Books by James Mackay
Mor lân â Chrymru lonydd? Caledfryn 1 "I am more Welsh than anything." Jim Barnes 2 What does it ... more Mor lân â Chrymru lonydd? Caledfryn 1 "I am more Welsh than anything." Jim Barnes 2 What does it mean for an American poet to define himself as Welsh? Can Jim Barnes's claim to Welsh as his primary familial inheritance provide a route to greater understanding of his poetry? That the claim is important to him is certain, particularly given that in making it he defies a gentle but persistent pressure from interviewers and scholars for him to define himself mainly in terms of his Choctaw and other ancestries. 3 Yet Barnes is also unarguably (and rightly) clear in his rejection of exegesis from DNA, stating in one place that "It is high time critics stopped being cretins. There is no such thing as autobiography or biography" and in another asking his interviewer to "Credit me with imagination." 4 For this reason, vague hand-waving appeals to the well-known aspects of Welsh poetry-invocation of an ancient tradition, language and culture that was once deliberately suppressed, spirituality rooted in ideas of place, post-colonial consciousness of belonging to a defeated nation-will not do. 5 One cannot (or not without doing some violence to the poet we are supposedly explicating) set out with a set of preconceived stereotypes, locate them in the work, and then justify such exploration with an appeal to stories literally in the blood. This directly reflects the issue of legitimacy that has always hovered over Anglo-Welsh literature. Can a poet writing in English, whatever his ancestry,
The Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the "Lily of the Mohawks," is only referenced twice in My Body is ... more The Blessed Kateri Tekakwitha, the "Lily of the Mohawks," is only referenced twice in My Body is a Book of Rules. Being generous, the two passages on the Iroquois saint stretch to at most four pages. Yet the positioning of these passages, and the complex mythology of Tekakwitha herself, mean that these brief passages provide a key context for understanding Washuta's book. It is my contention that the Tekakwitha narrative provides Washuta with a way to accept and incorporate pain, within the context of a book constructed as a record of attempts to deal with trauma -whether sexual violation, mental disintegration due to bipolar disorder, medication dependency, religious indoctrination, eating disorder, or cultural dislocation -via the "rules" of the title. Rather than negating pain with such structuring rules -which include Catholic catechism, Cosmopolitan and Match.com questionnaires, self-help books, strict diets, academic discourse analysis, bibliography, psychiatric counselling, new regimes of medication, pop culture analogy and a victimry-inflected understanding of her tribal citizenship -Washuta uses the figure of Tekakwitha, and by extension a new relationship with her own Cascade/Cowlitz heritage, to perform a Hegelian sublation of trauma, allowing her to regain agency precisely by embracing and absorbing, even deliberately intensifying, such pain.
This transnational collection discusses the use of Native American imagery in twentieth and twent... more This transnational collection discusses the use of Native American imagery in twentieth and twenty-first-century European culture. With examples ranging from Irish oral myth, through the pop image of Indians promulgated in pornography, to the philosophical appropriations of Ernst Bloch or the European far right, contributors illustrate the legend of "the Indian." Drawing on American Indian literary nationalism, postcolonialism, and transnational theories, essays demonstrate a complex nexus of power relations that seemingly allows European culture to build its own Native images, and ask what effect this has on the current treatment of indigenous peoples.
Introduction - Red State Poet.
"'That Awkwardness is Important': An Interview with Diane Glancy."... more Introduction - Red State Poet.
"'That Awkwardness is Important': An Interview with Diane Glancy."
Diane Glancy Bibliography.
Journal Articles and Chapters by James Mackay
It cannot be denied that the figure or simulacrum of the indian
continues to be a major product o... more It cannot be denied that the figure or simulacrum of the indian
continues to be a major product of American culture over the past two centuries, and that its significance cannot simply be ignored as the product of ignorance and racism (undisputable though the link is). In this special issue, therefore, we and the writers have been principally concerned with the question of what happened to this figure after its necessity decreased. Once the frontier closed and the ‘savage’ was no longer needed to excuse land grab, once the threatening other transferred to communist, Nazi and Al-Qaeda operative, and once Native Americans had begun to succeed in taking control of their own narrative, what post-history might remain for this pure sign, and how is it invoked in the wider world?
Examines representations of American Indigenous peoples in trans-European hardcore pornography.
Transmotion is a biannual, fully and permanently open-access journal inspired by the work of Gera... more Transmotion is a biannual, fully and permanently open-access journal inspired by the work of Gerald Vizenor. Transmotion will publish new scholarship focused on theoretical, experimental, postmodernist, and avant-garde writing produced by Native American and First Nations authors, as well as book reviews on relevant work in Indigenous Studies, and new creative work that seeks to push boundaries.
The Anishinaabe novelist and postmodern cultural theorist Gerald Vizenor has a long-standing inte... more The Anishinaabe novelist and postmodern cultural theorist Gerald Vizenor has a long-standing interest in France and French culture, which has come to the fore in his most recent work. This article examines the implications for his larger project, as revealed through the encounter between his Native American characters and a France depicted as an origin point of high modernist culture. By re-appropriating tropes and concepts from thinkers and artists such as Albert Camus, Marc Chagall and Edmond Jabés, in a narrative dominated by the figure of an Anishinaabe artist clearly modelled on George Morrison, Vizenor clearly attempts a revaluation of the category of the primitive so vital to modernist experimentation, reformulating it as “cosmoprimivitism”. In doing so, however, he also intervenes in contemporary debates around the exhibition of “arts premiers” in the Musée du Quai Branly, with results that problematically complicate any assessment of his attempt to unify the categories of the indigenous and the postmodern.
Discusses the influence of Dylan Thomas on the Choctaw poet Jim Barnes.
Papers by James Mackay
It is my contention that the Tekakwitha narrative provides Washuta with a way to accept and incor... more It is my contention that the Tekakwitha narrative provides Washuta with a way to accept and incorporate pain, within the context of a book constructed as a record of attempts to deal with trauma – whether sexual violation, mental disintegration due to bipolar disorder, medication dependency, religious indoctrination, eating disorder, or cultural dislocation – via the " rules " of the title. Rather than negating pain with such structuring rules – which include Catholic catechism, Cosmopolitan and Match.com questionnaires, self-help books, strict diets, academic discourse analysis, bibliography, psychiatric counselling, new regimes of medication, pop culture analogy and a victimry-inflected understanding of her tribal citizenship – Washuta uses the figure of Tekakwitha, and by extension a new relationship with her own Cascade/Cowlitz heritage, to perform a Hegelian sublation of trauma, allowing her to regain agency precisely by embracing and absorbing, even deliberately intensifying, such pain.
Review essay on critical theories and Native American literatures.
This essay begins by briefly describing the current methodological crisis in literary study, a di... more This essay begins by briefly describing the current methodological crisis in literary study, a discipline which we argue adheres to an outmoded image of the human brain’s interaction with language and an insistently subjective approach. We then go on to outline the quantitative model of literary study currently being developed at the University of Binghampton by the critic Jonathan Gotschall and the biologist David Sloan Wilson. We describe what we perceive as the strengths of this methodology, which brings the notion of statistical analysis and empirical fact into the space where evolutionary psychology and literary study interact. We also note that we have discovered what seem to us to be weaknesses in Gotschall’s pilot study, which first came to light through our knowledge of the history of the production of the book Legends of Vancouver by E. Pauline Johnson. Having described this history in some depth, we return to Gotschall’s study and show that, although we have revealed a colonialist assumption that weakens its conclusion, this does not challenge the validity of his methodology. Indeed, we argue, the fact that we can challenge Gotschall’s conclusions empirically rather than through rhetoric actually demonstrates the strength of his methodology. Finally, we outline a future research project.
Examines Seven Arrows as a visually striking and culturally controversial document
Examines visual imagery in the work of Cherokee Christian novelist Diane Glancy. Paper first del... more Examines visual imagery in the work of Cherokee Christian novelist Diane Glancy. Paper first delivered at the Native Studies Research Network colloquium, University of Kent, 2012.
Examines the way Californian landscape is used in the novels of Gerald Vizenor, with a special co... more Examines the way Californian landscape is used in the novels of Gerald Vizenor, with a special concentration on the 2001 novel CHANCERS.
Examining case studies of writers whose articles have been voted “non-notable,” I discuss the way... more Examining case studies of writers whose articles have been voted “non-notable,” I discuss the ways in which Indigenous American writers frequently meet a hostile response from the overwhelmingly young, Euroamerican male editors of Wikipedia, where majoritarian codes are used to obliterate these writers’ cultural importance. Linking the difficulties in getting a foothold for indigenous knowledges within the wikisphere to those faced by feminist, trans, queer and other groups, I suggest ways to fight back against the erasure of minor discourses.
Paper delivered at the Native American Literary Symposium, Minneapolis 2013.
Book Reviews by James Mackay
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Books by James Mackay
"'That Awkwardness is Important': An Interview with Diane Glancy."
Diane Glancy Bibliography.
Journal Articles and Chapters by James Mackay
continues to be a major product of American culture over the past two centuries, and that its significance cannot simply be ignored as the product of ignorance and racism (undisputable though the link is). In this special issue, therefore, we and the writers have been principally concerned with the question of what happened to this figure after its necessity decreased. Once the frontier closed and the ‘savage’ was no longer needed to excuse land grab, once the threatening other transferred to communist, Nazi and Al-Qaeda operative, and once Native Americans had begun to succeed in taking control of their own narrative, what post-history might remain for this pure sign, and how is it invoked in the wider world?
Papers by James Mackay
Paper delivered at the Native American Literary Symposium, Minneapolis 2013.
Book Reviews by James Mackay
"'That Awkwardness is Important': An Interview with Diane Glancy."
Diane Glancy Bibliography.
continues to be a major product of American culture over the past two centuries, and that its significance cannot simply be ignored as the product of ignorance and racism (undisputable though the link is). In this special issue, therefore, we and the writers have been principally concerned with the question of what happened to this figure after its necessity decreased. Once the frontier closed and the ‘savage’ was no longer needed to excuse land grab, once the threatening other transferred to communist, Nazi and Al-Qaeda operative, and once Native Americans had begun to succeed in taking control of their own narrative, what post-history might remain for this pure sign, and how is it invoked in the wider world?
Paper delivered at the Native American Literary Symposium, Minneapolis 2013.