Beyond Two Worlds: Critical Conversations on Language and Power in Native North America (SUNY series, Tribal Worlds: Critical Studies in American Indian Nation Building)

By: James Joseph Buss; C. Joseph Genetin-Pilawa

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Synopsis: Beyond Two Worlds brings together scholars of Native history and Native American studies to offer fresh insights into the methodological and conceptual significance of the "two-worlds framework." They address the following questions: Where did the two-worlds framework originate? How has it changed over time? How does it continue to operate in today's world? Most people recognize the language of binaries birthed by the two-worlds trope—savage and civilized, East and West, primitive and modern. For more than four centuries, this lexicon has served as a grammar for settler colonialism. While many scholars have chastised this type of terminology in recent years, the power behind these words persists. With imagination and a critical evaluation of how language, politics, economics, and culture all influence the expectations that we place on one another, the contributors to this volume rethink the two-worlds trope, adding considerably to our understanding of the past and present.