Positionality is Not (Only) a Metaphor

Distance-Focused Reading in Indigenous Comics

Abstract

In the same way that decolonization as metaphor “turns decolonization into an empty signifier to be filled by any track towards liberation” (7), positionality as (exclusively) metaphorical reduces our complex, shifting relational identities and perspectives to an oversimplified statement of introduction. In this paper, I put forward an approach to the reading/viewing of Indigenous comics inspired by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang’s calls for less abstraction in relation to decolonization and calls from others who have so aptly identified the complexity of settler location in the field of Indigenous literary studies. This paper suggests that self-location plays a major role in the way we read. It develops the ideas of distance and reader positionality beyond their usual abstractness into the basis for an ethical reading approach for Indigenous comics.