Indigeneity, Colonialism, and Literary Studies: A “Transdisciplinary, Oppositional Politics of Reading”

Indigeneity, Colonialism, and Literary Studies: A “Transdisciplinary, Oppositional Politics of Reading” Shari Huhndorf University of Oregon W „ llf Len Fin d la y’s e x h o r ta tio n , “alw ays in d ig en ize,” could usefully apply to all social relations throughout the Americas, he is par­ ticularly concerned in this essay with the ways the university replicates and reinforces the “aggravated inequality” of indigenous peoples. The complicity of the university in colonialism takes a broad range of forms, including the Eurocentric biases of academic knowledge and the devalu­ ation of indigenous perspectives in the curriculum as well as hiring and admissions processes that favour white applicants. While these problems affect all communities of color to varying degrees, in us institutions, the vantage point from which I write, they are particularly acute for indigenous peoples, who remain the most underrepresented group in the academy. Even ethnic studies programs dedicated to interrogating social power and racial inequalities have, for the most part, ignored or neglected Native America: many such programs do not include indigenous studies as part of the curriculum, at least not in any substantial way, while scholars working in adjacent fields— African American, Chicano/Latino, Asian American, postcolonial, and gender studies— rarely have even a rudimentary knowl­ edge of indigenous scholarship and issues. This is true despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that, in Findlay’s words, there is nothing hors-Indigene ESC 30.2 (June 2004): 29-38 Shari Huhndorf (Yup’ik) received her PhD in comparative literature from New York University, and she is associate professor of English and former director of the Ethnic Studies Program at the University of Oregon. She is the author of Going Native: Indians in the American Cultural Imagination (Cornell UP, 2001), as well as numerous articles on Native American literature, film, and representation. Her current book project analyzes the relationship between nationalism, colonialism, and culture in Native North America. in the Americas, an acknowledgement that necessitates the difficult task of rethinking the histories and interrelationships of communities of color. In the us context, Findlay’s exhortation thus points to a badly needed cor­ rective both in dominant academic culture as well as in emerging fields dedicated to challenging the hegemonic order. For Findlay, this corrective necessitates structural changes to transform the university into a place that supports indigenous self-determination and self-representation, a process in which, Audre Lorde’s contention notwithstanding, “the master’s most important tools— like the domestic and international division of labour— can be used to dismantle the master’s housed though [crucially] not if they are the only tools used and if they remain within dominant patterns of ownership and means of production” (310). These changes entail inclusive curricular, hiring, and admissions practices throughout the institution. More specific to literary studies, they require a new hermeneutic— in Findlay’s terms, a “transdisciplinary, oppositional politics of reading” (318)— to interrogate and challenge, rather than support, social inequalities. Indeed, Findlay’s essay itself exemplifies such a practice because it adapts deconstructive and Marxist theories for indigenous purposes in a way that also underscores and counters their Eurocentric foundations. Findlay’s approach thus provides a model for an oppositional politics of reading that is critical as well as constructive and that contributes to a broader anticolonial project. In what follows, I shall look more closely at Findlay’s adaptation of Jameson to consider, however briefly, what tools Jameson's conception of political criticism might provide for such a hermeneutic. Findlay’s exhortation rewrites the opening of ThePolitical Unconscious, the work in which Jameson develops a Marxist hermeneutic that provides a useful starting point for an oppositional politics of reading dedicated to analyzing the positions of indigenous peoples under ongoing colonialism, conceptualizing social change, and considering the role of culture in these processes. Although Jameson does not address these issues directly, The Political Unconscious offers a critical practice that insists on the social significance and ideological nature of literature and that thus lends itself to adaptation for anticolonial purposes. Political relationships, Jameson contends, constitute the “absolute horizon of all reading and all inter­ pretation” because “there is nothing that is not social and historical...

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