In the liminality of their femininity: An examination of the othered sex in Sherman Alexie’s “The Search Engine”
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Abstract
This study examines the representations of the female characters in Sherman Alexie’s short story titled “The Search Engine.” The analysis employs Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s postcolonial and feminist theory of subalternity, specifically the conceptual aspects concerning the transparency of intellectual and strategic essentialism, as the main framework. The examination reveals that the text, in its preoccupation with contesting colonialism, becomes complicit in legitimizing androcentrism and essentializing femininity. By empowering the female protagonist with male authority and judgement, through her ideological association with such patriarchal institutions as Christianity and epic literature, the text alienates and marginalizes the other female characters who are found to represent traditionally female stereotypes. On account of this ideological oversight, called ‘the transparency of the intellectual’ by Spivak, the male-female dichotomy is consequently reinforced, the former presented as a hero, the latter as a bozo. Following Spivak’s recommendation of ‘strategic essentialism’ as a reactive approach for the subaltern to mobilize in solidarity through temporary essentialization, this study rallies the marginalized females in Alexie’s story and gives them the space and spotlight as the ‘dumb blonds,’ the ‘ugly/old bores’ and the ‘mad women,’ hoping that this could serve as a paradigm for strategically promoting solidarity in the face of sexist essentialism that is still much prevalent today.
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