scholarly journals Re-Mystifying the West: Hybridity and Spirituality in Jim Jarmusch’s 'Dead Man'

Linguaculture ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-68
Author(s):  
Florina Năstase
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American West ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Spiritual Awakening ◽  
The West ◽  
American Imperialism ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Native American Identity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Dead Man

The paper intends to examine the ways in which the American West has undergone a cinematic transformation with the advent of counter-cultural western movies that criticize and often dismantle American imperialism and expansionism. The paper makes the argument that the American West has arrived at a new stage in its mythology, namely that it has been re-mythologized as a locus of Eastern spiritual awakening. The western of the 1990s’ decade embraces a rebirth of spiritualism through the genre of the “acid western,” typified in this paper by Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man (1995), a film that showcases the return of the West as a cultural frontier that must be re-assimilated instead of rejected. Given its symbolic title, Dead Man is not so much a Western as it is an Eastern romance, a rite of passage framed as a journey towards death. The paper will attempt to make its case by tackling the history of anti-establishment cinema, while also basing its argument on the assertions of director Jim Jarmusch, and various film critics who discuss the issue of the “acid western.” At the same time, the paper will offer a post-colonial perspective informed by Homi Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, with particular emphasis on Native American identity.

Conquered Landscape in the American West

Linguaculture ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Chirica
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
American West ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Dead ◽  
Western Expansion ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Future Policy ◽  
Historic Significance

AbstractThe paper traces the history of “conquered landscape” back to the original European colonists and the Puritans. We discuss the contribution of Thomas Jefferson as an architect of Western expansion through the purchase of the Louisiana territory and the mapping of future policy regarding the settling of Western territory. We cover the major moments in the settling of the West and their historic significance. We discuss Frederick Jackson Turner’s concept of the West as “a succession of frontiers” versus revisionist historian Patricia Nelson Limerick’s concept of conquest and conquered territory. The second part of the paper deals with the Native American view of the land, with reference to Paula Gunn Allen’s ideas and Leslie Marmon Silko’s novels Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead. Silko juxtaposes two different kinds of space, Native American versus federal space. The Native American and Anglo-American views of nature are contrasted and explained, with the discussion of aspects of native removal, reterritorialization and misrepresentation.

Data & Native American Identity

Contexts ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 10-15
Author(s):  
Kimberly R. Huyser
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Alaska Native ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Native American Identity ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Meaningful Data

The history of the U.S. Census is needed to understand the count and participation of American Indian and Alaska Native peoples. The challenges and lessons learned from the census reveal an opportunity for social research to collect meaningful data in Indian Country.

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Cultural History ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
New Materials ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Everyday Objects ◽  
Modern Age ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of

A Cultural History of Objects in the Modern Age covers the period 1900 to today, a time marked by massive global changes in production, transportation, and information-sharing in a post-colonial world. New materials and inventions – from plastics to the digital to biotechnology – have created unprecedented scales of disruption, shifting and blurring the categories and meanings of the object. If the 20th Century demonstrated that humans can be treated like things whilst things can become ever more human, where will the 21st Century take us? The 6 volume set of the Cultural History of Objects examines how objects have been created, used, interpreted and set loose in the world over the last 2500 years. Over this time, the West has developed particular attitudes to the material world, at the centre of which is the idea of the object. The themes covered in each volume are objecthood; technology; economic objects; everyday objects; art; architecture; bodily objects; object worlds.

A Hint of Things to Come …

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-36
Author(s):  
Charles R. Cobb
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
Native Americans ◽  
Historical Anthropology ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Landscape Studies ◽  
The Past ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Come ◽  
Landscape Transformations ◽  
Point Of Departure

This chapter provides an overview of landscape studies in archaeology, particularly as practiced in the southeastern United States. There is an extended discussion justifying historical anthropology as an important point of departure for this study, in particular because of its usefulness for exploring processes of colonialism. The chapter provides summaries of the major Native American groups and European powers that appear in the remainder of the volume. Generally speaking, the three major European players, or the Spanish, English, and French had different goals and methods of colonization. These methods cumulatively spurred a highly ramified history of landscape transformations for Native Americans. The chapter’s approach resonates well with post-colonial approaches that attempt to decolonize the past by removing Europeans as the primary lens by which we view the actions of Indigenous peoples. Working under rubrics such as “Native-lived colonialism” and “decolonizing the past,” archaeologists increasingly are seeking to integrate European texts, the archaeological record, oral histories, and the perspectives of Native peoples to try and achieve a plural perspective on past lifeways.

Introduction: American Wests

2014 ◽  
pp. 1-2
Author(s):  
Stephen Aron
Keyword(s):  
American West ◽  
The West ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject

‘Introduction: American Wests’ shows that the confusion of legend and fact, of myth and history, makes it hard to disentangle the stories we have told about the development of the American West from our understanding of what really happened. This VSI explains how the gap between projections and reality has shaped the development of the West and confounded our interpretations of its history. This history of the American West expands the chronology, enlarges the geography, complicates the casting, and pluralizes the subject to show that across the centuries, the movements of peoples and the minglings of cultures have shaped the history of sharp confrontations and murky convergences.

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