Falling in Love with Indians

The Metaphysics of Becoming America

Bibliographic Data

ID4786265
AuthorsKaren M Gagne (corresponding author)
Year2003
Volume3
Issue3
Pages205-233
Publication date2003-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCR The New Centennial Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1532-687X • E-ISSN: 1539-6630
PublisherProject MUSE (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1353/ncr.2004.0005
OpenAlexW1980048973
LanguageEN
References cited7

ROBERTO FERNANDEZ RETAMAR ARGUES IN CALIBAN AND OTHER ESSAYS (1989) that the image of the Carib/cannibal, a "bestial man situated on the margins of civilization," is contrasted with that of the Arawak/Taino, the peaceful, meek, and even timorously cowardly native. This Taino, he writes, would be transformed into the paradisiacal inhabitant of a utopian world—as in the world of Thomas More in 1516. Further, this notion of an Edenic creature would serve as a "working hypothesis for the bourgeois left, and, as such, offers an ideal model of the perfect society free from the constrictions of that feudal world against which the bourgeoisie is in fact struggling." The vision of the cannibal, then, corresponds to the right wing of that same bourgeoisie. Retamar writes, "It belongs to the ideological arsenal of politicians of action, those who perform the dirty work in whose fruits the charming dreamers of utopias will equally share" (7; my emphasis). Both of these visions, as Shakespeare was to address in The Tempest, were perfectly reconcilable

Aesthetics · Art · Bourgeoisie · Civilization · Epistemology · Feudalism · Foolishness · Ideology · Literature · Metaphysics · Political science · Politics · Tempest · Theology · Vision · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Literature, Magical Realism, García Márquez · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

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