-
Introduction
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
elvir a pulitano Introduction Transatlantic Voices: Interpretations of Native North American Literatures brings together fourteen scholars from Europe. These scholars have contributed original, critical studies of contemporary literature by Native North Americans in the past few years. The essays in this collection present their most recent critical interventions on Native North American literary studies. European critical practices and theoretical discourses transcend the boundaries of nations, disciplines, and academic traditions. A collection of essays on Native North American literatures by scholars in Europe takes the Atlantic as a site of cross-cultural exchange and circulation of ideas, a bridge linking the Old and New Worlds, in the attempt to overcome historical and ideological differences. Reflecting the most recent critical debates surrounding the discipline of American Studies in the United States and Europe, Transatlantic Voices significantly points toward transnational and transcultural practices and methodologies.1 Recent scholarship on the Atlantic has focused on the cross-cultural exchanges originating with the transatlantic slave trade, a rhizomorphic system that in the years between 1500 and 1800 would alter considerably the boundaries of the Old World. Greatly aided by Paul Gilroy’s influential study of transatlantic modernity, The Black Atlantic (1993), scholars interested in transnational and intercultural perspectives have found in the Atlantic a fruitful, creative space around which to articulate ideas on ethnicity, race, gender, class, sovereignty, nationalism, migration, and language in an increasingly globalized world. As the editors of the jour- nal Atlantic Studies point out: “Scholars genuinely interested in exchanges between the east and west coast of the Atlantic—Africa, South America, the Caribbean and Canada, as well as Europe and the United States—are coming to think that the project can best be managed in a multipolar world. In fact the Atlantic perspective is best perceived within older and currently evolving forms of globalization” (“Editorial”). What, nevertheless, necessitates more critical attention within emerging Atlantic perspectives is the importance of the Atlantic for contemporary Native North American Studies. In “Crossroads of Cultures” Shelley Fisher Fishkin mentions the research of Annette Kolodny on Viking contact with Native North American tribes in Canada and Maine, pointing out how “transnational questions and approaches can complicate Native American issues in American studies in fascinating ways” (29). Transatlantic journeys linking Europe to the Americas have significantly characterized the history of the two continents since Columbus’s first voyages. We know, for instance, that one of the admiral’s first gestures, upon arriving on the North American continent, was to ship a group of Tainos back to Spain so that they could “learn to speak” (quoted in Owens 3). And “famous” Indian historical figures such as Pocahontas, Black Elk, Luther Standing Bear, and others would travel to major European cities—whether to prove Europeans’ successful attempts at “civilizing ” the Indian or simply to become a source of entertainment in Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show. Undoubtedly, key moments in the history of the relationship between Indians and Europe, such transoceanic journeys are not, however, the primary concern of the present volume. The essays collected in Transatlantic Voices take Gilroy’s idea of the Atlantic as a complex system of cultural and political exchanges in order to present the most recent, original interpretations on Native North American literatures by scholars on the other side of the Atlantic (Gilroy 4).2 Since the publication in the late 1960s and 1970s of four major Native American novels—House Made of Dawn (1968) by N. Scott Momaday , Winter in the Blood (1974) by James Welch, Ceremony (1977) by Leslie Marmon Silko, and Darkness in Saint Louis Bearheart (1978) by Gerald Vizenor—to be followed, in the 1980s aftermath, by Louise Erdrich’s xiv Introduction [100.24.12.23] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 13:45 GMT) Love Medicine, Native North American literary voices have stimulated a great amount of critical attention in Europe. Translations of some of the most critically acclaimed works of the so-called Native American Renaissance into European languages have been in circulation for the past twenty years or so; at the same time, essays and critical articles in English, often published by small European university presses and frequently included in American (and European) journals and essay collections , have initiated a serious critical tradition of European scholarship on Native North American Studies. Moreover, the regular annual gathering of these same scholars to discuss themes and issues concerning Native North American literatures and its place within contemporary American and world literature provide evidence of the growing...