Skip to main content

Refusing the Settler Society of the Spectacle

  • Living reference work entry
  • First Online:

Abstract

This chapter examines the relationship between Guy Debord’s notion of spectacle and settler colonialism, exploring the role that spectacle plays in the solidification of the settler state and the consolidation of whiteness. In so doing, it examines contemporary depictions of Native peoples in the mainstream media, with a particular focus on coverage of Indigenous peoples at Standing Rock and the #NoDAPL prayer camps. Ultimately, I argue that the ongoing production of spectacularized “Indians” functions to erase the lived experience of Indigenous peoples and, in so doing, serves as a transit for settler colonial relations.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

References

  • Baloy NJK (2014) Spectacle, spectrality, and the everyday: settler colonialism, aboriginal alterity, and inclusion in Vancouver. Dissertation, University of British Columbia

    Google Scholar 

  • Baloy NJK (2016) Our home (s) and/on native land: spectacular re-visions and refusals at Vancouver’s 2010 Winter Olympic Games. Streetnotes 25:2159–2926

    Google Scholar 

  • Bartels LM (2008) Unequal democracy: the political economy of the new gilded age. Princeton University Press, Princeton

    Google Scholar 

  • Baudrillard J (1994) Simulacra and simulation. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor

    Google Scholar 

  • Berkhofer RF Jr (1987) Cultural pluralism versus ethnocentrism in the new Indian history. In: The American Indian and the problem of history, vol 38

    Google Scholar 

  • Best S, Kellner D (1999) Debord, cybersituations, and the interactive spectacle. SubStance 28(3):129–156

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Couldry N (2008) Reality TV, or the secret theater of neoliberalism. Rev Educ Pedagogy Cult Stud 30(1):3–13

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Coulthard GS (2014) Red skin, white masks: rejecting the colonial politics of recognition

    Google Scholar 

  • Crary J (1989) Spectacle, attention, counter-memory. October 50:97–107

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Crary J (2000) Suspensions of perception: Attention, spectacle, and modern culture. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Deloria V (1969) Custer died for your sins: An Indian manifesto. University of Oklahoma Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Debord G (1994) Society of the spectacle. Zone Books, New York

    Google Scholar 

  • Debord (1977) [1967] The society of the spectacle (trans: Perlman F, Supak J) (Black & red, 1970; rev. ed. 1977)

    Google Scholar 

  • Deloria V (1999) For this land: Writings on religion in America. Psychology Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deloria PJ (1998) Playing Indian. Yale University Press, New Haven

    Google Scholar 

  • Drew EM (2011) Pretending to be “postracial”: the spectacularization of race in reality TV’s survivor. Television & New Media 12(4):326–346

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Duggan L (2012) The twilight of equality?: Neoliberalism, cultural politics, and the attack on democracy. Beacon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Estes N, Still fighting for our lives. The Red Nation. September 18, 2016. https://therednation.org/2016/09/18/fighting-for-our-lives-nodapl-in-context/

  • Flowers R (2015) Refusal to forgive: Indigenous women’s love and rage. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Educ Soc 4:2

    Google Scholar 

  • Fryberg, A. S., & Markus, H. R. (2004). Models of education in American Indian, Asian American, and European American cultural contexts. Unpublished manuscript, University of Arizona.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fryberg SA et al (2008) Of warrior chiefs and Indian princesses: the psychological consequences of American Indian mascots. Basic Appl Soc Psychol 30(3):208–218

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gamson J (2011) The unwatched life is not worth living: the elevation of the ordinary in celebrity culture. PMLA 126:4

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gilens M, Page BI (2014) Testing theories of American politics: elites, interest groups, and average citizens. Perspect Polit 12(03):564–581

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Giroux H (2008) Slouching towards Bethlehem: The new gilded age and neoliberalism’s theatre of cruelty. Dissident Voice

    Google Scholar 

  • Giroux H (2009) Disposable futures: dirty democracy and the politics of disposability. Education and hope in troubled times: visions of change for our children’s world, Routledge, pp 223–241

    Google Scholar 

  • Goeman M (2013) Mark my words: native women mapping our nations. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Grande S, Nichols R (2014) Indigenous political thought. In: Gibbons M (ed) Wiley-Blackwell encyclopedia of political thought. Wiley Blackwell, Hoboken

    Google Scholar 

  • Guess TJ (2006) The social construction of whiteness: racism by intent, racism by consequence. Crit Sociol 32(4):649–673

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Harris CI (1993) Whiteness as property. Harv Law Rev 106:1707–1791

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hendricks VF (2013) All those likes and upvotes are bad news for democracy. Conversation http://theconversation.com/all-those-likes-and-upvotes-are-bad-news-for-democracy-21547

  • Hendricks VF, Hansen PG (2014) Infostorms: how to take information punches and save democracy. Springer, Cham

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Huhndorf SM (2001) Going native: Indians in the American cultural imagination. Cornell University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kan L (n.d.) ‘spectacle/spectator (1)’, keywords, The Chicago School of Media Theory, available at: http://lucian.uchicago.edu/blogs/mediatheory/keywords/spectaclespectator/. Accessed 14 Jan 2013

  • Kaplan RL (2012) Between mass society and revolutionary praxis: the contradictions of Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. Eur J Cult Stud 15(4):457–478

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ladonna Brave Bull (2016). Video: “Mni Wiconi: The Stand at Standing Rock”. Accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4FDuqYld8C8

  • Lyons SR (2000) Rhetorical sovereignty: What do American Indians want from writing? College Composition and Communication, 51(3), 447–468.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • MacCannell D (1976) The tourist: a new theory of the leisure class. University of California Press, Berkeley

    Google Scholar 

  • McClintock A, George R (1994) Soft-soaping empire: Commodity racism and imperial advertising. Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • McClintock A, Robertson G (1994) Soft-soaping empire: commodity racism and imperial advertising. Routledge, London

    Google Scholar 

  • Memmi A (1991) The colonizer and the colonized. Beacon Press, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Noisecat JB, Spice A (2016) The History and future of resistance. Jacobin Magazine. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/standing-rock-dakota-access-pipeline-protest/

  • Pardy M (2010) A waste of space: bodies, time and urban renewal. M/C Journal [Online] 13(4). n. pag. Web. 2 Jan 2017

    Google Scholar 

  • Pewewardy CD (1991) Native American mascots and imagery: the struggle of unlearning Indian stereotypes. Journal of Navajo Education 9(1):19–23

    Google Scholar 

  • Pewewardy CD (2004) Playing Indian at halftime: the controversy over American Indian mascots, logos, and nicknames in school-related events. Clearing House J Educ Strateg Issues Ideas 77(5):180–185

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Piketty T (2014) Capital in the 21st century. Harvard University, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Raheja MH (2011) Reservation reelism: redfacing, visual sovereignty, and representations of native Americans in film. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Rifkin M (2011) Settler states of feeling: National belonging and the erasure of native American presence. A companion to American literary studies, 342–355

    Google Scholar 

  • Rifkin M (2013) Settler common sense. Settler Colonial Stud 3(3–4):322–340

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosaldo R (1989) Imperialist nostalgia. Representations 26:107–122

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Rosaldo R (1993) Culture & truth: the remaking of social analysis: with a new introduction. Beacon Press, Boston

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose D (1991) Hidden histories: black stories from Victoria river downs, humbert river and wave hill stations. Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra, p 46

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose RL, Wood SL (2005) Paradox and the consumption of authenticity through reality television. J Consum Res 32(2):284–296

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Smith A (2014) Settler common sense: queerness and everyday colonialism in the American Renaissance by Mark Rifkin (review). Am Stud 53(4):155–156

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Spira TL (2012) Neoliberal captivities pisagua prison and the low-intensity form. Radic Hist Rev 2012(112):127–146

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • The Poverty and Inequality Report (2016) http://inequality.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/Pathways-SOTU-2016.pdf

  • Weiskel TC (2005) From sidekick to sideshow – celebrity, entertainment, and the politics of distraction why Americans are “sleepwalking toward the end of the earth”. Am Behav Sci 49(3):393–409

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • West P (2010) Making the market: specialty coffee, generational pitches, and Papua New Guinea. Antipode 42(3):690–718

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • West P (2012) From modern production to imagined primitive: the social world of coffee from Papua New Guinea. Duke University Press, Durkham/London

    Book  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sandy Grande .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Section Editor information

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

About this entry

Cite this entry

Grande, S. (2018). Refusing the Settler Society of the Spectacle. In: McKinley, E., Smith, L. (eds) Handbook of Indigenous Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1839-8_42-1

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-1839-8_42-1

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-10-1839-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-10-1839-8

  • eBook Packages: Springer Reference EducationReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Education

Publish with us

Policies and ethics