Necessary fictions: The re-visioned subjects of Louise Erdrich and Alice Walker

Of profound concern among current feminist and postmodern theories of the subject is what might be meant by a narrative construction of identity. This concern stems from reaction against the master narrative which tells reality according to conventions of linearity, the inevitability of progress, and, especially, the coherent self. In getting at the question of identity as formed by women writers, feminist theories often explore the link between traditional paradigms, like the romance or quest, and culturally mandated options for women that are oppressive. Postmodern theories usually privilege experimental fiction, marked by fragmentation, as a way of exploring identity in terms of loss of power and loss of control.; The novels of Louise Erdrich and Alice Walker participate in the contemporary impulse to critique the master narrative but their critique takes a different form. For both writers, identity takes place in unorthodox narrative spaces, carved out by rendering the experience of Third World women in America. Each writer creates fictional identities through which the oppression of women and the loss of particular histories always presume the consequences and currency of racial domination. Working with Love Medicine and Tracks by Louise Erdrich, and The Third Life of Grange Copeland and Meridian by Alice Walker, this dissertation explores questions of racialized identities in narrative. At issue for Erdrich is colonization; for Walker, apartheid.; By examining Erdrich's narrative strategies, I argue that, in each novel, the reservation is both a historically defined territory and a homeland for a non-Western culture. American hegemony is challenged by Chippewa trickster configurations and by imaginative depictions of a Native American assumption that stories make things happen. Attending to Walker's narrative strategies, I argue that freedom from the racist sexist apartheid system is enacted in both novels by southern black women, as reorganization of private and public space. In such a context, identity is an individual and community project, an improvisation based on the African American heritage of surviving slavery.; Contesting dominant descriptions of identity, both writers locate the Third World in America as a site of creativity as well as resistance.