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Literary Criticism Native American

Listening to Old Woman Speak

Natives and alterNatives in Canadian Literature

by (author) Laura Smyth Groening

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2005
Category
Native American
  • Hardback

    ISBN
    9780773527881
    Publish Date
    Jan 2005
    List Price
    $110.00
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9780773527898
    Publish Date
    Jan 2005
    List Price
    $34.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9780773572225
    Publish Date
    Jan 2005
    List Price
    $95.00

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Description

Groening argues that what Frantz Fanon terms the "manichean allegory" has shaped European understanding of the New World to such an extent that the image patterns fundamental to the allegory continue to dominate depictions of Native characters. Although a world separated into two categories defined by light and dark, reason and emotion, mind and body, technology and nature, future and past is no longer also characterized as good and evil, revaluing the tropes has not made them disappear. And without their disappearance, good intentions notwithstanding, nonaboriginal Canadian writers will continue to portray Native characters as part of a dead and dying culture. Groening demonstrates that the real issue cannot be about censorship as censorship involves the abrogation of freedom, and the imagination is never truly free.

About the author