Settler colonial cowboy: Beenash Jafri, ‘Native Survivance and the Violent Pleasures of Resignifying the Cowboy’, American Quarterly, 76, 2, 2024, pp. 311-322 | settler colonial studies blog

Settler colonial cowboy: Beenash Jafri, ‘Native Survivance and the Violent Pleasures of Resignifying the Cowboy’, American Quarterly, 76, 2, 2024, pp. 311-322

10Jun24

Excerpt: Cowboy takes up the entirety of this small museum and is divided into three sections, each on a full floor: on the main floor, “Mythmaking” prompts us to reflect on the cowboy as myth; on the second floor, “From Fantasy to Lived Experience” shifts the focus from the myth of the cowboy to the cowboy as worker and rodeo performer; and in the basement, “Reimagining the Past, Present, and Future” presents artists speculating on the futures made possible through creative engagement with the cowboy and its associated histories. By foregrounding the cowboy as a site of myth and meaning-making—for example, through the placement of “Mythmaking” on the main floor—the curators suggest that the primary problem plaguing the cowboy imaginary is its narrow scope, which makes particular representations more prominent than others. The exhibit expands or opens up these narrow/short-sighted/stereotypical perceptions by offering more authentic representations of the cowboy. Yet its design and organization—which emphasizes the cowboy as a multifaceted and multicultural figure—has the simultaneous effect of downplaying the historical and material conditions of settler colonialism and imperialism that make the cowboy so ubiquitous. The exhibit thus exemplifies the disjunct between frameworks of multiculturalism and decolonization. However, if we consider the exhibit from the vantage point of Indigenous and settler colonial studies, it becomes clear that even if a variety of actors engage with the cowboy, they do so precisely because it is embedded in the US settler colonial project.

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