total convenience and flowers seven days milk:

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.


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So I know that an English-language translation of Beatriz Sarlo's Una modernidad periférica exists. I've assigned it in my graduate classes before, I'm pretty certain. It's just that I always tell them to read it in the original if they can and they always can. But this semester I have a student who can't read Spanish taking my seminar, and she told me that she couldn't find a translation anywhere, and you know, I spent some time this evening looking for one, and I can't find it either. So - do you know if it ever was translated? Or have I just been smoking crack again?


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