Afterword: Postcolonial theories and Thai semicolonial hybridities

    Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapter

    Abstract

    This concluding chapter discusses postcolonial theories of cultural hybridity to delineate some of the main forms of Siamese/Thai responses to the West. It compares Nestor García Canclini's account of the hybrid mestizaje discourse of Latin American Hispanic elites as a mode of hegemonic rule to the nineteenth-century Siamese elite discourse of siwilai (“civilized”). In contrast, at the international level in which Siam's rulers were subordinate to the West, the chapter draws on Homi Bhabha to read siwilai as a hybrid discourse manifesting Thai elites' subaltern resistance to Western imperialism. Both Bhabha's and García Canclini's different accounts of postcolonial cultural hybridity are needed to explain all these patterns of Thai–Western cultural mixing.
    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationThe Ambiguous Allure of the West: Traces of the Colonial in Thailand
    Editors Rachel V Harrison and Peter A Jackson
    Place of PublicationHong Kong
    PublisherHong Kong University Press
    Pages187-205
    Edition1st
    ISBN (Print)9789622091214
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2010

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