Poetics of the Native
(Call for Articles)
Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances, and sometimes these loyalties conflict with one another and confront the person who harbours them with difficult choices. In some cases the situation is obvious at a glance; others need to be looked at more closely.
- Amin Maalouf1
Natives, Aborigines, Indigenous, First Nations are all appellations that assert the legitimacy of the antecessors despite the sub-position granted to them by colonial, postcolonial and neo- colonial theories. In a perpetual quest for agency, over long resistance journeys, looking for self-assertiveness, in the quest for identity and subdued by historical narratives and political discourse, the native has been framed within a set of representational practices that claim for a redress of grievances.
Cultural, mediatized and historical representations of the native tend to fall within the boundaries of either a bottom up or a top down view that fits within a structuralist paradigm that rarely questions the individual let alone the marginalized. However, there is a need to examine the systems within which indigenous narratives operate from a post-structuralist stance in order to re-read indigenous discourses and to celebrate the multiplicity of meanings inherent in them. The need for an intercultural pragmatic reading of native discourse also reveals to be of utmost relevance.
A ‘mass of atrocities’ experienced by natives has been the object of study in literary, historical and linguistic practice. The native’s trauma, subjugation, voicelessness, identity crisis, displacement, shame and resistance are still produced and reproduced through literary archetypes, historiography and narrative techniques. Howard Zinn says in this respect: “the reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learnt to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth”2.
This volume attempts to discuss indigenous literary performances, native history and cultural representations of natives and aboriginal discourse all around the world.
Researchers are encouraged to send abstracts focusing on, but not restricted to, the following topics:
- Historicizing the native: the role of testimony and primary sources - Teaching native literature and Anglophone history
- Native American trauma
- displacement and the denial of native legitimacy
- Literary (Mis) representations of natives
- Cultural representations of natives in the media: the birth of stereotypes - Native vs. Refugee
- Identity, Origins, Belonging
- Self/Other dichotomy
1 Amin Maalouf, On Identity. London: The Harvill Press, 2000. p 5
2 Howard Zinn. A People’s History of the United States. London & New York: Longman, 1980
*
Essays should be 7,000-8,500 words, including all quotations and bibliographic references, and should follow the MLA Style for internal citation and Works Cited.
Writers around the world may be considered, but texts must be available in English and essays must be in English.
Short bio and 500 word abstracts by August 1st, 2019 to: native.volume@gmail.com
Notification of acceptance: August 10th, 2019
Essay submission by: November 30th, 2019