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Title Discursive Reconstruction of the Native American Subject in Sherman Alexie's Works

Author(s) Ghulam Murtaza

Abstract The Native American subject has been misconstructed by the Euro-American historical, media, literary and politico-juridical discourses for the White colonial capitalist agenda. Columbus, the most hated individual by the Native Americans, initiated their genocide in the name of civilization and service to Christ. Onwards from the discovery of the New World in 1492, Euro-American history, geography, politics, judiciary, literature, media and even religion all served as instruments of colonial project to construct Red Indians as a cannibalistic community whose extinction is unavoidable for the preservation of humanity. Sherman Alexie, a Coeur de Alene Native American author’s works reconstruct the Native American subject from tribal perspective. His revisionism discursively brings the Native American subject into interiority. The subject in The Summer of Black Widows and First Indian on the Moon, conscious of domestic imperialism, is proudly rooted in the past, challenges Euro-American misrepresentation without compromise and imaginatively reactivates the old American Indian cultural patterns and practices. It dismantles the historical oblivion and brings to the surface the cultural identity from pre-Columbian context to write back to the imperialist misconstruction. But the subject in Ten Little Indians, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian and Flight is simultaneously rooted in both the Euro-American and the Native American discursivities. In the latter case, the subject is realistically conscious of the existing milieu of the United States in which survival without acceptance of the multi-cultural and multi-racial institutionalized bioforce and governmentality is not possible. Flight and Diary offer a solution to the nihilist vision presented in The Indian Killer. The frustrated Native American subject is frequently bogged down into historical trauma, colonialism, alcoholism and racism but the subject in Flight, Diary and Ten Little Indians realizes the need for healing the ravages of traumatic inheritance of genocide. Forgiveness, compassion and empathy emerge as a solution to the imbroglio of agony and suffering. The optimist subject in Alexie’s latter works develops the simultaneous relationship with past and present: the former is necessary to preserve the tribal identity of the Native American culture and the latter is significant in view of the modern multicultural, multi-ethnic and technologized milieu of the United States.

Type Thesis/Dissertation PhD

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Department English

Language English

Publication Date 2016-01-01

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