The Politics of Vanishing

L ike Margaret Atwood, Louise Erdrich has expressed concern over the future of humanity. Her concern stems from the fact that “our planet, which at best estimate might support 2 billion modest lifestyles, will see our population jump to 7 billion in just two years” (“Dartmouth”). In her 2009 Dartmouth commencement address, she put it bluntly: “We’re in a nosedive unless we can change as a species.” Erdrich’s writing attests to her belief that change is possible and that literature has a role to play in facilitating the kind of change she believes is necessary. She has explained that, “although fiction alone may lack the power to head our government leaders off the course of destruction, it affects us as individuals and can spur us to treat the earth... as we would our own mothers and fathers” (“Where I Ought to Be” 50). However, the source of change for Erdrich is markedly different than for the other writers included in Confronting Visuality because, as a writer of mixed German American and Ojibwe descent, 1 Erdrich offers a perspective that reflects her experiences with both cultures. She has described herself as “on the edge” ( Conversations 111), and David Stirrup asserts that “written from this place, Erdrich’s representations of marginality cannot help but hold some power, whether it resides in transforming infrastructures or in offering transformative potential to those who recognise themselves or their predicaments in her characters” (15). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.