Narrative Desire and Textual Consummation in Haida, Tlingit, and Northern-Dene Textualized Orature: A Critical Review Essay on Narrative Revitalization

• Published in: Tusaaji: A Translation Review
• Main Author: Spencer, Jasmine
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Glendon College, York University 2020
• Subjects: Deseo; tlingit
• Online Access: https://tusaaji.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/tusaaji/article/view/40384; https://doi.org/10.25071/1925-5624.40384

Abstract: Associated with the rubric of desire and consummation are four interrelated challenges for the critical interpretation of oral narratives transformed into printed texts: the boundaries of the discursive (presence and absence), the recursive (orality and literacy), the ontological (animality and humanity), and the metaphysical (reincarnation and rewriting) that occur in the collaborations I examine in this review article of oral-literary methodologies and ideologies. I focus on better-known and lesser-known key examples from Haida, Tlingit, and northern-Dene orature as culturally and linguistically defined bodies of oral literature that follow from two interconnections between them: the bioregional and the bibliographical. By comparing essentially Modern conditions for interpretive uncertainty with interpretive cues found in the stories themselves, through a critical review of the colonial and decolonial poetics of orature, I argue that cross-border ways of thinking with these stories may enact narrative revitalization (cf. Spencer, “Telling Animals”; “The Soundscape”) through the circulation of meaning as “desire” and as “consummation.” Keywords: Indigenous languages and literatures; textualized orature; Indigenous epistemologies; decolonial semiotics; comparative poetics Resumen: A la rúbrica del deseo y de la consumación se asocian cuatro desafíos interrelacionados para la interpretación crítica de las narraciones orales llevadas a textos impresos: las fronteras de lo discursivo (presencia y ausencia), lo recursivo (oralidad y alfabetización), lo ontológico (animalidad y humanidad), y lo metafísico (reencarnación y reescritura). Estos están presentes en las colaboraciones que analizo en este artículo acerca de las metodologías y las ideologías oral-literarias. El análisis se centra en ejemplos clave, algunos conocidos, otros menos, de la oratura haida, tlingit y dené del Norte vistos como entidades cultural y lingüísticamente definidas de la literatura oral que se derivan de dos interconexiones: la ...