“Gee, you don’t seem like an Indian from the reservation” (CAMERON, 1981): The Subaltern (re)construction of Literary Archetypes

Abstract

This research is situated within the lives and experiences of American natives marginalised for providing “deviations” from racial, ideological, and sexual epistemological normativity – race and sex as both hindrances and assets. Setting forth the literary analysis of “Gee, you don’t seem like an Indian from the Reservation” (CAMERON, 1981), I problematise hegemonic methods for ideological reiteration and for the universalising of central conceptions of race and gender. My reading of Cameron’s (1981) text aims at identifying if and – if so – how her experience as a Lakota native and a lesbian articulates a deep critique regarding American history, the romanticising of nature, and narrow views towards race and gender. As she herself demonstrates in the (re)historicising of her own life, difference is feared because it destabilises the norm; the need to silence the subaltern is justified by the need to prevent the self from being altered by the experience of the other. Nevertheless, the other is getting closer and closer to the self – and, as time goes by, there will be nowhere else to hide.