Leaching the Native American Hidden Dreams: Historical Oppression in the Necropolitical Dystopia of The Marrow Thieves | ||
| مجلة کلية الآداب بالوادي الجديد | ||
| Articles in Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available Online from 09 March 2025 | ||
| Document Type: بحوث علمية محکمة | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/mkwn.2025.358769.1461 | ||
| Author | ||
| لبنى محمد عبده خضر شداد* | ||
| مدرس الأدب الإنجليزي كلية الآداب جامعة أسيوط | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Native Americans, as the original inhabitants of the Americas, have endured generations of systematic oppression stemming from European colonization. This historical oppression forms the core of Cherie Dimaline’s dystopian novel The Marrow Thieves (2017), written by the Canadian novelist of Métis descent. The novel is set in a near future where climate change and global warming have caused the deaths of millions, leaving the survivors traumatized and dreamless, stripping them of ambition. Only Native Americans retain the ability to dream, a gift passed down through their ancestors’ bone marrow. As a result, Indigenous peoples are hunted by both the American and Canadian governments, who seek to extract and exploit these dreams in an attempt to cure the widespread dreamlessness. This study aims to demonstrate how Dimaline anticipates the continued exploitation of Native Americans, even when there seems to be nothing left to take. To analyze this dystopian society, this employs Achille Mbembe’s concept of necropolitics—the politics of death. By engaging with the histories of Native Americans, dystopian studies, and necropolitics, this article argues that the fear of rising authoritarianism gives rise to a specific genre of fiction, which this paper terms “Necropolitical Dystopia.” This genre portrays future societies where life as we know it ends, as certain races assert their perceived superiority and oppress or annihilate others. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| : Necropolitics; Dystopia; Historical Oppression; The Marrow Thieves | ||
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