IX Congresso Internacional ABRALIC 2004 - Travessias

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Almost Browne: the post-indian and Gerald Vizenor's post-human subject
Isabella Vieira de Bem (UFRGS/ULBRA)

Once again, a new age brings a transmutation and a new repertoire of tricks. In fact, we may now have reached the stage of ultimate ambiguity, where the trickster's self-awareness and self-reflexivity calls into question even what is a trick and what is in earnest, or on what side of the boundary truth lies, if indeed there are any more "sides" or any unequivocal truths. ( Helen Lock , Transformations of the Trickster)

The opening lines of Gerald Vizenor's short story Feral Lasers instantiate the problematization of nativity, biological and spiritual, within the condition of the trickster. The issue of a twofold nativity in western civilization can be traced back to the discussion of Christ's twofold nature - one endowed by the Father from eternity, the other by His Mother in time - or even earlier to the Dionysian myth - Dionysus, the twice-born one, first from Semele's womb and second from Zeus' thigh.

Like Christ, whose parents were forced to stop in the middle of a journey to a sacred place where to safely deliver their first son, at the same time so unlike Him, Almost Browne had the security in blood by his tribal father and in flesh by his white mother. "Almost Browne was born twice, the sublime measure of a crossblood trickster". 1 By paralleling Almost's origin with the framework of Christian mythology, Vizenor sets the structural tone of his story on several levels. A.B., his character's initials precede C in the alphabet, in the history of writing, suggesting in this way that so does Almost's ascendence. This technical choice of ideological embedding, however, stresses the mundane aspect of his "untraditional birth" (VIZENOR, 1998, p.548), the birth of a crossblood, in the back seat of an old hatchback, in transit on an interstate highway. The time of narration will thus develop mostly chronologically, leading the reader from his birth - on the way to the reservation, to his stint in the reservation and finally to his banishment from it and removal, back to the interstate highway, coming full circle to where we first started following his itinerary.

Thus, next to setting the circumstances of his birth, his shaping as a character starts with , "Almost was concerned with creations" and displayed a "brute dedication to trickster simulations" (idem). This rather oxymoronic wording of a carnal, sensual animal dedication to simulation - the absence of a reference - in the narrator's statement that Almost's childhood could not be remembered even by his parents illustrates at the same time the author's notion of a post-indian subject and N. Katherine Hayles's characterization of the post-human subject 2.

In an interview to Jack Foley, Vizenor draws on Jean Baudrillard's notion of simulation,

> > > > [O]f course, so much of post anything life is one of simulation: photographs, images, motion picture, the things we take pleasure in are simulations. [...] [T] he simulation has no reference. It's just a pure invention, and then that invention becomes the real, so that you have to be suspicious of your own memory, your own experience; you have to suspend them because the power of the simulation has taken control of everything real. 3

Thus, the dividing, distinctive line capable of telling creation apart from simulation is blurred. In Baudrillard's terms, simulations as opposed to representations are not grounded on any pre-existing referent, yet they are not just a reversal, a preter-representation to be interpreted as a false representation. They bear the ontology of hyperreality, "the product of an irradiating synthesis of combinatory models in a hyperspace without atmosphere". 4

Simulation, on its turn, envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum. For Baudrillard, simulations have taken for reality, generating nothing but more simulations, models have taken precedence over things, ending up in determining the real, we are faced with a precession of simulacra, there is no longer any distinction between reality and its representations, there is only the simulacrum.

The notion of a post-indian identity articulated by Vizenor in Post Indian Conversations 5and in Mannifest Manners 6 brings to the fore the fact that the term "indian" is a white construct, the result of the operation of naming, a colonial invention, and, to a certain extent, a simulation. Under the term "indian" tribal cultures were reduced to a name, their diversities stripped off. In order to affirm the presence of these cultures prior to the colonial encounter as both inscribed memory and contemporary living agencies, Vizenor insists on the

coining of the term "post-indian", as the recognition that "indian" responds to the desire of the western civilization, so much so that the very subjects to that naming procedure never called themselves that way. To accept the name "indian" is to align with the survivors, not with the "survivants".

The term "survivance", on its turn, is rescued from disuse in the English language lexicon, to counter the term "dominance" on the same grounds, on the grounds of the always already there use of language inscribed in ideology, with all its naturalizing effect. Survivance is to dominance as survivor is to dominator. If one resists dominance, he is deemed a survivant, not a survivor; he has not only endured domination, but also and above all reaffirmed his agency in this process. In Vizenor's words,

> > > > [S]urvival suggests more of a reaction, and that's that. It's tied to something and describes the circumstances of a response, a survival. My idea is that we understand what dominance is, a condition, we know it in many, many forms in time and place and circumstance. We need a word like dominance that speaks and is understood in the context of our will to live (idem).

Vizenor's creative intervention in the use of English provides us with the tools to understand crossblood cultures not as part of a natural response to colonial domination, or colonial domination as an accident of history; the term "survivance" entertains creative and deliberate strategies of "survival".

Back to the line of narration, in Feral Lasers we learn that Almost Browne lived in "the ruins of civilization", "matured in seven abandoned cars" and was "in his own words, ' a natural polyvinyl chloride partisan' " (VIZENOR, 1998, p. 548). The fact that he refers to himself as a PVC partisan brings up a full host of ironies and contradictions. First, as a cheap and easy to assemble building material, in recent years PVC has been replacing traditional stuff such as wood, clay, clay, and concrete in many areas, which, despite its apparent advantages, has high environmental and human health costs. Second, the adjective "natural" turns the whole phrase ambiguous, as it could well refer to Nature as opposed to Culture or natural in the sense of a necessary and logical consequence of "civilization". The reader is left with the challenge of deciding if this is a complimentary of a derogatory self-definition - undoubtedly a complex one. Is this the case that he is a partisan of the substitution of the "traditional" materials for new ones? And, if so, is this partisanship a creative and deliberate strategy of survival, an instance of "survivance"?

This is a case to wonder as we proceed in the narration line of the story. Next to the above characterization, Almost is presented to us as the creator of a new tribal world, as the animated/automated icewoman he built turned the reservation into a kind of amusement resort, where people from the cities and other reservations took turns to hear her laugh and watch her move her arms - an obvious and yet twisted allusion to the all-American cultural icon Disneyland, the target of Umberto Eco's and Baudrillard's analyses of hyperreality. This deed on Almost's part, however, was the target of "a cold tribal hand" - Reservation censure. And from this point on in the story, readers will watch Almost's crescendo in the art of image manipulation, paralleling Baudrillard's taxonomy of the phases of image in culture, from classic to postmodern. The icewoman trick, the assembly of a mechanical gadget powered by the movements of a harnessed mongrel tied to a solenoid, corresponds to the first phase of image, an image that reflects a basic reality, the image as a good appearance. Not to mention the fact that his first "creation" was a gendered one, a woman, something that matches the Judeo-Christian myth of creation.

More of his familiarity with technology is presented to us as he is characterized by the narrator as "a genius at new schemes and practices, and the mechanical transanimation of instincts"(VIZENOR, 1998, p. 549), a formulation that is at one with the post-human subject. It both reaffirms the immaterial dimensions of the contingencies of human condition and hints at the stage of development of the human race concerning the mastery of technological assets.

Once hired as a tribal computer consultant, after having invoked an earned "chance doctorate" (idem) as credentials, he wired the reservation with amazing computer capabilities. His alleged degree, which masked and perverted the basic reality of his underqualification, corresponds to the second phase of image - an evil appearance, na image at odds with reality. Almost himself confesses that chance was "a backseat degree"(idem).

Next to b the information that he worked with computers, Em Wheeler, a teacher at the government school in the White Earth Reservation who lived in the woods, comes into play in the story as one who "listened to tricksters"(idem) and who held hands with Almost.

As a trickster, Almost "reached in imagination to a postbiological world"(idem). This is a clear instance of Almost as the post-human subject, as characterized by Hayles. Postbiological in her thesis is not a transcendence or an essentializing maneuver equivalent to the prevalent imperialist tactics of depriving the subject of its contingent materiality, in an effort to tame its demonic uncivilized and even heretic force, it is not a cleansing procedure. Post-, here, means the reinscription of the unsurpassable concreteness, the unerasable physical and corporeal presence of life on Earth, in all its diversity. The fact that this specific instance of life, human life, has managed to manipulate the means that have led to both creation and destruction is fully acknowledged. Postbiological in post-humanity refers to biology of a second and third order, bur still biology, biology understood and described in models and thus capable to be re-created, created anew. It is both a liberating and terrifying thought.

So far, we have learnt that Almost's practices aroused both censure and a "suspicious solicitude" (idem) on the reservation. On one hand, his interest in "cold robotics"(id. ibidem) - third order reality ; on the other, his communion with bears, mongrels, and crows - first order reality. His comfortable and playful manipulation of high-tech gadgets to mask the absence of basic reality, that is, to offer a surrogate to reality, is at one with Baudrillard's characterization of the third phase of image, na image that plays at being an appearance, as in sorcery. However, Almost Browne is a trickster, and, as such, unlike the medieval fool, he is not playing.

Almost ends up being banished from the reservation, not on the grounds of his icewoman automat, or of his fabrication of snow in summer, but due to his postshamanic laser holotropes hovering over the reservation - and that terrified tribal families. This trick was simulation, the fourth phase of image, the image that bears no relation to any reality, it is its own pure simulacrum, a departure from and abandonment of reality.

The reason for his trial and removal to the cities was his dabbling with electromagnetism, luminescence and spectral memories, all at the same time. His holotrope shows earned him charges to be tried in a tribal court first, and later in a court of law in the cities. In the reservation he paraded western explorers over the mission pond. These apparitions are made accountable for a series of mishappenings in the reservation area.

Almost is then questioned on his allegiance to the tribal values and traditions and cornered to take sides.. As a trickster, not to mention a crossblood one, the very definition of "sides", the sharp division of worlds into sides, ethnic sides for one, is a violation of those very traditions. His attempts to "enlighten" the tribal judge on the tricks with lasers fail.. His statement that "laser is an image"(VIZENOR, 1998, p.550) is replied with a vehement "not when he shines our deer"(idem) on the part of the judge. We watch here the counterpoint of two border definitions of image: the former, simulation; the latter, representation. Ordered to demonstrate his laser holotropes, at the center of the reservation pond, Almost has Christopher Columbus' image dismembered by scuds and put together again.

The first tribal member ever to be removed to the cities, Almost and the preschool teacher who held his hand moved out together to a camper van. Because of this, "a wild reversal of colonial histories" (VIZENOR, 1998, p. 551), he hits the news, describing his current condition then as being on "laser relocation" (idem), still launching laser holotropes, though of another content. This time they are tribal warriors, wild animals, and presidents over the interstates. Nude presidents. Questioned on TV about the obscenity of his presidential holograms, he replies, "light is no erection" (VIZENOR, 1998, p. 552). His wild life projections stopped traffic in many cities while he enjoyed some celebrity. The next thing we know is people are "taking sides", for the tribal people's rights to "create animals over cities" (idem), as the treaties read, and against them.

Almost and Em Wheeler have to face court on charges of having caused public disturbance, endangerment on interstates and amusements without a license. The prosecutors argued that "a light show is neither speech nor art, and is not protected by current copyright laws"(VIZENOR, 1998, p. 553). This statement corresponds to the tendency to equate civilization with the technology of writing, typical of a predominantly text-oriented culture. Seen as a "machine", writing constructs human consciousness as reflective and interior, not specifically biological or drawing on other technologies.

The same regressive logic informs the prosecutor's claim that their cause is not "sacred but postbiological as we read Hans Moravec in Mind Children [...]"(idem). The prosecutor uses the book, the test, as his grounding, and this particular book, Mind Children, presents the postbiological world as a nightmare, as chaos, as the total demise of the western humanist project - a view which is fiercely opposed by Katherine Hayles.

The understanding that underpins the trickster and the school teacher's own representation at the hearing is of still another sort. They invoke Columbus as their witness, their common precedence, only this time in tribal light, laser light. The point Almost succeeds in making to the judge is that the image of Columbus all over the place in several kinds of media is as important as the image of tribal icons, and that "light [...] is a tribal right"( VIZENOR, 1998, p. 554), as belonging to the First and Sixth Amendments.

At his plea, the trickster presents to the court, in his postshamanic holograms, a new tribunal in which tribal warriors eclipsed the Mount Rushmore Nation Memorial presidents (Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Thed Roosevelt) beaming over the bench. To this, the judge, ruling in favor of light rights and dismissing the case, pronounced, "the laser is a tribal pen, a light brush in the wild air[...] and these warriors are new creations, an interior landscape, memories to be sure, an instance of communal rights and free expression"(idem).

That night, over seven cities, the judge reappeared in the laser holotropes sided by the animals. Over the Renaissance Center in Detroit, the headquarters of General Motors since the moving from the Cadillac Place facilities, Almost Browne and Em Wheeler appeared in a comic opera together with Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac - the founder of Detroit who persuaded many Native Americans to settle near the new colony - with tribal mummers in the fur trade, peace medal presidents, bears, and crows.

Almost Browne, the twice-born, twice-tried trickster, stands as the emblematic post-indian, a survivant, which Vizenor himself embodies, both as a fictionist and critic. In Feral Lasers , Almost is found innocent in the cities' court of law, a clear indication that survivance is an earned condition. He will go on with his holotropic shows anywhere but in the reservation, where, Vizenor seems to be suggesting to us, there is only place for survival.

Gerald Vizenor. Feral Lasers . In: Postmodern American Fiction. A Norton Anthology. Paula Geyh, Fred G. Leebron, Andrew Levy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, p. 548.

N. Katherine Hayles. How we became posthuman: virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Jack Foley A Chance of Survivance : An Interview with Gerald Vizenor, Conclusion Broadcast on "Cover to Cover", KPFA-FM, 8/26/96 . Available at <http://www.alsopreview.com/columns/foley/jfvizenor2.html > Assessed on May 3 rd , 2004.

Jean Baudrillard. Simulacra and Simulation. In: Postmodern American Fiction. A Norton Anthology. Paula Geyh, Fred G. Leebron, Andrew Levy. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998, p.632.

Gerald Vizenor and Robert A. Lee. Post Indian Conversations. Lincoln, Nebraska: The University of Nebraska Press, 1999, 189 p.

Gerald Vizenor. Mannifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. Lincoln, Nebraska: The University of Nebraska Press, 1999, 191 p.