The Lost Land of Lemuria: Fabulous Geographies, Catastrophic Histories

By Sumathi Ramaswamy

Book 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0520244400
• ISBN13: 9780520244405
• Release Date: September 2004
• Publisher: University of California Press
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.2" x 8.8"