bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Reynolds, G. W. M.
Authors: McWilliam Rohan
Published: June 2017

G. W. M. Reynolds was one of the best‐selling novelists of the nineteenth century, author of the popular serial
The Mysteries of London
(1844–55). He was also a leading radical figure, briefly playing a prominent role in the Chartist movement in 1848. In addition, he was one of the pioneers of mass‐market journalism, launching periodicals such as
Reynolds's Miscellany
(1846–69) and
Reynolds's Newspaper
(1850–1967). In his different pursuits, Reynolds employed the techniques of melodrama to champion radical causes and to attack the exploitation of the poor.
Robinson, Agnes Mary Frances
Authors: Rigg Patricia
Published: June 2017

Agnes Mary Frances Robinson (1857–1944) spanned the fin‐de‐siècle English and French literary circles and British aestheticism and modernism. Robinson's reputation in English literature rests on her poetry of the 1880s and her intense friendship with Vernon Lee. However, after her marriage to James Darmesteter (1849–94), her move to Paris in 1888, and her second marriage to Émile Duclaux (1840–1904), she spent the next forty years publishing primarily biography, French literary history, and French history – in both English and French. She earned an income writing for a number of journals and participated in an intellectually stimulating French literary and philosophical group. She is important to our understanding of the intellectual contribution of nineteenth‐century women writers, the growth and demise of British and European aestheticism, and the political, social, and cultural place of women in the late nineteenth and mid‐twentieth centuries.
Sewell, Anna
Authors: Beam Sara N.
Published: June 2017

Anna Sewell (1820–77) is best known for her only novel,
Black Beauty: His Grooms and Companions: The Autobiography of a Horse
, published in 1877. Sewell's family was Quaker, but she and her mother, Mary Sewell, to whom Anna was very close, left the Friends to pursue their own independent ideas. An injury and possible immunodeficiency disorder limited Anna Sewell's mobility, but she led a busy life, at times tending to animals, driving a chaise, teaching night classes, visiting family and friends, and, near the end of her life, penning her “little book.” Sewell was against cruelty and sought to give voice to the working horse and the working people who owned him or drove him.
Black Beauty
is Sewell's creative and enduring contribution to the Humane Movement and to the genre of fictional autobiography. Scholars have discussed the text in light of the dress reform, antivivisection, women's rights, labor, and abolitionist movements.
Swinburne, Algernon Charles
Authors: Meyers Terry L.
Published: June 2017

Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837–1909) is commonly dismissed as the bad boy of Victorian poetry, assaulting standards of sexual propriety especially with the publication of
Poems and Ballads
(1866). Born into England's upper classes, he pursued a literary career of great distinction and accomplishment, though he has yet to receive in either the popular or the academic mind the recognition he deserves. That is in part a consequence of his fiery agitation of Victorian values, but is also in part a consequence of such a modernist as T. S. Eliot, whose strictures, now resisted by modern scholars, have shaped Swinburne's critical standing for almost a century.
Symonds, John Addington
Authors: Heidt Sarah J.
Published: June 2017

John Addington Symonds (1840–93) was a versatile and well‐known man of letters, publishing nearly forty books of poetry, essays, cultural history, travel sketches, biography, memoirs, and studies of sexuality. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, from the mid‐1860s he traveled extensively in Europe, eventually leaving England to split his years between the Swiss Alps and Venice. Though he has been best known for his
Memoirs
and treatises on sexuality, recent scholarship has focused on a wider range of his writings, particularly his essays and histories, seeking to reassess dismissive modernist criticism and resituate him in his collaborative networks and intellectual traditions.
American Victorian fiction and prose
Authors: Chavez Julia McCord
Published: June 2017

The study of American Victorian or “transatlantic” fiction and prose can be classified into three main branches of inquiry. For intellectual historians, this topic covers the fruitful exchange of ideas facilitated by transatlantic travel and Atlantic Rim friendships. For book historians, American Victorian fiction is the product of a distinctive publishing landscape dominated by periodical culture and pirated texts. For literary scholars, “American Victorianism” involves a nucleus of topics and themes (i.e., national identity, racial inequality, gender constructs), aesthetics (i.e., realism, sentimentalism), and genres (i.e., social purpose novel, sensation novel, gothic fiction) shared with nineteenth‐century British texts.
Victoria, Queen
Authors: Allen Emily
Published: June 2017

Queen Victoria (1819–1901) occupied the British throne and the British imagination during the Victorian period, over which she reigned from 1837 to 1901. As a female monarch, Queen Victoria was the center of a cult of domesticity with wide‐ranging consequences for all Victorian women. Represented as the ideal British wife and the “Mother of the Nation,” Victoria was styled as a middle‐class ruler whose power was symbolic and benign. The author of three published books and numerous unpublished diaries, Victoria was also the subject of literary representation, and influenced Victorian literature as the century's most powerful icon.
Nature, Concepts of
Authors: Palsson Gisli
Published: June 2017

The concept of nature plays a major role in contemporary popular culture and many fields of scholarship. While historically it has tended to refer to a fixed state, some kind of essence or baseline, it has always remained complex. This complexity is reflected in both biological/physical and cultural/social anthropology. For long, nature was seen as part of a dual pair, rigidly separating nature from culture, society, and nurture. Recently the relationship has been seen as an interactive one, each domain affecting the other. Nowadays, however, the language of naturecultures and biosocialities is sometimes used to capture human impact on “life itself” and the refashioning of planet earth during the so‐called Anthropocene. At the same time there is growing interest in vital materialism and the agency of things. Despite these shifts and complexities, “nature” seems destined to stay on the agenda as a leading concept.
Humanitarianism as Ideology and Practice
Authors: Benthall Jonathan
Published: June 2017

Humanitarianism has an ideological aspect, representing the industrialized world's aspirations to relieve suffering in societies faced by acute crisis, but may also be conceived as a self‐evidently practical response to needs. After a historical summary, this entry describes how social–cultural anthropologists since the 1980s have helped to lay the foundations for “humanitarian studies,” especially in questioning many professional assumptions but also in breaking down the distinction between “human‐caused” and “natural” disasters, analyzing the relationships between relief aid and the world of marketing and media, and describing the common factors in refugee movements. The entry goes on to consider the links between humanitarianism and religion, including Christianity and Islam, and compares the Christian ideal of charity with other similar traditions—which is helpful if an ethnocentric stance is to be avoided. Theoretical concepts such as “humanitarian governance” are explained, with a final affirmation of the unique contribution made by ethnographic fieldwork.
Brain and Culture
Authors: Launay Jacques
Published: June 2017

In order to understand human behavior, studies of both the brain and culture need to be taken into account, as well as complex interactions between these two perspectives. Experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience tend to emphasize the underlying psychological and neural processes that underpin behavior and might therefore be perceived as reductionist. However, there is much evidence to demonstrate that behavior and the brain are directly influenced by learning. Given that we learn throughout life within in a cultural context, our brains are dramatically changed by practices that are particular to our own social group. As well as the environment directly influencing the brain, there is also some interaction with genetics. The fields of neuroanthropology and cultural neuroscience have started to bring together studies of the brain and culture.
Economic Anthropology
Authors: Hann Chris
Published: June 2017

For almost a century, economic anthropology has formed a fairly coherent field at the interface between sociocultural anthropology and economics. Many anthropologists are suspicious of economists' concepts and some question the very notion of “the economy.” Material livelihoods are always embedded in wider contexts of immaterial values and practices that cannot be reduced to a utilitarian calculus. However, some anthropologists maintain that the axioms of mainstream economics are universally applicable. This entry begins by reviewing the contentious history of the subdiscipline. It then sets out some of the principal categories within which practitioners have systematized their knowledge. Finally, it considers economic development and suggests that applied anthropologists working in this field can draw theoretical inspiration from classic sources in economic anthropology, notably Karl Polanyi.
African American Literature, Criticism and Theory
Authors: Goyal Yogita
Published: June 2017

African American literature begins with a meditation on the meaning of slavery and freedom, as early writers create new narrative forms to seek agency, subjectivity, and community within the dehumanizing conditions of forced migration and enslavement. The Reconstruction era prompts the literature of racial uplift and the theorization of double consciousness. During the Harlem Renaissance and the black arts era, writers turn to realist protest fiction, lyrical poetry, and committed theater to develop a cultural nationalism that combats continuing segregation and Jim Crow disenfranchisement. Debates over black feminism and queer sexuality challenge black nationalist ideologies. Contemporary African American literature includes strains of black postmodernism, neo‐slavery, and Afrofuturism, as writers continue to develop innovative forms to complicate existing notions of race and representation through debates over politics and aesthetics, diaspora and transnationalism, and gender and sexuality.
Apartheid
Authors: Macaskill Brian
Published: June 2017

Apartheid is the Afrikaans‐language term that designates the policy of racial segregation and associated social engineering overtly practiced by the National Party in South Africa between 1948 and the early 1990s. Apartheid consolidated and extended prior legislation discriminating against nonwhite South Africans and served as a means of preserving white minority rule over the black majority. Two foundational items of legislation passed in 1950, the Population Registration Act and the Group Areas Act, racially categorized the South African population and stipulated where people could live and work. Apartheid was from the beginning internally opposed by individuals, political organizations, and artists.
Australian Aboriginal Literature
Authors: Griffiths Michael R.
Published: June 2017

Australian Aboriginals comprise a heterogeneous set of indigenous peoples, made up of more than 200 language groups, each characterized by regionally distinct cultural practices. Pan‐Aboriginal identification has mobilized a postcolonial politics of writing from an indigenous Australian perspective, one that has been both nationally and transnationally influential. Aboriginal people have been writing since as early as their first contact with the European phonographic alphabet. To date, the database
BlackWords: Aboriginal Writers and Storytellers
records more than 5000 published Aboriginal authors, who have produced work in forms as diverse as poetry, plays, and short and long prose fiction. Much of this work is imbued with both political charge and aesthetic depth. Nonfiction prose has also been a feature of Aboriginal writing since colonization, covering history, journalism, academic criticism, and, most significantly, life writing. In each genre, questions of politics and identity tend to be central themes, diversely addressed.
Australian Literature
Authors: Moody Alys
Published: June 2017

This entry provides an overview of Australian literature and the debates it has generated, with an emphasis on Australian literature's relationship to the postcolonial. It provides a brief history of scholarly definitions of Australian literature, an overview of debates around whether Australian literature should be considered postcolonial, and fuller discussions of Australian literature according to commonly used periodizations: the colonial period (1788–1901), the establishment of Australian as a nation (1901–50), and the postwar and contemporary period (1950–present). It follows the development of poetry, fiction, drama, and nonfictional prose forms, describing the principal preoccupations of Australian writing in these periods, as well as the institutional structures and transnational contexts in which they evolved.
Baldwin, James
Authors: Coulardeau Jacques
Published: June 2017

Born on August 2, 1924 in Harlem, New York, James Baldwin was an African American essayist, novelist, playwright, and social critic. In his work, he explored possible escape routes for black Americans, through music, literature, and his own gay sexuality. When he was only a child, his mother divorced his father and remarried the fundamentalist preacher David Baldwin, who was very strict with his stepson in a context of great poverty. His stepfather died of tuberculosis in July 1943 and was buried on James's nineteenth birthday just before the birth of his youngest sister. He had three brothers and five sisters, all named in the dedication of his book
Just Above My Head
(1979). Baldwin moved to France in 1948, and lived chiefly in Paris. He died on December 1, 1987 in Saint‐Paul de Vence, France.
Bhabha, Homi K.
Authors: Mukherjee Ankhi
Published: June 2017

Homi K. Bhabha's work has inaugural significance in the field of postcolonial theory and was especially influential in the formative stages of the discourse as it tried to recuperate signs of subjectivity and resistance in the gap between what Benita Parry calls the “monolithic, near deliberative colonial power” and “an undifferentiated oppressed mass.” Bhabha was born in Bombay, India, in 1949, educated at the University of Bombay and the University of Oxford, and is at present the Anne F. Rothenberg Professor in the Department of English and American Literature at Harvard University. He is also Director of the Humanities Center at Harvard. ’
Brink, André
Authors: Diala Isidore
Published: June 2017

Andre P. Brink (1935–2015) was a South African novelist, playwright, essayist, and internationally renowned anti‐apartheid commentator. Brink's long career and his continuing responsiveness to the changing political and social landscape of South Africa have ensured dynamism in his novelistic discourse as well as in his critical sensibilities.
Bulosan, Carlos
Authors: Freeman Bradley M.
Published: June 2017

The work of Filipino American writer Carlos Bulosan remains pivotal to postcolonial studies, Asian American studies, and studies of the American left. Born shortly after the United States’ annexation of the Philippines, Bulosan grew up in the margins of American empire. After moving to the United States early on in the Depression, he became a leader in various labor movements on the west coast, and eventually a writer. His most famous novel,America Is in the Heart, launches a damning indictment of US empire and capitalism. Since his untimely death in 1956, critics have marshaled transnational and postcolonial methodologies in order to hail Bulosan as a pioneer in Asian American letters and a harbinger of postcolonial critique.
Bolivarianism
Authors: Rudan Paola
Published: June 2017

Bolivarianism could be regarded as the ideological formation that emerged in Latin America during the twentieth century in order to define two different political and institutional experiences: anti‐imperialism and democracy. The political use of the term made by nationalist, socialist liberal Latin American political thinkers and by contemporary Chavism will be analyzed historically and compared with Simón Bolívar's international and constitutional thought. The objective of this historical approach is not to provide a presumed “original” Bolivarianism in contrast with contemporary interpretations, but to decipher the political use of the Bolivarian past and doctrine in present times by stressing the historical and material dimension which characterizes this same use. According to this reading, Bolivarianism is not a historical tradition or an accumulation of consistent experiences; rather, it is a polemical device based on the identification of an enemy, a contextualized choice of arguments.
Caribbean Anti‐Colonialism
Authors: Ledgister F. S. J.
Published: June 2017

Anti‐colonialism in the Caribbean dates back to the earliest colonial presence at the end of the fifteenth century. It has involved slave resistance, revolution, and intellectual challenges to colonial rule articulated by journalists, scholars, activists, democratic politicians, and armed rebels. It has included different manifestations of nationalism, constitutionally based Creole nationalism and more radical black nationalism, as well as the decision to abolish colonial rule by incorporating the colony into the metropole. In the territories of the American, Dutch, and French Caribbean, there continue to be active anti‐colonial expressions into the twenty‐first century.
Demography
Authors: Krywult‐Albańska Małgorzata
Published: June 2017

The entry discusses the demographic impact of colonialism, focusing on selected historical and contemporary population issues. A brief outline of the scope of demography as a science is followed by discussion of the consequences of contact between white Europeans and indigenous societies (including the slave trade). Demographic factors underlying the colonial expansion are highlighted. The final section points out some of the most important population issues in the postcolonial world.
Desai, Anita
Authors: De Aparajita
Published: June 2017

This entry provides a brief biographical sketch of the author Anita Desai. It deals with the writer‘s current and past accomplishments and awards, synopses of her major work, her literary contribution, and sensibilities in the broader genre of postcolonial and Anglophone literatures. The entry categorizes Desai's work to particularly explore themes of identity with a focus on feminine characters in the context of globalization and postcoloniality.
Development
Authors: Murray Peter
Published: June 2017

This entry traces the intellectual history of development from its Enlightenment origins to today's neoliberal globalization. Concentrating on development as both theory and practice, it also considers the historical impact of colonialism, imperialism, and World Wars I and II in how we today understand the meaning of developed and undeveloped countries. More specifically, this entry highlights how progressive philosophies of history, economics, and culture have worked in tandem to support Western modernity's dominance, thus continually positioning the global South in a subordinate position. Finally, the entry attempts to illuminate intersections between postcolonial theory and postdevelopment theory as both schools tend to question the production of power‐knowledge in regard to inequality.
Devi, Mahasweta
Authors: Baer Ben Conisbee
Published: June 2017

Mahasweta Devi (b. 1926) is an activist, a renowned author of literary fiction and radical journalism, and is one of the most important postcolonial public intellectuals of contemporary India. Her work is concerned with the aboriginal (
adivasi
or tribal) citizens of India, as well as other marginalized and disenfranchised groups that collectively make up the contemporary Indian poor.
Diop, Cheikh Anta
Authors: Babalola Abidemi Babatunde
Published: June 2017

This entry discusses the life and works of Cheikh Anta Diop – an erudite Senegalese writer, researcher, and political activist of the twentieth century. As a young foreign student in Paris, Diop began his career by advocating for the abolition of the colonial presence in Africa and the institutionalization of African independence. Throughout his lifetime the crusade for African liberalization was at the forefront of Diop's scholarship. He pursued this idea and concretized it in many books, journal articles, and conference papers, through which he brought black Africa into the discourse of world civilization. The entry covers a wide range of Diop's scholarship, which extended across several disciplines.
Alexie, Sherman
Authors: Fleury Staci
Published: June 2017

Sherman Alexie is an American poet, novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and filmmaker known for writing about the modern‐day American Indian on and off the reservation, often referencing his own life experiences and hybrid culture. Controversy concerning Alexie's work is rooted in his representation of the American Indian; he utilizes negative stereotypes and humor to communicate the colonial and postcolonial qualities of the American Indian identity, validating the hybridity of the modern Indian.
Farah, Nuruddin
Authors: Borman David
Published: June 2017

This entry covers the life and career of Somali novelist Nuruddin Farah. It summarizes the major themes of his creative work – such as gender, politics, and national identity in Somalia – with particular attention to
From a Crooked Rib
(1970) and
Maps
(1986). It also covers Farah's cosmopolitan writing career in Africa, Europe, and the United States.
Federalism in Latin America
Authors: García Antonio Rivera
Published: June 2017

Federalism is a polysemous concept like democracy. Despite its various types and meanings, it is possible to identify philosophical and political foundations that are common to all kinds of federalism. Once we understand these foundations, we can analyze the past, the present, and the future of federalism in Latin America. In principle, the concept is hard to reconcile with the modern political philosophy that began with Thomas Hobbes. Federal theory allows for a high degree of complexity, which enables it to regulate and explicate the diversity and multiplicity of the world. Modern political philosophy, by contrast, tends to simplify and construct a political order that relies on the homogenous concept of the “people,” whose components are equal individuals rather than a plurality of heterogeneous groups or associations.
French World Literature
Authors: Orlando Valérie K.
Published: June 2017

Authors writing in French support the use of the termLa Littérature‐monde, or “French world literature,” as a way to encompass novels written by mainstream authors in France as well as from countries where French is one of the principal languages.Littérature‐mondeallows the French language to be freed of its national boundaries in order to become a transnational language for a literature that is globally defined and engages multiple socioethnic and national registers.
Empire, Philosophy of
Authors: Villacañas José Luis
Published: June 2017

Four intellectual approaches are relevant to the concept of empire that I would like to propose here: the world system school, the British comparative school, the subaltern, and the decolonial. Although the contributions of all these approaches are important, none provides us with a satisfactory approximation to the morphology of the Spanish empire and its material practices of power. If we do not identify the morphological scheme proper to the Spanish empire, the material practices of power that underlie the Hispanic concept may well go unnoticed. Likewise, if these practices remain unconsidered, the forms of resistance struggles in general, and those that led to the wars of independence in particular, cannot be identified either. Lastly, without identifying the structure of these struggles, which were constitutive of the historical time of the first Spanish American emancipation, it is hard to understand Latin America's role in the long history of the formation of the nation‐states, in the national popular period, during the first period of neoliberalism, or in the time of global postcoloniality or of pan‐provincialism.
Gordimer, Nadine
Authors: Blair Peter
Published: June 2017

A prolific South African novelist, short‐story writer, and essayist, Nadine Gordimer (1923–2014) was known for her opposition to apartheid and censorship. Her many honors included the Booker Prize (1974) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1991). This entry outlines Gordimer's writing career in relation to the form of “internal colonialism” known as apartheid, and to the postcolonial condition of South Africa after apartheid. It describes how Gordimer's fiction, which combines critical realism with late‐modernist experimentation, articulates three phases: “liberal,” “radical,” and “post‐apartheid.”
Hughes, Langston
Authors: Valella Daniel
Published: June 2017

Langston Hughes (1902–67) was an African American writer and social activist best known for his leading role in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s and 1930s.
Imperialism
Authors: Chowdhury Kanishka
Published: June 2017

Imperialism is characterized by an unequal economic, social, and political relationship marked by military superiority, by the exertion of force, and in many cases, by the imposition of cultural values. In its modern version, the term “imperialism” is most often associated with Lenin's analysis of global capitalism. In his
Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism
(1916), Lenin argued that Western capitalist economies, propelled by the inner contradictions of capital and the increasing role of finance capital, inevitably had to exploit overseas territories in a competitive struggle to aid capital accumulation. In recent years, imperialist practices have included direct warfare and occupation, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, but more commonly imperialism has been exercised through the continuing attempt by the United States and its allies to coerce countries to abide by the vastly unequal rules of the neoliberal global economy and to provide valuable resources and labor for Northern economies.
Indian Anti‐Colonialism
Authors: Singh Madhu
Published: June 2017

Indian anti‐colonialism was inspired by diverse political, economic, religious, and ideological factors but mobilized toward the common goal of freedom from British domination through different methods and means. While many contributed to the end result, the Indian National Congress (INC), with leaders like Balgangadhar Tilak and others, brought together people of different ethnic, religious, and racial identities in the anti‐colonial struggle. Mahatma Gandhi played a phenomenal role in the struggle for self‐determination and freedom from foreign rule. However, the closing decade of the nineteenth century and early years of the twentieth witnessed the emergence of hardcore militant nationalists within the INC who were sharply critical of the ideology and methods of the older leadership. The revolutionary movement gradually took a socialist turn supported by leaders like Jayaprakash Narayan and Rammanohar Lohia. Eventually, with the strong non‐violent and violent outbursts of Indians from all walks of life, the British became certain that clearing out of India was only a matter of time. The anti‐colonial struggle finally led to independence in 1947 but at the tragic cost of the fragmentation of the nation into two entities, India and Pakistan, and the huge loss of lives and property.
Indianism in Brazilian Discourse
Authors: Marsal Meritxell Hernando
Published: June 2017

Indianism is a literary current in Brazilian Romanticism that is defined by the adoption of the indigenous figure as an originating symbol and incorporated into the nascent nationality in the forms of (loving) submission and of sacrifice. After colonization, the Indian figure was stripped of his own characteristics and transformed into a trope of hegemonic discourse, which in the twentieth and twenty‐first centuries developed disruptive characteristics that question Indians’ subordination.
Irish Studies from Postcolonialism to Globalization
Authors: Bahri Deepika
Published: June 2017

A history of contention with regard to the use of “postcolonial” to describe the politics and culture of the Irish recallsus to issues of methodology and commitments in the field of postcolonial studies while scholarship in Irish studies points to the need for continued and collective exertion in understanding the idea of empire over time in forms both traditional and emergent. Although once hotly debated, and now largely accepted, Irish postcolonialism remains a productive topic capable of yielding new insights as both Irish and Postcolonial Studies continue to evolve in response to historical and global developments.
James, C. L. R.
Authors: Meehan Kevin
Published: June 2017

Cyril Lionel Robert James is a pivotal figure in twentieth‐century intellectual history, with a body of writing that broadly addresses and integrates Marxist and pan‐Africanist approaches to social change. His voluminous bibliography ranges from Trotskyist political theory and global revolutionary history to literary production in multiple genres and brilliant cultural criticism of both high art and popular culture in the United States, Europe, Africa, and his native Caribbean.
Japanese Literature, Criticism and Theory
Authors: Kono Kimberly T.
Published: June 2017

From the late nineteenth century to the present, Japan has challenged the assumptions underlying the dualism of a traditional East and a modern West. Japan's shifting position as both the subject and object of the colonial gaze is evident in modern Japanese literature; scholars have applied various postcolonial concepts to different moments throughout modern Japanese history: “self‐colonization” during the Meiji period, orientalizing of Asia throughout the colonial period, postwar colonial nostalgia, postcolonial writing by “minority” writers, and contemporary investigations of Japanese identity (ethnic, linguistic, national, and cultural).
Lamming, George
Authors: Dalleo Raphael
Published: June 2017

George Lamming is a Barbadian writer. Between 1953 and 1972, he published six novels and an influential book of essays. Lamming opened the way for the boom of Caribbean literature published in England during the 1950s, and his essays have become touchstones of postcolonial studies. Lamming is the novelist most closely associated with decolonization in the Anglophone Caribbean, with his work exploring the relationship of intellectuals to social movements, the ambiguities of independence, and literature's role in combating colonialism's psychological influence.
Latin American Literary Representational Regime
Authors: Shellhorse Adam Joseph
Published: June 2017

This entry examines the relation between the consolidation of the Latin American literary regime and the emergence of a self‐reflexive, irreverent tradition. If we are witnessing the demise of literature as the privileged medium of cultural expression in Latin America, the aim here is to rechart the conceptual limits of the literary representational regime so as to begin to re‐imagine literature's critical force.
Mariátegui, José Carlos
Authors: Workman Amber
Published: June 2017

Born in Moquegua, Peru, José Carlos Mariátegui (1894–1930) was a prominent socialist thinker, writer, activist, and literary critic. He was a steadfast and influential advocate of the rights of the indigenous and the working class. Mariátegui is widely accepted as a postcolonialist thinker for his promotion of
indigenismo
, or the valorization of Peru's indigenous roots and its contribution to a Peruvian national identity.
Mishima, Yukio
Authors: Wren James A.
Published: June 2017

Blending modern and traditional aesthetics with sexuality, death, and political change, Yukio Mishima is likely the most influential Japanese literary figure of the twentieth century. He penned 34 novels, 50 plays, some 25 collections of short stories, and no less than 35 volumes of essays, as well as one libretto and a film script.
Mo, Timothy
Authors: Chan Winnie
Published: June 2017

Timothy Mo, born in Hong Kong in 1950 and resident in Britain from 1960 to 1994, is the author of seven novels. Along with Kazuo Ishiguro and Salman Rushdie, he emerged in the 1980s as among Britain's most important novelists to write on multicultural themes.
Modernismo
Authors: Baker Peter
Published: June 2017

Modernismorefers to a Spanish American literary movement which began to emerge toward the end of the nineteenth century and continued into the twentieth century. It is most often identified with a loose transcontinental network of authors centered around the leadership of Rubén Darío, although it may also indicate more generally a set of shared aesthetic and political interests among a group of Latin America authors who established themselves as part of a literary sphere dependent not on state apparatuses but on the literary market and an increasingly important reading public in Latin America that emerged during those years.
Mootoo, Shani
Authors: Pirbhai Mariam
Published: June 2017

This entry provides an overview of Caribbean‐Canadian novelist Shani Mootoo, as well as a brief critical outline of scholarship focused on Mootoo's fiction. Mootoo is the author of four novels, one short story collection, and one volume of poetry. She is best known for her debut novel
Cereus Blooms at Night
(1996), which is considered a groundbreaking work for its candid portraits of same‐sex desire and queer identities in the colonial and postcolonial Caribbean.
Multinatural Perspectivism
Authors: Luciani José Antonio Kelly
Published: June 2017

Multinatural perspectivism (MP) describes what comes back to us when we play some of anthropology's fundamental concepts and premises against their correlates in Amerindian thought, as expressed in myth, shamanism, and native reflexive commentary on hunting, warfare, and other aspects of life. MP is at once a phenomenon, in that it is an aspect of Amerindian conceptual imagination; a theory of a theory, in that it articulates in anthropological language concepts and premises more or less explicitly present in native thought about humans, nonhumans, and social relationships; and a counter‐(to our)anthropology, for given the torsion it impresses on the nature–culture configuration, and its reflection on social relations, MP's premises for understanding and engaging with alterity are orthogonal to the longstanding anthropological assumption that culture and its diversity are myriad constructions of nature and social relations being a matter of connections between pre‐existing persons.
Narco
Authors: Zavala Oswaldo
Published: June 2017

The notion of
narco
is mediated by official sources that describe the phenomenon of the drug trade as essentially exterior to the structures of government and of a normalized and functional civil society. The majority of the most visible cultural representations of narco thus refer to mythological drug cartels and kingpins with an expansive world reach. While these representations effectively erase the history of official power as the very condition of possibility of organized crime, others are challenging this hegemonic imaginary by placing the state as the central signifier of narco.
Nationalism
Authors: Rizzuto Nicole
Published: June 2017

Today, the word “nationalism” inspires a host of associations ranging from patriotic self‐sacrifice and civic pride to ethnocentrism and xenophobia. These associations speak to the concept's changing meaning across a history of practices that begin during the eighteenth century, and theories that commence at the end of the nineteenth century and continue to develop into the twenty‐first. This entry examines theories of nationalism as they intersect with postcolonial studies. Whether nationalism is defined by its location within the modern nation‐state or extends temporally and spatially beyond it; how this “spiritual principle” relates to material conditions of industrialization, capitalism, imperialism, and neocolonialism; the ways nationalism both marshals memory and induces forgetting of the past, and deploys violence in efforts to secure a political or social formation while naturalizing identities that are historically constructed – these are themes that animate critical conceptualizations of nationalism in the contexts of anti‐colonial resistance, decolonization, postcoloniality, and globalization.
Native American Culture and Society
Authors: Krian Lena
Published: June 2017

Native American culture and society is difficult to understand through a Western classification that neatly separates culture and society as isolated categories, because Native American culture is typically characterized by reciprocal relations with other realms of life. This sort of relationality is visible in the sustaining social structure of Native American society: the kinship system. The extended family bonds or clans of the kinship system express a ceremonial relationship between the earth as primal creator and all other beings, blurring boundaries between what, according to Western knowledge, belongs strictly to either society or culture. Colonization reshaped Native American society by imposing norms of national affiliations, constructing legally dependent tribal nations out of diverse Native American clans. Expressions of Native American culture can be located in a discursive realm of storytelling. These stories with their multiple genres constitute the main source of historiographic knowledge and communal identification within society and space.
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
Authors: Nyairo Joyce
Published: June 2017

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, previously known as James Ngugi, is one of East Africa's most celebrated literary figures. He started writing fiction, poetry, and drama as a student at Makerere University. A political detainee under the Kenyatta government, and a long‐time exile under the Moi regime, Ngugi has given practical meaning to the idea of “writers in politics,” an area of literary criticism that he has consistently articulated and written about. Ngugi is a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, Irvine, and his teaching career spans three continents and close to 50 years. But Ngugi's commitment to unraveling human character and dissecting Africa's tortured journey through decolonization and the vagaries of political independence has been steadfast. Through fiction, literary theory, and cultural criticism he has challenged the mainstays of thought and practice and shown how political power works and how postcolonial identities might be understood.
Philip, Marlene NourbeSe
Authors: Beckford Sharon Morgan
Published: June 2017

A poet, essayist, novelist, playwright, and short story writer, Tobago‐born Canadian Marlene NourbeSe Philip writes about the history of colonialism and its legacy in relation to peoples of African descent living in the African diaspora. Importantly, Philip's work addresses issues of race, gender, language, memory, class, migration, exile, belonging, sexuality, and the body. In addition, many of Philip's works highlight the blending of Western European, African, and Amerindian cultures, traditions, and mythologies over four centuries of colonial contact in the New World. Forthright in her approach to the postcolonial experience, Philip offers insightful critiques on transatlantic slavery and the legacy of colonialism.
Positivism in Latin America
Authors: Cortes‐Rocca Paola
Published: June 2017

Positivism is both a program and a description of the end of the century's epistemological field – both an epistemological change accompanying specific political and social processes, and the transformation of the institutions which enable these processes. Its introduction and expansion in Latin America coincides with the processes of organization and centralization of the national states. Thus it becomes the master narrative that promotes regional modernization, normalizes the relationship between the population and the national states, and provides a new vocabulary for old dichotomies – such as civilization/barbarism, city/country, elite/people. Observing, controlling what exists, and using it through the scientific gaze is the equation that links positivism, perception, and visual technologies. Criminology adds the distress caused by concealment and camouflage among the crowd as a problem that also requires the use of an apparatus based on observation and control. The positivist genre, par excellence, is the essay, but positivism will also be present in the novel through naturalism.
Rushdie, Salman
Authors: Ratti Manav
Published: June 2017

An internationally renowned writer born in India to a Muslim family, who studied and lived in England, Salman Rushdie has produced fiction and nonfiction that provocatively addresses a range of controversial issues, such as politics, religion, secularism, colonialism, empire, democracy, and freedom of expression. He has published eleven novels, a collection of short stories, three works of nonfiction, and a memoir,
Joseph Anton
(2012). Among his best‐known novels are
Midnight's Children
(1981) and
The Satanic Verses
(1988), both of which use magic realism.
Midnight's Children
, telling the story of India's independence from the United Kingdom, catapulted Rushdie to global fame.
The Satanic Verses
led to a decree or
fatwa
issued by the Ayatollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, calling for Rushdie's death. Rushdie's writings have been used by postcolonial studies scholars to theorize ideas such as hybridity and migration. His work has been translated into over 40 languages.
Sartre, Jean‐Paul
Authors: Pendakis Andrew
Published: June 2017

Though Jean‐Paul Sartre has often been framed by poststructuralist and postcolonial theory as a humanist who could offer little in the way of resources for contemporary critical thought, Sartre himself was a fervent anti‐imperialist whose work is now being reconsidered in the light of the attention being paid to the philosophy of his self‐avowed “disciple” Alain Badiou. This entry argues that Sartre's work continues to be relevant to questions pertaining to the subjectivity of colonial and postcolonial peoples and that his attentiveness to critical forms of universality usefully offsets the contemporary emphasis on particularity, identity, and resistance so prevalent in postcolonial theory.
Smith, Michael
Authors: Doumerc Eric
Published: June 2017

This entry looks at the work of the dub poet Michael Smith (1954–83) and sets his poetry in its proper cultural context. Smith's poetry stands at the crossroads of various rhetorical traditions, including Jamaican performance and dub poetry, Jamaican deejay music, and Rastafarian oratory.
Spanish Empire (Hispanism)
Authors: Lumba Allan
Published: June 2017

The Spanish empire was one of the first planetary empires in human history. At its height, it held sovereignty over vast territories and populations throughout Europe, Asia, the Pacific, Africa, and the Americas. Due to its rivalry with other European powers, it commissioned explorations that would result in the “discovery” of the Americas and the first circumnavigation of the globe. Its military power governed advanced civilizations in the Americas and made possible the immense global extraction of wealth that would drive the rise of European industrial capitalism. Imperial commercial and trade routes enabled not only the mixing and migration of a vast population of humans, but also radically new ecological encounters between a diverse array of vegetation and animals. Finally its historical significance is profound: through its imposition of Spanish culture, religion, and language upon colonized subjects, its imperial legacies continue to shape postcolonial societies into the present.
Testimonio
Authors: Solís Ángel Octavio Álvarez
Published: June 2017

The Testimonio entry contains three parts. The first establishes a critical mapping of testimonial literature, arguing that it is impossible to develop a general theory of the
testimonio
. The second designates the testimony related to literature, rhetoric, and politics. Finally, the text puts forward a definition and the uses of the testimony in different contexts.
Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs)
Authors: Kumar Uday
Published: June 2017

The term “nongovernmental organization” (NGO) refers broadly to an organization that is explicitly involved in the promotion of social and economic development, especially in developing countries. The term was introduced in the development literature during the postwar period. During the second half of the twentieth century, when the state in newly independent countries failed to accommodate the interests of the weaker sections of society, there was a need for an alternative agency to address people's right to a decent and dignified life. Under such circumstances, civil society offered itself as a breeding ground for social formations like voluntary and nongovernmental organizations that could address a range of issues, rooted in rights and liberty. NGOs include all types of organizations engaged in socioeconomic welfare at the grassroots level, other than the state and the for‐profit private sector. Some social scientists associate civil society with organizations like voluntary associations and NGOs that allow individuals to participate directly and address issues concerning their welfare.
Toer, Pramoedya Ananta
Authors: Lumba Allan
Published: June 2017

Pramoedya Ananta Toer (1925–2006) was an Indonesian writer, historian, and political activist. During the course of his lifetime he wrote over 30 works including novels, short and long fiction, nonfiction essays, and a memoir of his life. Toer is internationally recognized as one of the greatest Southeast Asian writers of the twentieth century. He is most famous for
The Buru Quartet
, four novels that he wrote while imprisoned on the gulag island of Buru under Sukarno's New Order regime.
Walcott, Derek
Authors: Breiner Laurence A.
Published: June 2017

Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott is the most prominent poet and playwright of the English‐speaking Caribbean. Born in St. Lucia in 1930, his work has reflected the full trajectory of colonialism and its aftermath. He is more an uncompromising observer than a participant in explicit politics, and his governing concern has been the writer's responsibility to his people, his place, and his languages, all of which he has celebrated in a long career.
Wicomb, Zoë
Authors: Lytle Cynthia
Published: June 2017

Zoë Wicomb (1948– ) is a South African author, critic, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. Her creative writings discuss motifs such as gender, race, history, and discrimination, and focus on characters from the South African colored community. Through such an emphasis, Wicomb not only sheds light on the community and oppressive ideologies, but she also problematizes nation‐building and subjugating practices that resonate with apartheid principles. Furthermore, she argues against the authoritative histories and for the inclusion of multiple stories, particularly with a feminine voice, as a way of coming closer to possible truths that are lesser known and have been discounted. Her published creative writings include
You Can't Get Lost in Cape Town
(1987),
David's Story
(2000),
Playing in the Light
(2006),
The One that Got Away
(2008) and
October
(2014).