Canadian Social Science
On “Survivance” in Sherman Alexie’s Indian Killer
Abstract
The development and continuation of ethnicity has always been one of the most crucial issues faced by ethnic minorities in the United States. This issue is particularly prominent in the literary works of contemporary American Indian writers including Sherman Alexie, who is a representative figure of the new generation of American Indian writers. Based on the theory of “survivance” by Gerald Vizenor, the present paper explores that in the social and cultural atmosphere where multiculturalism was hindered and minorities in America were still ostracized by a portion of mainstream whites in the 1990s, American Indians in Alexie’s Indian Killer fight against mainstream media’s smear of Indian images, the dominance of their culture by white academics and the disregard of the white government for their living conditions. This paper contends that through the representation of American Indians’ counterattacks, Alexie calls for American Indians’ resistance against the Indian stereotypes as the Other in the mainstream ideology and adherence to the subjectivity of their culture and identity in the process of integrating into the mainstream.
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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/12985
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