ABSTRACT
This chapter seeks to examine how this has unfolded using the example of the American folk standard “This Land Is Your Land” and how its rhetoric has been continually reproduced by capital in order to both subvert its radical sentiments and utilize its poetic language to reinforce humanity’s dominion over the natural world. It shows that the colonization process is imperfect, and at the edges there are still spaces of resistance that are embedded in these songs as well. The political aspects of the verse are striking: juxtaposing America’s endless skyways and golden valleys with its rampant poverty, and articulating the tension between the metaphors of America the beautiful emancipator and the reality that Guthrie had witnessed in his travels across the land. The refrain of “This Land” further gets reproduced under this context, as the landscapes described in the song become used to symbolize the domination of humanity over their environment.
