CONTEXT MATTERS: UTILISING VIZENOR’S THEORY OF NATIVE SURVIVANCE TO EXPLAIN EXPERIENCES OF GENETIC DIFFERENCE IN ENGLAND AND WALES

This article explores the appropriateness of utilising Vizenor’s writings on ‘survivance’ outside of Native American contexts. I ask whether survivance is a fitting analytic tool for understanding the actions and perspectives of my participants who live with an unpredictable genetic condition. While residents of England and Wales – both my own participants and those involved in other ethnographic projects – may utilise irony and creativity to resist both misrepresentation and stigma, I contend that the use of survivance as a critical term must be qualified and translated. In this article, I consider differences between the context in which Vizenor writes and the experiences of my own participants. Namely, I attend to the contrast wherein Native Americans have been understood as ‘the celebrated survivor[s] of cultural genocide’ (Vizenor 2008), while my participants are at times discouraged from reproducing people like themselves because of their genetic difference. The purpose of this consideration is threefold. First, I wish to find new ways of analysing the creativity of my participants. Does survivance help elucidate the agency and wisdom of my participants with NF1 in the United Kingdom? Second, I intend to add to Vizenor’s discourse. What might survivance look like in a biosocial community as opposed to a cultural group? Can we understand ‘survivance’ as an expression of ‘biopower’? How do we fully divorce survivance from survival in contexts of reproductive surveillance? Thirdly, and ultimately, the purpose of this article is to consider, more broadly, the role and flexibility of theory in anthropology.