Performing the Other: The Indigenous Experience in Eden Robinson’s "Terminal Avenue"

The chapter considers the ways in which the neo-colonial discourses of power influence the Indigenous experience in Eden Robinson’s short story Terminal Avenue, focusing predominantly on the intersections between the private and the public, the Self and the Other, the corporeal and the discursive. Concerned predominantly with familial relationships, Robinson’s fiction examines the conditions in which the identity of the Other (both individual and communal) is shaped in multicultural societies, negotiating a space in which it can exist and transform. Therefore, employing postcolonial theory as well as theory of science fiction as the theoretical framework, the chapter posits that that the protagonist’s performance of his Indigeneity, intended for the titillation of the white audiences of the BDSM club which he frequents and facilitated primarily by his sensory experiences (predominantly touch), at the same time results in the dissolution of his familial and social ties and allows him to become more keenly aware of his ancestral heritage, as well as the strategies of anti-colonial resistance employed by his community.