This highly engaging collection of essays, originating in conferences held in 2006 and 2007 at Duke University and the University of Wisconsin–Madison, respectively, defines ethnopornography as “the production of eroticized material regarding people deemed different from the people expected to digest (read/watch/listen to) any particular piece of research” (p. 4). At their best, the contributions honor the legacy of Neil Whitehead (1956–2012) by daringly foregrounding the writers' own personal involvement in the subjects of their studies, their own desires, and how these intersect with their scholarship—in other words, the scholars' own “ethnopornographic engagement” (p. 27). This is a brave approach that disrupts the original voyeuristic use of the term in an 1898 study of the sexuality of Australia's aboriginal peoples. Walter Roth invented this neologism to justify printing descriptions of genitalia and sexual positions. The distinction between “the general lay reader” and “men like us” meant that educated white men...
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Book Review|
February 01 2021
Ethnopornography: Sexuality, Colonialism, and Archival Knowledge
Ethnopornography: Sexuality, Colonialism, and Archival Knowledge
. Edited by Sigal, Pete, Tortorici, Zeb, and Whitehead, Neil L.Durham, NC
: Duke University Press
, 2020
. Photographs. Figures. Notes. Index. ix
, 270
pp. Paper, $26.95.Hispanic American Historical Review (2021) 101 (1): 143–145.
Citation
Nicole von Germeten; Ethnopornography: Sexuality, Colonialism, and Archival Knowledge. Hispanic American Historical Review 1 February 2021; 101 (1): 143–145. doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/00182168-8796561
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