Resistance in Contemporary Contagion Narratives

Abstract

This chapter studies one way in which postcolonial Indigenous Canadian literature engages with contagious disease: as both a key part of ongoing colonial harm and a potentially galvanizing force for change. Contagious disease is a multifaceted literary device that is capable of holding multiple and contradictory meanings. This is particularly true in the concept of “contact,” a term with both epidemiological and community-based implications that can connote either vulnerability to infection or collective proximity and communication. As a case study, the chapter analyzes Lee Maracle’s duology Ravensong and Celia’s Song, where the representation of pandemics concatenates with settler colonialism, crossing the boundaries between historical and current atrocities as emblematized in the infectious agent. Maracle’s duology attends to “contact” both as traumatic colonial infection and as a condition necessary for more equitable forms of engagement.