Thinking of Native texts beyond the traditional interpretive framework
This paper offers a rereading of the critical discourse that incorporated Native literature in Québec literary studies and established a framework for interpretation. The question of special interest to the author is the way in which the written and oral have been set down and thought about as in Diane Boudreau’s Histoire de la littérature amérindiennes au Québec. This question is ever-present in commentaries about Native literature and is essential to the creation of the literary work and its code. Boudreau’s essay became, since its release in 1993, a popular reference for Native literature studies in French-speaking Québec. The paper points out that the first critical discussion about Native literature in Québec reproduced axiological ideas about orality and writing, some of them going back to the colonial discourse and other coming from grammatology. The analysis shows, among other things, that the approach to the ‘oral tradition’ has ignored or erased the historical context and its transcription. It has placed orality in an ideal space, mainly in the past, a past free of any interaction with Native writing. Native systems of writing have been relegated to the category of the ‘forerunner’ of writing. In conclusion, this paper calls for a re-evaluation of connections between oral speech and graphic signs on the basis of their common semiotic nature in order to consider the dynamic or dialectic connections between oral and written.