Leslie Marmon Silko's 1991 novel Almanac of the Dead is a profound and challenging analysis of late capitalist society in America and more widely, and the ways in which powerful minority elites ensure that their power is never challenged nor shared, through the complicit discourses of imperialism, patriarchy, religion, medicine, science and technology. Almanac's exploration of multiple forms of dispossession and resistance is most fully embodied in the two Armies of Justice, who are devoted to overturning oppression in all forms and to the restoration of social and economic justice. Reading Almanac in the light of the global economic recession of 2008, this study assesses the ways in which Almanac's vision of oppressive capitalism continues to have absolute relevance. Perhaps most importantly, this study provides a groundbreaking reading of Almanac for the 21st century, comparing Silko's activist armies with recent international popular social justice activism such as the Arab Spring, the international Occupy movement, and the Indigenous Idle No More movement.

Acknowledgments1. IntroductionsPart One: Oppression and Dispossession2. Social (dis)Orders: 'Vampire' Capitalism, Social Privilege and the Law3. Institutionalized Violence: Patriarchy, Gender and Sexuality4. Discourses of Difference: Science, Medicine and AcademiaPart Two: Resistance and Revolucíon5. 'The Disappearance of All Things European': Revolucíon and Relatedness6. Fourth World Rising: The 'Indian Connection'7. Armies of Justice: Textual and Extra-textual 'Revolucíon'Afterword: 'Another World Is Possible'Bibliography Index