Unsettling Inscriptions: An Interview with Michael Gaudio

Abstract

Michael Gaudio is an art historian whose far-reaching scholarship has transformed archival and theoretical approaches to the visual cultures of the early modern Atlantic world. In this interview, Gaudio considers smoke’s (dis)organizing vocation within the archives of early colonial modernity. Following smoke’s pathways leads to a discussion of the structure and limits of representation; ephemerality and protocols of reading; the racialized vexations of materiality; and the possibilities of thinking the question of medium otherwise.