The Hegemony Of Heritage

The Hegemony of Heritage makes an original and significant contribution to our understanding of how the relationship of architectural objects and societies to the built environment changes over time. Studying two surviving medieval monuments in southern Rajasthanthe Ambika Temple in Jagat and the Sri Eklingji Temple complex in Kailashpurithe author looks beyond their divergent sectarian affiliations and patronage structures to underscore many aspects of common practice. This book offers new and extremely valuable insights into these important monuments, illuminating the entangled politics of antiquity and revealing whether a monuments ritual record is affirmed as continuous and hence hoary or dismissed as discontinuous or reinvented through various strategies. The Hegemony of Heritage enriches theoretical constructs with ethnographic description and asks us to reexamine notions such as archive and text through the filter of sculpture and mantra. Makes visible the multiple methodologies that can be mobilized to write nuanced histories of Hindu temple architecture. The authors approach is both refreshing and new. Skillfully weaving in postcolonial theory, object ontologies, and affect theory, among other approaches, the book opens up an exciting paradigm in the study of South Asian art and architecture. SUGATA RAY, Assistant Professor of South Asian Art and Architecture, University of California, Berkeley. DEBORAH L. STEIN holds a PhD from UC Berkeley and has taught at Mills College, UC Berkeley, UC Irvine, UC Santa Cruz, and San Francisco State University. Currently Senior Lecturer at California College of Arts, she is the author of several peer-reviewed articles.