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Conclusion

The Puppet Show Is Not Over

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 June 2020

Melanie Benson Taylor
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College, Hanover
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Summary

This conclusion offers a new template for approaching the apocalyptic landscape of contemporary advanced capitalist America, where environmental, political, racial, and class crises tend to simmer in silos, and where both Indians and southerners occupy outdated and discrete categories of stereotype. Gesturing toward new texts in the realm of virtual reality, this closing chapter demonstrates that Indigenous exceptionalism lingers in the American imagination as a confounding contradiction between the concealed horrors of national origins and the transcendent virtues of wisdom, catharsis, and deliverance. The Indians are always doomed, and yet they always manage to rise above as well - a paradox that the American narrative desperately needs and clings to, particularly when basic concepts like humanity and reality have become the slipperiest of conceits. Despite how acutely we might want to rescue the Indian from the heterotopias of modernity, these texts remind us again and again that these imaginative sites are the beginning and the end of our realities.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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  • Conclusion
  • Melanie Benson Taylor
  • Book: The Indian in American Southern Literature
  • Online publication: 30 June 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108861892.005
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  • Conclusion
  • Melanie Benson Taylor
  • Book: The Indian in American Southern Literature
  • Online publication: 30 June 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108861892.005
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Conclusion
  • Melanie Benson Taylor
  • Book: The Indian in American Southern Literature
  • Online publication: 30 June 2020
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108861892.005
Available formats
×