Indigeneity and Childhood in US and Andean Literature by Emily Metz-Cherné BA, Weber State ...

249 Pages·2013·0.92 MB·English

Inconceivable Saviors: Indigeneity and Childhood in U.S. and Andean Literature

by
Emily Metz-Cherné
B.A., Weber State University, 2002
M.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2007

Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of
the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy

University of Pittsburgh
2013
UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH
The Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences

This dissertation was presented

by

Emily Metz-Cherné

It was defended on
April 15, 2013
and approved by
John Beverley, Distinguished Professor, Hispanic Languages and Literatures
Elizabeth Monasterios, Associate Professor, Hispanic Languages and Literatures
Susan Andrade, Associate Professor, English
Marah Gubar, Associate Professor, English
Dissertation Advisor: Gonzalo Lamana, Associate Professor, Hispanic Languages and
Literatures

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Copyright © by Emily Metz-Cherné
2013
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INCONCEIVABLE SAVIORS:
CHILDHOOD AND INDIGENIETY IN U.S. AND ANDEAN LITERATURE

Emily Metz-Cherné, PhD

University of Pittsburgh, 2013

This dissertation explores the question of indigenous development and its literary representation

through an investigation of depictions of growth in novels from the United States and Peru where
boys mature, perhaps, into men. I find that texts with adolescent characters intimately connected
to indigenous communities challenge western concepts of maturity and development as
presented in the traditional Bildungsroman. Specifically, I read José María Arguedas’s Los ríos
profundos (1958) and Sherman Alexie’s Flight (2007) as parodies of the genre that call into
question the allegory of a western civilizing mission with its lineal trajectory of growth in which
the indigenous is relegated to an uncivilized time before modernity. I describe the protagonists of
these novels as inconceivable saviors; inconceivable in that the West cannot imagine them, as
indigenous, to be the saviors of the nation (i.e., its protectors and reproducers). They are border-
thinkers who live in-between epistemological spaces and the stories of their lives serve as kinds
of border-Bildungsromane, narratives of growth that arise in the blurred time/space of a border
culture, or Bil(dung)sroman, stories of the abject or expelled. Arguedas’s and Alexie’s narratives
confront the issue of race, a problem that allegories of the consolidation and development of the
nation (e.g., Bildungsroman and foundational fictions) evade through magical means by turning
the form into a fetish and presenting fetishized fetal origins that offer reassurances of legitimacy
for the western narrative of modernity and the nation-state. That is, the traditional form acts like
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a talisman that magically disappears the fragmentation of coloniality by providing a history to
hold on to, creating an origin that does not really exist. Instead of conforming to the model of the
genre or rejecting it, Arguedas’s and Alexie’s texts yield to the power of the original form,
appearing to tell the familiar story while carrying a subversive message. Their power derives
from the uncertainty inherent in this mimesis. In this way, these novels encourage readers to
question the maturation process as conceived and represented in the west and in western
literature and to consider alternative paths and formations of self.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.0 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................ 1
1.1 FOR THE BIRDS ........................................................................................................ 8
1.2 CULTURAL CONSTRUCTIONS: AETONORMATIVITY AND THE
CH ILD… ............................................................................................................................. 15
1.3 CHILD, NATION, RACE ......................................................................................... 22
1.4 QUESTIONS OF FORM AND FOUNDATION .................................................... 33
2.0 FL IGHTS OF FANCY: THE FETISH AND THE FORM ........................................... 39
2.1 THE BILDUNGSROMAN ....................................................................................... 42
2.2 MATTERS OF FAITH AND THE FORM AS FETISH ....................................... 50
2.3 IMAGINING THE SELF AND THE NATION ..................................................... 59
2.3.1 Imagining Foundational Fictions .................................................................. 63
2.3.2 The Page as Mirror ........................................................................................ 73
2.4 BAC K TO BILDUNG ................................................................................................ 80
3.0 SA VIORS (RE)CONCEIVED .......................................................................................... 84
3.1 SAVIORS AND THEIR SIDEKICKS ..................................................................... 90
3.2 FOUNDATIONAL FUTURITIES ......................................................................... 106
3.3 RECIPROCAL OCULAR EXCHANGE, A KIND OF SÉANCE WITH THE
LIV ING ............................................................................................................................. 117

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3.4 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................ 123
4.0 FR OM PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST TO PORTRAIT OF AN ILLA: ERNESTO IN
LO S RÍOS PROFUNDOS ......................................................................................................... 124
4.1 STORIES OF GROWTH: BILDUNGSROMANE AND
EN TWICKLUNGSROMANE ........................................................................................ 129
4.2 THE CHILD, AMERICA, AND THE INDIAN ................................................... 140
4.3 DIVIDED SELVES AND DISCORDANT WORLDS ......................................... 148
4.4 PORTRAIT OF AN ILLA ....................................................................................... 151
5.0 AN OTHER BIRD WITHOUT A NEST: THE SHAME OF ZITS ............................. 163
5.1 ZITS : MICHAEL :: AYAHUASCA: CHRISM .................................................. 169
5.2 ELIMINATION COMMUNICATION/ELIMINATION CONTAMINATION 182
5.3 BAPTISM BY BOILING ........................................................................................ 205
BIBLIO GRAPHY ..................................................................................................................... 224

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PREFACE
I would like to acknowledge the many people who have made an impact on me while I worked
on this project. First, I would like to thank my dissertation advisor, Dr. Gonzalo Lamana, for his
insightful input and constructive criticism. He has motivated me to consider carefully what I read
and write and I appreciate all the time he dedicated to reviewing my work and discussing my
project with me. I would also like to thank the members of my committee for their comments and
feedback. I am grateful to Dr. Elizabeth Monasterios, whose advice and encouragement as I
began the program played an important role in the direction of my studies. Discussions with Dr.
John Beverley, Dr. Susan Andrade, and Dr. Marah Gubar have all been invaluable and I am
thankful for their critique and guidance.
I would like to thank the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literatures for offering
me teaching assistantships that provided financial support as well as experience during my
studies. I also benefited from a FLAS Fellowship to study Aymara and a Lillian B. Lawler Pre-
doctoral Fellowship. I am grateful to these organizations for their support.
Dialogue with all my professors at the University of Pittsburgh in courses and at
conferences has been instrumental in the progress of my research, writing, and teaching. I would
like to send a special thank you to my Aymara teachers: the late Salomé Gutiérrez, for her warm
and thoughtful classes and Juan de Dios Yapita with whom I took classes at the Instituto de
Lengua y Cultura Aymara in La Paz, Bolivia. Yuspayara. I would also like to acknowledge the
staff members of the Hispanic Department who have helped me in many ways over the years
including Debbie, Lucy, and Connie.
I have fond memories of my friends and colleagues who began the program with me. We
are on unique paths now, but there was a time when we were all somewhere in the Cathedral of
Learning, ragged with whatever bad method we had chosen to make it through the last weeks
before comps. I would like to thank Raquel Alfaro for her friendship and all of our engaging
conversations that have helped me throughout my project. Thanks to Koichi Hagimoto, Sarah
Ohmer, Alejandra Cadeno, Aarti Madan, María del Pilar Melgarejo, Leah Strobel, Jorge
Zavaleta, Maricarmen León, María Ximena Postigo, Hannah Burdette, Parker Shaw, Becky
Klink, and all the rest who have touched my life in the past eight years.
My professors at Weber State University deserve recognition for encouraging me in my
academic pursuits, Dr. Spanos, Dr. Sessions, and Dr. Mondi. Not only did they read through my
undergrad honors project—which was, above all things, a topsy-turvy experiment of a coming-
of-age story (I blush)—but they also made academia attractive enough to consider extending my
stay.
I’m tempted to go back thanking everyone who has helped or inspired me—like Ms.
Meany my high school Spanish teacher—but I’ll try to contain myself. I’m already at risk of
exhausting my thank yous. However, there are a few people I would like to acknowledge from
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my pre-graduate school days: Alix Shand, for offering me a great opportunity to teach on la Isla
del Sol, Bolivia for several months, an experience that made a definite impression on me; José
Paye and the Yumani community for welcoming me; and Bregja for all the good times. I would
also like to thank Georgiana Simpson, for taking a chance on me and offering me a position in
Bluff, for her words of wisdom, and for being understanding during the hardest moments—I am
glad that man did not die and I hope I did not cause you too much trouble. Thank you to Corinne
Roring for letting me live in her remodeled shed, which might seem irrelevant here, but I spent a
year there, in that border town—Utah on one side of the river, Navajo Reservation on the other—
and I observed and experienced life in a way I wouldn’t have otherwise. I guess it is a bit odd
that someone writing on issues of coloniality had lived on the property of the first Anglo
settlement in that town, in a shed funded by an organization that claims (proudly) on its website
that it is dedicated to preserving the history of a “colonization endeavor of unparalleled
challenges.” I’ll be the first to admit that, yes, it is a bit inharmonious. Anyway, I want to say
thank you for letting me live there rent-free. I had a good time and I hope I did not kill any of
your trees.
I would like to thank all the people who helped care for my children so I could finish my
project: Ann, Liza, Alison, Rachel, Adgie, and all their wonderful teachers!
I’m not sure what my parents were thinking when I told them I wanted to go to Bolivia
one summer for a study abroad program when I was seventeen. They let me go and my late
grandpa Pete helped me get there and for that I am especially grateful. I appreciate that my
parents always encouraged me to follow my heart, even if that meant communication would get
choppy at times. Thanks to my mom for believing in me, for all those papers you read from
elementary school on, and for your inspiring passion for writing and art. Thanks to Jer too for all
your support and love—and for taking care of Liza. Thanks Brea for listening and for being there
for me when I needed you. Thanks to Leo and Dawn for the comfy quilts that have kept my
family and me warm during these cold Pittsburgh winters. Thank you Kayla for our close
friendship all these years. And thanks to the whole Metz family for all their loving support.
Finally, I would like to thank my sweet family for all their love, patience, and
encouragement. Lafe, Vita, and Fidelis, you managed to drive me crazy and keep me sane at the
same time. Thank you for keeping me grounded and giving me lots to laugh about. Vee and Fi,
I’ve learned so much from you already and I can’t wait to see what else is in store. Lafe, thank
you for being a part of my life, helping me navigate the tricky parts and encouraging me to relish
even the little accomplishments. I’d be lying if I said life in Pittsburgh has been a piece of
cake—not that it didn’t have more than a few good bites, many of which I shared with you.
Some things in life are worth the trouble, and there’s no one else I’d rather have by my side to
face them than you.

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1.0 INTRODUCTION
You can’t understand the world without telling a story.
—Gerald Vizenor in Winged Words

So is the right of identity simply a privilege of power?
—Thomas King in The Truth About Stories

This project primarily focuses on the depiction of growth in novels from the United States and
Peru where boys mature, or supposedly mature, into men. Such novels of formation are often
referred to as the narrative form of the Bildungsroman. In agreement with scholars who
recognize the Bildungsroman as allegorically representing the tale of growth of a people or
community within modernity, I recognize the symbolic function of the form as reassuring the
legitimacy of the narrative of modernity, including the path for entry into and participation in the
nation-state.1 I find that texts with adolescent characters intimately connected to indigenous
communities challenge western concepts of maturity and development.2 Although these texts

1 See for example Franco Moretti, Jed Esty, and Joseph Slaughter.
2 By development, I mean the conviction in a universal order that marks achievement as the autonomous movement
along a single fixed path in which the accumulation of matter (increase in size, strength and property) and western
knowledge (increase in self, national, and cultural understanding) results in maturity on personal, national, and
global levels. This definition may seem self-evident. However, clearly outlining development highlights the
particularity of the western concept of maturity and calls attention to the role of development in the construction of
hierarchies of power. People or cultures that do not move along this course are deemed backward and seem to
struggle to reach the goal of development: maturity—a time/space where one can enact power. Non-western notions
of development offer similar but distinct understandings of how one becomes an active member of the community.
For example, in their study of Aymara socialization, Denise Arnold and Juan de Dios Yapita discuss the importance
of thakhi (pathways), a series of developmental and social stages that lead to jaqichasiña (becoming a person). As in
the bourgeois Bildungsroman, the pathways of thakhi highlight the movement through the ayllu’s “formal
institutions that structure the relations of teaching and learning and of gender and age groups and facilitate the
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