Overview

The first interdisciplinary history of vertigo, this book covers medical accounts from antiquity to the present, testimonies of lived experience, and literary and cultural representations of vertigo. Balanced. Stable. Grounded. Levelheaded. Even-keeled. There is a long list of words that demonstrate how we attach extraordinary value to a metaphorical sense of balance. From Alfred Hitchcock’s cinema, to Salvador Dalí’s art, to the writings of Virginia Woolf and Elizabeth Bishop – authors and artists have repeatedly used their work to invoke vertigo, or the loss of balance, as a metaphor for trauma, disorientation, even existential crisis. But what about those of us who have to live with a vertigo that is all-too real? Based on more than thirty in-depth interviews with people who live with balance disorders, this book explores the connections between vertigo-as-metaphor and vertigo-as-lived experience.

Full Product Details

Author:   Anindya Raychaudhuri (University of St Andrews, UK)
Publisher:   Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Imprint:   Bloomsbury Academic
Dimensions:   Width: 16.40cm , Height: 2.00cm , Length: 23.60cm
Weight:   0.520kg
ISBN:  

9781350523517

ISBN 10:   1350523518
Pages:   248
Publication Date:   11 December 2025
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction: Vertigo-as-Symptom and Vertigo-as-Metaphor 1. ‘Nothing is quite where it is supposed to be’: Negotiating Vertiginous Spaces 2. ‘Moving in a hyperbolic sort of way’: Speed and Vertigo 3. ‘What if you jumped?”: Acrophobia and the Vertigo of Heights 4. ‘Avoid shopping centres like the plague’: The Supermarket and the Dizziness of Capitalism 5. ‘We can’t just go to McDonalds’: Ingestion, Expulsion and Vertigo as Abject 6. ‘Not quite right in the world’: Vertigo and Digital Technology 7. ‘My life was already smaller’: Pandemic as Vertiginous Disruption Conclusion: A Hermeneutics of Vertigo Notes References

Reviews

This book offers a fresh and compelling take on the cultural history of vertigo. Engagingly written, it is an effortless, informative read. * Haejoo Kim, Assistant Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Seoul National University. * There is so little work on vertigo that attends seriously to its cultural impact. This book will resonate not just with scholars but many folks living with this condition who will feel seen by the intimate and rigorous ways it explores our vertiginous cultural imaginary. * Travis Chi Wing Lau, Assistant Professor of English, Kenyon College, USA. *

Author Information

Anindya Raychaudhuri is Senior Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, UK.

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