The Columbian Moment: Overcoming Globalization in Vizenor’s The Heirs of Columbus

Abstract

This essay reassesses Gerald Vizenor’s novel The Heirs of Columbus in the context of the critical concepts of transnationalism and globalization.  Drawing in part on the work of Indian economist Amartya Sen’s and Italian political philosopher Giacomo Marramao, the central argument of this piece is that Vizenor’s novel functions as a meditation on the ambiguous nature of modern globalization for Indian people. Through his subversive re-scripting both of the history of the “Columbian moment” of encounter and of Columbus’ own identity, Vizenor seeks to open up an imaginative space between the historical reality of a form of globalization over-determined by Western colonialism and an alternative, utopian model of what globalization might mean if re-cast in indigenous terms.