ABSTRACT
This chapter explores at the ways in which the otherness outside the frame of the colonial photographs of adivasis has both been re-cited as well as challenged in contemporary nationalist and transnational representations. It examines historical and contemporary visual representations of adivasis and traces continuities and discontinuities with colonial images, underlining what Timothy Brennan has called the image-function of the periphery wherein the otherness that resides in the periphery becomes co-opted into processes of capital accumulation. One scene in the 42-minute film has an adivasi name appearing on trees, memorializing the martyrs of state-led capitalist development. These are the remains of the adivasis, their worlds under constant threat of disappearance. The Scene of Crime offers an experience of landscape just prior to erasure. Every location, every blade of grass, every water source, every tree that is seen in the film is now meant not to exist any more.
