Cultural Difference and the Literary Text: Pluralism and the Limits of Authenticity in North American Literatures ed. by Winfried Siemerling and Katrin Schwenk (review)

HUMANITIES 153 Winfried Siemerling and Katrin Schwenk, editors. Cultural Differenceand theLiteranJ Text: Pluralism and the Limits ofAuthenticity in North American Literatures University of Iowa Press. 190. us $24.95 cloth, us $12.95 paper In a 1982 article, Werner Sollers asked, 'Should the very same categories on which previous exclusivism was based really be used as organizing concepts ?' He opposed the group-by-group categorization of American literature according to constructs of race, gender, ethnicity, as 'parhat temporal, and insufficient.' Katrin Schwenk, in the introduction to this volume of essays, explains that she and Winfried Siemerling, planning a conference workshop and then this book, recognized the constructedness ofsuch categories and found Sollers's article a useful starting point. Sollers, Schwenk, and Siemerling share concerns about the limitations of such categorization and the vexed questions it raises about authenticity and voice. It makes difficult any trans-ethnic considerations of literature. Nevertheless, none of them denies the importance of voice. Ideas of otherness may be problematic: they are, nonetheless, vital- and may have to be experienced to achieve a sense of intersection. Schwenk'sintroductionsets out, then, the ideas that social groupings are constructs, that ethnic classification may be too limited, that a trans-ethnic perspective may be desirable, that scholars should not have to choose either/ or but should have the option of dialogue between them. The essays in this volume represent such options. As Linda Hutcheon points out, it is puzzling that many people seem to think these issues should not be discussed. The essays are civilized, sophisticated, respectful: no polemiC here. The Sollers article may be a take-off point for the enterprise, but the name Bakhtin comes up often. Complex issues present themselves. Shared attitudes and assumptions inform the essays. All the essayists recognize the tyrannies of metanarrative , privileged and overwhelming. All agree that silence is not a natural state for any group. Each writer understands that previously jeopardized or denied identities must be included within the literary canon, and that many of these voices define themselves in reaction against the prevailing orthodoxies of power relationships. Issues of voice recur. What is authentic voice? Who defines it? What happens when a voice is judged to be misappropriated or misrepresented? Who speaks for a 'group'? Strategies of challenge are examined: humour, carnivalization, anger, autobiography and memoir, folk expression, 'codes,' and understatement. Ironies and paradox arise. Volumes belonging to received canons may be from the margins. Texts may become 'shrines of authenticity.' Identity may be simulated. Representation becomes vital in an era moving away 154 LETTERS IN CANADA 1996 from representation - and that very movement away from 'mimesis' may be a device of metanarrative to maintain authority. Reaction against the idea of 'canon' is creating many canons. Tedmiques of these essays include narration, examination of specific texts, engagement with critical theories, discourse analysis, genre criticism, historicism, cultural analysis, and semiotic analysis. Hutcheon tells the story of the furore over the publication of Other Solitudes, and wonders why a scholarly community would not welcome discussion. Wqlfgang Hochbruck looks at pan-Indian metanarrative through discourse analysis. Gerald Vizenor explores post-Indian autoinscriptions to find the cultures of tribal identifies. Winfried Siemerling assesses Houston Baker's contributions to the analysis and production of narratives of culture. Kathryne V. Lindberg looks at the ironic personae which Jean Toomer creates, refusing Black stereotypes. John Lowe examines the strategies of humour in etlmic autobiography by Zora Neale Hurston and Jerre Mangione. Monika Kaup finds, in writing by Gloria Anzaldua, especially in Borderlands, the quintessential border-crossing text, multiple in genres and voices. Ernst Rudin examines the changes in mearung of the term mestizo, its cultural shifts. Michael Wachholz considers Faulkner's Light in August as a marginal text. Gert Buelens traces the richness of multiple voices in Henry Roth's Call It Sleep. Werner Sollers, avuncular, then comments on the whole collection. No one proposes solutions, but the volume does arrive at a series of insights. Identity is a power relationship. Identity is constructed, an effect grotmded in discourse, not in essence. Identity is also performative, varying with context. Cultural identity is complex, shifting and ambiguous, not fixed and absolute. Heteroglossia, polyglossia, intra- and inter-language differences...