Nile Tonkovich, Parallax, Trans, Transmotn: Readg Race the Allotment Photographs of E. Jane Gay, MELUS, Vol. 39, No. 2, Visual Culture and Race (Summer 2014), pp. 66-92
Contents:
MIGRATORY SUBJECTIVY E. JANE GAY’S CHOUP-N-KI, WH THE NEZ PERCéS
Due to s unual publishg history, E. Jane Gay’s Choup-n-ki: Wh the Nez Percés has not received the cril attentn serv. Through the book’s photographs and text, Gay stag a migratory, polyvol narrator who rejects the unary inty that tablish both the wrer’s and the lonizer’s thory. This article studi textual featur such as shiftg folizatn, the spltg of the wrg subject to multiple personae, and the humor extracted om social ntradictns to show how Gay’s book both c and challeng neteenth century nventns erng genre and genr. Contemporary theory (Delze and Guattari, Braidotti, Butler) provis ncepts that n aid our appreciatn of the text’s origaly. Gay’s self-prentatn cracks the rtrictive neteenth century mold of femy and liberat the subject, even as, ironilly, the thor llaborat the project of imposg on the Nez Perce the nstrats legislated through the Daw Act. Gay’s book illtrat the thor’s ambivalence about the Allotment policy that attempted to end tribal anizatn on the Nez Perce rervatn. * jane gay dawes act *
Gay took photographs, wrote, and kept hoe while Fletcher surveyed and privatized the land to male heads of hoeholds, agast the majory of the tribe’s wish.
Puar has named this problematic phenomenon “homonatnalism”: the fantasy that whe gay life is herently civilized and good for the natn, whereas Black, brown, and Asian nonheterosexual life is primive, backward, and a threat to progrs. Puar was wrg about the 21st century, but the dynamic reach back to the late 19th and the women like Fletcher and Gay who ed their lotn the “ontier” to liberate themselv om patriarchal sexual norms while simultaneoly imposg them upon others. Through the book’s photographs and text, Gay stag a migratory, polyvol narrator who rejects the unary inty that tablish both the wrer’s and the lonizer’s thory.
CATEGORY: JANE GAY
This article studi textual featur such as shiftg folizatn, the spltg of the wrg subject to multiple personae, and the humor extracted om social ntradictns to show how Gay’s book both c and challeng neteenth century nventns erng genre and genr. Gay’s self-prentatn cracks the rtrictive neteenth century mold of femy and liberat the subject, even as, ironilly, the thor llaborat the project of imposg on the Nez Perce the nstrats legislated through the Daw Act. Gay’s book illtrat the thor’s ambivalence about the Allotment policy that attempted to end tribal anizatn on the Nez Perce of page.
Bis tendg to Fletcher’s domtic arrangements and keepg up rrponnce wh fay and iends back East, Gay ma photographic rerds of Fletcher’s activi, the land, and s Several years later, wh the llaboratn of her niece, Emma Gay, E.
Jane Gay piled a selectn of her rrponnce and photographs to an epistolary memoir entled Choup-n-ki: Wh the Nez Percé In gatherg to book form the disurs and imag she produced rponse to her enunter wh the Nez Perce, the wrer stag herself as a subject divid by the ntradictns herent her suatn.