Global developments in the field of culture, communication and media
Sajjad Gheytasi
Abstract
Regarding cultural assimilation, subaltern cultures face a critical problem that is analyzed in the novels Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko and the novels Tracks and The Round House by Louise Erdrich. The characters in the novels resist the dominant culture's nodal points ...
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Regarding cultural assimilation, subaltern cultures face a critical problem that is analyzed in the novels Ceremony and Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko and the novels Tracks and The Round House by Louise Erdrich. The characters in the novels resist the dominant culture's nodal points using counter-discourses that aim to negate, resist, and suspend them. Instead of simply accepting the hegemonic discourse, the subalterns construct and re-territorialize the meaning of the nodal points, using elements from their own cultures such as memories, storytelling, and folkloric songs. This creates contradictions that destabilize the dominant discourse's nodal points and reformulate its rules. The characters in both novels remember the residual elements that question and negate the dominant discourse, and use them to create faultlines that deconstruct the nodal points of the ideological discourse. The natural, the supernatural, and the real are combined to re-territorialize the field of discursivity, which opens up space and time for articulating new elements. Ultimately, this leads to the construction of a counter-hegemonic discourse that redefines and re-territorializes our discursive space.
