The Lost Land of Lemuria : Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories
Overview
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.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780520244405
- ISBN-10: 0520244400
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publish Date: September 2004
- Dimensions: 8.84 x 6.2 x 0.85 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.07 pounds
- Page Count: 384
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