Indigenizing Blankness in the Works of Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Gerald Vizenor, and Jordan Abel

ABSTRACT

The article examines the strategic use of blankness in the literary works of Indigenous authors Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg), Gerald Vizenor (White Earth Nation Anishinaabe) and Jordan Abel (Nisga’a). The study begins by tracing the broader tradition of blank books, blank works of art, and blank pages in English language literature, discussing the techniques that have evolved to make blankness speak. We then trace the potential implications of blanks in work specifically by Indigenous artists, where it can be made to speak as a commentary on erasure, genocide and epistemicide. However, in our readings of all three writers, we discover that each uses strategies of blanking to take the audience through such a trauma-centered reading, but also to go beyond it. By emphasizing the creative renewal that blankness embodies, each author uses it as a (literal) space of healing and imagination. This space is then linked via various narrative associations, most importantly by invoking the ancient art of petroglyphs, to Indigenous land sovereignty and survivance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Punctuation is that of the original review.

2. A note on nomenclature: we will, wherever possible, use the names of specific tribal nations rather than catch-all terms. While the word “Indigenous” has its critics (Peters and Mika 1229), it is the best collective term for the writers we are discussing, who due to being based in both settler nations of the US and Canada should not be collectively referred to as “First Nations,” “Native American,” or “American Indian.” Separately, given the need in this book frequently to refer to “white space” without intending that this be read racially, we have capitalized the word White when it refers to people of European origin.

3. Rauschenberg’s paintings are said to have inspired Cage’s silent piece, one way to demonstrate how this practice of not-making can be seen as a post/modern tradition.

4. Storm’s claim to be an authority on Northern Cheyenne religion have been heavily disputed, not least by the tribe itself.

5. There is also supposedly a fine art version of the title, though we have not been able to track down a copy. According to publisher Debra di Blasi, this edition was to be “shrink-wrapped and enclosed in a wooden box; the box is fully encased in plaster that can be opened with a pull-tab. Once opened, however, the box cannot be re-encased” (Walsh).

6. The word has been translated into English as “infra-thin,” but given its uncertain status as an invented term of art whose inventor declared it could not be precisely defined, translation seems unnecessary (Loewen).

7. Duchamp “once claimed that ‘infrathin denotes adjective, not the name – and never a noun’ [… though] he himself often used it as a noun as well” (Berlot 28n7).

8. This setup is clearly based on Vizenor’s own publishing company, Nodin Press, which did indeed hawk books around university campuses out of an old station wagon in the 1960’s (Leeper).

9. The name Wigwaas, which means “birchbark” in Anishinaabemowin, plays on the name of Birchbark Books, a Native American bookstore in Minneapolis owned by novelist Louise Erdrich. Birchbark Books is also the setting of Erdrich’s covid-era novel The Sentence (2021).

10. The description of this character leads us to assume that he is intended as one of Vizenor’s insider jokes that satirize a particular academic or literary personage, in the mode of other characters such as “Pardone de Cozener” and “Homer Yellow Snow.” However, we have not been able to deduce who the intended target is.

11. For competing definitions of survivance, see Carlson 16; Miles 41; Wahpeconiah 94. As Vizenor himself observes, however, “dictionary definitions of survivance do not provide the natural reason or sense of the word in literature. Space, time, consciousness, and irony are elusive references, although critical in native history and literary sentiments of the word survivance” (“Aesthetics” 18).

12. Espen Aarseth conceptualizes ergodic literature as writing which makes a nontrivial demand on the reader to participate actively in the meaning process by interfering with the normal reading process. While Aarseth’s theory developed out of readings of cybertexts, and has in mind complex assemblages such as the Choose Your Own Adventure series or the I Ching, it is at least not inapplicable to Simpson’s book.

13. We do not choose to italicize Anishinaabe words in this article. Scholar-poet Alice Te Punga Somerville has explored the colonial implications of such italicizations in an Indigenous context, not least in her book of poems Always Italicise (2022), throughout which English is italicized and te reo Māori is not.

14. In his article “and,” Peter Kulchyski explains that “my refusal of capital letters [is] in part a refusal of grammatically inscribed hierarchies” (320).

15. We prefer the active agency of the verb “Indigenize” to the reflexive implications of “decolonize,” though what we are describing is obviously also a decolonial art practice.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

James Mackay

James Mackay is Associate Professor of Literature and Digital Cultures at European University Cyprus. He was one of the founding editors of the Indigenous cultural studies journal Transmotion, and is the coeditor of the forthcoming collection Reading #Instapoetry (Bloomsbury 2024).

Polina Mackay

Polina Mackay is Professor of English at the University of Nicosia and the Vice President of the European Beat Studies Network and Association. She is the author of Beat Feminisms: Aesthetics, Literature, Gender, Activism (Routledge, 2022).