Cultural Appropriation and Historical Recursion: On the Systemic Violence of “Indian Night” in Nemesis

Abstract

Philip Roth’s Nemesis uses the 1944 polio epidemic in Newark to explore the repeated violence and exclusion in American society. This thesis argues that the “Indian Night” celebration at the Indian Hill summer camp is not only a background event in the novel. Roth uses this scene to show how violence from the past can appear again in new forms. The white children imitate Native American’s clothing, customs, and behavior during the celebration. Their performance makes Native American’s traumatic memory something like entertainment and hides the history of colonial violence behind it. To analyze this chapter, the thesis uses Michel Foucault’s idea of heterotopia and Jacques Derrida’s idea of hauntology to further examine the meaning of the summer camp. The camp is at first a safe place away from the polio epidemic. However, it later becomes a hell when the disease spreads. This change tells the readers that the camp has two different meanings: it is both a refuge and a place of danger. The break of polio in the camp also shows that, the violence of the past can come back into the present. It connects the suffering of the Jewish people with a longer history of anti-Semitism and colonial violence. Through these connections, Roth shows that exclusion and cultural appropriation do not simply disappear with time. These forms of violence can return when new social crises break out and continue to affect the marginal groups.