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The Chimalpahin Conference 2007: Colonial and Post-Colonial Remembering and Forgetfulness October 16 - 18, 200 7
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These Shores will Swarm with the Invisible Dead": Indigenous Cosmopolitanism and the Global Image of Seattle Department of Political Science My essay considers the global 'image of Seattle' within the frames of what Arnold Krupat ("Red Matters") calls 'indigenous cosmopolitanism'. Rather than accepting the essentialist notion that a cosmopolitan ethos is 'necessarily' contrary to the claims of indigeneity (or that indigeneneity is contrary to the claims of cosmopolitanism), I argue that the interconnectedness of 'singularity, particularity and universality' that cosmopolitanism implies affords a framework within which indigenous politics encounters new possibilities, and that, as Krupat holds, strictly 'nationalist' or 'indigenist' approaches are certainly no more free of colonial residue than is cosmopolitanism. This, I want to suggest, is because once there is no longer any group that can claim majoritarian status - or at least, once things beginning moving in that direction - the image of the city becomes open to significant pluralization, no longer as mutually-exclusive (as was the case within a strictly national or tribal imaginary), but instead as complementary and overlapping. As a result, the coexistence of multiple claims to the 'same' space become thinkable. In this presentation, I will argue that the struggle
over the 'image of Seattle' during the WTO protests of 1999, marked the
beginning of a new aesthetics and politics, one that is reflective of this
radical cosmopolitan ethos, of which 'indigenous cosmopolitanism' is one
of the most important and developing strands. I will pursue this line of
thought by looking at the globalization of the 'image of Seattle' in
multiple media venues over the course of the Nineties, and how the concept
of 'indigenous politics' has been transformed from a strictly tribal
towards a more cosmopolitan frame as a result: specifically, I will
consider mass media |
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