Productions of Geographic Scale and Capitalist-Colonialist Enterprise in Leslie Marmon Silko's Almanac of the Dead
This essay focuses on conceptualizations of space in Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Almanac of the Dead. Specifically, it seeks to understand how constructions of geographic scale contribute to both the survival and overthrow of colonialist-capitalism. In its critique of colonialist-capitalist enterprise, the novel elucidates how scale operates as a mechanism for place-making, profit-making, and identity-making, processes linked to economic globalization and social reproduction. In addition, other stories manipulate and/or resist conceptions of scale. Through these stories, the novel re-envisions the idea of scale with a Native American conceptualization of space and narrative modeled on expansiveness rather than expansion.