Dispossession and survivance in the literature of atrocity

Dispossession and Survivance considers works of multiethnic literature that confront historical legacies of violence and dispossession: the novels and literary theory of N. Scott Momaday and James Welch (Chapter 1); the poetry and prose of Gloria Anzaldúa and Irena Klepfisz (Chapter 2); and the poetic arts of NourbeSe Phillip and Claudia Rankine (3 and 4). There has been a tendency in Euro-American trauma studies to view the Holocaust as an historically unique atrocity, inadvertently privileging Eurocentric perspectives on the literature of trauma and recovery, at the cost of experience from colonial contact zones: the genocide of Indigenous peoples, linguistic and cultural erasure, and slavery’s middle passage. Dispossession and Survivance therefore views multiethnic literatures of atrocity as performative acts of “survivance” a term of recovery created by Anishinaabe scholar, Gerald Vizenor. According to Vizenor, survivance is an “active sense of presence, a continuance of Native stories and the renunciations of dominance, tragedy, and victimry.” Vizenor provides for a transformative possibility that reconceives identity beyond atrocity in new narratives of spirituality, community and non-binary identities. His Indigenous literary theory allows readers to approach the complexity of multiethnic literatures of atrocity in terms of creation, presence and non-Eurocentric visions of recovery. Not only does Native American literary theory deserve more critical attention, but Native/Indigenous philosophies of recovery from trauma can and should be considered in relationship to communities that have experienced similar violence. Each chapter, therefore, demonstrates how survivance offers unique insights into multiethnic literatures of trauma and radical dispossession.