Fluent Bodies
eBook - PDF

Fluent Bodies

Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance

  1. English
  2. PDF
  3. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF

Fluent Bodies

Ayurvedic Remedies for Postcolonial Imbalance

About this book

Fluent Bodies examines the modernization of the indigenous healing practice, Ayurveda, in India. Combining contemporary ethnography with a study of key historical moments as glimpsed through early-twentieth-century texts, Jean M. Langford argues that as Ayurveda evolved from an eclectic set of healing practices into a sign of Indian national culture, it was reimagined as a healing force not simply for bodily disorders but for colonial and postcolonial ills.
Interweaving theory with narrative, Langford explores the strategies of contemporary practitioners who reconfigure Ayurvedic knowledge through institutions and technologies such as hospitals, anatomy labs, clinical trials, and sonograms. She shows how practitioners appropriate, transform, or circumvent the knowledge practices implicit in these institutions and technologies, destabilizing such categories as medicine, culture, science, symptom, and self, even as they deploy them in clinical practice. Ultimately, this study points to the future of Ayurveda in a transnational era as a remedy not only for the wounds of colonialism but also for an imagined cultural emptiness at the heart of global modernity.

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Yes, you can access Fluent Bodies by Jean M. Langford in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Indian & South Asian History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Contents
  2. Acknowledgments
  3. 1. (Re)inventing Ayurveda
  4. 2. Ayurvedic Interiors
  5. 3. Healing National Culture
  6. 4. The Effect of Externality
  7. 5. Clinical Gazes
  8. 6. Medical Simulations
  9. 7. Parodies of Selfhood
  10. Epilogue
  11. Interlocutors
  12. Glossary
  13. Notes
  14. Bibliography
  15. Index