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Synopsis
Examines stereotypes and the ways race has been invented and utilized by the West.
Booknews
Dathorne (English, University of Kentucky) explores the extent to which textuality<-->the actual compilation of a text in the West<-->is a way of owning and naming alien lands and places, peoples, and property. He argues that written signifiers of the earlier travelers to the East, of explorers to Africa, and of "discoverers" like Christopher Columbus and Amerigo Vespucci, authenticated and validated people and territory for the West. He suggests that only in this way was the West able to establish a hegemony that was willingly accepted even by those living on the margins of the Western world. He discusses royalty, gender, and race in the early modern period, written hegemony and oral Native American narration, and the concept of diaspora. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)