The erotics of sovereignty : queer native writing in the era of self-determination / Mark Rifkin.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rifkin, Mark, 1974-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--Indian authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--Indian authors.

Gay peoples' writings, American--History and criticism.

Gay peoples' writings, American.

Gay people's writings, American.

Physical Description:

viii, 337 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, [2012]

Summary:

In 1970 the Nixon administration inaugurated a new era in federal Indian policy. The U.S. government would no longer seek to deny and displace Native peoples or dismantle Native governments; from now on federal policy would promote "the Indian's sense of autonomy without threatening his sense of community."

In The Erotics of Sovereignty, Mark Rifkin offers a telling perspective on what such a policy of self-determination has meant and looks at how contemporary queer Native writers use representations of sensation to challenge official U.S. accounts of Native identity. Rifkin focuses on four Native writers-Qwo-Li Driskill (Cherokee), Deborah Miranda (Esselen), Greg Sarris (Graton Rachería), and Chrystos (Menominee)-approaching their fiction, and poetry as forms of political theory. Rifkin shows how the work of these queer or two-spirit Native writers affirms the significance of the erotic as an exercise of individual and community sovereignty. In this way, we come to see how their work contests the homophobic, sexist, and exclusivist policies and attitudes of tribal communities as well as those of the nation-state. Book jacket.

Contents:

The somatics of haunting: embodied peoplehood in Qwo-Li Driskill's Walking with ghosts

Landscapes of desire: melancholy, memory, and fantasy in Deborah Miranda's The zen of la llorona

Genealogies of indianness: the errancies of peoplehood in Greg Sarris's Watermelon nights

Laboring in the city: stereotype and survival in Chrystos's poetry.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780816677825

0816677824

9780816677832

0816677832

OCLC:

759909932