Mavericks on the Border: The Early Southwest in Historical Fiction and Film by J. Douglas Canfield (review)

represent tribal worldviews through the myriad ofliterary and artistic forms that capture their imaginations ... and those writings will do more than any metacriticism can" (226). But Shanely makes the case in her essay, "The Indians America Loves to Love and Read," that scholarly questions about the representations of Native Americans are still highly relevant. For instance, regarding the question ofjust who constitutes a genuine Native author, she argues, "much is at stake. To the grassroots activist, more pressing concerns related to basic survival— health, education, and welfare—receive first priority; ongoing legal batdes and negotiations with state and federal governments preoccupy Indian leadership as well" (33). In other words, questions about die representations ofNative Americans , and who controls these representations, affects the ability ofNative Americans to speak on their own terms against the dominant culture, which in turn can impede their ability to produce positive social change. Many critics, as is readily acknowledged diroughout the book, have addressed die representation ofNativeAmericans in popular culture and literature, but this book extends diis critical discourse for those in Native American Studies and anyone working in American culture and literature. Moreover, one reads diis book widi the clear sense that these critics are morally committed to what diey're writing about. The book implicidy suggests that diis moral commitment must find linkages to a wider American audience ifit is going to mean anything in terms of positive social transformation. $& J. Douglas Canfield. Mavericks on the Border: The Early Southwest in HistoricalFiction andFilm. Lexington: The University Press ofKentucky, 2001. 238p. Melissa Hussain Washington State University As the title itselfsuggests, J. Douglas Canfield's Mavericks on theBorder: TheEarly Southwest in HistoricalFiction andFilm is an addition to the field ofborder studies —a field that has rapidly developed since die Chicano/a movements of the 1960s in an attempt to dieorize political, economic, and cultural clashes along the Mexican/American border, vexed as those clashes are with unequal power-relations . Canfield is particularly interested in portrayals ofhero-characters or "mavericks " in various novels and films ofthe "early Southwest" (1). He takes up the period ofsuch cultural productions that spans from 1833 to 1917 (the end ofthe Mexican Revolution). IO * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * FALL 2002 Reviews Canfield divides his book into three parts on the basis ofgeo-spatial demarcations . He begins part one, "South to West," with a study ofFaulkner's protagonist Ike McCaslin in Go Down, Moses in the midst ofthe slavery ofthe south. In part two, "North ofthe Border," he moves through stories offamous American characters such as Gerónimo, Doc Holliday, and Billy the Kid, among others. The last section, "South ofthe Border," focuses on Mexican films and fiction—probably the best known ofthese is the novel (and later film) Como aguapara chocohte. What makes the heroes or mavericks in these works worthy ofscholarly attention , Canfield argues, is the way in which their own personal existential crises— which prompt them to cross boundaries, borders, and borderlands ofvarious kinds—are indispensable to novels and films depicting die early Southwest. In otherwords, Canfield suggests diat collective definitions and meanings ofthe borderlands have been shaped through the struggles ofthese individual heroes. While Canfield's central theoretical concern is the construction of the Soudiwest "borderlands," his attention to die rapidly growing field of"border" scholarship seems somewhat limited. At best, he gives a nod to Gloria Anzaldúa's influential BorderhndslLa Frontera. Canfield relies heavily instead on the French poststructuralist-feminist theorist Julia Kristeva for his theoretical apparatus. In particular, he employs Kristeva's theoryofthe "abject"—a theory that explains the body's necessary rejection ofthe abject in order to preserve the self. The "abject," then, is thatwhich must be rejected in the body's secretions and excretions—such as urine, excrement, sweat—in order for the border between the self and that which is not selfto be defined. Canfield argues that in many ofthe works he studies , the protagonist is reduced to such a state ofabjection, and must find "regeneration through violence" (3). In other words, die hero is able to cross borders by rejecting the abject in himselfor herself. Canfield's deployment of Kristeva's concept of the abject is problematical in that he stretches it to mean...