Hybrid Modernities  (English, Hardcover, Morton P. A)

The 1931 International Colonial Exposition in Paris was a demonstration of French colonial policy, colonial architecture and urban planning, and the scientific and philosophical theories that justified colonialism. The Exposition displayed the people, material culture, raw materials, manufactured goods and arts of the global colonial empires. Yet the event gave a contradictory message of the colonies as the "Orient" - the site for rampant sensuality, decadence and irrationality - and as the laboratory of Western rationality. This book shows how the Exposition failed to keep colonialism's two spheres separate, instead creating hybrids of French and native culture.