Indigeneity and the Decolonizing Gaze

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 Stam’s ability to relationalize processes and events from diverse historical epochs and geographical regions. -- Sérgio 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 Stam’s 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 Brandão, Tavares Professor at Federal University of Southern Bahia (UFSB), Brazil