a little help here?

[lolaraincoat]

So you all know the term "orientalism," right? Invented by Edward Said to indicate the western European set of ideas and images and metaphors and stories about the Middle East which supported formal and informal colonialism between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century, right? A very handy term - once you know what it is, you start to see it everywhere, which was kind of Said's point I guess.

Anyway. My question: is there an equivalent word to sum up the set of ideas and images and metaphors and stories from the US (and France, and Britain) about Latin America from the mid-nineteenth century to the present? You know what I mean - the idea that all those people "down there" are "hotblooded little brown people" and so on and so on and so on on on. I need a word. Unless I should just use "orientalism." But probably not.


++++++++++

Comments

[twistedchick]

Sorry, haven't got a word for you -- and I checked with the SU, who went to Univ. of Arizona, lived in the southwest for decades, and he hasn't run across anything either.

[lolaraincoat]

Huh. Nobody's coming up with anything inall my social-media circles ... it's an interesting absence, I think.

[laughingrat]

Interesting. I wonder if nobody's bothered to talk about it that way before, giving it a name and identifying it as a discrete phenomenon? You could be the first!

[lolaraincoat]

I keep thinking that I *could not possibly* be the first. Could I? I mean, really!

[laughingrat]

Well, people have probably talked about it, but...have they coined a word and talked about the ways it is unique when aimed at Latin Americans? Hmm!

I guess...not so much database searching, but maybe a look at subject-specific bibliographies might be a good way to check? (I'm curious about this because I rarely get to do in-depth, srs academic reference what with being a community-college librarian.)

[lolaraincoat]

Oh, I know that there is a lot of scholarship on aspects of this topic - off the top of my head, there's Helen Delpar, Walter Mignolo (of whom I do not think highly), Jose Limon, Bethany Morroton - but there isn't a word that I can find. It's odd ...

[laughingrat]

*nodnod* That's what I meant, yeah, if you can verify nobody's coined one yet...bingo! :-D

[crypto]

I don't have a word for you, but the question makes me think of Cynthia Enloe's Bananas, Beaches & Bases and Carmen Miranda (Mirandaismo?).

[lolaraincoat]

Yeah, the topic of her book is kind of what I'm trying to find a word for here. Except mostly the words and pictures and sounds, not so much the actions and behaviors of the US military and associated organizations ...