INVERSION AND SUBVERSION, ALTERITY AND AMBIVALENCE:
“MIMICRY” AND “HYBRIDITY” IN SHERMAN ALEXIE’S TEN LITTLE INDIANS
A Capstone Experience Manuscript
Presented by
Eva Becker
Completion Date:
May 2009
Approved by:
____________________________________________________
Professor Alex Phillips, Commonwealth College
Table of Contents
I. Review of the Literature .................................................................................................. 1 II. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 12 III. B. Ambivalence, Hybridity, Mimicry: The Deconstruction of Binarism, the
Emergence of Subversion ................................................................................................. 22 III. B. 1. The presence of difference, the metonymic presence ........................................ 22 III. B. 2. Deconstructing binarism further......................................................................... 35 III. B. 3. Further subversion: recovering agency through Orientalism ............................. 37 III. B. 4. Reclaiming the stereotype .................................................................................. 46 III. B. 5. Observing mimicry holistically: double-consciousness ..................................... 48 Works Cited ...................................................................................................................... 54 Review of the Literature
Subaltern Studies: Historical Framework
In her essay, “Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Historiography,” Dipesh Chakrabarty
provides an historical framework for the political and social events that fostered the
emergence of the Subaltern Studies group. She explains that the Subaltern Studies Group
formed in Calcutta in 1982 as a result of a series of debates on the writing of history in
India after the end of British imperial rule in 1947. The group wished to restore agency
and voice to the “non-elite” Indian peasantry, whom they referred to as the Indian
“subaltern.” In her text, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, Ania Loomba notes that the word
“subaltern” originated as a military term to refer to officers under the rank of captain (4849). The current usage of the term, however, refers back to Antonio Gramsci’s reference
in his Prison Notebooks concerning oppressed peoples: “It is the conception of a
subaltern social group, deprived of historical initiative, in continuous but disorganic
expansion, unable to go beyond a certain qualitative level, which still remains below the
level of the possession of the State” (396). In referring specifically to the Indian subaltern,
Richard Eaton describes them as being “peasants, industrial workers, women, and tribals”
(56-57) in his essay, “(Re)imag(in)ing other 2ness: A Postmortem for the Postmodern in
India,” Chakrabarty explains that the formation of the group was inspired by Ranajit
Guha, an historian of India then teaching at the University of Sussex. Guha, along with
eight scholars from the United Kingdom and Australia, published the editorial collective,
Subaltern Studies until 1988, at which time Guha retired. The field now known as
Subaltern Studies has since expanded its scope from history and historiography to include
1
“contemporary critiques of history and nationalism, and of orientalism and Eurocentrism
in the construction of social science knowledge” (9). In addition to the scope of its
intellectual reach, Subaltern Studies now extends well beyond the regions of India and
South East Asia; for example, Chakrabarty notes that the Latin American Subaltern
Studies Association was established in 1992 (9).
Beginning in the 1960s, scholars such as Bipan Chandra, A.R. Desai, and Anil
Seal began to pose controversial questions concerning the effects of British imperialism
in India. Official documents of the British government had hitherto portrayed the effects
of colonialism as positive, insisting that they had brought to India political unity, modern
educational institutions, modern medicine, and so on. These Indian scholars, however,
began to ask if imperial Britain did, in fact, deserve credit for making India a “modern,”
developed country, asserting instead that colonialism had had detrimental effects on the
cultural and economic development of the country. Thus, as Chakrabarty illustrates,
colonialism and nationalism emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as the two major fields of
discourse in writing and defining modern Indian history. Some scholars belonging to the
Cambridge School of Thought, such as Anil Seal, argued that what might have been
interpreted as Indian nationalism was in reality simply the “rivalry between Indian and
Indian” (qtd. in Chakrabarty 12), that is, between the Indian peasantry and the elite.
Others, such as Bipan Chandra, approached the problem from a Marxist perspective,
arguing that nationalism was the perfect antithesis of colonialism that would unite the
Indian people, elite or nonelite aside, in their struggle for freedom against the British.
Still others like Partha Chatterjee understood the situation differently, asserting that
nationalism is not only a political movement, but an historical one, as well. In his work,
2
Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World, he divides the world into the exterior sphere,
in which the West may assert its dominance in economy, science, and so forth, and the
inner domain of culture, which is inaccessible to the West. Chatterjee called this
relationship between the inner and outer spheres “a ‘modern’ national culture that is
nevertheless not Western” (6-7).
Chakrabarty thus explains how the field of Subaltern Studies emerged as a sort of
“critical intervention” to better explain what the Cambridge School and the Marxist
Nationalists left out.
Guha’s Binarism
In the first volume of the Subaltern Studies series, Ranajit Guha argued that both schools
of history were elitist in nature, asserting that both could not explain “the contributions
made by people on their own, that is, independent of the elite to the making and
development of this nationalism” (3). Guha accused the historiography of the Indian
nationalists of excluding “the subaltern classes and groups constituting the mass of the
labouring population and the intermediate strata in town and country – that is, the
people,” as he notes in his essay, “On Some Aspects of the Historiography of Colonial
India” (6). Guha began to make use of the term subaltern, particularly in the field of
postcolonial studies, which he defines as “a name for the general attribute of
subordination…whether this is expressed in terms of class, caste, age, gender and office
or in any other way” (5). Thus, the goal of the Subaltern Studies project focused on
recovering the subaltern as a subject of history, as Guha mentions in the first volume of
Subaltern Studies: “We are indeed opposed to much of the prevailing academic practice
3
in historiography…for its failure to acknowledge the subaltern as the maker of his own
destiny. This critique lies at the very heart of our project” (vii). In considering peasant
rebellions in India, Guha observed that in rebelling, peasants strove to invert the power
dynamic between themselves and the elite. Guha notes of this observation in the first
volume of Subaltern Studies:
Inversion was its principal modality. It was a political struggle in which
the rebel appropriated and/or destroyed the insignia of his enemy’s power
and hoped thus to abolish the marks of his own subalternity. (75)
In this first volume, Guha argues that in order to recover the subaltern as the agent of its
own history, historiography must be interpreted through an “epistemological inversion,”
that is, the mirror-image of the historical narrative that he claims denies the subaltern the
agency of self-representation in the first place. Guha saw the relationship between the
hegemony and the subaltern as binary, as he states in his essay, “On Some Aspects of the
Historiography of Colonial India”: “We recognize of course that subordination cannot be
understood except as one of the constitutive terms in a binary relationship of which the
other is dominance.” To many scholars, however, the notion of the hegemonic/subaltern
relationship as binary perpetuated the tradition of colonial discourse by which the
hegemony was able to maintain its influence in the first place.
Deconstructing Binarism
Many scholars argue that while Guha’s discourse of inversion was fundamental in
reconsidering the power dynamic between the hegemony and the subaltern, his notion
that the hegemonic/subaltern relationship is fixed in a binary state, which Abdul
4
JanMohamed has called the “Manichaen allegory” (qtd. in Loomba 91), did not allow for
a consideration of the multitude of complexities and ambiguities inherent on either side
of the power spectrum. Ania Loomba considers the vast differences in historical, political,
and social situations of various forms of colonization around the globe. She notes that
formal decolonization has spanned from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in a
multitude of countries, including but not limited to New Zealand, the Americas, Australia,
and South Africa (12). She thus argues that it is impossible, then, to specifically locate
“postcolonialism” in the temporal sense, colonies have been decolonized in different
ways at different times. She considers the fact that by the 1930s, colonialism dominated
84.6 percent of the land surface of the earth, which she argues is a clear indication of the
impossibility of universalizing the way in which colonialism manifested itself throughout
the world (19). She argues that the term “postcolonialism” can not simply be defined as
the subordinated being liberated from colonialism, since previously existing social
hierarchies within the colonized countries were not only maintained, but oftentimes
strengthened through colonialism (16). In addition, she cites aboriginal peoples of
Australia, North America, and Canada as yet another example of complexity within the
scope of the term “postcolonial”; given that they have yet to reclaim their territory and
achieve self-government, she mentions that scholars such as Arif Dirlik often argue that
such regions be examined under a colonial, rather than postcolonial, light. She cites Jorge
de Alva in light of these complexities and contradictions, who argues that it is necessary
to approach postcolonialism not as a universal, linear process, but rather, as de Alva
states, as “a multiplicity of often conflicting and frequently parallel narratives” (qtd. in
Loomba 16). In his essay, “When Was the Post-Colonial?” found in Iain Chambers and
5
Lidia Curti’s text, The Post-Colonial Question, Stuart Hall considers these complexities
found in the terms “postcolonial” and “subaltern,” stating,
Those deploying the concept must attend…carefully to its discriminations
and specificities and/or establish more clearly at what level of abstraction
the term is operating and how this avoids a spurious
‘universalisation’…Not all societies are ‘post-colonial’ in the same
way…But this does not mean they are not ‘post-colonial’ in any way.
(245)
John Beverly also considers the limitations of considering the hegemonic/subaltern
relationship as binary in the chapter, “Hybrid or Binary?” found in his text, Subalternity
and Representation. He asks, “Isn’t the whole point…to undo the binary taxonomies that
were instituted by previous forms of colonial or class power?” (87) He cites several
scholars who argue for the case of hybridity rather than binarism, including Ann Stoler,
who states, “The reification of a colonial moment of binary oppositions may speak more
to contemporary political agendas than to ambiguous colonial realities” (qtd. in Beverly
86). He includes Sara Suleri in his argument as well, who claims,
Rather than examine a binary rigidity between these terms – which is an
inherently Eurocentric strategy – this critical field would be better served
if it sought to break down the fixity of the diving lines between
domination and subordination. (qtd. in Beverly 86)
Pat Seed’s argument is also noted here:
Those unwilling to countenance [the subalternist] critique of nationalism
and national identity – their own and others – instead seem anxious – and
6
for me it registers as a kind of anxiety – to preserve essentialisms, by
denying hybridity, diasporas and other contextual remakings of identities
precisely because such critiques contribute to a fundamental remaking of
the conception of both national and political identity. (qtd. in Beverly 86)
Ambivalence, Hybridity, Mimicry
John Beverly notes that in lieu of binarism, “[Homi K.] Bhabha’s argument has become
something like an article of faith in postcolonial criticism” (86). Bhabha’s project, found
primarily in his text, The Location of Culture, examines how stereotypical discourse
remains as the basis for colonialism and how the engagement with this discourse on
behalf of the subaltern offers a new way of approaching stereotypes. Bhabha states that
the locus of the stereotype lies within what he refers to as ambivalence, that is,
“ambivalence of the object of colonial discourse – that ‘otherness’ which is at once an
object of desire and derision, an articulation of difference contained within the fantasy of
origin and identity” (67). David Huddart, whose text, Homi K. Bhabha comprises a series
of close readings of Bhabha’s work, refers to the way in which the hegemony seeks to
understand the subaltern through “normalizing judgments.” To Bhabha, however, these
normalizing judgments must be seen as “…modes of differentiation, realized as multiple,
cross-cutting determinations, polymorphous and perverse, always demanding a specific
calculation to their effects” (67). Bhabha urges that every stereotype must be examined
through a unique lens that casts away normalizing judgements and individually examines
its effects on both the colonizer and the colonized. He argues that the hegemony wishes
to see the relationship between the colonizer/colonized as fixed, on the assumption of
what he refers to as the “presence of difference,” in order to provide a context against
7
which to define itself. He cites Paul Abbott in this case, who states, “It must sustain itself
on the presence of the very difference which is also its object” (qtd. in Bhabha 79).
Bhabha then asserts that hybridity thus emerges from a deconstruction of this binary
relationship between Self and Other upon which colonial authority bases its power.
Bhabha refers to this subversive destabilization of colonial power as “mimicry,”
quoting the psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan to do so:
Mimicry reveals something in so far as it is distinct from what might be
called an itself that is behind. The effect of mimicry is camouflage…It is
not a question of harmonizing with the background, but against a mottled
background, of becoming mottled – exactly like the technique of
camouflage practised in human warfare. (qtd. in Bhabha 85)
Bhabha asserts that mimicry does not refer to mere imitation, nor does it assume
assimilation into the dominant culture; to him, it is an exaggeration of a copying of the
ideas, language, manners, and culture of the dominant culture that differentiates it from
mere imitation: it is “repetition with difference,” as Huddart describes it (57). Bhabha
calls this sort of mimicry a “sly civility,” which he views as a sense of mockery to
mimicry that is based on “ambivalence.” To Bhabha,
Colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a
subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite. Which is to say,
that the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence. (86)
Bhahba refers to the capability on behalf of the subaltern to engage in “sly civility” as an
affectation of a “partial presence” or “metonymic presence,” rather than the “presence of
difference.” It “marginalizes the monumentality of history, quite simply mocks its power
8
to be a model, that power which supposedly makes it imitable” (88). To Bhabha, it is “at
once a resemblance and menace” (86) that affords the subaltern a reclamation of agency.
Orientalism
Palestinian-American scholar Edward Said’s Orientalism provides a discourse on
understanding how the Other, or the subaltern, has historically, culturally, and politically
been dominated, represented, and romanticized by the Western hegemony. Said asserts
that “Orientalism” is not about non-Western cultures, or “the Orient”; it is about how the
Orient was depicted through a Western interpretation. Said defines hegemony as
…certain cultural forms predominate over others, just as certain ideas are
more influential than others; the form of this cultural leadership is what
Gramsci has identified as hegemony….It is hegemony, or rather the result
of cultural hegemony at work, that gives Orientalism the durability and the
strength I have been speaking about so far. (7)
He argues that it was the “knowledge” held by the West over the Orient that was able to
maintain power over the Orient. Said asserts that there are several spheres in which the
definition of Orientalism may be found, all interdependent; first, that Orientalism is the
way in which the West is able to distinguish itself as apart from the Occident, referred by
Ania Loomba as a “dialectic between self and other” (45), in order to create the binary
relationship between superiority and inferiority. He thus argues that Orientalism, an
imagining of “the Other,” became for the West a way in which to build up a national
identity, by creating a relationship of binary oppositions. In this way, the discourse of
Orientalism is not actually contingent on “the Orient” itself, since it is the West’s attempt
9
to portray the Other in a way that supports its premise of cultural superiority, not actually
to depict it truthfully and without bias. Said asserts that it is important to acknowledge
both the historical and cultural scope of Orientalism:
Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point
Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for
dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it,
authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over
it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring,
and having authority over the Orient. (3)
To Said, “The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of
domination, of varying degrees of a complex hegemony.”
Double-Consciousness
In his Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois describes “double-consciousness” as the
struggle of the Negro around the turn of the twentieth century to reconcile, rather than
sacrifice, his double identity of Negro and American in order to infuse them into an
aware and whole self. Du Bois based his notion of double-consciousness on the
predicament of the African-American situation at the beginning of the twentieth century.
David Huddart notes that Homi K. Bhabha based his notion of “hybridity” largely on the
work of Du Bois. Du Bois’ describes the nature of double consciousness, which Bhabha
likens to hybridity, as the state in which “One ever feels his twoness,– an American, a
Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings…” (222). Du Bois argues that
the history of the state of “twoness” requires a merging of selves, and “In this merging he
10
wishes neither of the older selves to be lost” (222). The goal of this striving to merge the
selves is “to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture” (223).
11
Introduction
In examining the characters found within Sherman Alexie’s collection of short stories,
Ten Little Indians, it is evident that the process by which they interact with their world
allows for an extension of the definition of “subaltern” to apply to a modern experience
of multiculturalism. Originally a term used to describe the subjects of colonialism,
“subaltern” signifies the diasporic counterpart of the ruling classes who, as a result of
hegemonic oppression, have hitherto lacked the agency of self-representation and voice,
be it in historiography, literature, or any other narrative form. Understanding how Ten
Little Indians fits into an expanded definition of “subaltern” requires placing the work in
reference to the social theories of contemporary scholars of the subaltern; namely, Ranajit
Guha, Edward Said, and Homi K. Bhabha, as well as to secondary literature that places
these theories in an historical framework and provides a critical analysis of their claims.
Guha’s concept of “inversion,” as well as Said’s “Orientalism,” will support the
foundation in considering how the “Other” has historically been represented by colonial
authority and how it is necessary to invert traditional discourse in order to begin to
recover subaltern agency. Most importantly, Bhabha’s notion that the colonial
relationship, as embodied in his conception of “stereotypical discourses,” is, in fact, an
ambivalent one that is able to be deconstructed and thus subverted through “hybridity”
and “mimicry” illustrates how Alexie’s characters have recovered cultural agency. In
effect, both the primary and secondary literatures of subaltern studies and postcolonial
theory illustrate how Alexie’s characters extend the scope of the subaltern to include the
aboriginal diaspora of the Spokane Indians.
12
However, the inclusion of Ten Little Indians under the genre of “subaltern
literature” begets a multitude of complexities and difficulties in deciding who may be
considered subaltern, and how. Some scholars such as Arif Dirlik argue that the
aboriginal diaspora of countries who have yet to reclaim their land should be examined
under the light of a colonial, rather than postcolonial, discourse. Other critics, such as
Stuart Hall and Jorge de Alva, encourage an approach to subaltern studies that is volatile
in its scope and thus dynamic in its definition, which Alexie’s characters clearly illustrate
through their interactions with the hegemony. In addition, many would argue that
Alexie’s characters cannot be considered “subaltern,” as they exist within the realm of
cultural hegemony. This classical postcolonial argument, which assumes that the
relationship between the hegemonic classes and the subaltern is inherently binary, is
negated by way of Bhabha’s notion of “hybridity,” in which both states of consciousness
need not be mutually exclusive. Thus, the binarism inherent in Guha and Said’s work
must be reconsidered in light of the deconstruction necessary to negate traditional
colonial authority.
Indeed, the unique perspective of Alexie’s characters, likened to Du Bois’
“double-consciousness,” may effectively illustrate how the “colonial mimicry” of cultural
hegemony is a form of subversion, rather than submission, since it makes unclear the
distinction between “them” and “us,” which forms the basis for colonialist ideologies.
Critical analysis of the stories, “The Search Engine,” “The Life and Times of Estelle
Walks Above,” and “Can I Get a Witness?” will exemplify how the characters are,
through mimicry, able to reclaim cultural agency first through an understanding of
hegemony and subsequently through an opportunism that takes advantage of “otherness”
13
and stereotypical knowledges and works to their own benefit. Finally, Alexie’s characters
recover agency not only through the subversion of mimicry of hegemony, but a mimicry
of indigenity, as well, thus truly making them subversive characters that possess the
ability to critique, mimic, and take advantage of both cultural states of consciousness. In
effect, this ultimate display of subversion and reclamation illustrates how Ten Little
Indians presents a powerful subaltern voice that seeks to illuminate an alternative view of
indigenous self-representation in literature.
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Subaltern Studies: An Historical Framework
The Subaltern Studies Group formed in Calcutta in 1982 as a result of a series of debates
on the writing of history in India after the end of British imperial rule in 1947. The group
wished to restore agency and voice to the “non-elite” Indian peasantry, whom they
referred to as the Indian “subaltern,” whom were “peasants, industrial workers, women,
and tribals” (Eaton 56-57). The formation of the group was inspired by Ranajit Guha (b.
1923), a historian of India then teaching at the University of Sussex. Guha, along with
eight scholars from the United Kingdom and Australia, published the editorial collective,
Subaltern Studies until 1988, at which time Guha retired. The field now known as
Subaltern Studies has since expanded its scope from history and historiography to include,
as the scholar Dipesh Chakrabarty notes, “contemporary critiques of history and
nationalism, and of orientalism and Eurocentrism in the construction of social science
knowledge” (9). In addition to the scope of its intellectual reach, Subaltern Studies now
extends well beyond the regions of India and South East Asia; for example, Chakrabarty
notes that the Latin American Subaltern Studies Association was established in 1992 (9).
Beginning in the 1960s, a multitude of scholars such as Bipan Chandra, A.R.
Desai, and Anil Seal began to pose new and controversial questions concerning the
colonial discourse and the effects of British imperialism in India. Official documents of
the British government had hitherto portrayed the effects of colonialism as undeniably
positive, insisting that they had brought to India political unity, modern educational
institutions, modern medicine, and so on. These Indian scholars, however, began to ask if
imperial Britain did, in fact, deserve credit for making India a “modern,” developed
country, asserting instead that colonialism had had detrimental effects on the cultural and
15
economic development of the country. Thus, as Chakrabarty illustrates, colonialism and
nationalism emerged in the 1960s and 1970s as the two major fields of discourse in
writing and defining modern Indian history. Some scholars, such as Anil Seal, argued that
Indian “nationalism” was not, in fact, a struggle for identity, but rather that it was the
vying of the indigenous elite to join with the British in search of privilege and power. In
his book, Locality, Province, and Nation, Seal asserts that this “rivalry between Indian
and Indian” (qtd. in Chakrabarty 12), that is, between the Indian elite and nonelite, was
what might have been interpreted, from an outside perspective, as the Indian struggle for
freedom. This way of thinking of Indian history is often referred to as the Cambridge
School of Thought (Chakrabarty). Other scholars, such as Bipan Chandra, argued the
other extreme, claiming that nationalism was the perfect antithesis of colonialism that
united the Indian people, elite or nonelite aside, in their struggle for freedom against the
British. Chandra and others thus approached Indian history from a Marxist perspective,
negating the notions of “elite” and “nonelite” in favor of a generalized “Indian people”
equally united in the struggle for freedom. Others, like Partha Chatterjee, sought to break
away from the paradigm of Indian nationalism by asserting that nationalism is not only a
political movement, but an historical one, as well. In his work, Nationalist Thought and
the Colonial World, he divides the world into the exterior sphere, in which the West may
assert its dominance in economy, science, and so forth, and the inner domain of culture,
which is inaccessible to the West. Chatterjee called this relationship between the inner
and outer spheres “a ‘modern’ national culture that is nevertheless not Western” (6-7). It
became apparent, then, that a particular complexity began to emerge from the variety of
ways in which to approach colonialism and nationalism.
16
Subaltern Studies thus emerged as a sort of critical “intervention” to explain the
crucial aspects of modern Indian history that were left out by both the Columbia school
and the Marxist-nationalists. In the first volume of the Subaltern Studies series, Ranajit
Guha argued that both schools of history were elitist in nature, asserting that both could
not explain “the contributions made by people on their own, that is, independent of the
elite to the making and development of this nationalism” (3). Guha accused the
historiography of the Indian nationalists of excluding “the subaltern classes and groups
constituting the mass of the labouring population and the intermediate strata in town and
country – that is, the people,” as he notes in his influential essay, “On Some Aspects of
the Historiography of Colonial India” (6). Of course, it was Guha who made widespread
the use of the term subaltern, particularly in the field of postcolonial studies, which he
defines as “a name for the general attribute of subordination…whether this is expressed
in terms of class, caste, age, gender and office or in any other way” (5). Thus, the
fundamental goal of the Subaltern Studies project focused on recovering the subaltern as
a subject of history, as Guha mentions in the first volume of Subaltern Studies: “We are
indeed opposed to much of the prevailing academic practice in historiography…for its
failure to acknowledge the subaltern as the maker of his own destiny. This critique lies at
the very heart of our project” (vii). Ania Loomba notes in her book,
Colonialism/Postcolonialism that the project’s efforts provided for a fundamental shift in
colonial dichotomies; that is, between colonial and anticolonial to “elite” and “subaltern”
(166). The dichotomy of “elite” and “subaltern” allowed Guha to argue that there existed
outside the politics of the elite a “politics of the people,” as well, also known as
“subaltern politics.”
17
By suggesting that the subaltern could, in fact, be political, Guha expanded the
scope of the term “political” typical of traditionally European thought, thus recovering a
particular agency for the subaltern that they had hitherto been denied. By expanding the
term, Guha presented a more volatile way in which to approach the relationship between
the subaltern and the elite, a relationship assumed by the hegemony to be fixed, through
the discourse of inversion. Guha contended that, in observing over a hundred incidents of
peasant uprisings in British India, there emerged in all of them the attempt to destroy the
traditional vestiges of power; in other words, to invert the power relationship between the
elite and the nonelite. He writes, “Inversion was its principal modality. It was a political
struggle in which the rebel appropriated and/or destroyed the insignia of his enemy’s
power and hoped thus to abolish the marks of his own subalternity” (75). Guha thus
argued that in order to recover the subaltern as the agent of its own history, it is necessary
to access colonial and postcolonial historiography, written in favor of the hegemonic
ruling classes, and to reinterpret the historiography with a necessary “epistemological
inversion.” In effect, the epistemological inversion is the mirror-image of the historical
narrative that denies the subaltern the agency of self-representation in the first place.
Thus, reading historical narratives “in reverse” is the beginning to understanding the
subaltern experience of history.
The Subaltern Studies Group owes an intellectual debt to Marxism, which had
helped to mobilize “the nationalist project of intellectual decolonization” (Chakrabarty
11); in order to examine the relationship between Subaltern Studies and Marxism,
however, it is necessary to explain the umbrella term under which both relate to one
another, that is, postcolonialism. The concepts of both “hegemony” and “subaltern”
18
originate with the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci, who wrote in his Selections from the
Prison Notebooks, “subaltern social group, deprived of historical initiative, in continuous
but disorganic expansion, unable to go beyond a certain qualitative level, which still
remains below the level of possession of the state.” How does Marxism play a role in
understanding the complex interdependency between the notions of colonialism, colonial
discourse, postcolonialism, and Subaltern Studies? It is first important to note the
distinction that Marxist thinking makes between earlier colonialisms, such as the Roman
and Aztec empires, and modern colonialism, as the former were pre-capitalist and the
latter indicative of the capitalism in Western Europe (Loomba 9). In the case of modern
colonialism, the oppressed were drawn into a complex restructuring of their economic
systems, in which the profits always flowed back into the “mother country.” Ania
Loomba provides a succinct definition of colonization as “the takeover of territory,
appropriation of material resources, exploitation of labour and interference with political
and cultural structures of another territory or nation” (11). Be it the exploitation of cotton
in India or fur in the Spokane region in Washington, both illustrate the structure of a
global system that expanded through much of the nineteenth century.
The process of decolonization of subordinated countries and regions is generally
subsumed under the term “postcolonialism”; however, such a generalization of the term
is rife with particular qualifications and contradictions in its temporal and societal
ambiguities. For one, formal decolonization has spanned from the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries in a multitude of countries, including but not limited to New Zealand,
the Americas, Australia, and South Africa (Loomba 12). It is impossible, then, to
specifically locate “postcolonialism” in the temporal sense, as every colony was
19
decolonized in a different way at a different time. In addition, the term “postcolonialism”
can not simply be defined as the subordinated being liberated from colonialism, since
previously existing social hierarchies within the colonized countries were not only
maintained, but oftentimes strengthened through colonialism, as illustrated previously
between the educated Indian elite and the peasantry. Aboriginal peoples such as in
Australia, North America, and Canada illuminate yet another complexity within the scope
of the term “postcolonial”; given that they have yet to reclaim their territory and achieve
self-government, scholars often argue that such regions be examined under a colonial,
rather than postcolonial, light. As Ania Loomba notes, by the 1930s colonialism
dominated 84.6 percent of the land surface of the earth (19), a clear indication of the
impossibility of universalizing the way in which colonialism manifested itself throughout
the world. In light of these complexities and contradictions, it is necessary to approach
postcolonialism not as a universal, linear process, but rather, as the scholar Jorge de Alva
suggests, “a multiplicity of often conflicting and frequently parallel narratives” (qtd. in
Loomba 16). He argues that since many still suffer from the deleterious effects of
colonialism in once-colonized countries, it is important to disengage formal
decolonization from postcolonialism. In his essay, “When Was ‘The Postcolonial?’”
Stuart Hall summarizes the precautions necessary in applying the term succinctly:
Those deploying the concept must attend…carefully to its discriminations
and specificities and/or establish more clearly at what level of abstraction
the term is operating and how this avoids a spurious
‘universalisation’…Not all societies are ‘post-colonial’ in the same
20
way…But this does not mean they are not ‘post-colonial’ in any way.
(245)
Hall encourages approaching postcolonialism as a process that takes into account the
volatile way in which it is applied to a multitude of situations.
Given the ambiguity of the term “postcolonialism,” it becomes increasingly
difficult to view the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized as simply
binary, as the inner hierarchies within colonized societies illustrates. In Subalternity and
Representation, John Beverly adds that “It appears and develops as an academic practice
in a contemporary setting in which globalization is producing new patterns of domination
and exploitation and reinforcing older ones” (28). If the function of postcolonialism and,
in turn, Subaltern Studies, cannot be binary, how, then, should they be approached? It is
first necessary to return to Guha’s idea of binarism inherent in the subaltern/hegemonic
relationship in order to understand how Homi K. Bhabha negates this binarism through
his concept of hybridity.
21
Ambivalence, Hybridity, Mimicry: The Deconstruction of Binarism, the Emergence
of Subversion
The presence of difference, the metonymic presence
Colonial and postcolonial discourses approach the function and the process of “othering”
that necessarily emerges in the relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. It is
argued that in order for colonialism to have functioned effectively, it became necessary in
European thought to create a cultural, political, and social binarism between the
hegemony and the subaltern, rendering a dualism of superior/inferior and
modern/backwards that Abdul JanMohamed has called the “Manichaen allegory” (qtd. in
Loomba 91). Is the relationship between the Occident and the Orient actually binary, or
are there other fundamental processes that operate within oriental discourse to undermine
such a Manichaen dualism? Homi K. Bhabha, a leading scholar in postcolonial and
subaltern studies, argues that the relationship is, in fact, not binary; in effect, colonial
regimes fail to create a “fixity in the ideological construction of otherness” (Bhabha 66),
thus rendering the relationship unstable. Because that relationship is unstable, as is
proved in his analysis of “stereotypical discourse,” notions such as “ambivalence,”
“hybridity,” and “mimicry” that illustrate the consciousness of the colonized must be
included when analyzing the colonial encounter.
Many discourses, particularly Bhabha’s, have emerged from the field of
postcolonial studies that seek to understand and explain the notion of stereotypes that
form the basis for colonialist ideology and theory. Bhabha’s project, found primarily in
his text, The Location of Culture, examines how stereotypical discourse remains as the
basis for colonialism and how the engagement with this discourse on behalf of the
22
subaltern offers a new way of approaching stereotypes. The locus of the stereotype lies
within what Bhabha refers to as ambivalence, that is, “ambivalence of the object of
colonial discourse – that ‘otherness’ which is at once an object of desire and derision, an
articulation of difference contained within the fantasy of origin and identity” (67).
In examining these “stereotypical knowledges” (67), this ambivalence is revealed:
the stereotype of the Other that is “already known” is at once assumed to be both fixed
and in constant need of repetition to maintain such a fixity. In order to maintain this
presumed “fixity,” the hegemony views the colonized subjects seek through what David
Huddart refers to as “normalizing judgements.” However, according to Bhabha, these
normalizing judgements must be seen as “…modes of differentiation, realized as multiple,
cross-cutting determinations, polymorphous and perverse, always demanding a specific
calculation to their effects” (67). Here, Bhabha urges that every stereotype must be
examined through a unique lens that casts away normalizing judgements and individually
examines its effects on both the colonizer and the colonized. Edward Said refers to the
tension between fixity and volatility, particularly in the scope of colonial theory, as the
tension between synchronic and diachronic visions, the idea that everything stays
essentially the same versus that everything continually changes. The negation of
absolutes (the synchronic vision) is critical when approaching colonial discourse, which
Bhabha defines as such:
It is an apparatus that turns on the recognition and disavowal of
racial/cultural/historical differences. Its predominant strategic function is
the creation of a space for a ‘subject people’ through the production of
knowledges in terms of which surveillance is exercised and a complex
23
form of pleasure/unpleasure is incited. It seeks authorization for its
strategies by the production of knowledges of colonizer and colonized
which are stereotypical but antithetically evaluated. The objective of
colonial discourse is to construe the colonized as a population of
degenerate types on the basis of racial origin, in order to justify conquest
and to establish systems of administration. (70)
In effect, then, colonial discourse claims to deny any chance of change within a fixed
identity, and it is the notion of the stereotype that functions to enable the hegemony to
control the colonized, due to innate superiority. Bhabha suggests, however, that this
assumed authority depends on the assumption that the relationship between the colonized
and the colonizer is a binary one. He cites Said in this case, explaining that it was the
European conception of such a dualism that allowed them to advance so “securely” upon
the Orient. Indeed, imperialist Europe relied upon the Other in order to provide a context
against which to define its own identity, as Paul Abbott notes of repression: “It must
sustain itself presence of the very difference which is also its object” (qtd. in Bhabha 79).
It has thus been established that stereotypical discourse is maintained by an
assumed “presence of difference.” If such binarism is so necessary in perpetuating
colonial discourse, it may then be argued that deconstructing it into hybridity, or a
“partial presence,” poses a powerful threat to its stability. Bhabha refers to this
subversive destabilization of colonial power as “mimicry,” quoting the psychoanalyst
Jacques Lacan to support his claim:
Mimicry reveals something in so far as it is distinct from what might be
called an itself that is behind. The effect of mimicry is camouflage…It is
24
not a question of harmonizing with the background, but against a mottled
background, of becoming mottled – exactly like the technique of
camouflage practised in human warfare. (qtd. in Bhabha 85).
Importantly, the idea of mimicry does not refer to mere imitation, nor does it assume
assimilation into the dominant culture. Rather, to Bhabha, it is an exaggeration of a
copying of the ideas, language, manners, and culture of the dominant culture that
differentiates it from mere imitation: it is “repetition with difference,” as Huddart
describes it (57). There is, then, a sense of mockery to mimicry, giving this “sly civility,”
as Bhabha would call it, a particular comic quality. Bhabha asserts that mimicry is an “an
ironic compromise” (86) between the synchronic and diachronic visions of history that
Said mentions. To Bhabha,
Colonial mimicry is the desire for a reformed, recognizable Other, as a
subject of difference that is almost the same, but not quite. Which is to say,
that the discourse of mimicry is constructed around an ambivalence. (86)
Now, if the colonized is “almost the same, but not quite,” the dualistic notion of
superior/inferior that supports stereotypical discourse begins to break down. Bhabha
assumes that this ambivalence is, surprisingly, inherent within colonial discourse itself,
since it opens the door for its culture and language to be reinterpreted by the colonized.
Of course, this situation is, on behalf of the colonizer, paradoxical and unconsciousness
in nature, though it nevertheless makes mimicry possible.
What should be emphasized here is how, through mimicry, the subaltern can take
advantage of the appropriation inherent in colonial discourse and use it to affect a “partial
presence,” rather than the “presence of difference,” that can marginalize the stereotype
25
and, in turn, colonial authority. “Mimicry,” asserts Bhabha, “is thus the sign of a double
articulation; a complex strategy of reform, regulation and discipline, which ‘appropriates’
the Other as it visualizes power” (86). By being aware of how stereotypical discourse
operates and the way in which it seeks to appropriate the Other, the subaltern is able to,
through this “double articulation” of awareness, reclaim the agency in representation. In
this sense, mimicry must be seen as a new mode of representation that is at once
subversive and powerful. It is precisely the negation to be both the Other and to
assimilate that affords the subaltern its power. Essentially, then, mimicry is a mockery of
colonial authority, as it “marginalizes the monumentality of history, quite simply mocks
its power to be a model, that power which supposedly makes it imitable” (88). Thus, it is
“at once a resemblance and menace” (86); that is, it is a menace to the dualism that
sustains discriminatory discourse.
Sherman Alexie’s story, “The Search Engine” in Ten Little Indians strongly illustrates
how the colonized characters in the stories consciously engage in mimicry as a form of
subversion by using it to their advantage. However, it is first important to emphasize that
the story itself articulates the deleterious effects of colonialism on the Spokane Indian
tribe, so much so that the boundaries of identity become blurred and ambiguous.
Colonization, resulting in an ambiguity of identity, is what ultimately allows the
characters to transcend the binarism of appropriation and engage in cultural subversion.
Furthermore, it is precisely because of this articulation of colonialism that colonial
mimicry is applicable, as is exampled in this particular passage:
26
She [Corliss] knew Indians were obsessed with authenticity. Colonized,
genocided, exiled, Indians formed their identities by questioning the
identities of other Indians. Self-hating, self-doubting, Indians turned their
tribes into nationalistic sects. But who could blame us our madness?
Corliss thought. We are people exiled by other exiles, by Puritans,
Pilgrims, Protestants, and all of those other crazy white people thrown out
of a crazier Europe. We who were once indigenous to this land must
immigrate into its culture. (Alexie 40)
Corliss, the main character in “The Search Engine,” is an intelligent Spokane Indian
college student who is powerfully conscious of her Spokane identity and how she must
use her identity to her advantage to reap the benefits of the surrounding dominant, white
culture. The story begins humorously, yet provocatively: Corliss embarrasses a white
male student by making light of his ignorance of W.H. Auden. Read under a colonial
discourse, the scene is strikingly comical: Corliss, a Spokane Indian, reigns dominant in
the field of white male poets, contrasted with the white student. Her knowledge is by no
means imitative; on the contrary, she uses the knowledge found in white men’s literature
(Auden) in order to humiliate the white student. Thus, Corliss represents a definitive
agency in her understanding of white culture (in this case, literature).
Corliss deeply understands the necessity of mimicry for her own benefit,
particularly in the matter of her education. She engages in SAT courses and the like to
earn herself scholarship money. Likewise, she asks the instructors at the local preparatory
school that she cannot afford for the syllabi so that she might submerge herself in an
expensive, “white” education. Corliss, however, does not see her requests by any means
27
as degrading; she is clearly conscious of how she benefits from the dominant culture by
way of mimicry: “She’d been a resourceful thief, a narcissistic Robin Hood who stole a
rich education from white people and kept it” (Alexie 5). Furthermore, Corliss has a
strong grasp on the stereotypical knowledges that forever seek to retain a synchronic hold
on the colonized versus the colonizer. As mentioned above, however, Bhabha warns
against assuming all stereotypes be fixed, and demands “a specific calculation to their
effects.” Thus, when examining the specific effects of the stereotypes surrounding Native
Americans, Corliss is undoubtedly aware of how these effects affect her:
White people, no matter how smart, were too romantic about Indians.
White people looked at the Grand Canyon, Niagara Falls, the full moon,
newborn babies, and Indians with the same goofy sentimentalism. Being a
smart Indian, Corliss had always taken advantage of this romanticism, but
that didn’t mean she wanted to share the refrigerator with it. If white folks
assumed she was serene and spiritual and wise simply because she was an
Indian, and thought she was special based on those mistaken assumptions,
then Corliss saw no reason to contradict them. The world is a competitive
place, and a poor Indian girl needs all the advantages she can get. So if
George W. Bush, a man who possessed no remarkable distinctions other
than being the son of a former U.S. president, could also become president,
then Corliss figured she could certainly benefit from positive ethnic
stereotypes and not feel any guilt about it. For five centuries, Indians were
slaughtered because they were Indians, so if Corliss received a free coffee
now and again from the local free-range lesbian Indiophile, who could
28
possibly find the wrong in that? In the twenty first century, any Indian
with a decent vocabulary wielded enormous social power… (Alexie 11)
It is clear that Corliss is actively engaged in taking advantage of stereotypical discourse,
as she defends her interests by likening them to the flaws inherent in the dominant culture
in which she lives. She directly criticizes the American choice to elect George Bush as
president, and within that criticism she argues that one has the power to benefit from
historical traditions, be it, in this case, politics; in her own, ethnic stereotypes. She is thus
mimicking a particularly American tradition in order to expand it to include her own
interpretation of history. She is decidedly cognizant of the way in which both the
traditionally negative stereotypes of Spokane Indians as needy and the guilt conscience of
white Americans can become transmuted to serve Corliss’ benefit: after all, she receives
free coffee. It is important to make the distinction, however, between Corliss’ profiting
from ethnic stereotypes and her encouraging a continuation of the colonial idea that
Native Americans are, say, “needy.” Her awareness of her position seems to rest solely in
the former, as there is a strong disengagement with the “local free-range Indiophile.”
Corliss well understands why she receives free coffee, yet subversively ignores the why
and, inversely, transforms it into a resounding why not. By mimicking both traditionally
“white” and ethnic stereotypes, Corliss succeeds in bettering herself from both.
Assuming that Corliss’ mimicry is a conscious act of resistance that proves
successful in her benefiting her own well-being, the rigidity of the binary relationship
between the colonizer and the colonized must then be necessarily negated. The idea of
the diaspora and its hegemonic counterpart as a fixed relation, in which both states of
consciousness are mutually exclusive, is an argument supported by Guha and other
29
leading scholars in the field. Guha states in his essay, “On Some Aspects of the
Historiography of Colonial India,” “We recognize of course that subordination cannot be
understood except as one of the constitutive terms in a binary relationship of which the
other is dominance.” It assumes that the existence of these two modes of existence, rather
than being relational, is inherently ontological in nature. The claim that this relation must
be binary is negated by Bhabha, as he argues in his book, Nation and Narration,
The complex strategies of cultural identification and discursive address
that function in the name of ‘the people’ or ‘the nation’ are more hybrid in
the articulation of cultural differences and identifications – gender, race, or
class – that can be represented in any hierarchical or binary structuring of
social antagonism.
John Beverly cites the scholar Sara Suleri in her book The Rhetoric of English India, who
argues that argues that this binary set of relations is “an inherently Eurocentric strategy”
(qtd. in Beverly 86). John Beverly, in his text Subalternity and Representation, considers
the differences in Bhabha’s and Guha’s theories, but ultimately asks, “Isn’t the whole
point…to undo the binary taxonomies that were instituted by previous forms of colonial
or class power?” (87) Beverly also cites Pat Seed to support his claim that binarism need
be negated:
Those unwilling to countenance [the subalternist] critique of nationalism
and national identity – their own and others – instead seem anxious – and
for me it registers as a kind of anxiety – to preserve essentialisms, by
denying hybridity, diasporas and other contextual remakings of identities
30
precisely because such critiques contribute to a fundamental remaking of
the conception of both national and political identity. (qtd. in Beverly 86)
Bhabha, however, seems to believe that, like ambivalence being paradoxically embedded
in colonial theory, both the role of people and history are fundamentally ungrounded, and
that such an inherently arbitrary state must lend itself to hybridity. In his essay,
“DissemiNation,” Bhabha argues that people are both the “objects” and “subjects” of
their own history, quoted at length here:
…people must be thought in double-time; the people are the historical
“objects” of a nationalist pedagogy, giving the discourse an authority that
is based on the pregiven or constituted historical origin or event; the
people are also the “subjects” of a process of signification that must erase
any prior or originary presence of the nation-people to demonstrate the
prodigious, living principle of the people as that continual process by
which the national life is redeemed and signified as a repeating and
reproductive process. (Bhabha 297)
To correlate Bhabha’s postulation with Corliss, she must considered as both belonging to
a tradition in which her people were the objects of a “nationalist pedagogy,” or the
historical narrative told by the white colonizers, as well as being the subject of a more
universal history that repeatedly deconstructs traditional significations and transforms
them into objects of its own agency.
The other prominent figure in “The Search Engine,” Harlan Atwater, presents
another, though different, illustration of the subversion inherent in colonial mimicry. He
31
is a supposed Spokane Indian poet whose work, In the Reservation of My Mind, Corliss
finds thirty years after its publication. Coming upon an interview with Atwater, Corliss
reads that he seeks to form a hybrid genre of poetry, drawing his influences on both white
and nonwhite poets: “so I guess I’m trying to combine it all,” Atwater says, “the white
classicism with the dark-skinned rebellion” (Alexie 22). Before Atwater is even directly
introduced, then, his use of mimicry is alluded to in his assertion of rebellion, since
mimicry, to Bhabha, is considered to be “a difference or recalcitrance” (86). His selfproclaimed hybrid literature aside, Corliss comes to discover, upon contacting him, that
while he is biologically a Spokane Indian, he was raised off the reservation, or the rez, by
white parents. Though it seems in his poetry that he is deeply aware of what it means to
be Spokane and to live on the reservation, he himself admits that he is a fraud and that
mimicry of indigenity is just as possible as mimicry of colonial authority: “Indian is easy
to fake. People have been faking it for five hundred years” (40), alluding to the five
hundred years of Native American history. The implications of mimicry of indigenity
will be returned to later, but it is first important to examine how Atwater uses the
stereotype of Indian identity to his benefit amidst a white culture. By growing up in a
predominantly white culture and thus being aware of the romanticization of Native
Americans, Atwater understands how easy it is to deceive white people, admitting, “these
white people, they thought my poems were real. They thought I had lived the life I was
writing about” (42). Not only does Atwater use a Spokane identity as a way to
distinguish himself from other aspiring poets, either: his capability for deception is
effective enough to elicit compassion and, ultimately, sex from “Star Girl,” a young
woman described as white, progressive, and intelligent. When asked to describe his
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“pain,” that is, the “pain” of being Indian, Atwater effectively mimes the role, describing
the outrageous poverty rampant on the reservation. Atwater crosses cultural and
stereotypical boundaries precisely because he can; his mimesis of Indian identity allows
him to affect what Bhabha refers to as “metonymy of presence.” Bhabha’s definition of
the “metonymy of presence” is worth quoting in full here, as it explains in full the nature
of Atwater’s subversion:
Those inappropriate signifiers of colonial discourse – the difference
between being English and being Anglicized; the identity between
stereotypes which, through repetition, also become different; the
discriminatory identities constructed across traditional cultural norms and
classifications, the Simian Black, the Lying Asiatic – all these are
metonymies of presence. They are strategies of desire in discourse that
make the anomalous representation of the colonized something other than
a process of ‘the return of the repressed,’…These instances of metonymy
are the non-repressive productions of contradictory and multiple belief.
They cross the boundaries of the culture of enunciation through a strategic
confusion of the metaphoric and metonymic axes of the cultural
production of meaning. (Bhabha 89-90)
Atwater’s mimesis may thus be interpreted as a “production” of one particular cultural
meaning; that is, he is aware of Star Girl’s guilt of her ancestor’s colonial past and is, as a
result, able to produce a corresponding cultural enactment. He laughs, however, at her
insistence that he “put his pain into her,” musing, “he’d never made love to a woman who
wanted him to take revenge against her for hundreds of years of pain she never caused.
33
Who could make love with that kind of historical and hysterical passion?” (Alexie 45).
Here is yet another example of a contradictory production, as Atwater simultaneously
assumes a different perspective in his negation of colonial history that makes Star Girl
feel so guilty in the first place. He certainly acknowledges why she feels guilty
considering the colonization of Native Americans, yet he genuinely disavows the
perpetuation of this colonial discourse, of oppressor/oppressed, of binarism. Atwater’s
ability to simultaneously engage in and negate the “Indian” stereotype is thus a lucid
affirmation of mimicry being the “ironic compromise” to the relationship of the Saidian
concept of synchronous and diachronous histories, as mentioned earlier.
Alexie’s detailing of the sex scene between Atwater and Star Girl is the last,
though the most powerful, example of a subaltern reclamation to agency since, unlike
other instances within this particular narrative, it is the most direct. Atwater enters her,
and as the penile symbol of penetration is, undoubtedly, one of the most universal
metaphors for colonization in psychoanalysis, the scene may very well be read as
representing a resoundingly powerful metaphor of recovered agency. Finally, in
penetrating her, Atwater is able to subject to the universalizing anonymity inherent in the
colonizer appropriating the Other; that is, in stereotypical discourse: “He looked down at
the back of her head, her face buried in the pillow, and he understood she could be any
white woman” (46). In their final interaction, Atwater repeatedly asks Star Girl to say his
name which, in fact, is not his real name. As she does so, he thinks, “She was wrong and
didn’t know she was wrong” (46). Atwater’s possession of power, in this instance, may
be correlated with the Michel Foucault’s notion that knowledge is always inextricably
connected to the operations of power. It was precisely this connection between
34
knowledge and power which formed the basis for Edward Said’s conception of colonial
discourse, known as “Orientalism,” to be discussed later. What is thus important about
Star Girl’s being wrong and not knowing that she is wrong is that is represents the
recovery of subaltern authority that Guha had referred to as inversion, that is, agency in
reverse.
Deconstructing binarism further
“Can I Get A Witness?,” another story in Ten Little Indians, is a provocative example of
how Alexie breaks down colonial binarism and from it produces in his characters a
liberated state of consciousness that is subversive to colonial authority and, being
liberated, even questions traditionally revered ideals held in American patriotism. The
main character, a self-described “parawife and a paramother and a parafriend” (71),
begins to consider her ordinariness and the meaning of her life amidst delusion following
the bombing of a restaurant. “For years, she’d been living a binary life as participant and
eyewitness” (84), her thoughts begin.
Now she lay on the floor of a stranger’s apartment, ambivalent about her
life. Maybe she could lie on that floor forever. Maybe she could ossify or
fossilize. Maybe she could change into a bizarre coffee table. As a piece of
furniture, she might feel valued and useful. (84-5)
It is interesting that Alexie uses the words binary and ambivalent, typically used when
discussing colonial discourse, in describing the main character’s thought process. As a
participant and an eyewitness, she considers the binarism inherent in a normal, objective
existence; she participates in culture and what is expected of her, and she watches how
35
culture manifests itself in her life. What, precisely, is meant by “culture” in this instance,
and how is it possible to prove that the words binary and ambivalent are referring to it
here? Consider the way in which, upon feeling ambivalent about her life, she thinks of
the possibility of transforming, of ossifying, of fossilizing. In this state of transmutable
consciousness, she turns her thoughts to September Eleventh and approaches the event
and the nationalistic patriotism that followed provocatively and (what might to the
American Government considered to be) dangerously. She thinks with disgust of how her
husband puts flags in the windows after the event: “What kind of Indians put twenty-two
flags in their windows?” (91) she asks, referring to the propaganda after the event as
“grief porn.” She cannot believe that her husband and her sons have become patriotic, as
she considers it this way: “How could any Indian put on an U.S. military uniform and not
die of toxic irony?” (91) She thinks it ironic that Native Americans be patriotic because
she considers the years of exploitation and oppression on behalf of precisely those who
now demand patriotism. She is thus strongly conscious of how Native Americans,
historically treated by their colonial oppressors as subpersons, are now encouraged to
share the same nationalistic sentiment towards September Eleventh, which she rejects.
She approaches the tragedy of September eleventh from a radical perspective:
Let’s say twelve hundred men died that day. How many of those guys
were cheating on their wives? A few hundred, probably. How many of
them were beating their kids? One hundred more, right? Don’t you think
one of those bastards was raping his kids? Don’t you think, somewhere in
the towers, there was an evil bastard who sneaked into his daughter’s
bedroom at night and raped her in the ass? (89)
36
Evidently, the main character is able, in an ambivalent state of mind, to negate the
traditional values esteemed in American patriotism. She recognizes how Native
Americans have been excluded from the colonial hegemony in the past, and she thus sees
the irony in now being asked to participate in it in light of September eleventh. Indeed,
her approach to the tragedy strongly disaffirms the nationalistic response expected of
Americans, so much so that her view might be considered dangerous in light of the
extreme sensitivity to terrorism following the incident. “Nobody is innocent, right?” she
continues. “But after the Trade Center, it was all about the innocent victims, all the
innocent victims, and I kept thinking – I knew one of those guys was raping his daughter.
Raping her” (92), she concludes. Ultimately, her radical point of view should be
considered as the product of a liberated state of consciousness that allows her to view the
tragedy (and, in a larger scope, her world) not in the traditional dualistic sense of
right/wrong, good/evil, but in an ambivalent way that understands that victims are
sometimes villains, as well.
Further subversion: recovering agency through Orientalism
“The Search Engine” and “Can I Get A Witness?” have so far illustrated ways in which
the subversion that emerges from a transgression of binarism in colonial discourse can
manifest itself, be it through the subaltern appropriating the stereotype of the “Other” for
their own benefit or negating revered ideals in “American” thought. The story, “Estelle
Walks Above,” finds a strong correlation with “The Search Engine” in the way in which
the characters take advantage of “Otherness”; that is, the romanticization of the Indian
stereotype. It is appropriate at this time to consider Edward Said’s discourse on the
37
romanticization of “the Other” in order to be able to better explain what, precisely, the
characters Corliss and Estelle in “The Search Engine” and “Estelle Walks Above,”
respectively, are taking advantage of for their own personal benefit. Furthermore, while
“Estelle Walks Above,” is more critical of the white hegemony than “The Search
Engine,” both stories present a critical attitude not only of the hegemony but their
indigenous culture as well. The consequences of their being critical of both cultures are
magnanimous, for they allow the characters to affect a metonymy of presence not only in
their interactions with hegemony, but with indigenity as well. In this sense, then, they are
allowed a complete range of movement in their cultural consciousness that liberates them
from any given cultural stronghold. They thus emerge as hybrid subversives in both
realms of culture, capable of recovering agency in both a hegemonic and indigenous
sense.
In his highly renowned and controversial work, Orientalism (1978), Palestinian
American scholar and intellectual Edward Said contributed a groundbreaking discourse
on understanding how the Other, or the subaltern, has historically, culturally, and
politically been dominated, represented, and romanticized by the Western hegemony.
Orientalism is not about non-Western cultures, or “the Orient,” as Said puts; it is about
how the Orient was depicted and interpreted through Western interpretation. Said defines
Orientalism as
…certain cultural forms predominate over others, just as certain ideas are
more influential than others; the form of this cultural leadership is what
Gramsci has identified as hegemony….It is hegemony, or rather the result
38
of cultural hegemony at work, that gives Orientalism the durability and the
strength I have been speaking about so far. (7)
It was the “knowledge” held by the West over the Orient that was able to maintain power
over the Orient.
What, precisely, is Orientalism? Said asserts that there are several spheres in
which the definition of Orientalism may be found, all interdependent; first, that
Orientalism is the way in which the West is able to distinguish itself as apart from the
Occident, referred by Ania Loomba as a “dialectic between self and other” (45), in order
to create the binary relationship between superiority and inferiority. Thus, Orientalism, an
imagining of “the Other,” became for the West a way in which to build up a national
identity, by creating a relationship of binary oppositions. In this way, the discourse of
Orientalism is not actually contingent on “the Orient” itself, since it is the West’s attempt
to portray the Other in a way that supports its premise of cultural superiority, not to
actually depict it truthfully and without bias. In effect, Edward Said has produced a
“discourse” about the Orient; that is, a way in which to holistically examine the political,
literary, scientific, and artistic contributions of Europe in describing and depicting “the
Orient.” Ania Loomba articulates the importance of analyzing such discourses in light of
understanding postcolonialism at large, asserting,
Discourse analysis…makes it possible to trace connections between the
visible and the hidden, the dominant and the marginalised, ideas and
institutions. It allows us to see how power works through language,
literature, culture, and the institutions which regulate our daily lives. (45)
39
In turn, Said offers a comprehensive definition of Orientalism, acknowledging both its
historical and cultural scope:
Taking the late eighteenth century as a very roughly defined starting point
Orientalism can be discussed and analyzed as the corporate institution for
dealing with the Orient – dealing with it by making statements about it,
authorizing views of it, describing it, by teaching it, settling it, ruling over
it: in short, Orientalism as a Western style for dominating, restructuring,
and having authority over the Orient. (3)
Orientalism is fundamental in understanding how the Other has historically been
interpreted and dominated by the West; what needs to be elaborated here, however, is
how the Other, in turn, interprets and interacts with the “othering” inherent in Orientalism.
The character Corliss in “The Search Engine” has already illustrated how she uses her
identity as a Spokane woman to her benefit in receiving an education, free coffee, and so
forth. Likewise, the story “Estelle Walks Above” is a powerful portrayal of how the
subaltern is romanticized as the Other by the cultural hegemony, and how, in turn, this
same romanticization is reclaimed by the subaltern for the sake of their own benefit. The
narrator’s mother even aggregates the romanticization by changing her name from Estelle
Miller to Estelle Walks Above in order to present herself as more “native” to her friends.
Estelle is not only aware of the romanticizing on behalf of her white friends; she is aware
of how to seize it to her own advantage. One might argue that the changing of her name
indicates submission, rather than subversion, to stereotypical discourse; however, as seen
in Bhabha’s work it is imperative that the subaltern grasps the original stereotype and
40
deconstructs it in order to destabilize and undermine its original meaning as a way to
repossess self-representation. Estelle’s son remarks of her name change,
She…felt shortchanged by her own colonized moniker, so she simply
changed her name when she left the reservation…my mother reinvented
herself when she landed on these democratic shores. (Alexie 136)
Estelle is thus able to capitalize on the romanticization on behalf of white America of
“poetic” Indian names as she sees fit for her own benefit.
Alexie presents another approach by examining the way in which Estelle and her
son take advantage of this romanticization. They are poignantly aware of their being seen
as the Other, and decisively deride these “needy white women” (Alexie 145) for their
hopeless imitation of all things aboriginal. Estelle’s son describes his mother’s reaction to
such sentimentalism:
My mother went to college on scholarships funded by white people; she
was a teaching assistant to a white professor; she borrowed money from
white people who didn’t have much money to lend; our white landlord let
us pay half rent for a whole year and never asked for the rest; my favorite
baby-sitter was a white woman with red hair.
“White people!” My mother should have sung their praises; I
should sing their praises! But we didn’t sing for them. Indians are not
supposed to sing for white people. Does the antelope sing honor songs for
the lion? (139; emphasis added)
As with Corliss, Estelle, fully aware of her being regarded as subaltern by the hegemony,
takes advantage of the kindness bestowed upon her for her own personal gain. This is, in
41
effect, a directly subversive act that answers Said’s question of how the Other can
possibly reclaim representation by being depicted precisely as “the Other,” since, he says,
“The relationship between Occident and Orient is a relationship of power, of domination,
of varying degrees of a complex hegemony” (5). In Estelle’s case, as with Corliss, this
“relationship of power” is inverted: both characters recover their cultural agency by, to
use an appropriate colloquialism, “playing up to” the hegemony. Cultural resistance, then,
to recall Bhabha, is not always necessarily defined merely by resistance; rather, it is
resistance through mockery, derision, and mimicry on behalf of the subaltern. Indeed,
Estelle and Corliss’ resistance certainly illustrates “varying degrees of a complex
hegemony” that form the possibility for hybrid states of consciousness. “Does the
antelope sing honor songs for the lion?” asks Alexie in a biting rebuttal of thankfulness.
In the second paragraph, Estelle knows she has benefited from cultural dominance, yet
refuses to be thankful. Her refusal is a powerful example of how seizing “white people’s
goodness” and the romanticization it implies need not be interpreted as submission. Her
response is far from submissive, in fact.
Through characters like Estelle and Corliss, then, Alexie implies a fundamental
understanding, be it consciously or unconsciously, of stereotypical discourse and
Orientalism, and produces an inverse and subversive narrative out of this knowledge base.
In addition to inverting romanticization, Alexie also reverses the representation (or
misrepresentation, for that matter) of the Other by shifting the perspective from the
hegemonic perspective to that of the subaltern. The basis for portraying the Other, says
Said, is representation; the hegemony “speaks for” it. In turn, the basis for such
representation is what Said refers to as “exteriority”: “The exteriority of the
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representation is always governed by some version of the truism that if the Orient could
represent itself, it would; since it cannot, the representation does the job, for the West,
and faute de mieux, for the poor Orient” (21). Of course, Said’s approach to the
romanticization and depiction of the Orient is deliberately biting in its sarcasm; he speaks
on behalf of the colonizer in order to illustrate what Orientalism has meant to the Oriental
discourse found in the hegemonic institutions that support and sustain it, be it
linguistically, anthropologically, biologically, and so forth. Having defined Orientalism
on a multitude of levels, he then begins to systematically deconstruct representation,
postulating that a true representation of anything is impossible, an idea that he bases in
Nietzsche’s philosophy. Representation and misrepresentation, then, must be understood
not as absolutes but as unfixed examples of cultural opinion. He insists that both are
volatile in their scope and interpretation, saying that “we must be prepared, to accept the
fact that a representation is eo ipso implicated, intertwined, embedded, interwoven with a
great many other things besides the truth, which is itself a representation” (21).
Orientalism, he concludes, is a discourse of misrepresentation.
Again, Alexie reverses misrepresentation by shifting the Oriental discourse from
the authority to the subaltern perspective, as is illustrated in Estelle and her son’s
description of her white friends. “My mother both loved and resented the attention she
received from her white-women friends” (Alexie 137), Estelle’s son concludes. Her
reaction is, of course, another example of ambivalence inherent in the subaltern
consciousness. The son continues, “In their lives away from my mother, these women
were lawyers, doctors, teachers, parole officers, chefs, and social workers, but they turned
into children in her presence” (137; emphasis added). Here, again, is an inversion of the
43
oppressor/oppressed relationship, as white women act like “children” in their
romanticizing of the Indian stereotype. While romanticization of the Other has been, in
Orientalist discourse, traditionally indicative of the subjugation of the subaltern, it is in
this case reversed, for it is Estelle’s white friends, not Estelle, who are made out to be the
fools. In addition, Estelle reverses the notion of the stereotype of the Other, as she lists a
slew of biting generalizations she considers indicative of “white people” To name a few:
Twenty-seven-year-old white men look exactly the same as three-monthold white babies of either gender…White men are endlessly creative
because they’re so damn bored. Shakespeare and golf were invented for
the same reason. Hitler and Pee-wee Herman were motivated by the same
existential dread and masculine insecurity. Hugh Hefner and Napoleon
should be flavors of ice cream. World domination and the complete line of
Sears power tools are equally important goals…White men are terrified of
being better and kinder and more intelligent men than their fathers;
therefore, they invented nostalgia and have canonized slave owners like
Thomas Jefferson and George Washington…If you want to make a white
man cry, despite the amount of time it’s been since he last wept aloud,
then all you have to do is employ “baseball” and “father” in three
consecutive sentences. (143-4)
Her generalizations and her own crafted stereotypes offer a provocatively fresh
perspective of a dominant group of people who are traditionally considered superior to
cultural “othering.” Of course, the hegemony regarding the “Other” through a
stereotypical lens lays down the fundamental groundwork in the classical colonial
44
relationship, but what happens to this relationship when it is inverted? More importantly,
how must the relations of power be understood if they are not precisely “agency in
reverse,” but rather profoundly more complex and ambiguous in their scope? After all, in
the traditional colonial relationship, the hegemony regards the subaltern but is not
considered to be regarded in turn: the interaction is one-way in its nature. Estelle’s
interactions with the hegemony, however, are certainly not one-way, as she is friends
with “those needy white women” who think that she’s “magic.” Her relationship with her
friends, then, is two-way directionally, as both engage with one another in a way that
might imply that the conception of a colonial relationship is all but absent. It is Estelle’s
stereotyping white people, however, that proves that power relations are, in fact, present,
be they inverted and ambiguous. What is important of their presence is that it illustrates
that out of hybridity, there emerges on behalf of the subaltern the capacity for an
“othering” far more powerful than its classical predecessor, since the subaltern has access
to that which they “other” through cultural mimicry, a perspective that the classical
colonizer had, of course, been denied. Having access to this knowledge is, as mentioned
previously, an affirmation of the Foucaultian concept of how knowledge is intricately
linked to power. Being afforded this knowledge of the white hegemony allows Estelle so
see the contradictions inherent in the “goodness” of white liberals; she asserts this
awareness strongly, listing a variety of examples. She remarks, for example,
Your average white liberal would die before she sat down to a raccoon and
squirrel dinner with some illiterate shotgun-shack Arkansas white folks
who believe the Good Lord is their one and only savior. But that same
white liberal will happily eat fried SPAM and white bread with a Lakota
45
Sioux shaman who never graduated from high school, and give him a
highly transcendent blow job after dinner. (139)
Estelle’s awareness of white contrariety thus presents an example of how she is able to
deconstruct and negate white power; by affecting a metonymic presence in their company,
she is able to observe its contradictions and its flaws.
Reclaiming the stereotype
What is to be said, then, of a reclamation of agency that emerges out of the subaltern’s
inversion stereotypical knowledges? Is Estelle’s capability of “othering” the hegemony
positive in its scope, or is it simply a display of the capacity for all humans, be they
hegemonic or diasporic in their position, to stereotype and marginalize whom they
consider to be “the Other”? While it has thus far been singularly illustrated that Estelle is
capable of engaging in “othering”, it is essential to consider holistically the cognizance of
cultural contradictions and stereotypes that abound not only in the hegemony, but in
one’s own cultural sphere, as well. In all of the stories analyzed here, this dual
cognizance coexists in tandem in every instance in which the hegemony is criticized,
stereotyped, mocked, and “othered,” and it is in this way that the characters’ capability of
“othering” is afforded profound legitimacy. The characters do not simply negate
particular Native American stereotypes. On the contrary, they engage in them in a variety
of ways, be it through simple recognition, humor, agreement, anger, or embarrassment;
they do not, however, negate the existence of their stereotypes, regardless of the value
judgement they may make of them. Before white hypocrisy is even mentioned in “Estelle
Walks Above”, for example, the narrator makes this self-deprecating joke about Native
46
Americans: “Q: What’s the difference between an Indian reservation and a racist, sexist,
homophobic, white-trash logging town populated entirely with the mutated children of
married second cousins? A: The Indians have braids” (126). It is interesting that the
“joke” is told by a Spokane Indian, though it should not be read simply as selfdeprecation for the sake of self-deprecation; rather, it is representative of the narrator’s
belief that such stereotypes that are not always necessarily false. In fact, it is more
powerful that the narrator humorously makes mention of such a stereotype, as it exudes a
strong sense of cultural consciousness that at once allows him to move beyond Native
American stereotypes and to make critical assumptions about white culture, as well. It
has been illustrated thus far how Corliss and Estelle use romanticization for their own
personal gains, but it also important to remember that these characters do not simply
blindly embrace the opportunity without considering the absurdity of such
romanticization in the first place. The narrator in “Estelle Walks Above,” for example,
remarks,
What is it about Indians that turns otherwise intelligent, interesting, and
capable people into blithering idiots? I don’t think every white person I
meet has the spiritual talents and service commitment of a Jesuit priest,
but white folks often think we Indians are shamanic geniuses. Most
Indians are only poor folks worried about paying the rent and the light bill,
and they usually pray to win the damn lottery. (139)
Thus, while it is apparent that the characters do, in fact, actively embrace the
romanticization of “otherness” in order to subvert the hegemony, they simultaneously
negate the concept itself, as they realize its fundamental ridiculousness. In this sense,
47
then, they are not actually perpetuating the presence of romanticization in colonial
discourse: they embrace its effects for their own benefit, but they do not accept the
legitimacy of its existence. Again, this is yet another affirmation of the ambivalence
embedded in subaltern subversion and power.
In addition, the white hypocrisy that the story describes earlier is immediately
then paralleled with Native American hypocrisy, as well: “My mother and I are the
hostages of colonial contradictions: “1. Liberal white man, you can steal my land as long
as you plant organic peas and carrots in the kidnapped soil! 2. Liberal white woman, you
can practice my religion as long as you teach third grade at the co-op tribal school!” (141;
emphasis added) Colonial is emphasized here to illustrate how both Estelle and her son
are aware of how, in their recovery of agency, their process of doing so is inextricably
linked to their colonial history, which in turn allows them to approach their relationship
with the white hegemony with an important historical context. The inclusion of this
historical context allows for a fluidity in understanding how the traditional, dualistic
colonial relationship has come to transmogrify into its hybrid state that has allowed the
characters in Ten Little Indians to reclaim agency in the first place.
Observing mimicry holistically: double-consciousness
How does this simultaneous state of consciousness, in which subaltern and hegemonic
culture are equally considered, afford the characters in Ten Little Indians the ultimate
range of movement and power in their understanding of their world? This heightened
consciousness may now be explained through W.E.B. Du Bois’ notion of “doubleconsciousness.” In the first chapter of his work, The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois
48
describes “double-consciousness” as the struggle of the Negro around the turn of the
twentieth century to reconcile, rather than sacrifice, his double identity of Negro and
American in order to infuse them into an aware and whole self. While Dubois originally
intended the idea of double-consciousness to apply to the African American situation at
the beginning of the twentieth century, the notion that marginalized members of society
possess the unique ability to live within and between two cultures and two perspectives is
applicable here to the diasporic Spokane Indian community. Bhabha himself developed
his ideas of hybridity and mimicry in part through Du Bois’ work; David Huddart notes
that “Bhabha has developed his ideas from the work of M. M. Bakhtin (1986), Antonio
Gramsci (1971), Hannah Arendt (1951; 1958), W.E.B. Du Bois (1995), and Albert
Memmi (1965; 2000)” (15-16). Du Bois first describes the initial dilemma presented to
those who inhabit two realms of consciousness, that is, their own and the dominant
culture (in this case, the white hegemony). The Negro, he asserts, is
…born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, –
a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see
himself through this revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation,
this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self
through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world
that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,–
an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings;
two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it
from being torn asunder. (3)
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Du Bois’ poignant description of the initial state of those with “double-consciousness” is
quoted at length here in order to understand how his argument is presented first as a
problem, and then as a solution. Note that while the metaphorical “veil” of consciousness
does present the difficult awareness of being regarded with “contempt and pity” by the
hegemony, it is at once a “gift,” as well. In being “gifted” with the understanding of how
the hegemony views the subaltern, the subaltern is thus allowed access into the
hegemonic perspective of the Other and the fears and anxieties that accompany that
perspective. Recall Bhabha’s argument that the hegemony bases its assumption of
superiority on the “presence of difference” of the subaltern, in which the former is
perpetually afflicted with an anxiety to preserve that difference in order to maintain the
power dynamic that they assume to be in a state of fixity. What Du Bois presents as the
solution to the state of being “regarded” and reminded of “twoness,” then, is a retaliatory
awareness on behalf of the subaltern that holistically includes both the hegemonic and
subaltern perspectives. He argues that in order to successfully achieve self-consciousness,
one must “…merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes
neither of the older selves to be lost” (3). The goal of this striving to merge the selves is
to ultimately become “a co-worker in the kingdom of culture” (3). Du Bois’ notion of
double-consciousness, then, may be likened here to Bhabha’s idea that, by deconstructing
the presence of difference through a hybrid state of consciousness, the subaltern may
affect a metonymic presence (that is, a partial presence vis-à-vis the hegemony) in order
to reclaim agency and, subsequently, to subvert and destabilize the presumed authority of
the hegemony. As has been revealed in Ten Little Indian’s characters being highly aware
of their own culture as well as that of the hegemony, it is evident that they embody a
50
sense of double-consciousness that allows them to be “co-workers in the kingdom of
culture.” What is important to consider in both Du Bois’ conception of doubleconsciousness and the consciousness of Alexie’s characters, however, is that the
empowerment found in self-awareness emerges from an historical understanding of the
deleterious effects oppression had in denying the subaltern to partake in societal
institutions, be they academic or political. Du Bois refers to Negros’ awareness of having
suffered under decades of “compulsory ignorance,” or “the simple ignorance of a lowly
people” (5), as the point from which the Negro was able to understand fully his situation
and to transcend it without forgetting historical oppression. As has been illustrated,
Alexie’s characters, too, are aware of the negative effects of colonialism on the Spokane
Indian community. While not directly stated, one might consider the “joke” about Indians
in “Estelle Walks Above,” cited earlier, as an indirect criticism of the effects of white
colonialism and subjugation, as an Indian reservation is likened to a “racist, sexist,
homophobic, white-trash logging town” (126). Thus, in being aware of what the narrator
in “Estelle Walks Above” considers the flaws inherent in both white colonialism and the
contemporary Indian reservation, he illustrates the power afforded in this dual state of
consciousness, as he is able not only affect a mimicry of hegemony, but a mimicry of
indigenity, as well.
Consider once more Corliss in the “The Search Engine,” who understands how
and why she is successful in taking advantage of ethnic stereotypes in order to benefit
from white culture. While she is cynical in her approach to whites and their “white
goodness” (5), she is equally aware and critical of what she considers “typical” Indian
character and behavior. On why she does not live with an Indian roommate, she explains,
51
She didn’t want to live with another Indian because she understood
Indians all too well. If she took an Indian roommate, Corliss knew she’d
soon be taking in the roommate’s cousin, little brother, half uncle, and
long-lost dog, and none of them would contribute anything toward the rent
other than wispy apologies. Indians were used to sharing and called it
tribalism, but Corliss suspected it was another failed form of communism.
Over the last two centuries, Indians had learned how to stand in lines for
food, love, hope, sex, and dreams, but they didn’t know how to step away.
They were good at line-standing and didn’t know if they’d be good at
anything else. (Alexie 9-10)
Corliss’ examination of her own heritage and community may, at first glance, appear
shocking. The assumption is often made that it is those in the dominant culture who view
the subaltern as inferior, though it is often equally those residing in the diaspora itself
who are truly able to cast a bitingly critical eye on their community. As both a Spokane
and an American, Corliss is gifted with the second sight of double-consciousness that
allows her to see the tragedy of the Spokane “through the revelation of the other world”
(5), as Du Bois describes it.
Along with Corliss, all of the characters cited, be they in “The Search Engine,”
“Can I Get A Witness?” and “Estelle Walks Above” have illustrated in their interactions
with the white hegemony how they are able to not only embody Bhabha’s cultural
mimicry of hegemony, but to transcend it to effect a partial presence among their own
native culture, as well. Harlan Atwater, in using a Spokane identity to advance his literary
and romantic appeal, is able to “regard” Star Girl and criticize her “white guilt.” Estelle
52
mimics indigenity as well in changing her last name to “Walks Above,” who also then
proceeds to criticize those “white, needy women.” Corliss, in consciously reaping the
benefits in identifying as “Indian,” arguably criticizes “white goofy romanticism.”
The ability to effect a partial presence among both the hegemony and the diaspora
thus highlights the volatile state of consciousness in which Alexie’s characters dwell. In
being able to mimic and take advantage of either state, the characters ultimately emerge
as individuals who, while cognizant, understanding, and critical of both cultures, are
representative of the ultimate form of subversion, as they dismantle the notion that
cultural awareness is bound in a state of fixity. On the emergence of an individualistic
awareness, it is to Du Bois the “dawning [of] self-consciousness, self-realization, selfrespect. In those somber forests of striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw
himself” (5; emphasis added). Finally, then, Sherman Alexie’s characters in Ten Little
Indians emerge from cultural strictures into the hybrid state of seeing themselves as
exactly as they are: as volatile, as aware, as empowered.
53
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