Spreading Oneself in the Novelistic Character System: Algorithmic Forms and Tommy Orange's There There

Abstract: This essay advances an alternate model of the novelistic character system through a reading of There There (2018), the debut novel by contemporary Cheyenne writer Tommy Orange. Departing from prevailing understandings of the character system that are predicated on the metaphor of finite space or resources, There There invites its readers to approach the text like an algorithm would, looking for the meaningful patterns that constitute Native identity but that may not be recognizable on the scale of the individual life; in this way, the aggregate data of the many supports, rather than threatens, the individuation of the one. I conclude by reflecting on the implications of There There 's deployment of algorithmic forms for the success of the novel's anticolonial politics: although in some ways the a posteriori logic of algorithmic classification supports Orange's stated aim of depicting Native Americans as a "present-tense people," I suggest it is potentially incompatible with a politics of sovereignty.