Poetics of the Native

Natives, Aborigines, Indigenous populations, and First Nations are all appellations that assert the legitimacy of various antecessors despite the subordinate position granted to them by colonial, postcolonial and neo-colonial theories. In a perpetual quest for agency, 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 therefore reveals itself to be of utmost relevance.

This volume discusses indigenous literary performances, native history and cultural representations of natives and aboriginal discourse from around the world. Topics pivot around historicizing the native, the role of testimony and primary sources, displacement and the denial of native legitimacy, and literary (mis)representations of natives, among other themes.