Fazilleau, K.
L’Indien atemporel d’Edward S. Curtis et le mythe de la race en voie de disparition
(2023) Etudes Anglaises, 76 (2), pp. 157-179.
DOI: 10.3917/etan.762.0157
Abstract
This article aims at highlighting the dynamic link between the photographs of Native Americans taken by Edward S. Curtis between 1898 and 1927, published in his work The North American Indian, and the colonial discourse about the figure of the Indian, particularly the myth of the “Vanishing Indian.”Indeed, Curtis’s primary objective was to “preserve”the culture of an “Indian”whom he considered to be “authentic,””primitive,”and “intact,”which is to say spared from the effects of colonization and Americanization. In this manner, he hoped to portray an Indian from the past, a product of colonial imagery. The study conducted in this article borrows from Michel Foucault’s concept of networks of knowledge and power, to examine how Curtis’s undertaking was fed by colonial discourse and then in turn fed it, thus popularizing the myth of the “Vanishing Indian.”At the intersection between colonial studies and photographic studies, we will see how Curtis’s photographs are plagued with inherent contradictions, similarly to the discourse on the colonized Other. © Klincksieck.
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