Laughing to survive, humour in contemporary Canadian Native literature

grantor: University of TorontoWhile many critics see Native humour as directly reflecting Native traditions or idealize it as uniformly subversive, in fact Native writers often use humour to negotiate touchy social tensions and contradictions. The humour in the writing has both ordering and disordering effects, allowing the writers to walk a fine line between affirming and challenging contentious values, categories and identities. Drawing on Canadian Native literature from the seventies to the present, this study examines Native humour as a social practice, arising out of specific cultural and historical circumstances, that allows Native people to deal with change while maintaining a sense of continuity and community. Much humour in Native literature revolves around issues of authenticity, identity, and community. The humour allows Native people to maintain a sense of identity while challenging confining definitions of "Nativeness." For instance, satires of "the whiteman" allow writers to both engage with and resist the dominant society. Humorous depictions of racial and cultural hybridity both undercut and support notions of authentic identity. And depictions of Native people laughing together are affirmations of but also critical examinations of the process of community building. Native humour often arises from and reflects on Native traditions. For instance, traditional Native ethics discourage the direct telling of traumatic events. Thus in dealing with the subject of childhood sexual abuse, several Native writers have used humour as a way of both telling and not telling. Native writers use a similar double-positioning to affirm Native languages even when writing primarily in English. By humourously switching between various languages and styles, they bring language and its power politics to the foreground. The order and disordering of Native humour can be seen as grounded in a Native philosophy that seeks to reconcile order and chaos. However, while it is important to affirm Native ways of knowing, it is dangerous to over-generalize about such ways or to assume that they are directly reflected in the literature. The solution to this dilemma may lie in more narrowly focussed studies of Native humour as used by individual writers and tribal or other groups of Native people.Ph.D