Magic realism as an ideological strategy of resistance to white cultural hegemony: Louise Erdrich's the antelope wife

The "representation of meaning" has been a major concern for magic realist writers who have tried to reflect the "real" not as a static term restricted to the mİmetic depiction of the external world, but as one of the continuously developing concepts that have been contextualized according to one's cultural beliefs, values and assumptions. !n this respect Louise Erdrich's The Antelope Wife also challenges western conceptions of empirical reality since İt provides a syncretic worldview that mingles the two disparate worlds of the West and the Indian as well as the real and the unreal, the material and the spiritual, the human and the non-human. The aim of this study is, then, to reveal, in general the ideological rationale that lies behind the utilization of magic realism by Natİve American writers, and to demonstrate, in particular how "schema theory" can be a valuable tool in displaying the various subversive strategies used in the magİc realist novel, The Antelope Wife. For l believe that a schema analysis will be very effective in any subversive text that tries to construct new frames of understanding and meaning through discourse. In analyzing the ways in which Louise Erdrich subverts canonical assumptions about human experience and reality, l have focused on three different types of framing. First, l show how through the utilization of universal "scripts'', Erdrich is able to "naturalize" supernatural occurrences and display them as if they were natural phenomena of the real world. Second, ! reveal how textual frames such as the title, sub-titles and character names can play an influential role in creating hybrid spaces. And in the last part, l explore the realm of metaphors, especially the metaphor of "beadwork" as a cognitive frame that subverts western understandings of life and its meaning.