Louise Erdrich’s Tracks: Survival or Subversion
Introduction
Owing to the interconnection between most of Louise Erdrich’s novels,
the readers are bewildered, especially when they pick up her novels
out of sequence; or, although readers might have read her earlier works,
they scarcely remember who is who in later novels. Thus, Erdrich usually
appends a family tree to her novels to refresh the memory of the
reader. The recurrent themes in her fiction are the “ties between people
and geographical locations, the importance of community among all living
beings, the complexities of individual and cultural identity, and the exigencies
of marginalization, dispossession, and cultural survival.” Her fiction,
moreover, is ripe with “[f]amily and motherhood, storytelling, healing,
environmental issues, and historical consciousness” which connects her
work thematically to the expanding web of contemporary Native American
literature (Rainwater 271). The historical tragedies of epidemic diseases,
wars, and mischievous federal regulations, Erdrich implies, deteriorate
traditional tribal bonds among Native Americans, especially the Chippewa.
Yet Erdrich avoids giving priority to one cultural code over another;
her literary and cultural hybridization intends to deconstruct binaries
like the Europeans versus the Natives. Although her novels are always set
against a backdrop of Native American cultural life, they seek to challenge
both Native and Western epistemological assumptions (Shackleton 202).
She manipulates traditional narrative conventions. For instance, she lets
different narrators act diachronically and synchronically, that is, intermittently
different narrators relate the same event. These tactics persuade the
reader to suspect the stability of categories such as time, truth, narration,
and reliability (McClinton-Temple and Velie 111). Erdrich’s novels usually
have a circular design. They begin and end with a loss; a circular structure
indebted to oral narrative tradition.
Tracks, one of Erdrich’s masterpieces, narrates the lives of some tribal
Chippewa families living on a reservation off and around a lake called
Matchemanito, where the Native American communities believe a Lake
Monster, called Misshepeshu, lurks. The events of Tracks take place before
that of The Beet Queen and Love Medicine. Lulu, who will be one of the
elderly in Love Medicine, is very young in Tracks, and she is just learning
how to deal with the intruding white society. The novel is comprised of
nine chapters alternatively narrated by homodiegetic focalizers: Nanapush
and Pauline Puyat. Nanapush has survived the consumption epidemic of
1912, and Pauline is a mixed-white Indian girl who later in the novel reveals
that she had renounced her Chippewa blood to enter a convent, which only
accepted whites in its order. They narrate the incidents between winter
1912 and spring 1924, most of which focus on Fleur. She is also one of the
survivors of the consumption epidemic and has lost all her family members
in the disease outbreak. But as Nanapush relates in the first chapter,
he saved and protected Fleur.
Nanapush is a man of great medicine power, too, who had received
an education from the whites but finally returned to his own cultural values
and life on the reservation among the other local inhabitants. Unlike
Nanapush, Pauline Puyat is a mixed-blood who gradually becomes a strict
adherent of Catholicism and disrespectful toward Native American traditions
and her own native identity.
Land is of immense concern in Nanapush’s narrative. The Native
American families living on the reservation have to pay a sum of money
in order not to lose the lands allotted to them by the central government.
Nanapush and Fleur have their own allotments, but they lose them to the
government because they are unable to pay their debts. Fleur has to leave
the reservation. However, she does not carry with herself her beloved
daughter, Lulu, and sends her away to a boarding school especially established
for young Native Americans.
Sending Lulu, the daughter of a traditional Native American woman,
to an Indian boarding school raises another significant historical point in
Tracks. As Adams W. David notes, the ‘‘boarding school experience’’ from
1875 to 1928 was in effect an ‘‘education for extinction.’’ Essentially, it was
a new form of war, ideological and psychological, waged against children
(27). When Native Americans were no longer a military threat, the central
government targeted Native American tribal traditions and values. They
stressed the assimilation of Native Americans. This policy provided the
excuse for the implementation of brutal educational programs in Indian
boarding and day schools with the intention of wiping out Native culture.
The systematic destruction of the wildlife by the white settlers also
disrupted the organic reliance of Native Americans on natural milieu.
The “systematic non-Indian destruction of wildlife,” Joy Porter contends,
“made subsistence economics unviable. Such impossible conditions led to
demoralized dependence on government agents for rations and further
subversion of the main supports of tribal life” (52). In Tracks, when the
inhabitants of the reservation are suffering from widespread famine, as
Nanapush notes, “in the end it was not Fleur’s dreams, my skill, Eli’s desperate
searches, or Margaret’s preserves that saved us. It was the government
commodities sent from Hoop dance in six wagons” (171).
In Tracks, Erdrich discusses why and how massive cultural destruction
of Native Americans happened. Narrated by two characters, one
submissive (Pauline) and the other resistant but tricky (Nanapush), this
novel provides an opportunity to look at the course of events from different
angles and consider the socio-political and economic circumstances
related to their alienation and oppression. Stephen Greenblatt’s views
about the dominance of the oppressive forces and Alan Sinfield’s theory
concerning the effectiveness of resisting voices—although contradictory
on first consideration—can help to analyze the opposing reactions to
the dominant discourse. The mentioned theoreticians have been greatly
affected by their predecessors, Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser, who
believed that individuals in democratic and capitalist societies are under
constant surveillance and that such a control is achieved through sociopolitical
institutions and hegemonic discourses. In this essay, as points
of departure, we will employ early Stephen Greenblatt’s assumptions on
the futility of resistances and also Alan Sinfield’s notion of fault line that
counters Greenblatt’s speculations and affirms the possibility of resistances
toward the dominant power structures. Along with them, Althusser’s theorization
about ideological state apparatuses and Foucault’s speculations
over the pattern of power and resistance will help to further explicate the
issue. Thus, we aim at analyzing the rival voices in the novel and how they
strive for dominance, survival, or sometimes subversion.
To begin with, Althusser believed that ideology would be placed in
social/material institutions such as political and educational institutions
and mass media. He also claimed that the dominant ideology in capitalist
societies—with the help of socio-political institutions—forces the individuals
to comply with the dominant ideology (Lenin and Philosophy 112–15).
The process of accepting rules and regulations of the dominant ideology
is done through ideological state apparatuses (isas). The dominant, with
the use of isas like schools, universities, judicial system, and the church,
contains all resistances and shuts the doors to any changes. According to
Althusser’s proposed model, the dominant ideology in capitalist societies
contains all individuals and makes them comply with the dominant, and,
even worse, the individuals participate in their own oppression (“Ideological
State Apparatus” 693–702). Tracks reflects this Althusserian model of
dominations when, as we will demonstrate, most of Native Americans are
led to internalize their own inferiority and hence subjugation.
Besides, Foucault has also differently restated the process of internalizing
the rules and the regulations of the dominant discourse under
hegemonic pressure. Foucault’s speculations about power and resistances
seem at times contradictory. Greenblatt, who used to follow Foucault’s
pessimistic notions on the nature of power and resistance, is also pessimistic
about the outcome of resistance. In his Discipline and Punish
Foucault states that “he who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who
knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes
them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribed in himself the power
relations in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the
principle of his own subjection” (202–3), he also states that man is totally
unfree: “the man described for us, whom we are invited to free is already
in himself the effect of a subjection much more profound than himself”
(30). Greenblatt interprets Foucault’s text as antithetical to any resistance,
which predicts the perpetual containment of the opposing powers in the
dominant discourse (Shakespearian Negotiations 48). Accordingly, based
on what he surmised from Foucault, the dominant forces that can lead to
the construction of a totalitarian structure force individuals to internalize
the dominant norms and standards. But Foucault is irreducible to what
the early Greenblatt reached, that is, co-option. In The History of Sexuality,
Foucault concludes that power can give voice to new voices or forms
of behaviour and resistances are not some passive reactions doomed to
perpetual defeat (95–6). Moreover, he also believes that whenever we have
power we have also resistances (Power/Knowledge 120, 209–14), a belief
which is at odds with what the early Greenblatt stated.
On the contrary, Alan Sinfield’s interpretation of the later Foucault’s
model of the dominant discourse is positive and propitious. Discussing
Foucault’s conception of power and resistance in his History of Sexuality,
Sinfield argues that, according to Foucault, where there is power, there is
also resistance to it (94–6). Sinfield believes that Foucault’s claim hardly
means that resistance will always face defeat/containment (48). In other
words, in a continual contest between forces of resistance and the dominant,
at some conjunctures the dominant will lose ground while at others
the dominated will scarcely maintain its position (Sinfield 48).
Accordingly, the hidden tensions running through Tracks will be analyzed.
Did Native Americans’ resistance to the dominant discourse prove
futile and were they finally contained within the dominant norms? Are
forces of resistance significant in redefining the network of power or do
they just provide sources of empowerment for the dominant discourse?
Can we regard acts and moments of resistance as some safety valves for
the dominant hegemonic discourse to last, or are they effective to improve
the lives of the oppressed?
Theoretical assumptions
The earlier works by Foucault and a large bulk of Althusser’s writings study
how an individual becomes a subject under the control of the dominant
discourse or ideology. As a result, the two developed pessimistic ideas
about the nature and outcome of resisting voices of those who try to
subvert the dominant discourse. In early Foucault, readers are presented
with a prolonged discussion about a panoptican tower: an architectural
device in a prison by which one is able to see all the inmates without
the observer being seen. Foucault writes, “the inmate must never know
whether he is being looked at, at any moment; but he must be sure that
he may always be so” (Discipline and Punish 201). In this way, Foucault
metaphorically shows the mechanism of democratic or capitalist societies.
In these societies, the individuals are under constant watch, the all-seeing
tower of the dominant discourse compels the individuals to intrinsically
comply with the dominant (Madness and Civilization 304). The natural
outcome of such a system is the individuals’ internalization of the dominant
discourse’s standards. However, the later Foucault considers more
chance for the possibility of resistance. Foucault denies that “the plurality
of resistances” must be “only reactions or rebounds, forming with respect
to the basic domination an underside that are in the end always passive,
doomed to perpetual defeat” (History of Sexuality I 96).
Althusser modified the orthodox model of ideology in favour of a theory
that situates ideology within material institutions or isas (“Ideological
State Apparatus” 701). Under the hegemony of isas, the individuals will
internalize the standards of the dominant in such a way that the dominant
scarcely uses any coercive power. Yet, Greenblatt, in his early writings,
under the influence of Foucault and Althusser, developed the theory of
co-optation: that is, any resistance to the dominant discourse/ideology is
doomed to be contained. Nevertheless, undeniably the later Greenblatt
veered his way toward a more optimistic account of the culture, as it is
evident in the following lines from his Cultural Mobility:
mobility studies should account in new ways for the tension
between individual agency and structural constraint […] it
is important to note that moments in which individuals feel
most completely in control may, under careful scrutiny, prove
to be moments of the most intense structural determination,
while moments in which the social structure applies the fiercest
pressure on the individual may in fact be precisely those
moments in which individuals are exercising the most stubborn
will to autonomous movement. (251–2)
But, on the one hand, it is the early Greenblatt who presumed that the
dominant has an absolute presence and is always reproduced in sociocultural
practices in a kind of circular movement: circulation of social
energies (Shakespearian Negotiations 6–8). On the other, Sinfield’s aim,
however, is to show that there are always some lines in a literary work that
negate the dominant, creating fault lines within the text that are not always
doomed to failure and containment. According to him, the dominant
power tries to reproduce itself through literary texts, but literary texts are
filled with contradictions/fault lines that in turn question the dominant
and sometimes will overthrow it. Sinfield believes: “Deviancy returns from
abjection by deploying just those terms that relegated it there in the first
place. A dominant discourse cannot prevent abuse of its resources. Even
a text that aspires to contain a subordinate perspective must first bring
it into visibility; even to misrepresent, one must present” (Faultlines 48).
The nature of presenting something is to give it a chance to exercise its
power. In other words, presentation opens up a multidimensional space in
which different voices can hear their echoes. In this sense, it is not a safety
valve for the hegemonic discourse; instead, it deconstructs and suspends
the hegemonic articulations. Resistances will provide a potential for the
oppressed minorities to construct counter discourses.
Native American acts of resistance to the dominant discourse, as represented
in Tracks, therefore, can be examined from two opposing viewpoints.
However, these contrary portrayals of the function of power and
discourse in the society and their premises prove to be reconcilable. On
the one hand, we incorporate the rather pessimistic theories that the early
Greenblatt, Foucault, and Althusser had developed on the nature of the
dominant power, cultural forms, and the outcome of the resistances. As
Greenblatt acknowledged in Renaissance Self-Fashioning, he tries to locate
autonomy in individuals but he finds himself “and the human subject itself
[…] remarkably unfree” or, in other words, humans as “the ideological
product[s] of the relations of power in a particular society” (256). On the
other, Alan Sinfield and scholars of his ilk hold the hegemonic forces in
suspense and consider resistance viable. Sinfield and Dollimore in Political
Shakespeare state that their mission is to register their “commitment to the
transformation of a social order which exploits people on grounds of race,
gender and class” (viii). As a result, we will try to refine the rigid dogma in
the early Greenblatt’s theory of containment and present a radical/negative
literary criticism with the help of Sinfield’s theoretical speculations.
“White” culture and its hegemonic discourse in Tracks
Tracks portrays the socio-cultural and economic atmosphere of being a
Native American in a society overshadowed by the myth of white supremacy.
Nearly all of Native Americans are contained within the dominant
ideology of white bourgeois standards. But, there are some characters
who try to deconstruct/suspend the dominant ideology at work, whether
by constructing counter discourses or narrating new versions of the suppressed
discourses.
As Ernesto Laclau believes, when a specific meaning is attached to a
concept—while other possibilities of meaning are eradicated—that specific
concept becomes hegemonic (96). In other words, that concept calls
for containing all other rival discourses. The early Greenblatt created an
omnipotent version of power that could contain all other social energies
within a society. In his “Epilogue” to Renaissance Self-Fashioning,
Greenblatt argues that “the human subject itself began to seem remarkably
unfree, the ideological product of the relations of power in a particular
society […] If there remains traces of free choice, the choice was among
the possibilities whose range was strictly delineated by the social and
ideological system in force” (256).
Native
American acts
of resistance to
the dominant
discourse, as
represented in
Tracks,
therefore, can be
examined from
two opposing
viewpoints.
Pauline in Tracks is thus an example of a “free” subject whose agency,
in Greenblatt’s terminology, is decided by “the social and ideological system
in force” (256). Pauline’s actions, behaviour, and speech have been
greatly affected by the pressures from the dominant discourse/ideology.
She invalidates her own culture and praises the standards of the dominant
mode. In her dreams Pauline imagines God telling her that she is not an
Indian but pure white, an orphan taken by a white family: “One night
of deepest cold [God] sat in the moonlight, […] He said that I was not
whom I had supposed. I was an orphan and my parents had died in grace,
and also, despite my deceptive feature, I was not one speck of Indian but
wholly white” (137). Here, religion, as ideological state apparatus, plays an
important role in subjecting Native Americans. Ideological state apparatus
resides in the hands of the dominant bourgeoisie, who determine the
standards in favour of the dominant. Althusser maintains that “ideology
represents an imaginary relationship of individuals to their real material
conditions of existence”(Lenin and Philosophy 109). Besides, he argues
that in capitalist societies, the dominant, or here the dominant ideology,
tries to enforce itself on the others using state institutions (“Ideological
State Apparatus” 701). Consequently, the individuals become inactive and
“good” subjects in the hands of the dominant. Pauline chooses assimilation
and attempts to look down on Native Americans: “I should not turn my
back on Indians. I should go out among them, be still, and listen. There
was a devil in the land, a shadow in the water, and apparition that filled
their sight. There was no room for Him to dwell in so much as a crevice of
their minds” (Tracks 137). The ideological apparatus here announces and
propagates the beauty and goodness of the white. The church, schools, and
other educational institutions make the individuals agents of the dominant,
and as a result they are co-opted within the norms of the dominant and
adopt the dominant culture’s ways of living, thinking, and behaving. After
she proves to be a “good” subject, she is given a new mission; to teach the
young Indians. They will look up at her and then it will be easier for the
dominant to assign and practice new standards:
The trembling old fools with their conjuring tricks will die off
and the young, like Lulu and Nector return from the government
schools blinded and deafened […] I am assigned to teach
arithmetic at St Catherine’s school in Argus […] I have vowed
to use my influence to guide them, to purify their minds, to
mold them in my own image. (Tracks 205)
In fact, the weight of the hegemonic pressure of the dominant is so
great that when some of the minorities look at themselves and their community,
they see nothing but inferiority because they feel that they fall
short of the standards announced by the dominant culture. Tracks is about
those Native Americans contained within a network of values; such characters
internalize the dominant ideology and, in so doing, perpetuate
its dominance and their own disempowerment. In an act of complete
co-option, Pauline considers herself a white and distances herself from
other Native Americans when she addresses tribesmen and women with
the pronoun “them,” distancing herself from the rest of her community.
In this sense, even an apparatus like the church becomes the manipulator
of racial differences and announces the superiority of the white; Pauline’s
interior monologue discloses the fact: “It was like that with Him, Our Lord,
who had obviously made the white more shrewd, as they grew in number,
all around, some even owning automobiles, while the Indians receded
and coughed to death and died” (Tracks 139). She presumes that God
has made the whites superior. She is unable to see the design behind the
Native American’s death, deterioration, and subjugation. In fact, ideology
has blinded her to Native Americans’ systematic subjugation.
In order to lay down the basis for suppression, the dominant would
construct a matrix of statements or certain kinds of discourses propagated
by the ideological state apparatuses. When the entire world around the
subjects confirms to what the dominant desires, the masses will internalize
the rules and the regulations of the dominant ideology. Louis Montrose
believes that power has a homogeneous structure in which all modes of
resistance are condemned to perpetual defeat, and the dominant culture
uses the resisting voices to strengthen its hegemony over all members of
society (30). In Tracks, some of Native Americans have internalized the
ideology of white supremacy. But the study of the novel reveals something
more than what Montrose contends as the ruse of power.
The dominant hegemonic discourse that tries to oppress Native Americans’
cultures is symbolically represented in the novel when some white
men rape Fleur, “Fleur’s hoarse breath,” Pauline narrates, “so loud it filled
me, her cry in the old language and our names repeated over and over
among the words” (26 emphasis added). Fleur, who is one of the last Pillagers,
symbolically represents the whole native culture under the profound
effects of the dominant discourse. Fleur’s cries are articulated in the “old
language” filled with residual elements of the native culture. Besides, her
“old language” is used to articulate the elements pushed to the field of discursivity.
Floating signifiers are now recalled, to use Laclau and Mouffee’s
phrase (113). Using residual elements to articulate a discourse can be an
effective strategy to resist the dominant even when that dominant possesses
all the material resources. It was the allotment act of 1887 which
divided the communal reservation properties into individual properties
allotted to members of the tribe. Consequently, Native Americans were
compelled to use their lands for profit, to search self-interest, to be concerned
with paying taxes instead of sustaining their cultural ties. The main
aim of such a transition was to coerce Native Americans into adapting the
standards of capitalism and also assimilating the white dominant culture.
But the closure of meaning in the hegemonic discourse cannot close
all the doors on change; there is always room for dissent. Nanapush is
one of the most influential characters whose presence and narration is
felt and seen throughout the novel. Nanapush survives and brings about
the survival of the last Pillager. He who is one of the main representatives
of Native American cultures really believes in its value. He knows native
songs by heart, loves telling stories, and has tribal healing power. In this
sense, a character like Nanapush is a trickster figure who (re)constructs
Native discourses. He articulates the elements from Native American
traditions and makes connections between the articulated moments. It
seems that there is a relationship between what Nanapush believes and
his survival. In fact, what has been buried in the past as elements and
floating signifiers comes to the surface of attention. They are applied by
the resisting characters whose survival is portrayed in the novel. The end
of the novel portrays Nanapush trying to get Lulu out of the government
school. He succeeds and adopts her. Nanapush tells Lulu her mother’s
story in order to remind her of her past, articulating residual elements.
As a result, the dominant fails to contain acts of resistance. Nanapush’s
reaction to the hegemony of the dominant is to use the same tools that
relegated the Natives; “deviancy returns from abjection,” Sinfield reminds
us, “by deploying just those terms that relegated it there in the first place”
(48). Thus, his act of becoming a bureaucrat, which is a counter-hegemonic
action, cannot be regarded as an act of co-option. He uses the whites’ legal
system to prove that he is Lulu’s father:
To become a bureaucrat myself was the only way that I could
wade through the letters, the reports, the only place where I
could find a ledge to kneel on, […] I produced papers from the
church records to prove I was your father, the one who had
the right to say where you went to school and that you should
come home. (225)
Here is a challenge what Greenblatt states, that “the human subject
seems to be remarkably unfree” in the hands of the dominant or state
power (Renaissance Self-Fashioning 256). Thus, although the white culture
applies the hegemonic pressure to force the minority cultures to comply
with the dominant, the dissenting voices have also the capability to construct
counter discourses.
In capitalist societies, the standards of normality are determined by
the dominant, and then the dominant discourse will induce them to all
corners of individuals’ life and thought. The reasonable outcome of such
a process is the creation of a self-disciplinary system within all agents.
In Tracks, such a process has been unveiled. Pauline, who is willing to
assimilate the norms of the dominant, hates her tribal identity. Absorbed
in the dominant culture, she shuts her eyes and ears to her father who
had once said, “ ‘You’ll fade out there, […] You won’t be an Indian once
you return’ ” (14). Pauline as a symbol for those who try to refashion their
identity invalidates her own cultural identity and surrenders to the white
bourgeois culture. She says “They [Indians] were stupid and small” (68).
Erdrich uses two opposing points of view; Nanapush’s tricky narrative
is deeply connected to Anishinabe culture and ethnic knowledge and
philosophies. Through Nanapush, voices of those who resist the process of
colonization and the forces of white hegemonic culture are heard. When
Nanapush’s narrative is compared to that of Pauline, the reader is able to
see how a dominant discourse tries to eradicate minority cultures; on the
one hand, the oppressed are compelled by socio-political and cultural
significations to believe in the inferiority of their culture and, on the other,
they are not accepted into the dominant. As Homi Bhabha stated “the
same but not quite, the same but not white” (89). Consequently, subjects
do not know where they belong and, like Pauline, will become an accomplice
in the process of dehumanizing their own selves.
Besides, one of the best solutions for those characters like Pauline
seems to be forgetting what is unspeakable and hard to pass on: “Dollar
bills cause the memory to vanish” (174). The dominant white discourse
and the minorities’ resisting voices continually strive for dominance/voice.
In this sense, it is more realistic to assume that at some conjunctures the
dominant can contain almost all modes of resistance: as Fleur announces
her failure when she hears Nanapush’s encouraging words, “ ‘I’m tired old
Uncle’ ” (177), but at others, it will hardly maintain its presupposed position.
Nanapush states that “ ‘power dies, power goes under and gutters
out, ungraspable. It is momentary, quick of flight and liable to deceive
[…] As soon as you rely on the possession it is gone. Forget that it ever
existed, and it returns’ ” (177). Nanapush, therefore, knows and expresses
the relative nature of power and its unreliable gestures to the one who
owns it. As a result, the binary opposition to power, which is resistance,
surfaces. At the times when power dies, flies, and deceives, resistances to
the dominant have the space to articulate a counter discourse capable of
being adjusted by the oppressed.
Dissidence and subversion of power in Tracks
Instead of “I”, Nanapush frequently uses the pronoun “we” (1), and he also
uses native tribal names; for instance, he refers to his tribe as Anishinabe
instead of Chippewa, which is an Anglicalized term for Anishinabe (7, 8).
Having in mind the same referent, white people and Pauline use Chippewa
(11, 63) in order to compel the Native American to forget the remains of
the past. Thus, on the one hand, Nanapush wants to give voice to the
residual elements of his own culture and, on the other, the dominant tries
to eradicate them and alter them through the implementation of its own
norms. In this way, cultural and political institutions, economy, religion,
and language are used to normalize and propagate different versions of a
same message: the superiority of the white discourse. Against the white
discursive pressure, Nanapush’s main aim is to integrate his own people.
In this sense, his speech is replete with sentences united with different
conjunctive words. The first paragraph is united into almost one long
sentence revealing the primary aim of its narrator: “For those who survived
the spotted sickness from the south, our long fight west to Nadouissioux
land where we signed the treaty, and then a wind from the east, bringing
exile in a storm of government papers, what descended from the north in
1912 seemed impossible” (1 emphasis added). Articulating words without
meaning and creating voices specific to one’s own culture can help to unite
Native Americans again: “I talked on and on until you lost yourself inside
the flow of it, until you entered the swell and ebb and did not sink but were
sustained. I talked beyond sense—by morning the sounds I made were
stupid mumbles without meaning or connection. But you were lulled by
the roll of my voice” (167). This play of signification in language and articulations
of new meanings can be regarded as the main theme of the novel:
standards of the white ideology are not appropriate for Native American
ways of life. Nanapush begins to deconstruct the hegemonic conventions
to announce his narration as a means for survival and resistance to both
“personal despair” and socio-political and cultural oppression. Nanapush
uses residual elements of his own culture, reminding people of healing
power of the old songs: “Eventually, my songs overcame the painful burn-
In this way,
cultural and
political
institutions,
economy,
religion, and
language are
used to
normalize and
propagate
different
versions of a
same message:
the superiority
of the white
discourse.
ing and you were suspended, eyes open looking into mine. Once I had you
I did not dare break the string between us and kept on moving my lips,
holding you motionless with talking” (167).
The novel tries to show the experiences and sensations specific to
Native American cultures and sets them against the paralyzing power
of the dominant. Nanapush’s counter hegemonic discourse involves the
technique of storytelling, when there will be no land to rely on for survival,
stories of the past will help a culture to survive: “During the year of sickness,
when I was the last one left, I saved myself by starting a story […]
But I continued and recovered. I got well by talking” (46). Erdrich uses
Nanapush’s talking ability to let two storylines move in parallel to one
another: first, the microcosmic history of some Native American families
living on a reservation around Matchemanito; second, the macrocosmic
history of the Chippewa. Along with the story of Fleur, life in Argus, and
the reservation, Nanapush narrates the historical tragedies of the consumption
epidemic, land seizure, and Indians’ educational programs. In
fact, Nanapush relates the history of Native Americans from a marginalized
point of view.
Nanapush often notes that his narratives can heal. The healing power
inherent in Nanapush’s stories is both literal and metaphorical. Literally
speaking, storytelling twice saved his and Lulu’s life, once directly and
another time indirectly. “During the years of sickness,” He tells Lulu,
when I was the last one left, I saved myself by starting a story.
One night I was ready to bring to the other side the doll I now
gave Eli. My wife had sewed it together after our daughter died
and I held it in my hands when I fainted, lost breath, so that
I could hardly keep moving my lips. But I did continue and
recovered. I got well by talking. Death could not get a word in
edgewise, grew discouraged, and travelled on. (46)
Memory is the most important thing they have, residual elements from the
past live their lives there; the dead come back to life. The dominant culture
attempts to devoid them of whatever they have—land, identity, and unity—
and gives them hunger that devours memory, “hunger steals memory”
(127–8). Moreover, the dominant uses economy to put the minorities in
their presupposed places; it subjects them.
But, memory and storytelling about the past are key words in the novel
that open a gap in the text and a fault line throughout the discourse of
white ideology. Nanapush comes to this end: when one is unable to subvert
the hegemony of the dominant culture, s/he has to construct dissidences
that apply the same tools relegating the dispossessed in their places:
That’s when I [Nanapush] began to see what we were becoming,
and the years have borne me out: a tribe of file cabinets
and triplicates, a tribe of single-space documents, directives,
policy. A tribe of pressed trees. A tribe of chicken-scratch that
can be scattered by a wind, diminished to ashes by one struck
match. For I did stand for the tribal chairman, as you know,
defeating Pukwan in that last year. To become a bureaucrat
myself was the only way that I could wade through the letters,
the reports, the only place where I could find a ledge to kneel
on, to reach through the loophole and draw you home. (225)
In order to evade the upsetting undertone of the theory of co-optation,
Sinfield employs the term dissidence rather than subversion: “Dissidence
I take to imply refusal of an aspect of the dominant without prejudging
an outcome” (49). Nanapush’s storytelling and his construction of sounds
without meanings are not what Greenblatt calls co-optation; rather, Sinfield’s
theories can better explain the political aspects when Native American
communities had little power to resist and articulate a voice of their
own. In other words, one way to resist the dominant is to fabricate stories.
In this sense, Sinfield’s notions regarding dissidence instead of subversion
seem more reasonable: one must uphold dissenting voices per se and
prevent prejudging outcomes for resistances/dissident voices (49). In this
way, acts of resistance were worthwhile and they paved the way for social,
political, cultural, and economic changes in the lives of minority groups,
especially Native American people.
Conclusion
Capitalism encourages individuals to search for self-interest; each subject
seeks her or his own wellbeing or dreams of advancement. But, Nanapush
tries to remind the clan of cultural ties. Some of Native Americans curse
the displeased spirits as the only cause for all their troubles and misfortunes;
they are unable to see through what happens to them. The dominant
discourse lurking in each corner of the society leads the citizens to consent
to the compelling demands of the dominant, and individuals come to
believe that their present status is the only natural way of the world. But,
it is just an apparent closure put on the signification of signs in language.
However, by critically welcoming his own culture, its past and present,
Nanapush becomes capable to see the real causes of the tribe’s troubles;
capitalistic adventures of the dominant “whites” and their tendency to
control and contain.
Sending Lulu to a white school was a complete failure and so are Fleure’s
acts of radical resistance. But, such strategies of containment and failed
resistance cannot be regarded as the final destiny of the minorities. Finally,
the novel portrays the survival of Nanapush and his community as the
hegemonic closure of the dominant discourse loses its validity and is put
in suspense. Moreover, dissident voices will be heard and begin to positively
challenge and deconstruct the dominant discourse. The dominant
discourse of white bourgeois standards is seriously challenged by alternative
voices and systems of significations represented in Native American
cultures. Accordingly, those who try to become actively dissident and
subversive, if their acts of resistance are well thought out and strategically
pre-planned, are far from being contained or controlled, will have their
voices heard and their culture will survive.
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