ABSTRACT
The contemporary Eurocentrism is the discursive residue or precipitate of colonialism, the process by which the European powers reached positions of economic, military, political, and cultural hegemony in much of Asia, Africa, and the Americas. Colonialism took the distant control form of resources and of direct European settlement. The definition of the Third World flows logically out of colonialism and racism discussion, for the Third World refers to the colonized, neocolonized, or decolonized nations and minorities whose structural disadvantages have been shaped by the colonial process and by the unequal division of international labor. This chapter discusses the postcolonial hybridity theory that has been restricted to the academe; the debates about multiculturalists mixing have taken place in the public fora of newspapers, radio and TV talk shows. And while postcolonial discourse focuses on situations outside the US, multiculturalism is often seen as the name of a specifically American debate. The notion of polycentrism, in our view, globalizes multiculturalism.
