Vocabulary

POST-COLONIAL LITERATURE FOR CHILDREN - EDU32PLC
La Trobe University, Bendigo - Semester Two - 2006

SOME USEFUL TERMS AND INTERPRETATIONS

Colonialism - control/authority over one culture/society by another. Controlling culture is usually external, controlled usually native. May also be based in economics, without direct political or identity domination - e.g. coca-colonialism.

Imperialism - the building of empires. Often based on ideas of political, religious or social superiority, and suppression of local identity.

Therefore – Colony: the controlled external territory, returning value to the homeland (separation and distinction); Empire: the incorporated entity subsumed into the greater whole (identity)

Imperial centre - from, or aligned with, the perspective of the controlling power. Consequent interpretations of actions, situations or issues.

Indigenous and Native - originating in a particular place. This is usually by birth, though it may include or require identifying socially with that local place or culture.

Expatriate - native of elsewhere residing in a specific place, but still identifying with native “home”.

Diaspora - spread of people beyond their original homeland, by migration, exile, imperialism etc. Originally of the Jews, now also any dispersal while maintaining identity.

Sub-altern - junior officer rank. In literature, a local sub-set of a larger language/literature, defined by their relation to the larger - e.g. Australian/Indian/New Zealand national literatures as part of English Literature.

Stereotype - an image or idea that has become fixed by repetition or acceptance, to the point of cliché.

Archetype - a fixed (even original) model of an idea or image, a recurrent motif or theme that is developed and varied while maintaining homage to the original.

Voice - expression of the distinct identity of a culture or people, in contrast to (or despite) relation to a colonising or alternative culture or people.

Orientalism – the definition of the “East” by the “West” as something different (to them), exotic, unlike the familiar; the implied authority and power to do so.

>HOME to INDEX page