2015/12/19 by Scott Richard Lyons · 1 citation
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Seventeenth-Century Political and Philosophical Thought #Rhetoric and Communication Studies #Hannah Arendt's Political Philosophy
paper · doi:10.1002/9781119118589.ch15
openalex publication_date 2015/12/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This chapter presents commonly used terms in the study of postcolonialism. The terms listed begin with the alphabet “P”. Detailed explanation is provided for several terms, including picturesque, postcoloniality, postcolony, postnational, primitivism, and provincializing. Each entry includes the origin of the term; a detailed explanation of its perceived meaning; and examples of the term's use in literary-cultural texts. The material contexts and conditions - economic, political, geographical, social - of countries in Asia, Africa and South America that acquired political independence from European nations in the course of the 20th century after years of colonial rule are collectively termed postcoloniality. Postcolony first deployed by Achille Mbembe in On the Postcolony to describe the sub-Saharan nation-states of Africa. Articulated as a descriptor of the globalized world order by Arjun Appadurai and others, the postnational gestures at a late 20th-century condition where the nation-state has become obsolete.