“To Write My Way out of a Map and onto the Land”: Bodily Sovereignty in Billy-Ray Belcourt’s Essays A History of My Brief Body
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/LL.4.2024.005Keywords
the body, embodied experience, decolonization, eroticism, sovereigntyAbstract
The article examines multiple ways in which Driftpile Cree writer and scholar Billy-Ray Belcourt applies the body and embodied experiences as a theoretical framework for decolonization of Indigenous concepts such as sexuality, eroticism, and sovereignty. According to Belcourt, the Indigenous body has not only been colonized and restrained by settler colonial heteronormativity, but also undermined by Native critics, artists, and writers as insignificant when compared with the theory of indigeneity. Therefore, in his writings, Belcourt emphasizes the centrality of the body as a theoretical framework as well as a source of (sexual) pleasure in everyday life. He advocates for “Indigenous joy” that affirms Native identities in all their dimensions, Two-Spirit, queer, etc., and thus provides emotional support in everyday struggle with manifestations of settler colonialism.
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