Resistance Against Colonial Modes of Objectification of Mojaves in Natalie Diaz's Postcolonial Love Poems and When My Brother Was an Aztec

Abstract

In Natalie Diaz's anthologies Postcolonial Love Poem and When My Brother Was an Aztec, the theme of Native American’s objectification of body echoes Frantz Fanon's theory of object-hood. Fanon argues that colonized are always objectified by the colonizers with Us and Them considerations. This objectification of natives leads to identity crisis since the formers start looking themselves from colonizers’ perspectives after the entrenching internalization of the colonial culture. This crises of identity have been profoundly reflected in Diaz's poetry by entailing a menace of erasure in native Americans’ imagination. Diaz documents the history of Native Americans' objectification along with questioning the racial bias which construes the historical discourse of discrimination. A deep sense of alienation, identity loss, and fragmentation of the native cultural strands lead towards self-objectification. Furthermore, Diaz's poetry offers an alternative and subversive reading; a way to resist the colonial norm of the perpetuation of native objectification. that can be observed in the poetic imagery of physical and psychological marginalization of colonized. By drawing on Fanon’s psychological notion of objectification, the current study accomplishes that in modern Native American poetry, Fanon's challenges the myths of objectification of Native Americans. To that end, the present study creates a dialogic space for reclamation of their bodies and their identities buried under historical versions of colonial cultural subjugation