Oxford University Press, New Delhi Fluent Bodies

This book examines the modernization of theindigenous healing practice of ayurveda in india combining contemporaryethnography with a study of key historical moments as glimpsed through earlytwentieth century texts, fluent bodies argues that ayurveda evolved from aneclectic set of healing practices into a sign of indian national culture it wasre-emerged as a healing force not simply for bodily disorders but for colonialand postcolonial ills interweaving theory with narrative, the book explores thestrategies of contemporary practitioners who reconfigure ayurvedic knowledgethrough institutions and technologies such as hospitals, anatomy labs, clinical trials, and sonogramsit shows how practitioners appropriate, transform, orcircumvent the knowledge practices implicitly in these institutions andtechnologies, 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 remedynot only for the wounds of colonialism but also for an imagined culturalemptiness at the heart of global modernity