Research Catalog

Title

Indigenous women's theatre in Canada : a mechanism of decolonization / Sarah MacKenzie.

Author

MacKenzie, Sarah (Sarah Emily), 1981-

Publication

• Halifax ; Winnipeg : Fernwood Publishing, [2020]
• ©2020

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 184 pages; 23 cm

Summary

"Despite a recent increase in productivity amongst Indigenous playwrights in Canada, most critical and academic attention has been devoted to the work of male dramatists. This is seemingly due to the expediency with which such renowned writers/dramatists as Cree playwright Tomson Highway and Ojibwa writer Drew Hayden Taylor achieved fame. Grounded in a historical, socio-cultural consideration of Indigenous women's theatrical production and reception and addressing this critical gap in the literature pertaining to Indigenous theatre in North America, my book focuses specifically on plays by Indigenous women written and produced in the socio-cultural milieux of twentieth and twenty-first century Canada. Closely analyzing dramatic texts by Monique Mojica (Kuna/Rappahannock), Marie Clements (Cree/Métis), and Yvette Nolan (Algonquin/Irish), my book explores representations of gendered colonialist violence in order to determine the varying ways in which these representations are employed subversively and informatively by Indigenous women. These plays provide an avenue for individual and potential cultural healing by deconstructing some of the harmful ideological work performed by colonial misrepresentations of Indigeneity, demonstrating the strength and persistence of Indigenous women, and thereby offering a rupturing space in which decolonial futurisms can be envisioned. The female playwrights who are the focus of my book counter colonial and occasionally postcolonial representations of gendered and racialized violence by emphasizing female resistance, collective coalition, and survival. Engaging with both literary and performance theory, including (though not limited to) the work of Jo-Ann Episkenew (Métis), Allison Hargreaves, Barbara Godard, Ric Knowles, Susan Bennett, Janice Acoose (Salteaux), and Monique Mojica herself, my book argues that dramatic texts and performances deploy a decolonizing aesthetic that can redefine dramatic/literary and, ultimately, socio-cultural, political space for resistant and decolonial ends. Informed by Indigenous and feminist poststructuralist and postcolonial theoretical perspectives that address the production and dissemination of racialized and gendered regimes of representation, including the work of Sherene Razack, Quo Li Driskill (Cherokee), Sara Ahmed, Emma Pérez, Chela Sandoval, Gayatri Spivak, and Chandra Talpade Mohanty, my text suggests that colonialist misrepresentations of Indigenous women have served to perpetuate demeaning stereotypes, justifying devaluation of and violence against Indigenous women. Most significantly, however, my book argues that resistant representations in Indigenous women's dramatic writing and production work in direct opposition to such representational and manifest violence."--

Alternative Title

Indigenous women's theater in Canada

Subject

• 1900-2099
• Canadian drama > Women authors > History and criticism
• Canadian drama > Indian authors > History and criticism
• Canadian drama > 20th century > History and criticism
• Canadian drama > 21st century > History and criticism
• Indigenous peoples in literature
• Women in literature
• Decolonization in literature
• Canadian drama > Indian authors
• Canadian drama
• Canadian drama > Women authors

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-171) and index.

Contents

Machine generated contents note: 1. Violence against Indigenous Women and Dramatic Subversion -- Decolonization through Dramatic Resistance: Framing the Discussion -- The "Discovery" Myth: Colonial Misrepresentations and Violence against Indigenous Women -- Post-Colonial Drama: Misrepresentations of Indigenous Women -- Interpellation, Stereotyping and the Perpetuation of Gendered Violence -- Reverse Interpellation, the "Decolonial Imaginary" and Resistance -- Identity Politics and "Intercultural" Commensurability: The Ethics of Criticism -- Indigenous Women's Drama: Decolonization and Recovery -- Notes -- 2. Reclaiming Our Grandmothers in Monique Mojica's Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots and Birdwoman and the Suffragettes: A Story of Sacajawea -- Monique Mojica's "Transformational Dramaturgy" -- Reimagining "Indian Princesses" in Princess Pocahontas and the Blue Spots -- La Malinche, Malinalli Malintzin or Dona Marina -- Deity, Woman of the Puna and Virgin of Colonial Peru -- Marie, Margaret and Madeline: The Mothers of the Metis Nation -- Princess Pocahontas -- Reimagining Sacajawea in Birdwoman and the Suffragettes -- Reviving Sacajawea: Transforming History -- Recuperating Our Grandmothers and Reconfiguring Sexual Violence: "Una Nacion" -- Notes -- 3. Community and Resistance in Marie Clement's The Unnatural and Accidental Women and Now Look What You Made Me Do -- Marie Clements: Performing Interconnected Subjectivities -- Revisiting and Revising Violence in The Unnatural and Accidental Women -- Community, Witnessing and Empowerment -- Revenge, Reclamation and Remembrance: The End of the Story -- Representing Victimhood in Now Look What You Made Me Do -- Sisterhood, Sex Work and Self-Representation: The Women's Group -- Cultural Impunity and the "Abused Abuser": Narrating Resistance -- Breaking "Cycles of Violence": The End of Madonna's Story -- Notes -- 4. Media, Gendered Violence and Dramatic Resistance in Yvette Nolan's Annie Mae's Movement and Blade -- Yvette Nolan: Re-educating Canada -- Anna Mae Pictou Aquash: "Warrior" and Activist -- Remembering Anna Mae in Annie Mae's Movement -- Masculinism, Maternalism and Feminine Resistance -- Heroism vs. Martyrism: The Rape and Murder of Anna -- Blade: Identity Politics and Reception -- Race, Representation and Coalition Across Difference -- Stereotyping, Sexualization and Communal Resistance -- Notes -- 5. Indigenous Women's Theatre: A Transnational Mechanism of Decolonization -- Collective Creation and Dramatic Subversion -- The Transnationalization of Indigenous Feminisms -- Spiderwoman Theater: Enacting Intercultural Resistance -- Notes.

Call Number

JFE 21-4597

ISBN

• 9781773631875
• 177363187X

LCCN

2020445700

OCLC

1156335799

Author

MacKenzie, Sarah (Sarah Emily), 1981- author.

Title

Indigenous women's theatre in Canada : a mechanism of decolonization / Sarah MacKenzie.

Publisher

Halifax ; Winnipeg : Fernwood Publishing, [2020]

Copyright Date

©2020

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages 153-171) and index.

Chronological Term

1900-2099

Other Form:

Online version: MacKenzie, Sarah (Sarah Emily), 1981- Indigenous women's theatre in Canada. Halifax ; Winnipeg : Fernwood Publishing, 2020 1773632019 9781773632018 (OCoLC)1192496462

Research Call Number

JFE 21-4597