The Lost One

Sadiah Qureshi dismantles the myth that extinction is purely biological. In *Lost*, she traces how Georges Cuvier's mammoth bone analysis in Paris birthed a concept that quickly fused with imperialism, racism, and the Great Chain of Being. From bison slaughter in North America to "living ethnological displays" exhibiting indigenous peoples in zoo-like settings, extinction became a tool for legitimising colonial violence. Qureshi reveals how natural history museums transformed plunder into nostalgia, erasing the preventable nature of loss while indigenous fire management and sustainable hunting practices were dismissed as primitive.

You'll learn:

- How the "fortress conservation" model displaces the communities it claims to protect

- Why epistemic extinction parallels biological extinction

- What indigenous resurgence stories reveal about deterministic narratives