Reassembling Skins and Bones: Indigenous Posthumanism in Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms

While posthumanism has contributed to questioning the foundations of humanism and the consequent process of exclusion it engendered of all those diverging from the universal category of ‘Man,’ numerous scholars have criticized this diverse philosophical movement from Indigenous perspectives. Multiple critics suggest a tendency within posthumanist strands of thought to oppose dualistic approaches presenting them as universal without considering the preexisting non-dualistic frameworks articulated by Indigenous scholars, while also appropriating Indigenous epistemes without acknowledging them, running the risk of becoming complicit with colonial violence and with what Rauna Kuokkanen has defined ‘epistemic ignorance.’ For this reason, projects of decolonizing posthumanist scholarship entail engaging and establishing a dialogue with Indigenous studies, fostering a ‘multiepistemic literacy.’ Acknowledging the productive potential of an alliance between Indigenous and posthumanist discourses in reorienting the conversation toward issues of settler colonialism, land sovereignty and Indigenous self-determination, this paper aims to apply an Indigenous posthumanist perspective to Chickasaw author Linda Hogan’s Solar Storms. In particular, the paper will focus, on the one hand, on representations within the novel of taxidermic practices, deeply tied to colonial violence, that transform animals into posthuman commodified objects, and, on the other, on instances of reassembling skins and bones in acts of regenerative creation, which, unlike taxidermy, acknowledge the need for reciprocity and processes of relational becoming. These new combinations of matter constitute on the part of the protagonist a way of envisioning new modes of being human, relating to the more-than-human, and affirming Indigenous self-determination.