A Postcolonial Analysis in DrDoritosMD’s Novel Summoning America

Abstract

This study examines how Summoning America by DrDoritosMD reproduces colonial discourse through the “Summoning Modern Nations” trope using a postcolonial framework derived from Edward Said. Employing qualitative close reading, thirty textual excerpts were purposely selected and analyzed according to four interrelated categories: Orientalism, Othering, Latent Orientalism, and Manifest Orientalism. The findings reveal a structured hierarchy of representation in which Othering constitutes the dominant mechanism (40.00%), producing epistemological and civilizational difference through systematic misrecognition, followed by Latent Orientalism (23.33%), which naturalizes American epistemological superiority through scientific rationality and universalized knowledge systems. Orientalism (20.00%) reinforces this hierarchy by constructing a binary opposition between modern America and the pre-modern fantasy world, while Manifest Orientalism (16.67%) translates these assumptions into explicit institutional practices of governance and control. The study argues that the narrative does not depict a neutral encounter between worlds but constructs a neo-colonial fantasy of civilizational dominance, in which American knowledge defines reality, American technology defines progress, and American institutions define order. By demonstrating how contemporary fanfiction reproduces and rearticulates colonial power through epistemological and institutional frameworks, this study contributes to postcolonial literary scholarship and expands critical inquiry into underexamined forms of digital narrative