Postcolonial Theory and Avatar

by Gautam Basu Thakur, Todd McGowan (Editor)

Overview

The Film Theory in Practice series fills a gaping hole in the world of film theory. By marrying the explanation of a film theory with the interpretation of a film, the volumes provide discrete examples of how film theory can serve as the basis for textual analysis. The second book in the series, Postcolonial Theory and Avatar offers a concise introduction to postcolonial theory in jargon-free language and shows how this theory can be deployed to interpret James Cameron's high-grossing, immensely popular, and critically acclaimed 2009 film.

Avatar is widely celebrated for its politically and culturally sensitive critique of the “West's” neocolonial wars and exploitation of the “global south” – an allegory for (neo)colonialism – and for highlighting the plight of tribal communities throughout the world (for instance, the case of the Dongriah Kondh tribe of India). At the same time, it has been also criticized for repeating the colonialist fantasy of saving natives doomed by imperialist aggression. Intervening in this debate over how to read the film, Basu Thakur focuses on issues of representations, discourse, subalternity, and subjectivity, all of which have been central to postcolonial theory and postcolonial analyses of culture. This history will help students and scholars who are eager to learn more about this important area of theory and bring the concepts of postcolonial theory into practice through a detailed interpretation of the film.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781628925630
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/19/2015
Series:	Film Theory in Practice
Pages:	208
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

Todd McGowan is Professor of English at the University of Vermont, USA. He is the author of 15 books, including Universality and Identity Politics (2020), Emancipation After Hegel (2019), and Capitalism and Desire (2016). He is the series editor of Film Theory in Practice (Bloomsbury), and co-series editor (with Slavoj Žižek and Adrian Johnston) of Diaeresis (Northwestern University Press). He is also the host of the podcast Why Theory (with Ryan Engley).

Table of Contents

Introduction
Section 1: The Postcolonial Avatar: A Brief History of Postcolonial Theory
Section 2: Postcolonial Theory and Avatar, Or, Postcolonial Criticism in a Multicultural World
Conclusion
Appendices
- Further Reading
- Filmography

Editorial Reviews

This erudite and brilliantly provocative book takes us on a familiar journey through the history of post-colonial theory in order to end up in a new place: a critique not of colonialism but instead of the new Eurocentric neo-liberal, globalized subject. Basu Thakur teases us by juxtaposing James Cameron's Avatar with Michael Haneke's Caché. Of these two, it is Caché that surprisingly ends up with the post-colonial laurels for expressing what it is to be 'truly imagined by other worlds,' whereas Avatar is dismissed for re-presenting the fantasy of otherness that supplements the West's on-going performance of its own politically correct, neo-liberal subjectivity. This book will outrage even as it informs, adding new fire to the criticism of what Basu Thakur calls 'the West's unending imaginative vacuity about otherness.'” —Henry Krips, Professor of Cultural Studies and Andrew W. Mellon All-Claremont Chair of Humanities, Claremont Graduate University, USA

From the Publisher

This erudite and brilliantly provocative book takes us on a familiar journey through the history of post-colonial theory in order to end up in a new place: a critique not of colonialism but instead of the new Eurocentric neo-liberal, globalized subject. Basu Thakur teases us by juxtaposing James Cameron's Avatar with Michael Haneke's Caché. Of these two, it is Caché that surprisingly ends up with the post-colonial laurels for expressing what it is to be 'truly imagined by other worlds,' whereas Avatar is dismissed for re-presenting the fantasy of otherness that supplements the West's on-going performance of its own politically correct, neo-liberal subjectivity. This book will outrage even as it informs, adding new fire to the criticism of what Basu Thakur calls 'the West's unending imaginative vacuity about otherness.'

Henry Krips