Deconstructing America

Representations of the Other
1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-72532-1
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 226 Seiten, Format (B × H): 174 mm x 246 mm, Gewicht: 453 g

Reihe: Routledge Revivals

First published in 1990, Deconstructing America breaks new ground by locating the European discovery of America within the study of representations of Otherness. Peter Mason acknowledges that America was part of the European imagination before its discovery, but challenges the claim that the European vision of America is merely a distorted view of some extra-European reality. He relates the way in which Europe tended to see the inhabitants of South America as monstrous figures to a longstanding European tradition on the ‘Plinian’ human races, and goes on to point out that the existence of similar representations among contemporary Amerindian peoples calls into question the extent to which ethnocentrism is an exclusively European idea. Drawing on anthropological, literary and philosophical studies, he shows how European representations of America constitute a cultural monologue which tells more about the Old World than the New. This book will be a stimulating reading for all those working in the fields of symbolic and cultural anthropology, semiotics, cultural studies, Latin America, structuralism and deconstruction.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mason, Peter

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Volkskunde Minderheiten, Interkulturelle & Multikulturelle Fragen
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
• Geowissenschaften Geographie | Raumplanung Humangeographie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Otherwise 1. Imaginary worlds 2. Popular culture and the internal other 3. The monstrous human races 4. The monstrous human races of America 5. A monstrous idiom: articulation 6. A monstrous idiom: punctuation 7. Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism 8. The elementary structures of alterity Bibliography Name index Subject index

Über Autor(innen)

Peter Mason