Settler Aesthetics: Visualizing the Spectacle of Originary Moments in The New World (Indigenous Films) - Softcover

Goeman, Mishuana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803290667 ISBN 13: 9780803290662

Publisher: University of Nebraska Press, 2023

Synopsis

In Settler Aesthetics, an analysis of renowned director Terrence Malick’s 2005 film, The New World, Mishuana Goeman examines the continuity of imperialist exceptionalism and settler-colonial aesthetics. The story of Pocahontas has thrived for centuries as a cover for settler-colonial erasure, destruction, and violence against Native peoples, and Native women in particular. Since the romanticized story of the encounter and relationship between Pocahontas and Captain John Smith was first published, it has imprinted a whitewashed historical memory into the minds of Americans.

As one of the most enduring tropes of imperialist nostalgia in world history, Renaissance European invasions of Indigenous lands by settlers trades in a falsified “civilizational discourse” that has been a focus in literature for centuries and in films since their inception. Ironically, Malick himself was a symbol of the New Hollywood in his early career, but with The New World he created a film that serves as a buttress for racial capitalism in the Americas. Focusing on settler structures, the setup of regimes of power, sexual violence and the gendering of colonialism, and the sustainability of colonialism and empires, Goeman masterfully peels away the visual layers of settler logics in The New World, creating a language in Native American and Indigenous studies for interpreting visual media.

About this title

About the Author

Mishuana Goeman (Tonawanda Band of Seneca) is a professor and chair of the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University at Buffalo. She is the author of Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations.
 

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803290667
• ISBN 13: 9780803290662
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 206