What is Justice? Legal conflicts in zones of liminality in Louise Erdrich's justice trilogy
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2016-12-22
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en
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Legal liminalities occur on American Indian reservations because legal systems collide within the same area. These clashes create mazes in the law that make it incredibly hard to protect the American Indian community and find justice after a crime has been committed. Using theories on liminality, socially engaged law, and Engaged Literature, this thesis analyses the representation of justice and the consequences of the search for justice within the legal zones of liminalities in Louise Erdrich’s justice trilogy—The Plague of Doves (2008), The Round House (2012), and LaRose (2016)—as well as how those representations could be considered elements of activist literature. This thesis will conclude that multiple kinds of justice are present in the trilogy but that an ideal and balanced justice can only be achieved without the interference of legal liminalities. Also, Erdrich’s writing can be considered literature of social protest which pleads for more tribal sovereignty.
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