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Decolonizing Visual Anthropology: Locating Transnational Diasporic Queers‐of‐Color Voices in Ethnographic Cinema
Author(s) -
Gill Harjant
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1111/aman.13510
Subject(s) - ethnography , autoethnography , movie theater , diaspora , anthropology , sociology , white (mutation) , gender studies , white supremacy , visual anthropology , human sexuality , power (physics) , race (biology) , art , visual arts , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , quantum mechanics , gene
The American ethnographic film canon remains dominated by straight white men. As anthropology takes on the task of confronting the riddle of white supremacy, this might be a good time to consider who remains missing from popular taxonomies of anthropological cinema and to bring them into the canon. Unsurprisingly, the voices of immigrant diasporic queers of color are absent. By revisiting the ethnographic cinema of four such filmmakers—Marlon Riggs, Pratibha Parmar, Frances Negrón‐Muntaner, and Richard Fung—I call for an expansion of existing histories and a renewed focus on queers‐of‐color erasure. Their films challenges orthodox definitions of visual anthropology. Making films around the same time that some of the most canonical ethnographic films were released, these filmmakers anticipated current discussions of affect and autoethnography. Their work offers unique and productive insights into our understandings of race, gender, sexuality, and power relations. Questioning the limits of what counts as “documentary,” these filmmakers rethink colonial frameworks of ethnography itself. Confronting the patriarchal white supremacy of anthropology demands attention to these important works. [ ethnographic film, visual anthropology, transnational, diaspora, queers of color ]