The Unhomeliness Dilemma of Cultural Identity on Sherman Alexie’s Short Story War Dances

Abstract

Sherman Alexie’s (2009) War Dances, one of the short stories in the anthology War Dances, portrays the complexities of Native American identity in contemporary American society. The issue lies in how Indigenous subjects negotiate their cultural belonging through the continuing presence of colonial histories and the supremacy of American cultural values. The narrative presents various social phenomena and catastrophes marked by uncertainty, isolation, and displacement. The contour suggests that cultural identity cannot be comprehended as a settled and homogeneous category, but rather as a negotiated process. This study examines the representation of unhomeliness as cultural identity’s dilemma for Native Americans, employing Homi K. Bhabha’s postcolonial theory, particularly the concepts of hybridity, mimicry, ambivalence, and unhomeliness. Bhabha’s concept of hybridity provides a framework of in-between cultural space that leads to the concept of mimicry as the process of adoption and negotiation between social and cultural entities within the realm of assimilation correlated with ambivalence’s potential. These circumstances culminate in unhomeliness considered not merely as physical displacement but also as a psychological and cultural condition in which the subject experiences a disrupted sense of belonging. The study argues that War Dances portrays unhomeliness as a persistent dilemma in Native American cultural identity.