Archives as Decolonial Love in This Wound is a World
Billy Ray-Belcourt’s This Wound is a World serves as “an archive of memory” of an Indigiqueer speaker, who strives to find love and acceptance in a world where such love is denied and obstructed to one with an Indigiqueer identity (Whitehead). However, by writing and keeping an “archive” of his memory, the speaker goes through a spiritual process of healing the wounds he received from the world. Belcourt’s poems each describe a wound inflicted by physical and verbal violence of “heteropatriarchy and heteronormativity… logics of colonialism” (Finley 12). Ironically, these series of wounds create another world in the speaker’s mind, in the form of memory, where the victim exerts his own agency through writing — creating a space where the oppressed can speak and fight back against his oppressors. Therefore, instead of forgetting and erasing but by archiving and remembering, the speaker makes sense of his pain imposed by this post-colonial world, through the use of decolonial love and narrative. Identifying the cause of his wounds leads to their healing, and the youth, once dependent on love from another, matures into an adult who learns how to love himself despite all his scars.
In “Sacred,” the speaker recounts an experience where he feels alienated in his own Indigenous community, yet he refuses to assume an identity that will protect him from alienation. The memory begins with “a native man [who] looks [at the speaker] in the eyes as he refuses to hold [the speaker’s] hand during a round dance,” so the speaker “wince[s] a little” and feels “lonely in a way that doesn’t hurt anymore” (Belcourt 17). This anonymous “native man” refuses to hold the speaker’s hand in this communal ceremony, where everyone has a right to feel included, by assuming the speaker’s queerness, identifiable by his manicured nails. Therefore, the speaker has to suffer from the feeling of ‘otherness’ within his own community. This act of deliberate exclusion within a Native community is directly related to “[h]eteropatriarchal practices in many Native communities [that] are written into tribal law and tradition… [while] Native interpersonal and community relationships are affected by pressure to conform to the nuclear family and the hierarchies implicit in heteropatriarchy, which in turn are internalized” (Finley 13). This “internalized” pressure to conform to heteropatriarchal hierarchies cause Native individuals to exclude and be biased against those who do not fit into the colonial model of heteropatriarchy. Colonial traditions are deeply embedded into Native communities, and the society in “Sacred” is no exception. However, the speaker resists this post-colonial ideology of heteropatriarchy by continuing to “wear nail polish” because “it is a protest” (Belcourt 17). The speaker flips the protester stereotype, which usually consists of those who resemble the traditional model of patriarchal “warriors” who “carry… anger,” by becoming a protester who carries “love” instead of “anger” (Belcourt 17). The speaker’s protest manifests in its passivity since he passively “waits for hands that want to hold [his] too,” yet the persistent expression of his queer identity through applying nail polish shows how he wants another’s hands to hold his despite his non-conformity (Belcourt 17). The speaker’s self-love for his identity exceeds his desire to feel accepted by a community that upholds the “logics of colonialism.”
“Notes from a Public Washroom” gives a clear example of irony where the speaker creates a nonheteronormative world from a wound inflicted by an act of heteronormativity. The speaker’s “cousin’s boyfriend punched / a hole in the wall / so [the speaker] hid inside it… [and] ran off the edge of the world / into another world… / [where] everyone / was at least a little gay” (Belcourt 12). The act of punching “a hole in the wall” is undoubtedly an act of violence, which is a cliche response in media, usually done by men who exert their frustration in a destructive way. Such an act of violence can also be read as a symbol for rape, as both actions are done by forcing penetration into an object/person that/who is not supposed to be penetrated. Heteronormativity is related to “sexual violence [that] is both an ideological and a physical tool of U.S. colonialism” because heteronormativity “naturalize hierarchies and unequal gender relations,” which tend to condone rape culture (Finley 12–3). Also, the speaker’s mention that it is his “cousin’s boyfriend,” who executes an action that implicitly indicates “sexual violence,” represents the “high rate of sexual abuse in Native communities” usually inflicted by non-Native perpetrators, since “there is little chance of perpetrators being brought to justice or caught by tribal police” (Finley 12).
Yet from this insufferable wound of colonial crime, the speaker emerges with a solution in his archive, marked by empathy and love, that directly opposes the hate and oppression that fuel rape. The speaker creates a world where “everyone / was at least a little gay,” and this term, “gay” serves as a resistance against the remains of colonialism, such as heteronormativity and sexual violence — similar to how “queer studies can imagine more open, sex-positive, and queer-friendly discussions of sexuality in… Native communities,” that may change traditional, heteronormative constructs within post-colonial nations (Finley 12). Throughout the poem, the “gay” speaker is characterized by his want for empathy and love. He drives to “a city in colorado / called loveland” while purchasing “a pin that says LOVE / and [wearing] it on [his] jean jacket as a cry for help” (Belcourt 12). The speaker, out of a need for assurance that he is indeed being loved, goes to the extent to ask “all 908 of [his] facebook friends / to tell [him] they loved [him] / and they did / and [he] believed them” (Belcourt 12). The speaker’s actions are all strongly motivated by his need for connection and intimacy in the name of “LOVE,” which are directly opposite to sexual violence and rape that is done due to a complete absence of love and empathy. The title, “Notes from a Public Washroom” illustrates the speaker’s method of expressing personal values of love and empathy in a public, societal space. A “public washroom” includes both public and private spaces; it is located in a public place yet is used for private purposes. The speaker adds a personal, intimate touch to the “city in colorado” by calling it “loveland” instead of its colonial name given by the government. The speaker publicly announces his “LOVE” by wearing it on his jacket, instead of reserving it only for his personal, private relations. Furthermore, the speaker genuinely seeks individual connection and intimacy in a public social networking site where the concept of love and trust seems almost superficial. Thus, the speaker stresses the importance of extending private, personal emotions, such as love and empathy, to a larger, public audience, without the division of ingroup versus outgroup. The speaker’s idea of love encompasses all is a key characteristic of his utopian world (“maybe this is what heaven looks like”), which he creates from the gaping wound where there was originally only violence and no love (Belcourt 12).
The link between the public and private spheres is also present in “OKCupid,” as the speaker’s narrative of decolonial love blossoms into maturity by forming a romantic relationship with another who also shares the speaker’s wounds. “OKCupid” describes an Indigiqueer romance as “a kind of nation-building effort” and as an act of “protesting” (Belcourt 33). A personal, romantic relationship is presented as a form of societal resistance, another “nation-building” that protests against the current status quo: the colonial nation that is Canada. This love between “two native boys” is most likely unaccepted in their community, since “Native nations’ use of heteronormative citizenship standards… disallows nonheteronormative identity formations from belonging in Native nations” (Belcourt 33) (Finley 15). Outside of their Native community, these “two native boys” are also restricted from enjoying true intimacy and belonging, as shown in the superficial conversation between the Indigenous speaker and a non-Native fellow okcupid user: “my okcupid username was nakinisowin / which… / means: love don’t live here / means: ask me what my ‘ethnicity’ is / and say that’s interesting / when i tell you i’m native” (Belcourt 32). Non-native men can only fetishize the ‘exotic’ racial trait of the speaker, by giving shallow compliments on the speaker’s physicality to obtain sex instead of sharing love: “they baptize you with words like / beautiful and handsome and sexy / because sex is the only ceremony / you have time for / these days” (Belcourt 33). Being used for sex and only identified for one’s fetishized race, while being shunned and disregarded by their community, creates a combination enough to cause a significant wound — strong enough to be considered a trauma. Despite such alienation, the two lovers find a space for decolonial love and acceptance in one another, as each acts as a world, a sanctuary for the other. Their kisses and bodily proclamations of love serve to purge the “homophobic nationalism [in Native communities that] is similar to the U.S. nation-state’s” (Finley 39). A private act of sex and romance between Indigiqueer bodies becomes a public reminder to love oneself and each other, even when both Native and non-Native communities threaten to thwart it. The lovers both share similar wounds, and by detecting one’s wounds reflected in another, their love can overcome the post-colonial tragedies of heteropatriarchy and heteronormativity, thus “conceptualiz[ing] a more harmonious construction of sovereignty and Native nationhood” (Finley 15).
By explicating three of Belcourt’s poems in This Wound is a World, “Sacred,” “Notes from a Public Washroom,” and “OkCupid,” in relation to Chris Finley’s argument of decolonization by “critiquing Native nation-building that uses the U.S. nation-state as a model… [which is] internalized colonialism,” this paper suggests that Belcourt’s speaker is resisting against this “internalized colonialism” (Finley 12). The speaker’s resistance is not marked by violence but by love, and his decolonial love is upheld by its non-conformity, openness to vulnerability, and self-love, which allows him to love others. From the speaker’s wounds, no new wounds appear or are inflicted on to others; instead, he creates a world where his, as well as others’ wounds, have a space to communally heal and connect. As a result, the speaker’s “archives of memory,” in the form of poems, produce an internal, spiritual world, which purpose is to love and defend those who are marginalized from the external world dominated by heteronormativity and heteropatriarchy.