Mudwomen and Whitemen: A meditation on pueblo potteries and the politics of representation

As my title implies, I am concerned with the objects of others and the constitution of the colonial Other, the constructions of gender and ethnicity, and the problem- atics of alterity and interpretation. This meditation on the representation of the Pueblo subject within Anglo-American discourse is both a re-visionary and experi- mental text-a rereading through juxtapositions. “Re-vision,�? in Adrienne Rich’s now classic definition, entails “the act of looking back, of seeing with fresh eyes, of entering and old text from a new critical direction.�? This particular re-vision was occasioned by my leaving the Southwest and my work with Pueblo women and their potteries in 1987 and returning to it after a year in the Ivy League. M y essay is experimental in being a pastiche of images, quotations, and reflections-the sherds of over a decade of studying ceramics and culture.