Profane Illuminations

History and Collaboration in James Luna and Isaac Artenstein's The History of the Luiseño People

Bibliographic Data

ID4902910
AuthorsKathleen Mchugh (0000-0001-6891-5213, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume31
Issue3
Pages429-460
Publication date2008-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueBiography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0162-4962 • E-ISSN: 1529-1456
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/bio.0.0030
OpenAlexW2144528934
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited16

This essay studies narrative collaboration in film, focusing on The History of the Luiseño People , produced collaboratively by performance artist James Luna and filmmaker Isaac Artenstein. The film uses the ephemeral quality of performance art to allegorize the loss of a material history that would register its story. Rather than invoking division, plurality, and ambiguity, Luna and Artenstein limit their film's historical space to the media and the domestic, and its temporality to a version of what Walter Benjamin called "nowtime." Although History 's apparent collaboration with negative stereotypes of Native Americans has angered many critics, McHugh reads the film as an instance of Benjaminian "profane illumination." Her essay details Luna and Artenstein's profane apprehension of the historical, as she considers their strategies within the contexts in which the film was funded, produced, distributed, and exhibited

Ambiguity · Apprehension · Art · Art history · Ephemeral key · Epistemology · Film director · History of photography · Literature · Movie theater · Narrative · Photography · Temporality · Visual arts · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Computer Science · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Music History and Culture · Philosophy

Tools

Open DOI