Dancing Resistance, Re-creating the World

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers the histories and meanings of the round dances that are often performed as part of Indigenous resistance movements, to argue that these danced rituals are world-creating performances that challenge all forms of colonization and domination to enact a dangerous philoxenic form of democratic freedom: freedom in relationality. Drawing on Thomas Norton-Smith’s analysis of Indigenous story and ritual as world-creating performances, Weir considers Cree stories of the meanings of the round dance in light of Julia Kristeva’s Kleinian psychoanalytic theory of philoxenia. In contrast to Hannah Arendt’s idealized philia politikē, philoxenia is a form of political friendship that includes the stranger. Against a naive view of democratic discourse as honorable contestation among friendly and equal individuals—and against a cynical view of democracy as only a game of power—the danced rituals directly address and work through fear and hostility toward the other, to forestall violence and domination.