Language and Signs: An Interview with Ojibwe Novelist David Treuer

Kirwan, Padraig

doi:10.1017/s0021875809006069

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 1 publication

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…This is a hardcore view of incommensurability between cultural worlds, but it need not imply any loyalty to myths of purity or terminality. Different in important ways from theorists like Bastien and Jeffredo-Warden, some proponents of incommensurability do not seem to believe that it is impossible to translate between languages, rather, they simply refuse to do so (Kirwan and Treuer 2009). And finally, several Indigenous theorists offer views of another sort of incommensurability between worlds in which it is difficult to translate between worlds, but it is not impossible or unacceptable.…”

Section: Indigenous Philosophies Of Language: Some Key Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Because of the aforementioned abuses by outsiders and continued attempts of non-Indigenous research institutions to establish and maintain control of Indigenous language archives and reclamation programs, claims of radical incommensurability may serve an agenda of linguistic and epistemic sovereignty (Meissner 2021). Novelist David Treuer says his characters' Ojibwe thoughts cannot be translated into English, but he expands this thought to include that even if the character' thoughts could be translated, Treuer would refuse to translate them because he wants to defy the tropes of ethnography and the constant calls from settler society for the labor of translation (Kirwan and Treuer 2009). Treuer refuses to translate the Ojibwe language as an act of linguistic sovereignty.…”

Section: Tule Canoes: Three Kinds Of Incommensurabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

“World”-Traveling in Tule Canoes: Indigenous Philosophies of Language and an Ethic of Incommensurability

Meissner

2023

Hypatia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Indigenous language activists talk about incommensurability all the time—in interesting ways that link language and knowledge as components of Indigenous lifeways that can't be disentangled. According to many of these scholar-activists, what is untranslatable about Indigenous languages is often what is incommensurate about Indigenous worlds. Drawing upon resources from Indigenous language-reclamation work, I outline here a nonexhaustive taxonomy of incommensurability in the literature about Indigenous philosophy of language, and gesture at the ways coalitional relationships might be built that hold space for these different varieties of incommensurability. For ease of explication and to honor Indigenous ways of knowing, I employ here an organizational metaphor rooted in my own communities’ traditions of canoe-voyaging to organize three forms of incommensurability that emerge from Indigenous philosophies of language: impassable incommensurability and strategic impassable incommensurability (big water through a rock garden), as well as incommensurability with technical passage: (heavy water through a rock garden). These forms of incommensurability, as they spring from Indigenous philosophies of language, lend themselves toward nuanced insights for careful and considerate world-traveling (à la Lugones) that holds space for epistemic and linguistic sovereignty.

show abstract

Section: Indigenous Philosophies Of Language: Some Key Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Tule Canoes: Three Kinds Of Incommensurabilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

“World”-Traveling in Tule Canoes: Indigenous Philosophies of Language and an Ethic of Incommensurability

Meissner

2023

Hypatia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“All the Talk and All the Silence”: Literary Aesthetics and Cultural Boundaries in David Treuer'sLittle

Kirwan¹

2011

Novel

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Much has been written about how contemporary Native American writers explore the intersection between cultural or social materialities on the one hand and aesthetic or imaginative autonomies on the other. In keeping with that discussion, this essay examines David Treuer's Little (1995) alongside his recent collection of critical essays, Native American Fiction: A User's Manual (2006) and queries the extent to which Treuer's exploration of the universal nature of fiction meshes with various articulations of indigenous sovereignty and tribal independence. In doing so it examines the tensions arising out of a situation in which indigenous fictionists wish to introduce tribal perspectives in their writing without ceding their cultural autonomy. The expressive parsimony found in Treuer's novel might well be read in terms of a figurative defiance. By refusing to speak, the eponymous protagonist quite literally practices a form of personal self-rule—one that marks out his difference from those around him—while also denying the reader easy access to his particular version of events. However, in light of the Ojibwe author's advocacy of close reading and New Critical approaches to Native American fiction, alongside his claim that a certain form of affective fallacy is at play within Native American literary criticism, Treuer seems relatively disinterested in real-world situations or contexts. In response, the essay examines his particular emphasis on “artistry” and “style” and questions whether this critical agenda can be linked to the definitions of artistic autonomy currently informing discussions of indigenous sovereignty and tribal nationalism.

show abstract

Currents of Trans/national Criticism in Indigenous Literary Studies

Justice¹

2011

American Indian Quarterly

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Language and Signs: An Interview with Ojibwe Novelist David Treuer

Cited by 4 publications

References 1 publication

“World”-Traveling in Tule Canoes: Indigenous Philosophies of Language and an Ethic of Incommensurability

“World”-Traveling in Tule Canoes: Indigenous Philosophies of Language and an Ethic of Incommensurability

“All the Talk and All the Silence”: Literary Aesthetics and Cultural Boundaries in David Treuer'sLittle

Currents of Trans/national Criticism in Indigenous Literary Studies

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About