From Dystopic to Decolonial

Abstract

This paper looks to Haisla-Heiltsuk writer Eden Robinson’s short story “Terminal Avenue” (2004) as a literary example of what Canada’s future might look like if the collectively felt anxiety that underpins settler society remains unchecked. I analyze “Terminal Avenue” as a work of speculative fiction that represents what I term the genre’s “ideology of indeterminacy” as a politically productive condition under which Indigenous/settler relations in contemporary Canada can be reassessed. My analysis builds on the work of settler scholars David M. Higgins and Conrad Scott published in Extrapolation, vol 57, nos. 1-2, 2016.