Nature, Narrative, Natives: Posthumanist Ecstatic Environmentalism in the Work of Gerald Vizenor

• In Event: Land Curriculum: Indigenous, Postcolonial, and Decolonizing Perspectives on Place, Education, and Educational Research

Abstract

Decolonial philosophers and theoreticians have argued that the legacies of imperialism, colonization and ecological destruction are not the by-products of liberal humanism but constitute its mode of operation (Quijano, 1998, Smith, 1999, Mignolo 2000, Maldenado-Torres 2007). Commonly referred to as the darker side of modernity, such moments offer up not the exceptional but the everydayness of estrangement to others and the natural world. The objective of this paper is to provide a decolonial Indigenous philosophical framework for environmental education which defends Indigenous modes of ecstatic relations to the natural environment. This paper is a philosophical investigation which takes up the following question - if liberal humanism can no longer be assumed to provide the philosophical foundations for modern environmentalism, how are we to think and teach about the environment education otherwise? The argument that I will develop turns to the literary and theoretical works of Gerald Vizenor (1989, 1992, 1994) as he outlines a multi-valenced, yet uniquely American Indian response to the forms of estrangement (environmental and social) fostered by humanist philosophy. More specifically, I consider how the narratives Vizenor (1989, 1992) provides counter the Enlightenment humanist tradition by creatively reinterpreting Indigenous intellectual traditions. Opposed to instrumentalist orientations toward environmentalism and sustainability, his writings situate readers in poetic/ecstatic relations to the physical world as a way to overcome estranged separations. Through a critical Indigenous discourse of chance, games and wonderment, Vizenor (1992) counters humanist philosophies of self mastery and/or mastery over nature. In conversation with philosophers of education engaging environmentalism and sustainability, this paper outlines a post-humanist, decolonial Indigenous perspective, wherein environmental education should foster Dionysian and trickster- like narratives to overcome estrangement and separation induced by the humanist philosophical tradition.

References
Maldenado-Torres, N. (2009), Rousseau and Fanon on Inequality and the Human Sciences. The CLR James Journal: A Review of Caribbean Ideas.
Mignolo, W. (2000). Local histories/global designs: Coloniality, subaltern knowledges and border thinking. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Quijano, A. (1998). The colonial nature of power and Latin America’s cultural experience. In R. Briceno-Leon and H.R. Sonntag (Eds) Sociology in Latin America. Social Knowledge: Heritage, Challenges, Perspectives. Proceedings of the Regional Conference of the International Association of Sociology. Venezuela.
Vizenor, G. (1989). Trickster Discourse: Comic Holotropes and Language Games. In G. Vizenor (Ed.) Narrative Chance: Postmodern discourse on Native American literatures (pp. 187-211). Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Vizenor, G. (1992). Dead Voices: Natural agonies in the new world. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Vizenor, G. (1994). Manifest Manners: Postindian warriors of survivance. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press

Author

• Troy Richardson, Cornell University