Lauren Bachner Concepts Diaspora From the Greek meaning to disperse The voluntary or forcible movement of peoples from their homelands into new regions It is a central historical fact of colonization Exile The idea of a separating and distancing from either a literal homeland or from a cultural and ethnic origin Orientalism Said a hegemonic discursive formation or actively used body of knowledge about an Orient In other words such a body of knowledge produces real material effects in the world in this case colonial space Contrapuntal Reading Said Essentialism classifies objects or people by properties that are considered timeless and immutable no matter how those objects or people are defined or described Constructionism involves looking at the ways social phenomena are created institutionalized perceived and made into tradition by people Magic Realism A subgenre of fiction writing in novels or short stories that combines realistic depictions of events and characters with elements of the fantastic often drawn from dreams myths and fairy tales Hybridity One of the most widely employed and most disputed terms in post colonial theory Commonly refers to the creation of new transcultural forms within the contact zone produced by colonization or globalization Cultural Capital Based on the assertion that symbolic expression including literature has like money or property and exchange value determined by the ruling class of society The more a person is able to understand and manipulate culture the more culturally literate a person is in the language art and literature most highly valued by a dominant class the richer one is in cultural capital and the more one can control how cultural capital is distributed and passed on to the next generation Liberal Multiculturalism