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Written in the Birch Bark: The Linguistic-Material Worldmaking of Simon Pokagon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jonathan Berliner
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Abstract

Simon Pokagon's writings exemplify a complex process of linguistic‐material worldmaking. His birch‐bark booklets bring together multiple cultural traditions, including nineteenth‐century tourist art, traditional Algonquian writing, and a long history of writing on bark that dates to the early history of writing itself. Neither purely things nor purely texts, these documents interweave nature and culture in such a way that Pokagon can be said to be engaging in a process of naturalization whereby the cultural is presented as a feature of nature. To promote his reformist agenda, Pokagon capitalizes on a rich cache of naturalist symbolism that was of particularly high cultural value in Victorian America. What is perhaps most notable about Pokagon's use of naturalization is that he makes this linguistic trope into a materialist discourse. (JB)

Type
Cluster on Textual Materialism
Information
PMLA , Volume 125 , Issue 1 , January 2010 , pp. 73 - 91
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2010

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