The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific

Here Gananath Obeyesekere debunks one of the most enduring myths of imperialism, civilization, and conquest: the notion that the Western civilizer is a god to savages. Using shipboard journals and logs kept by Captain James Cook and his officers, Obeyesekere reveals the captain as both the self-conscious civilizer and as the person who, his mission gone awry, becomes a savage himself.

In this new edition of The Apotheosis of Captain Cook, the author addresses, in a lengthy afterword, Marshall Sahlins's 1994 book, How Natives Think, which was a direct response to this work.

Author: Gananath Obeyesekere
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 12/14/1997
Pages: 336
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.04lbs
Size: 9.17h x 6.13w x 0.83d
ISBN: 9780691057521

About the Author
Gananath Obeyesekere is Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University. His many books include The Work of Culture: Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology and, with Richard Gombrich, Buddhism Transformed: Religious Change in Sri Lanka (Princeton).