The Torus Chronotope
Spatial Motif as Anticolonial Resistance in The Night Watchman
Abstract
Torus spatiality offers a unique form of geographic resistance to the asymmetrical power dynamics of settler colonialism that remains sensitive to the infinite complexity of spacio-temporal relationships in fiction and in reality. In this essay I argue for the torus as a literary artistic chronotope that disrupts the domination/resistance binary in which resistance must parallel that which it disrupts, denaturalizes space’s subordination to time under capitalism, and enables the polyvocal ensemble cast of Louise Erdrich's The Night Watchman.
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