Publication Date
Winter 12-1-2022
Description
This article describes how the law inflects the narration of environmental conflict in William T. Vollmann’s Dying Grass (2015) and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead (1991). By focusing on the legal common sense of settler colonialism—its emphasis on private property in land and its subjugation of Indigenous peoples to the guardianship of the state—the article explores the ways in which Vollmann’s and Silko’s novels present counternarratives to the law’s story of justified conquest. Combining a law and literature approach with ecocriticism, this article highlights the importance of the legal imagination in defining human-land relations in the United States. It demonstrates how The Dying Grass and Almanac of the Dead critique this legal imagination while also using it as a model for changing environmental politics through discourse.
Journal
American Literature
Volume
94
Issue
4
First Page
705
Last Page
731
Department
English
Second Department
Environmental Studies
Link to Published Version
https://read.dukeupress.edu/american-literature/article/94/4/705/319922/The-Dream-of-Property-Law-and-Environment-in
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1215/00029831-10341748
Recommended Citation
Hamilton, Ted. "The Dream of Property: Law and Environment in William T. Vollmann’s Dying Grass and Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead." (2022) : 705-731.
Included in
Environmental Law Commons, Environmental Studies Commons, Indigenous Studies Commons, Literature in English, North America Commons, Native American Studies Commons