Violence against Indigenous Women and Dramatic Subversion
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Identity Politics and “Intercultural” Commensurability: The Ethics of Criticism In response to academic criticism monopolized by non-Indigenous scholars employing ethnocentric and essentialist analytic approaches, modern criticism of Indigenous work has been intensely self-reflexive regarding the sociocultural position of the critic. Explicitly rejecting outdated notions of critical and theoretical objectivity, most modern critics and scholars consider accentuation of Indigenous descent, or perhaps even more importantly, a confession of lack of Indigenous ties as a crucial element of contemporary criticism. Given historic disservices to Indigenous artistic production, this is a positive development in critical discussions of Indigenous literature and performance. It can also be argued, however, that this increased self-awareness and cultural sensitivity in critical theory tends to culminate in deterministic and overly cautious approaches to Indigenous work. Identity, even cultural identity, is not constituted by a shared history and ancestry alone. Hall argues that biasedly focusing on intracultural similarities leads to neglecting the “critical points of deep and significant difference which constitute what we really are” (1994: 394). In this respect, cultural identity is as much a process of becoming as being. As Hall argues: Far from being grounded in mere “recovery” of the past, which is waiting to be found and which when found, will secure our sense of ourselves into eternity, identities are the names we give to the different ways we are positioned by and position ourselves within, the narratives of the past. (1994: 394) Resistant community cannot be defined by subordinate or colonized status alone. While historical positioning inevitably bears upon identity, this contention disregards the potential for intracultural differences that ultimately determine who and what we are. Kimberlé Crenshaw argues that “the problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics suggest, but rather the opposite, that it frequently conflates or ignores intragroup differences” (1991: 1242). These categorical determinations can also make coalition building difficult or impossible. When asked in an interview with Janet Williamson about forging coalitions with people of European descent, Jeannette Armstrong poignantly stated:
