Laura Marcela Balan (Libertadores): When the Other Looks Back: Mock Ethnography and the Deconstruction of Otherness in O Peixe
| Dates: | 6 May 2026 |
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| Times: | 17:00 - 18:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Faculty of Humanities |
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| Speaker: | Laura Marcela Balan |
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This talk is part of the seminar series of the Centre for Latin American and Caribbean Studies.
Wed 6 May 2026, 5pm (UK time). This event will online. You can follow it here: https://tinyurl.com/yzm5d7k2
Abstract: hrough O Peixe (2016), I analyze the disruptive potential of mock ethnographic documentaries. I argue that the fishermen in the film perform a parodic enactment of an archetypal myth that frames them, exposing and destabilizing the ideological structures that objectify them. By returning the ethnographic gaze, they resist subjugation and generate alternative narrative possibilities. The film denaturalizes representational tropes through which Otherness and national histories have been constructed in Brazil (and Latin America more broadly), often domesticated for institutional and museological display within the Nation-State project. I show how O Peixe produces a form of experiential knowledge that renders theoretically dense ideas into vivid experiences for broader audiences.
Speaker
Laura Marcela Balan
Organisation: Libertadores
Travel and Contact Information
