In Search of a Dialogic Criticism: Ethnocriticism and Native American Literatures

Abstract

IN ETHNOCR1TICISM, ARNOLD KRUPAT OFFERS A MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND cross-cultural consideration of some of the thorniest issues central to the study of Native American literatures. He presents an eclectic discussion of at least three major foci: history of interrelations between ethnography and literature; several close, but brief, readings of Native American texts (Cherokee memorials, oral narrative performances, and autobiographies); and recurring call for the practice of what he calls ethnocriticism, ... an interdisciplinary mix of anthropology, history, and critical theory (4). As an alternative to postmodernism and in the service of a cosmopolitan [global] social order (245), Krupat proposes vision of literaryhistorical-ethnographic critical practice for the study of Native American literatures, particularly, and other marginalized literatures, generally. Summarized briefly, the practice of ethnocriticism promotes multiculturalism, which leads to polyvocal polity-that is to say, society in which Bakhtinian dialogic values replace Western binary oppositions.