Join Illinois Anthropology on Thursday, October 31, 2024 at 3:30 PM in Davenport Hall 230 for a colloquium by Dr. Amanda Daniela Cortez entitled, Photographic Refusal: The Politics of Indigeneity and Multispecies Relating in Photography Tourism.
Amanda Daniela Cortez, PhD is a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Center for Indigenous Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Abstract: As Quechua work with their animal companions in Cusco’s photography tourism industry, they refuse state-sponsored expectations of Indigeneity by making visible their own ways of being and relating. While they offer their images to tourists in the photography tourism industry, women and animals navigate state-sanctioned gendered, racialized, and multispecies violence and articulations of what Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Charles Hale call the “indio permitido” (the authorized Indian). Drawing on Audra Simpson’s refusal, Michelle Raheja’s visual sovereignty, and anthropological literature on the contested nature of Indigeneity, this talk develops the concept of photographic refusal. This is a process where Quechua women refuse state-sanctioned ideals of Indigeneity by making themselves and their multispecies relations visible and take control over their image. Building on Indigenous studies, animal studies, and anthropology, this project sheds light on the contested nature of Andean Indigeneity, mechanisms of state control over Indigenous women and animals, and the centrality of multispecies relations to life in the Andes.