Chances of Survivance: Gerald Vizenor’s Autocritical Auto/biographies

This essay discusses Gerald Vizenor’s Interior Landscapes in the context of current debates on life writing and theories of autobiography. Starting with the subtitle, “Autobiographical Myths and Metaphors,” Vizenor is already challenging Western conventions of literary autobiography by relating fact to myth and myth to truth and becoming a creator of myth in accordance with the practices of Native oral discourse. Taking the last section of the text, “September 1989: Honor your Partner,” as my starting point, I argue that Vizenor’s auto/biography becomes a form of auto/ criticism, as he skillfully constructs a self-portrait woven within his own reflections and musings on autobiographical theory. While such a split consciousness might at first remind readers of contemporary postmodern practices, and more specifically of a text such as Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes, Vizenor’s intriguing style, however, needs to be situated within the Anishinaabe tradition of oral discourse in which the art of telling stories is itself a theoretical gesture. In the attempt to understand the various ramifications of Vizenor’s autobiographical tales, I also discuss the role that his father, Clement William Vizenor, plays in the text ultimately arguing that Interior Landscapes is a book about Gerald Vizenor as much as it is the (unwritten) autobiography of his father, one tale resonating into the other in an endless process of transformations and trickster turns.