring against Loss
- pp. 223-234
- BIBLIOGRAPHY
- pp. 297-324
Additional Information
ISBN
9780520931855
Related ISBN(s)
9780520240322
MARC Record
OCLC
56733653
Pages
351
Launched on MUSE
2014-01-01
Language
English
Open Access
No