Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film
A cinematic study of Asian–Indigenous relationality
Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film is an interdisciplinary examination of the stubborn attachment of Asian diasporas to settler-colonial ideals and of the decolonial possibilities Asian diasporic films imagine. Beenash Jafri uniquely addresses the complexities of Asian–Indigenous relationality through film and visual media, urging film scholars to approach their subjects with an eye to the entanglements of race, diaspora, and Indigeneity.
Highlighting how Asian diasporic attachments to settler colonialism are structural, she explores how they are manifested through melancholic yearning within the figure of the Asian cowboy in films such as Cowgirl and Wild West and through the aesthetic and representational politics of body and land in experimental films by Shani Mootoo and Vivek Shraya. While recognizing the pervasive violence of settler colonialism, Jafri maintains a hopeful outlook, showcasing how Asian diasporic filmmakers persistently work toward decolonial worldmaking. This emerging vision can be seen in the radical friendship between Ali Kazimi and Onondaga artist Jeffrey Thomas in Kazimi’s film Shooting Indians, in the queer relational survivance depicted in films such as This Place and Scarborough, and in the sensory disruptions of Jin-me Yoon’s interactive art project Untunnelling Vision.
From film and media studies to diaspora studies and critical ethnic studies, Indigenous studies to queer theory, Settler Attachments and Asian Diasporic Film provides a critical framework for engaging cinematic media to understand and imagine beyond the entrenched settler-colonial dynamics within Asian diasporic communities.
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Beenash Jafri is assistant professor of gender, sexuality, and women’s studies at UC Davis. Her writing has been published in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, American Indian Culture and Research Journal, Cultural Studies↔Critical Methodologies, and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association.