ABSTRACT
The redemption of American political theory for Judith Shklar was therefore a matter of overcoming its marginal status by challenging the widely held presumption that it has lacked scientific rigor ever since the colonial period. A history of colonialist political economy haunts the writings of Michelle Cliff, Sherman Alexie, and Toni Morrison. The period of chattel slavery that Shklar lamented is merely one of the political phenomena that provoked, in a seemingly positive way, an American political theory that is strictly the provenance of Euro Americans. Toni Morrison expresses the same ambivalence toward her participation in US literary culture as Cliff and Alexie. The politics of counter-memory that Kincaid's garden book offers derives much of its historical context from the symbolic relationship of the English garden to both Britain's and Euro Americas imperial expansion. The Rubyite's special mission, an African American version of American exceptionalism, is motivated by their rejections, to which they refer in their narrative.
