ENGLISH

The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories

By Sumathi Ramaswamy

Book information

Publisher
University of California Press
Year
2004
ISBN
0520244400
Open Library ID
OL7712029M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
5 MB (4898310 bytes)
Edition
1
Pages
352\352
Topic
History
Library
avaxhome.ws
Time added
2010-05-31 15:29:46

Description

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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