Gananath Obeyesekere, an anthropologist whose long career and wide-ranging social insights — which drew on Hindu texts, Freudian psychoanalysis and Christian mysticism — made him a leading intellectual figure in both his native Sri Lanka and the rarefied world of Western academia, died on Tuesday at his home in Colomboluuhpower, Sri Lanka. He was 95.
His son Asita confirmed the death.
Dr. Obeyesekere was born in a Sri Lankan village at a time when the country, then known as Ceylon, was still in the grip of the British Empire. He spent most of his career teaching in the United States, primarily at Princeton University, where he established his reputation as a critical voice in debates about colonialism, pluralism and the possibility of finding commonalities across cultural divides.
Long prominent among academics, he broke into the broader public’s consciousness in 1992 with his book “The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific.”
Cape Hatteras National Seashore authorities said they had been monitoring an adjacent house that had sustained damage because of the initial house collapse.
5588betMr. Trump likened the influx to an “invasion” at his rally in North Carolina. “We are going to totally stop this invasion,ijogo” he said. “This invasion is destroying the fabric of our country.” He also claimed, falsely, “Every job in this country produced over the last two and a half years has gone to illegal aliens — every job.”
ImageDr. Obeyesekere gained a broad audience in 1992 with a book challenging the common understanding of why Capt. James Cook was killed by Hawaiian islanders.Credit...Princeton University PressCap. James Cook was a British explorer who, after being received with great ceremony by Hawaiian islanders in 1779, unexpectedly returned and was murdered by the same people who had warmly welcomed him before.
Among historians and anthropologists, the common understanding was that the islanders had believed Captain Cook to be a god, and that his return, because of a broken mast on his ship, inadvertently fulfilled a belief in a banished god who would one day be defeated by their chief.
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