Mohawk Interruptus - Shannon M.

Shannon Moutinho

Feminist Knowledge Production

2/21/17

Mohawk Interruptus - Audra Simpson

The concepts that most struck me in Audra Simpson's Mohawk Interrupts were the concepts of refusal and the messy business of defining group identity and therefore membership. This post will discuss these two issues, especially as I think about them in the context of my own research.

Simpson's critique of traditional anthropological research of native peoples not including the political and colonial context of their positionality directly informs the focus of her own questions. In response her work focuses heavily on this aspect through interviews, public statements, field notes and other resources to give a well-rounded perspective of the extent and reach of the political and colonial context that the Kahnawa:ke community are in the midst of.  In exploring the shape of the western political and colonial context (American and Canadian), she naturally also discovers the ways in which members resist its power and attempts at control.  The resistance takes the form of refusals in many aspects of life.  The rejection or refusal of citizenship to the colonizer's state, the refusal to transition to the colonizer's language, the refusal of colonial practices of gendering, and the refusal of the colonizer's governing through development of and adherence to law apart from the colonizer's.  

Throughout her exploration of the different ways that the Kahnawa:ke community refuses, I was interested in the ways that these refusals seem to vacillate between active and passive resistance.  Though, can refusals ever be passive?  Also, this business of refusal is not necessarily the first step in developing a definition or practice in opposition of the colonizer.  It can be simple a rejection of the colonizer's ways without replacement.  I think this is a true example of the "interruptus" because it is a rejection of not only the specific colonizing practice (law, language, etc) but also a complete disruption of western social organization.  If the Kahnawa:ke were refusing the colonizer's approach so that they could replace it with their own, it still adheres to the colonizer's concept of organization.  With a complete rejection of the organizing practice entirely, the refusal becomes a much stronger action of independence.

Simpson highlights the slipperiness of defining community identity and membership, especially given  that the people, culture, and traditional thought and practices have been moved from their land and context.  The colonial and political disruption of identity is a factor that makes everyone uncomfortable in conferring membership and defining the parameters of identity and membership.  The testimony given from the membership, as Simpson presents it, seems to settle on members being defined and validated by others.  If you cannot explain yourself (in relation to the group) or if others cannot claim you, your claim membership becomes vulnerable.  However, some are concerned that "claiming each other" is not enough since it requires very little performance of culture.  The colonial and political context, however, interrupts this requirement of performing culture in order to gain membership.  Who is to blame for the lack of performativity - the individual or the colonizer?

I think about this in connection to the Deaf community, language use, behavioral norms, and community practices.  For a short time, there was a trend in Deaf studies to write about the hearing world as a colonizer of the Deaf - the concept of which is still quite valid.  Within the Deaf community, I am now able to recognize refusals to the colonizer's way organization in behavioral norms and language use.  These refusals are often evident not only in their action but in the underlying ideology of them.  Defining membership is most primarily defined by language fluency but secondarily by a claiming of each other.  Members argue ad nauseum about who's in and who's out and how far from the insiders the outsiders are etc.  There used to be, however, a clearer context - a more defined polity of membership until the new laws of the colonizer disrupted the community foundations and fractured it into a Deaf diaspora across the US.  As I read Simpson's book, I couldn't help but think about how I might utilize her approach to composing a work that explores many of these same concepts.