Stylistic Interdiscursivity for Re-Configuration of Differential Native American Identity in Sherman Alexie’s Poetry

Abstract

Stylistic interdiscursivity is a political instrument for Alexie who has employed it not only to reconfigure Native American identity but also to challenge the Euro-American misshapen construction of the First Nations to benefit the exploitative white agenda. Alexie mixes the white discourses of history, law, politics and literature with Native American version of these discourses flouting limitations and restrictions of genres and styles for appropriation and reconstruction. His poetry readjusts the unequal power relations among the members of the American society and brings the Native American margin into the center through various stylistic devices. The very purposes of his writing – challenge, anger and offence – are dialogic in nature. He does not speak in his aloofness; he speaks to the white counterpart on behalf of his Native American community. This research explores how through stylistic interdiscursive bridging and blending Alexie’s poetry disrupts the existing practices of white literary discourse as well as establishes new poetic patterns to assert Native American literary and social distinct identity. I have used ‘style’ not in strict sense of the use of language and prosody, textual focus on various stylistic devices; I have used style in the larger sense of patterns of difference from and negotiation with Euro-American discursivity.