La Malinche by Jimmie Durham

2.6

Question 5

In his work “Orality and Literature: The Black and White of Salish History,” Keith Thor Carlson discusses the problematics inherent in European notions of “authentic” indigeneity. He writes, “While non-Natives have generally not been overly concerned with the historical legitimacy of Aboriginal legends and myths (if only because they assume them to be fiction) they have been greatly concerned with their authenticity” ( 55).  Carlson examines this eurocentric perspective, which holds that a Native story containing post-contact knowledge is somehow “not authentic.” To begin with,  this emphasis on pre-/post-contact is problematically eurocentric, in that it asserts European contact as the defining feature of an Indigenous temporal world view. Secondly, Carlson articulates that such an emphasis on “authenticity” challenges Salish modes of “truth making” and ways of knowing. By asserting the dominance of the Western conception of truth (indebted to Enlightenment epistemology) Europeans who question the “authenticity” of Native stories, risk violently overlaying one mode of “truth making” onto another. Carlson describes how the Salish history of literacy (which has been subjected to debates concerning its “authenticity” by European scholars) is embedded within a sacred narrative, making it, in essence, “sacrosanct” (59).  According to Carlson’s argument, to question the authenticity of these stories, which are embedded in a sacred narrative, is to fundamentally disrupt Salish frameworks of thought and ways of knowing. Lastly, the question of authenticity is implicated in a continual process of “Othering” which implicitly tries to keep Indigenous peoples in the “past,” as emblems of a static, “timeless” culture which can be juxtaposed against the “developing” cultures of the western world. This “Othering” is an ideologically loaded, and hugely troubling act, and one which I argue is still very much present today in the representations of Indigenous peoples in the popular media etc.

In thinking about constructions of authenticity, I was reminded of the artwork of Jimmie Durham. Durham’s work is frequently concerned with identity politics, and with undermining and exposing the ideologically weighted stereotypes that attempt to define “Indian-ness.” His work La Malinche, is a complexly ambiguous portrait which, in my opinion, speaks to the ways in which intersecting systems of oppression play upon the body. We do not know how to understand La Malinche; her hybridity is disorienting, and she troubles our understands of “authentic” indigeneity.

Here is a link to another of Durham’s works entitled Pocahontas’ Underwear, which deals with the problematics of exoticization and fetishization inherent in the “Othering” gaze.

Works Cited

Carlson, Keith Thor. “Orality and Literacy: The ‘Black and White’ of Salish History.” Orality & Literacy: Reflectins Across Disciplines. Ed. Carlson, Kristina Fagna, & Natalia Khamemko-Frieson. Toronto: Uof Toronto P, 2011. 43-72.