| Author |
Schmitt, Cannon |
| Year |
2009 |
| Publisher |
Cambridge: CUP |
| Number of pages |
262 |
| ISBN |
9780521765602 |
| Keywords |
|
Abstract
Amazon (2013):
When the young Charles Darwin landed on the shores of Tierra del Fuego in 1832, he
was overwhelmed: nothing had prepared him for the sight of what he called 'an untamed
savage'. The shock he felt, repeatedly recalled in later years, definitively shaped
his theory of evolution. In this original and wide-ranging study, In this 2009 book
Cannon Schmitt shows how Darwin and other Victorian naturalists transformed such encounters
with South America and its indigenous peoples into influential accounts of biological
and historical change. Redefining what it means to be human, they argue that the modern
self must be understood in relation to a variety of pasts - personal, historical,
and ancestral - conceived of as savage. Schmitt reshapes our understanding of Victorian
imperialism, revisits the implications of Darwinian theory, and demonstrates the pertinence
of nineteenth-century biological thought to current theorizations of memory.
