Across the Atlantic and Beyond: Tracing Cosmopolitan Agendas in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Gardens in the Dunes

Abstract

In Leslie Marmon Silko’s 1999 novel Gardens in the Dunes, young Indigo of the Sand Lizard tribe is separated from her family and taken in by a Euro-American couple, Hattie and Edward, who take her on a trip through Europe. Indigo visits foreign places, contemplates unfamiliar landscapes, collects seeds from unknown plants, and talks to people representing diverse cultures. Despite the sense of separation from home which accompanies her throughout her journey, the Indian girl manages to establish emotional and spiritual connections which facilitate communication in spite of cultural differences. The young girl does miss her home, but at the same time she manages to trace a connection with her Native home in the strangest parts of the world. One may ask: Can the easiness with which Indigo inhabits foreign spaces and her empathic approach to people and creatures that she encounters endow her transatlantic travel with a cosmopolitan character? Is Indigo an Indigenous cosmopolitan? Indeed, as the editors and contributors in this volume have observed, cosmopolitanism has recently reemerged as a valuable critical discourse, suitable for responding to the fast-paced and rapidly changing realities of the modern world, with a special emphasis placed on issues related to identity, culture, and society in the context of increased transnational mobility, technological advancement, and globalization. As has been noted by numerous scholars, the body of work which engages cosmopolitanism is very broad in scope and interdisciplinary, thus making the task of defining the term extremely challenging, if not impossible. In the most common and colloquial understanding of the term, cosmopolitanism is seen as standing in opposition to nationalism and is characterized by a detachment from national and local bonds, replaced by an embracement of humanistic sensibilities and the rich diversity of human practices. In the words of Pheng Cheah, one of the most renowned scholars in the field, “Cosmopolitanism is about viewing oneself as part of a world, a circle of political belonging that transcends the limited ties of kinship and country to embrace the whole of deterritorialized humanity” (3). Such an understanding of the concept dates back to the philosophy of the Cynics of the fourth century BC and later the Greek Stoics, who believed that individuals may exist as citizens of the world, balancing new and old loyalties in the name of an abstract commitment to other people of the world. In Immanuel Kant’s reworking of the concept, cosmopolitanism is combined with democratic forms of governance and is seen as a rational method of linking nations together to act against any violations of political rights (Fine ix). Post-millennial applications, or new cosmopolitanisms, revolve around the original meaning of the concept, as in Martha Naussbaum’s work, and simultaneously address