POSTKOLONIJALNI IDENTITET U FILMU DRUGO OSVAJANjE

Abstract

The paper analyzes the problematic of Mexican identity exposed in the film the Other Conquest of Salvador Carrasco. We tend to demonstrate that the identity of the Mexican people, specifically one of the Indian tribes, the Aztecs, is a product of a discourse of official history, and is therefore imposed and constructed from an ideologically conditioned perspective, the perspective of the West or the colonizers. We point out that throughout the history the Aztecs were seen through the eyes of the representatives of the essentialist identity that holds to itself that it is complete and ultimately conceived. Such identity tends to be defined in comparison to the other, excluding that same other and emphasizing its inequality. Therefore the need for rethinking Mexican identity becomes necessary. In the film the Other Conquest such rethinking is conducted from the perspective of those whose words, in official history, could not be heard, or of the Aztecs themselves. In the Carrasco’s film the Aztecs become representatives of a hybrid and heterogeneous identity which is defined in Homi Baba’s third Space - the space of chaotic reality inhabited by the intermediary figures which are situated in-between two cultures, and thus two identities. They are presented as the representatives of a creative and critically oriented culture that incorporates foreign elements in order to preserve their own identity. Therefore they take an active role in the formation of a national identity. Recalling the above, the film becomes directly connected with the principles of postcolonialism as a disagreement with passivity towards cultural superiority symbolized in the empires.