Foreword:The Names and Repetitions of Postcolonial History; Acknowledgments; Contributors; Note on Transliteration and Referencing; Introduction: The Allure of Ambiguity: The "West" and the Making of Thai Identities; 1. The Ambiguities of Semicolonial Power in Thailand; 2. An Ambiguous Intimacy: Farang as Siamese Occidentalism; 3. Competitive Colonialisms: Siam and the Malay Muslim South; 4. Mind the Gap: (En)countering the West and the Making of Thai Identities on Film; 5. Blissfully Whose? Jungle Pleasures, Ultra-modernist Cinema and the Cosmopolitan Thai Auteur
Summary
The Ambiguous Allure of the West examines the impact of Western imperialism on Thai cultural development from the 1850s to the present and highlights the value of postcolonial analysis for studying the ambiguities, inventions, and accommodations with the West that continue to enrich Thai culture. Since the mid-nineteenth century, Thais have adopted and adapted aspects of Western culture and practice in an ongoing relationship that may be characterized as semicolonial. As they have done so, the notions of what constitutes ""Thainess"" have been inflected by Western influence in complex and ambi
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-251) and index
