Bicultural Subjectivity and Modern Native American Identity in Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian

Abstract

The colonial enterprise of Euro-Americans, since its first contact, flourished on the false notions of Indianness, fixating the image of Native Americans as primitive and savages without any claim to civilization or history. This fixity and lack of presence involuntarily led to an absence marked by a lack of identity and subjectivity for the Indians. The current article explores Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian through the theoretical lens of Jana Sequoya, affirming bicultural subjectivity propagated by mixed-blood writers on the nexus of inside-outside as a suitable solution to the paradoxes that constitute Indian identity. Denying the rigid approach of the insularity of cultures, this bicultural work offers the possibility of Indianization of American forms and adaptation and acculturation of those dominant forms that are integral for the advancement of Indians in the modern world. The current research also deduces that such a presence can powerfully combat and confound the discursive dichotomy and representation of Indians as the binarized version of modern and civilized Whites.