Indigeneity and the Decolonizing Gaze

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.

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionThe Terms of DebateA 1492 Project: Conquest and DiscoveryThe Protocols of Anti-IndigenismThe Sacred LandNative Arts and AestheticsIndigenous Media Chapter One: From France Antartique To Shamanic Critique: The Tupinization Of Social ThoughtFrance Antartique and Tupi TheoryFilming France AntartiqueMontaigne and Tupi TheoryFrom France Antartique to the Carib RevolutionFrom the French Philosophes to the American RevolutionThe French Missions, Lévi-Strauss, and the IndianPierre Clastres, the Anarchist Indigene, and the WariThe Franco-Brazilian Dialogue and the Politics of The Falling SkyChapter Two: The Indigenous “Cunhã:” The Metamorphosis of a Gendered TropeThe Tupinization of ManhattanThe “Cunhã” as FilmmakerThe Cunhã as Myth: ParaguaçuCaramuru: The Invention of BrazilThe Filmic and Televisual CunhãThe Cunhã DegradedThe Cunhã as WarriorThe Cunhã as Forest PrincessThe Cunhã as Hyper-WomanThe Ecological CunhãThe “Cunhã” as Activist/ArtistMyths of Extinction: The Return of the Vanished IndigeneChapter Three: The Transnational “Indian”Land and the Frontier WesternGoing NativeEurope’s “White Indians”The Indian HobbyistsTransmedial IndigeneityThe Strategic Uses of HumorPainterly TricksterismIndigeneity and MusicFirst Peoples, First FeaturesIndigenization of HorrorChapter Four: Cross-National Comparabilities: The Indigenization Of Brazilian MediaCentennial Commemorations and First Contact FilmsVariations on a Westward ThemeProto-Indigenist Cinema in BrazilIndigenous Media in BrazilVideo nas AldeiasThe Archival TurnCorumbiara: on the Trail of MassacresThe Guaraní and Contrapuntal NarrationThe Martyrdom of the Guaraní-KaiowáThe Transmediatic Indigene of Popular CultureChapter Five: Triumphs and the Travails of the YanomamiJuan Downey and “The Laughing Alligator”Crossed Filmic GazesThe Poetics of The Falling Sky The Cinematic Imaginary of the Yanomami Cinematizing Shamanism: XapiriThe Last ForestConclusion: The Theoretical Indigene: Becoming Indian, And The Elsewhere Of CapitalismColonial Ambivalence and the Transnational GazeTransformational BecomingsFrom Republican Constitutions to the Carib RevolutionThe Theoretical IndigeneIndigeneity and the Postcolonial LeftBefore and After the Nation-StatePostcolonialism and the Nurture of NatureThe Fear of a Red Academe: Indigenous DecolonialityThe Power of Shamanic CritiqueCapitalism vs. the PlanetThe Transnational Trope of Indigenous HappinessCodaIndex

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.