Title
Native authenticity : transnational perspectives on Native American literary studies / edited by Deborah L. Madsen.
ISBN
9781438431680 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1438431686 (pbk. : alk. paper)
9781438431673 (alk. paper)
1438431678 (alk. paper)
Imprint
Albany : State University of New York Press, c2010.
Language
English
Description
xi, 193 p. ; 24 cm.
Call Number
PS153.I52 N35 2010
Dewey Decimal Classification
810.9/897
Summary
"An indispensable resource for readers, students, and scholars of Native literatures in North America, Native Authenticity offers a clear, comprehensive, and systematic look at the diversity of critical approaches to the idea of "Indian-ness." Some of the fore-most transatlantic scholars of Native studies in North America and Europe share their insights on this highly charged aspect of the contemporary theoretical field of Native studies. The issue of "authenticity" of "Indian-ness" generates a controversial debate in studies of indigenous American literatures. The articulation of Native identity through the prism of Euro-American attempts to confine "Indian" groups to essentialized spaces is resisted by some Native writers, while others recognize a need for essentialist categories as a key strategy in the struggle for social justice and perpetually renewed sense of Native sovereignty. Pressure from neocolonial essentializing practices is in conflict with a politics of cultural sovereignty, which demands a notion of "Indian" essence or "authenticity" as a foundation for community values, heritage, and social justice.".
"Contributors participate in a scholarly and pedagogical search for an intellectual paradigm for Native literary studies that is apart from, yet cognizant with, powerful colonial legacies. The complex politics of Polynesian authenticity versus Native indigeneity is engaged by Native Hawaiian writers as they negotiate conflicting demands upon personal and tribal identities. Related to this questioning is the authenticity debate in Canadian First Nation writing, where the claim to authenticity rests upon a claim to historical precedence, also related is the highly contentious claim by some Chicano/a writers to an indigenous heritage as a claim to authority and "American" authenticity. Essays in this volume are focused upon the diverse an sophisticated responses of Native writers and scholars, while offering comparative perspectives on Native Hawaiian, Chicano, and Canadian literatures."--BOOK JACKET.
Note
"An indispensable resource for readers, students, and scholars of Native literatures in North America, Native Authenticity offers a clear, comprehensive, and systematic look at the diversity of critical approaches to the idea of "Indian-ness." Some of the fore-most transatlantic scholars of Native studies in North America and Europe share their insights on this highly charged aspect of the contemporary theoretical field of Native studies. The issue of "authenticity" of "Indian-ness" generates a controversial debate in studies of indigenous American literatures. The articulation of Native identity through the prism of Euro-American attempts to confine "Indian" groups to essentialized spaces is resisted by some Native writers, while others recognize a need for essentialist categories as a key strategy in the struggle for social justice and perpetually renewed sense of Native sovereignty. Pressure from neocolonial essentializing practices is in conflict with a politics of cultural sovereignty, which demands a notion of "Indian" essence or "authenticity" as a foundation for community values, heritage, and social justice.".
"Contributors participate in a scholarly and pedagogical search for an intellectual paradigm for Native literary studies that is apart from, yet cognizant with, powerful colonial legacies. The complex politics of Polynesian authenticity versus Native indigeneity is engaged by Native Hawaiian writers as they negotiate conflicting demands upon personal and tribal identities. Related to this questioning is the authenticity debate in Canadian First Nation writing, where the claim to authenticity rests upon a claim to historical precedence, also related is the highly contentious claim by some Chicano/a writers to an indigenous heritage as a claim to authority and "American" authenticity. Essays in this volume are focused upon the diverse an sophisticated responses of Native writers and scholars, while offering comparative perspectives on Native Hawaiian, Chicano, and Canadian literatures."--BOOK JACKET.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Series
Native traces.
Contemporary discourses on "Indianness": introduction / Deborah L. Madsen
Questions about the question of "authenticity": notes on Moolelo Hawaii and the struggle for Pono / Paul Lyons
Cycles of selfhood, cycles of nationhood: authenticity, identity, community, sovereignty / David L. Moore
"Back when I used to be Indian": Native American authenticity and postcolonial discourse / Lee Schweninger
The x-blood files: whose story? whose Indian? / Malea Powell
Modernism, authenticity and Indian identity: Frank "Toronto" Prewett (1893-1962) / Joy Porter
Transdifference in the work of Gerald Vizenor / Helmbrecht Breinig
Traces of others in our own other, monocultural ideals, multicultural resistance / Juan Bruce-Novoa
Sacred community, sacred culture: authenticity and modernity in Canadian First Nations writing / Richard J. Lane
In conversation: postindian reflections: chickens and piranha, casinos, and sovereignty / Gerald Vizenor and A. Robert Lee.
