The Postcolonial Studies Dictionary

This new Dictionary features a thoughtfully collated collection of over 150 jargon-free definitions of key terms and concepts in postcolonial theory.

• Features a brief introduction to postcolonial theory and a list of suggested further reading that includes the texts in which many of these terms originated
• Each entry includes the origins of the term, where traceable; a detailed explanation of its perceived meaning; and examples of the term’s use in literary-cultural texts
• Incorporates terms and concepts from multiple disciplines, including anthropology, literary studies, science, economics, globalization studies, politics, and philosophy
• Provides an ideal companion text to the forthcoming Postcolonial Studies: An Anthology, which is also edited by Pramod K. Nayar, a highly-respected authority in the field

Lits of terms vi

Acknowledgements ix

Preface x

Dictionary 1

References 170

Terms

aboriginal 1

abrogation 2

Adivasi 3

Afro-Europe 4

agency 5

alterity 6

ambivalence 8

anthropology (colonial) 9

apartheid 11

appropriation 12

archive (colonial) 13

arithmetic (colonial) 14

assimilado 15

barbarian/barbaric 16

Black Atlantic 17

black consciousness 19

cannibal 21

captivity narratives 22

Carib 23

cartography 23

catachresis 25

citizenship (cultural) 26

citizenship (ecological) 27

census 27

centre and margin 28

chutneyfication 29

colony/colonialism 30

colonial discourse 32

Commonwealth Literature 34

comprador colonialism 35

conquistador 36

contrapuntal reading 36

cosmopolitanism 37

cosmopolitanism

(vernacular) 38

Creole/creolization 39

cultural imperialism 41

Dalit 43

Dark Continent 44

decolonization 45

dependency complex 47

diaspora 48

discovery 51

dislocation/displacement 52

double consciousness 52

e-Empire 55

ecological ethnicity 55

ecological imperialism 57

education (colonial) 57

effeminacy 59

Empire – new figurations of 60

Enlightenment (European) 61

environmentalism 62

epidermalization 64

epistemic violence 65

eroticization 66

essentialism 67

ethnicity 69

ethnocide 70

ethnography (colonial) 70

ethnopsychiatry (colonial) 71

Eurocentrism 73

evangelicalism (colonial) 74

exile 75

exoticism 76

exploitation colony 77

exploration (colonial) 77

feminism (Islamic) 79

fetish/phobia 80

filiation/affiliation 80

First World 81

Fourth World 81

geographical morality 83

geography 83

globe 85

globalization 85

hegemony 87

homonationalism 88

humanism (European) 88

humanitarianism 90

hybridity 91

imaginative geography 93

imperialism 94

indentured labour 95

infantilization 95

kala pani (‘Black Water’) 97

lactification 98

liminality 98

lusotropicalism 99

magical realism 100

Manichean allegory 101

masculinity (imperial) 102

mestizo/a 102

mimicry 103

miscegenation 104

multiculturalism 106

national allegory 108

nationalism (as discourse) 109

native 112

Native Informant 112

nativism 113

Negritude 114

neocolonialism 115

New World 116

Occidentalism 117

orality 117

Orientalism 118

Ornamentalism 120

picturesque (as colonialimperial aesthetic) 121

postcolonialism 122

postcoloniality 124

postcolony 125

postnational 126

primitivism 126

provincializing 127

race 129

refugee 130

re-orientalism 131

representation (colonial) 132

Requerimiento 134

reverse colonization 134

secularism/post-secularism 136

settler colonialism 137

situated knowledge 138

slavery 139

stereotyping 140

strategic essentialism 141

subaltern 143

subjectivity (of Europeans, colonial period) 146

subjectivity (of natives, colonial period) 148

sublime (as colonial aesthetic) 149

syncretism 150

terra incognita 152

terra nullius 153

testimonio 154

text/textuality (colonial) 155

Third World 156

torrid zones 157

transculturation 158

transnationalism 160

tricontinentalism 161

tropicality 161

universalism 163

vernacular 165

whiteness/white studies 167

World Literature 168

worlding 169

"This dictionary is highly recommended for libraries in higher education that offer courses in colonial and post-colonial history and programmes in history or political science. It also has the unique feature of being affordable for students who would like their own copy or for faculty that wish to recommend it for a Languages and literature Reference Reviews textbook supplement at a time when textbook prices are on the rise." (Reference Reviews 2016)

Pramod K. Nayar teaches in the Department of English at the University of Hyderabad, India. His books in postcolonial studies include Frantz Fanon (2014), Colonial Voices: The Discourses of Empire (Wiley, 2012) Postcolonialism: A Guide for the Perplexed (2010), and Postcolonial Literature: An Introduction (2008). He is also the editor of the 5-volume Women in Colonial India: Historical Documents and Sources (2013). Forthcoming works include Postcolonial Studies: An Anthology (Wiley) and a book on Human Rights and Literature.

The Postcolonial Studies Dictionary provides students with an essential resource for navigating the field of postcolonial theory. Each of the more than 150 entries includes the origins, where traceable, of a key term or concept; a detailed explanation of its perceived meaning and theoretical usage; and examples of literary and cultural texts where the term appears. Written by a respected scholar of postcolonialism, the Dictionary features a short introduction to postcolonial theory and a detailed list of suggested further reading, including the texts in which many of these terms originated.

Written in clear, jargon-free prose, The Postcolonial Studies Dictionary helps students and scholars decode colonial and postcolonial texts.

“Pramod Nayar’s The Postcolonial Studies Dictionary, with its careful explication of concepts and terms associated with various forms of colonial discourses and postcolonial writing, serves the purpose of being both a ready-reference guide and a scholarly exposition of the theoretical frameworks of the "discipline" of postcolonial studies. Lavishly illustrated through citations from literary-cultural texts, the Dictionary maps the tradition of critical thought we know as postcolonialism while bringing it right up to the contemporary era’s E-Empires, neocolonialism’s anthropocene visuality and new forms of hybridity in the age of the digital. An eminently usable work.”—Senath Perera, University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka