a little help here?

[lolaraincoat]

So you all know the term "orientalism," right? Invented by Edward Said to indicate the western European set of ideas and images and metaphors and stories about the Middle East which supported formal and informal colonialism between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century, right? A very handy term - once you know what it is, you start to

Comments

[djinnj]

Something colonialism? The Irish got it from the English, too, but I don't remember a specific term for it off hand.

[lolaraincoat]

Kind of. But colonialism is a set of actions as well as a set of ideas, if you see what I mean - I'm just looking for a single word to describe the idea.

[ancarett]

Hrm. I'm wondering if there's something tied into the Monroe doctrine w/r/t scholarly analysis of othering with a stronger paternalistic fillip. That whole "they're hotblooded little brown people but they're ours, so hands off" does add a complicating bit in that people in the US et al. weren't adducing the mystic, decadent, sophisticated elements of orientalism in all of that.

Doesn't strike a bell right off but let me take a look in some of the readings I did on post-nationalist scholarship when I was writing my battle for history chapter. . . .

[lolaraincoat]

Exactly - I think the "timelessness" elements of the orientalist discourse were certainly part of this related phenomenon, but not the "decadence" and "over-sophistication." Also there's a whole set of ideas about First Nations people - "in balance with nature" would be a big part of this - which comes into the discourse about Latin American people but isn't part of orientalist thinking.

[ancarett]

Okay, I dug up a reference to Mignolo in my research notes that led me to this article of his in JSTOR:
Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse: Cultural Critique or Academic Colonialism?
Walter D. Mignolo
Latin American Research Review
Vol. 28, No. 3 (1993), pp. 120-134

which, in turn, mentions Edmundo O'Gorman's work from the 1950s which might have something of interest in theory if not so much a terminology as nifty as Said's. Mignolo says that O'Gorman dismisses the universalist case for Orientalism as a descriptor of othered cultured. O'Gorman is someone of whom I've heard but never read, mind you, so this is definitely secondhand but intriguing!

[lolaraincoat]

Wow, that was fast. Mignolo is such a weirdo though. He can't possibly mean O'Gorman the painter and architect, can he? Also, how is O'Gorman dismissing Orientalism two decades before Said coined the term? Hmm. Will go read now. Thank you!

[lolaraincoat]

Sort of. Latin Americanists - both historians and lit crit types - have used the term extensively to describe a lens through which people from LA see the (global) north. But I'm looking for a word to describe the lens through which people from the (global) north look south. Super-altern?

[musikologie]

I feel there should be a good, broad-spectrum term about this that is not region-specific, but I don't know it. I'll ask around :)

[lolaraincoat]

I would think so! But nobody's coming up with anything other than Orientalism. Hmmm. There's a dissertation opportunity for someone.

[executrix]

Tuttifruttihatismo?

[lolaraincoat]

Best idea yet! Thank you!

[executrix]

...with the prophylactic, of course, being the Miranda Warning...

[lolaraincoat]

Ah hah hah! You are a GENIUS.