Loss and Wonder at the World’s End

Loss and Wonder at the World’s End

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$94.95

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In Loss and Wonder at the World's End, Laura A. Ogden brings together animals, people, and things—from beavers, stolen photographs, lichen, American explorers, and birdsong—to catalog the ways environmental change and colonial history are entangled in the Fuegian Archipelago of southernmost Chile and Argentina. Repeated algal blooms have closed fisheries in the archipelago. Glaciers are in retreat. Extractive industries such as commercial forestry, natural gas production, and salmon farming along with the introduction of nonnative species are rapidly transforming assemblages of life. Ogden archives forms of loss—including territory, language, sovereignty, and life itself—as well as forms of wonder, or moments when life continues to flourish even in the ruins of these devastations. Her account draws on long-term ethnographic research with settler and Indigenous communities; archival photographs; explorer journals; and experiments in natural history and performance studies. Loss and Wonder at the World's End frames environmental change as imperialism's shadow, a darkness cast over the earth in the wake of other losses. Laura A. Ogden considers a wide range of people, animal, and objects together as a way to catalog the ways environmental change and colonial history are entangled in the Fuegian Archipelago of southernmost Chile and Argentina. Laura A. Ogden is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Dartmouth College, author of Swamplife: People, Gators, and Mangroves Entangled in the Everglades, coauthor of Gladesmen: Gator Hunters, Moonshiners, and Skiffers, and coeditor of The Coastal Everglades: The Dynamics of Social-Ecological Transformation in the South Florida Landscape. The World's End: A Figure  1
Introduction. Loss and Wonder  4
The Explorer's Refrain: A Figure  15
1. The Earth as Archive  21
Arturo Escobar: A Figure  44
The Archival Earth: A Figure  47
2. Alternative Archives of the Present  51
Lichens on the Beach: A Figure  57
3. An Empire of Skin  62
The Anthropologist: A Figure  86
4. Stolen Images  91
Lewis Henry Morgan: A Figure  107
5. Dreamworlds of Beavers  111
Traces of Derrida: A Figure  127
Anne Chapman: A Figure  130
Conclusion. Birdsong  133
Gratitude: A Figuration  141
Notes  145
Bibliography  169
Index  183

“One of the most brilliant and compelling aspects of this beautiful little book is Laura A. Ogden's voice. A woman's seasoned, feminist, highly attuned and tuned, expertly lived voice, it leads us graciously into a critical world of wonder and loss—a collective looking around at what could have been and might still be. Loss and Wonder at the World's End is sharply, fiercely loving. It teaches us to live and think differently. This is a masterful, inspiring, wholly original work.”
“In its freshness of vision, its first-person mode of presentation, its openheartedness, and its scattering of materials in delicate montages, Loss and Wonder at the World's End is such fun to read. Laura A. Ogden's persistent view of history throughout the text as multivalent, dense, and mysterious is wonderful.”

Additional information

Weight 1 oz
Dimensions 1 × 6 × 9 in