The present study explores the potential relevance and/or irrelevance of capitalist conceptual frames to the subaltern pre-industrial cultures as marked out by the prominent US writer Sherman Alexie in his famous story “What You Pawn I will Redeem”. More specifically, the study highlights one particular deconstructive scheme used by writers from the periphery to protest the imposition of capitalist culture principles on native populations. To situate the discussion more broadly in post-colonial theory, the study traces uses of the same self-deprecating strategy elsewhere in the post-colonial tradition where the capitalist and non-capitalist cultures do occupy the same temporal and physical space. The article consistently demonstrates that these post-colonial voices were not in fact cursing themselves or their own populations, but they were rather protesting malignant interventions in the evolutionary growth of their native cultures.

Key Words: Capitalist cultures; pre-industrial cultures; self-whipping; marking difference; cultural encounters.

Title

International Journal of Language and Literature

Publisher

AMERICAN RESEARCH INSTITUTE for P o l i c y D e v e l o p m e n t

Publisher Country

United States of America

Indexing

Scopus

Impact Factor

None

Publication Type

Both (Printed and Online)

Volume

6

Year

2018

Pages

103-111