American Indian Culture and Research Journal

The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning. Ifyou knew when you began a book what you would say at the end, do you think you would have the courage to write it? The game is worthwhile insofar as we don't know what will be the end. -Michel Foucault Technologies of the Self "Since the first contact between Europeans and Native Americans, their relationship has been characterized by various forms of estrangement." So begins Gary Witherspoon's Language and Art of the Navajo Universe. This statement is true enough, but it is not at all certain that Witherspoon's influential representation of the Navajo is not another form of estrangement. The major motivation of the book was, as he put it, "to bring the Navajo world closer and make it more intelligible to non-Navajos," so that Navajo philosophy and art would "take their place alongside other philosophies and art tradition." It should be said at the outset that Witherspoon's effort, at least in terms of his stated intentions, is successful. This book is a useful and informative account of the Navajo culture, especially language, philosophy, and art (e.g., songs, rituals, drypaintings, weavings, jewelry). What is problematic, however, is the manner by which Witherspoon achieves his success. A reading of his writing that is informed by deconstruction will reveal that the means by which he brings the Navajo culture closer and more intelligible to our own are the same devices that simultaneously undermine the persuasive power of his representation of that culture. A number of problems arise from the effect of Witherspoon's extensive use of figurative language in particular, a metaphor of "depth.” The best example is in his main premise that "[s]urface level phenomena [culture] need to be understood and explicated in subsurface level term." From the point of view of poststructuralist theory, Witherspoon's use of this figure unintentionally undermines his explicit claims regarding Navajo art. There also are important implications for the representation of "others," which may indicate something about the history of relations between whites and Indians.