Indigeneity and the Decolonizing Gaze: Transnational Imaginaries, Media Aesthetics, and Social Thought

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Against the long historical backdrop of 1492, Columbus, and the Conquest, Robert Stam's wide-ranging study traces a trajectory from the representation of indigenous peoples by others to self-representation by indigenous peoples, often as a form of resistance and rebellion to colonialist or neoliberal capitalism, across an eclectic range of forms of media, arts, and social philosophy. Spanning national and transnational media in countries including the US, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, and Italy, Stam orchestrates a dialogue between the western mediated gaze on the 'Indian' and the indigenous gaze itself, especially as incarnated in the burgeoning movement of indigenous media, that is, the use of audio-visual-digital media for the social and cultural purposes of indigenous peoples themselves. Drawing on examples from cinema, literature, music, video, painting and stand-up comedy, Stam shows how indigenous artists, intellectuals and activists are responding to the multiple crises - climatological, economic, political, racial, and cultural - confronting the world.

Reviews

With this book, Indigeneity and the Decolonizing Gaze: Transnational Imaginaries, Media Aesthetics, and Social Thought, the always brilliant scholar Bob Stam has given us another tour de force. In this new work he tracks how -- over 500 years -- the possibilities of contemporary Indigenous media emerged in the Americas, with special attention to Brazil. He traces the colonial circumstances and European imaginaries that produced the Protocols of Anti-Indigenism, morphed into the transnational Indian, and landed in the rich dialogue emerging from contemporary Indigenous media. Witty, erudite, and politically engaged, this book is essential reading for those who hope to decolonize cinema studies and locate Indigenous media making in a rich historical context. -- Faye Ginsburg, Kriser Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for Media, Culture & History, NYU, USA.
Building on research in media studies, anthropology, and social philosophy, this timely book offers an in depth account of the recent indigenous turn in global scholarship, politics, and culture. Particularly impressive is Stams ability to relationalize processes and events from diverse historical epochs and geographical regions. -- Srgio Costa, Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Latin American Studies, FU Berlin, Germany
Eclectic and breathtaking in its scope, transnational and trans-medial, this book puts on full display Stams unique capacity to think across myriad sources and cultural forms in an insightful, sophisticated, and generous way. The book should be an important contribution not only to scholars across but also to cultural producers, activists, and even nonspecialized readers interested in the past and future of indigenous people. -- Gustavo Furtado, Associate Professor of Romance Studies and Co-Director of the Amazon Humanities Laboratory at Duke University, USA
Through a "trans-methodology" that crosses disciplines and boundaries of historical periods and countries, Stam shows us how indigenous peoples have constructed a global and intercontinental response to colonialism over the centuries. As a result, the modern world's history emerges as an "intertextual mise-en-abyme", in which indigenous progressive social thought, political practices and arts interpose the colonial imaginary. -- Joana Brando, Tavares Professor at Federal University of Southern Bahia (UFSB), Brazil

Author Bio

Robert Stam is University Professor at New York University, USA. He has authored, co-authored, and edited nineteen books on film and cultural theory, national cinemas, politics and aesthetics, and comparative race and postcolonial studies. His books include: Reflexivity in Film and Literature (1985,1995); Brazilian Cinema (1982);Subversive Pleasures:(1989); Tropical Multiculturalism (1997); Film Theory: An Introduction (2000); Literature through Film (2005); Francois Truffaut and Friends (2006); Keywords in Subversive Film/Media Aesthetics (2015); and World Literature, Transnational Cinema,and Global Media: Towards a Transartistic Commons (2019) He is co-author, with Ella Shohat, of Unthinking Eurocentrism (1994) Flagging Patriotism; (2006); and Race in Translation: (2012); He has taught in France, Tunisia, Brazil, Germany, and Abu Dhabi. His work has been translated into more than 15 languages.