Western Disorientations: The Vanishing East of South America and Eastern Europe
Journal: Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis
Year: 2022

In this paper I utilise Edward Said’s framework of Orientalism in order to investigate how the regions that the European explorers have mistakenly or negligently identified in their imaginaries as “the East” are brought into the colonial order through an a priori assumption of their inferiority to the West. I turn to South America and Eastern Europe as the two frontiers which make these operations visible. Through the analysis of primary sources such as travel journals and letters from Spanish e