Affective Communities

Anticolonial Thought and

the Politics of Friendship

Leela Gandhi

\ 1 )+-0

permanent black
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

I INTRODUCTION
Affective Communities I

2 MANlFESTO
AnticolonialThought and the Politiu
ofFriendship 13

3 SEX
The Storyof Late VictorianHomosexual
Exuptionalism 34

4 MEAT
A Short Cultural History ofAnimal Welfare
at the Fin-de-Sicde 67

5 GOD
Mystici,m and Radicalism at the End
of the Nineteenth Century 115

6 ART
Aestheticismand the Politicsof
PostcolonialDifference 142

7 CONCLUSION
An Immature Politics 177

Notes 191

Index 237
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Several individuals and institutions have supported and accompanied

the making of this book. A generous grant from the Australian Re-
search Council directly facilitated research and helped release invalu-
able writing time. La Trobe University was likewise supportive in cru-
cial ways, extending financial assistance, allowing for periods of leave
from teaching, and, most of all, providing a uniquely collegiate and
intellectually sustaining milieu. So too, the business of actual research
waseased considerably through the assistance ans:!patience of staff and
archivistsat the following libraries: St. Stephens College, Teen Murthi
the Bodlcian, La Trobe University, Monash University, and Sri Auro
bindoAshram.
Over the last few years I have benefited greatly from scholarly hospi-
talify at the Universities of Lisbon, Evora, Trento, Oxford, Massachu-
setts, Monash, Melbourne, Sydney, New South Wales, and Delhi, and
the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research in Canberra. For affective ac-
commodation at these institutions as well as for their intellectual and
personal generosity, I wish to thank especially Maria Alzira Seixo,
Tapan Basu, Liana Borghi, Brinda Bose, Barbara Caine, Giovanna
Covi, Ros Diprose, Alison Donnell, Simon During, Debjani Ganguly,
Costanza and Mario Garavelli, Paola Giacomoni, Chris Healy, Victor
Mendes, Suroopa Mukherji, Michele Nicoletti, John Noyes, Ira Raja,
Manav Rati, Linnell Seacomb, Lalitha Subbu, Rajeswari Sunder Rajan,
Ferdinando Targetti, Jurgen Todesco, and Joy Wang. I owe additional
thanks to Robert Young, who has also been the most supportive and
stimulating of readers for this work. At a delicate stage of writing I
received invaluable support and editorial feedbac.k from Julia Adams,
George Steinmetz, and others involved in the Politics, I Iistory, and
Culture Series for Duke University Press. At the press itself, I received
particular support from my editor Valerie Millholland and from Fred
Acknowledgments

Kameny, who has been the most painstaking of copy editors. lt is a rare
luxury to have a book shepherded toward completion and one for which
I remain very grateful Ample thanks are also due to the Humanities
Research Centre at the Australian National University for a month-
long fellowship that enabled me to prepare the final manuscript in the INTRODUCTION
most congenial setting.
Dipcsh Chakrabarty and Ashis Nandy have been instrumental as Affective Communities
mentors for this and other work: sympathetic, impatient, enthusiastic,
tough, always encouraging. Communities of friends, debts to whom are
inevitably somewhat unaccountable, have helped, thus, in incalculable
ways: Daniel Alexander, Julia Briggs, Marion Campbell, Terry Collits, Over the last few decades postcolonial scholarship has tended to desig-
Kate Cook, Michael Dutton, Joanne Finkelstein, Ramin Gray, Mani, nate anti-imperialism "proper" as an action performed solely by the
Srnriti, and Siddharata Iyer, Vinay Kumar, Caroline Lewis, Amanda putative non-West upon the putative West, through gestures of either
Macdonald, Hilary Mcphee, Sunam Mukherjee, Claire Murray, Raju oppositionality (culturalism, nativism, fundamentalism) or infiltration
Pandey, Nisbad Pandey, Ratna Raman, Arvind Rane, Mahesh Ranga- (hybridity, mimicry, reactive intcrpellation, "the journey in''). Suppl)'.-
rajan, Nimmi, Elizabeth Rubin, Sanjay Seth, Ruth Vanita, Don Wat- ing us with complex theoretical means through which to diagnose the
son. Ir is with appreciative pleasure that I acknowledge all of the above oppositional energies of nonwestern anti-imperialism, especially when
here along with my goddaughter Helena and her brother Ruben. My expressed in the form of anticolonial nationalism, postcolonialism has
parents Ramachandra Gandhi, Indu Gandhi, and Veenapani Chawla however remained tentative in its appreciation of individuals and
have consistently been sources of insight, comfort, and conversation. groups that have renounced the privileges of imperialism and elected
My greatest debts are to them as well as to Pauline Nestor and Bronte affinity with victims of their own expansionist cultures. It is to such
Adams for such love and presence as never allows even the most intense western "nonplayers" in the drama of imperialism that this book de-
periods of work and absence to seem like a privation. For their match- votes its attention, thus seeking to shed greater light on some "minor"
less gifts of humor, compassion, loyalty, and fierce and unyielding intel- forms of anti-imperialism that emerged in Europe, specifically in Brit-
ligence, then, my deep gratitude. ain, at the end of the nineteenth century.
The exhumation of these "internal" and subjugated forms of anti-
imperialism, I submit, productively complicates our perspective on colo-
nial en.counter. It brings, as David Cannadine and Jonathan Schneer
among others have urged, the hist0ry of the British Empire into closer
proximity to the history of the British nation, showing how imperial
messages were frequently intercepted, refused, and diluted from within
theimperial metropolis well before they reached the colonial periphery. 1
As Schneer writes, "The imperial drumbeat was steady and all-envelop-
ing in tum-of-the-century London ... Nevertheless, because London
wasan imperial metropolis it was cosmopolitan and because it was cos-
mopolitan it contained anti-imperialists and critics of empire. These men
and women did not attain the influence of their imperial counterparts, but
AffectiveCommunities Affective Communities
neither were they a negligible force. Moreover just as the champions of and separation, colonialism failed its informing orientalist enterprise
empire helped to shape the imperial metropolis, so too did tbey.''2Lend- largely on account of the irremediable leakiness ofimperial boundaries;
ing its voice to stories of such long-forgotten nineteenth-century metro- and third, if postcolonial thought is to lay claim to political and ethical
politan anti-imperialists, this book is at one level a work of straightfor- imPort it must use the analytic advantage of historical hindsight scru-
ward historical redressal. At another level, and in its heart, it is also an pulously to disclose the failure of imperial binarism. Said names this
inquiry into the onerous politics of "betrayal," "departure," "flight," "trea- third procedure the "contrapuntal perspective" of postcolonial thought,
son" exemplified by metropolitan anti-imperialists. What ethical impera- committed in its best moments to revealing the "overlapping territo-
tives, I wish to ask in the following pages, rendered some Europeans ries" and "intertwined histories" of colonial encounter. The law of divi-
immune to the ubiquitous temptations of an empire described by Schneer sion, as he writes, may well have been germane to imperial subjectivity
as a machine or factory "for making imperialist-minded citizens"?3 and epistemology: "Throughout the exchange between Europeans and
Which were the intolerable domestic pressures exercised by empire upon their 'others' that began systematically half a millennium ago, the one
its own citizenry, such that some among it chose to betray the claims of idea that has scarcely varied is that there is an 'us' and a 'them,' each
possessive nationalism in favor of solidarity with foreigners, outsiders, quite settled, clear, unassailably self-evident. As I discuss it in Orienta/-
alleged inferiors? How might we recognize as political the disaggregated ism, the division goes back to Greek thought about barbarians, but,
forms of a dissent engaged for its own sake, bearing no practical invest- whoever originated this kind of 'identity' thought, by the nineteenth
ment in the telosof the anticolonial nation-state :µid certainly gaining no century it had become the hallmark of imperialist cultures as well as
apparent material advantage from the economic and political diminution those cultures trying to resist the encroachments of Europe." Yet, Said
of imperial power? What part, if any, did western critiques of empire play avers,it is precisely such "identity thought" that postcolonial revision-
in the dissolution of the tired and violent deadlock betwec:n colonial ism has exposed to be fictional and illusory: "Gone nre the binary op-
power on the one hand and anticolonial resistance on the other? How positions dear to the nationalist and imperialist enterprise ... new
"successful" were they? How did they blur the rigid cultural boundaries alignments are rapidly coming into view, and it is those new alignments
between West and non-West, colonizer and colonized? These are some of that now provoke and challenge the fundamentally static notion of
the questions to be canvased in the course of the following discussion as identity that has been the core of cultural thought during the era of
we endeavor to glean one paradigmatic narrative of metropolitan anti- imperialism." 4
imperialism from the annalsoflate Victorian radicalism. In the course of its discursive and disciplinary transmission the
Although departing from postcolonial theory in an emphasis on theme ofSaidian "contrapuntality" has reached its apogee and possibly
internal rather than external critiques of empire, my arguments none- received its most inspired elaboration through the tropes of"hybridity,"
theless-take their cue from premises fundamental to that larger body of "interstitiality,'' "mimicry" and the "in-between," each closely associ-
thought, especially insofar as they pose an inquiry into the cultural ated with Homi Bhabha's oeuvre and each announcing the epistemic
osmoses occasioned by colonial encounter. To recall, the scholarship and existential impossibility of colonial division. Imperialism, Bhabha
variously liberated by the epochal publication of Edward Said's Orien- reiterates in his influential essays, never fulfills its fantasy of discrete
ta/ism (1978)and his later Cultureand Imperialism(1993)finds its theo- binarizarion. Its yearning for secure psychic quarantine is always com-
retical moorings in three assumptions also central to myconcerns here: plicated by a perennial osmosis through which colonizer and colonized
first, that colonialism was a hierarchically aligned system of division or mutate unawares but inexorably into each other in the countless hybrid
binary opposition designed, in the main and through the discourse of and interstitial sites of imperial antagonism: "the primitive Manichea-
"orientalism," to sequester the West from the psychic contagion of oism of the settler-black and white, Arab and Christian-breaks down
nonwestern alterity; second, that as such a project of division, partition, in the present of struggle for independence. Polarities come to be re-
Ajfe.ctiveCommunities A.ffl!diveCommunities

placed with truths that are only partial, limited and unstable." 5 That is work in this area proceeds decoostructively, drawing attention to the
to say, it is precisely as a project of pure division that colonial fantasy adulterants of occidental modernity secreted within every dream of
carries elements ofits own inevitable disappointment; precisely its crav- anticolonial nationalist purity. So, close cultural readings reveal in place
ing for the hygiene of oppositionality that renders it susceptible to of anticolonial nationalism's confident claim to edenic prcmodern an-
contagion from a field where, a la Marx, "everything seems pregnant tiquity a fictive and orientalist-inspired "invention of tradition," in
with its contrary."6 Or, as Bhabha contends in characteristic complica- place of its bombastic assertions of radical difference .md originnlity a
tion of this theme: "Reading from the transferential perspective, where "derivative discourse," contingent upon the oppressive forms of impe-
the Western ratio rerurns to itself from the time lag of the colonial rial nationalism. 10 In a similar vein, historiography inspired by the work
relation, then we see how modernity and postmodernity are themselves of the Subaltern Studies collective highlights, in lieu of its claims to
constituted from the marginal perspective of colonial difference. They anti.colonial oppositionality, elite nationalism's self-defeating collusion,
encounter themselves contingently at the point at which the internal collaboration, and implication in the imperial project, its reliance on the
difference of their own society is reiterated in terms of the difference of infrastructure and grammar of empire to disqualify elusive and disrup-
the other, the alterity of the postcolonial site etc."7 tive forms of popular resistance (such as peasant rebellions in South
Over the last few decades postcolon1alist scholars have carefully Asia}internal to the anticolonial nation-state.
worked through the obligations ofa "contrapuntal persflective," break- At its core, this book is thus deeply indebted to the impulse against
ing down the stem binary of colonial encounter by refusing the myths of imperialbinarism amplified in the postcolonial critiques, summarized
cultural purity, origin, inauguration, and initiation both to the imperial above,of both colonial and anticolonial nationalisms. Nonetheless, it
West and to its opposite, anticol~nial nationalism or natiVlsm. Gener- dramatizesa complaint against the subtle determinism to which post-
ally speaking, one set of scholars has sought to dissolve colonial division colonialorthodoxy is susceptible because of its reliance on a concealed
within the territorial and subjective geography of empire itself, showing rhetoricof historical dialecticism in which the dissolution of colonial
how the substance of imperial self-articulation was in fact furnished by division is seen as in some waysinevitable: a matter of temporal unfold-
the materials of nonwestern difference: thus the nine,teenth-century ing, an evolutionary effect of the laws of biological mutation. "I at-
English novel obtained its narrative and domestic detail from the cor- tempt," as Bhabha writes of his theoretical project, "to represent acer-
nucopia of the imperial periphery; the seemingly patriotic "culture" of tain defeat, or even an impossibility, of the 'West' in its authorization of
English Studies was first developed in the pedagogic laboratories of the'idea' of colonization ... "; the "fetishized colonial culrure" is always
colonial India, and so on.8 Here we might also record the theme, ubiq- "potentially and strategically an insurgent counter-appeal"; the ter-
uitous in postcolonial theory and fiction, of the "voyage in/' surmising ritorial transmission and imperial projection of the "Western sign" in-
the historical failure of colonial separation from the present admixture variably "inscribes an ambivalence at the very origins of colonial author-
of the imperial metropole, its mixed and vexed demography invoked as ity."11Without arguing the case for an elision of agency in such thought,
testimony to the complicating veracity of preVlous imperial contact I would however point to its relative neglect of, or disinterest in, anti-
zones. colonial actors, especially such as might have performed their political
Further to this project, another set of scholars has anempted to vocation impatiently from within imperial culture, unwilling to wait for
dissolve the logic of imperial manicheanism by nagging at its inversion its cvencual hybridization, actively renouncing, refusing, and rejecting
and reinstatement in the narrative of anticolonial nationalism-es- categorically its aggressive manicheanism. 12 The naturalist theatre of
chewing, to this end, the oftentimes pernicious consolation of"a rhet- "interstitiality" and "in-between-ness" is, I maintain, an inadequate
oric ofblame." 9 Seeking instead, as Bhabha puts it, ''acritical position setting for the aspirational energy of this latter endeavor, its politics
... free of the 'inverted' polarities of a 'counter-politics of exclusion,'" demanding, in addition to those improvisational gestures of "slyness"
 Affective Commun;ties Affectiw Communitus

and "mimicry" catalogued by Bhabha, scope for greater inventiveness, rial divide. Yet in its commitment to "recognising the oppressed or
and manifesting a desire not only for dissolution bur for the inaugura- marginalised selves of the First and Second world as civilisational allies
tion of new and better forms of community and relationality hitherto in the battle against institutional suffering," it posited a radical, ifAect-
unimaginable within the monochromatic landscape of imperial divi- ing, "newness" against the barren space of colonial division.JS
sion, where all opposition is tediously condemned to the logic of repeti- For Nandy, such a project of ethical "inventiveness" i~ to ipso •·uto-
tion and resemblance. pian.'1Those "wholly" opting out from the idiom of their own col,mi1..-
Faced with an ultimately unsatisfactory theoretical choice between ing cuJrure may be described, in his words, "as persons &earching for a
the oppositional but repetitive forms of cultural nationalism on the one new utopia untouched by any Hobbesian dream." 16 Utopianism, I will
hand and the subversive but quietist discourse of hybridity or contra- argueafter Nandy, was indeed the constitutive ingredient of the western
puntality on the other, some postcolonial scholarship over the last de- anti-imperialism that briefly elaborated itself at the end of the nine-
cade or so has begun the task of reengaging the colonial archive for teenth century, animating its action of departure from inherited com-
more selfconsciouslycreativeforms of anti-imperialism, especially in its munitiesand its yearning for an other-directed ethics and politics, and
western or metropolitan articulation. So, for instance, KumariJayawar- accountingalso for its relative unintelligibility to the existing field of
denc's TIN White Woman} Other Burden (1995) offers an instructive dis- pottcolonialstudies. Let me explain. If the imperial project, and its
cussion of western women who defied both imperial and anticolonial JeCOWSCto the exclusionary structures of instrumental binary reason,
orthodoxy in fulfilling their feminist allegiance with their nonwestern demandedfrom its votaries strict observance of the ideological thresh-
counterparrs. In a similar vein, ·Ramachandra Guha provides a compel- wds.eparatinginsiders from outsiders, us from them, similars from
ling account of the "other side of the Raj" in Saflaging the Ciflilised fi>ceigncrs,masters from slaves, the preci~e energies of the individuals
(1999), a biography of Verrier Elwin (t902-64), the British environ- andsubculturesthat I examine accrued in the main from innovative
mentalist and writer who opposed both imperialist and nationalist lob- bordercrossing, visible in small, defiant flights from the fetters of be-
bies during a protracted debate on India's tribal communities. A similar longingtoward the unknown destinations of radical alterity. Yet these
focus from the perspective of American race politics animates Becky lltopicflights from imperial similitude did not only traverse the paths of
Thompson's study of white self-critique in A Promise and a Way ofLift: culturalor civilisational difference, abandoning "West" for "non-West,"
White Antiracist Activism (2001) and Emily Bernard's edited volume nmouncing modernity in favor of orientalist consolation, going native.
Rememoer Me to Harlem (2001), a collection of letters detailing the Farfrom treating empire merely as a cultural clash between West and
controversial, four-decade-long friendship between the black, single, ~on-West, or as form of European territorial and capitalist expansion-
sexually ambivalent Langston Hughes and the white, married, and ism, late Victorian radicalism discursively extended the semantic scope
0
homosexual Carl Van Vechten. 13
This book aligns itself strongly with ~ ~~rialism to diagnose it as a peculiar habit of mind, discerning
the efforts of these writers, elaborating their emphasis on minor narra- ~thin 1~ structure a complex analogical system relentlessly mapping
tives of crosscultural collaboration between oppressors and oppressed. hierarchiesof race, culture, and civilization upon relationships hetween
Its principal theoretical point of departure is taken from Ashis Nandy's genders,species, classes, etc. In this schema, deparrure from the self-
early book, The ln.timatt Enemy (1983), one of the few works of post- confirmin~ orderliness of imperial habitation was at once an experience
colonial scholarship sympathetically to engage with "the numerically of profound psychic derangement: exile to the chaos of a world without
small but psychologically significant response of many who opted out of taxono
. · ly ·m the company of sexual misfits, slaughterhouse
my, various
their colonising society for the cause of lndia." 14 Very rarely, Nandy ~ factory slaves, colonized subjects, unruly women-the wretched,
concedes, did this enterprise register on the center stage of colonial u a~were, of the earth. Yet it was precisely this perception of the imperial
encounter, its protestations scarcely observed on either side of the impe- pcnpheryas an undifferentiated, horizontal terrain that gave possibility
Ajfective Ctnnmunities Affectivt!Communities
to a new politics of unlikely conjunction and conjuncture according to tion under the guardianship of Karl Marx-this organization was, in
which sexual dissidence, the struggle for animal rights, (proto- )post- thedecade or so of its influence over British labor, clear without being
humanist spiritualism and religious heterodoxy, pro-suffrage activism entirely comprehensive in its reservations about the nationali~t and pa-
and socialism could each be regarded as varieties of anti-imperialism. In rochial rivalries, as of the global inequities, endorsed by European im-
other words, once imperialism was troped as shorthand for all that was perialism. Testifying to the anti.colonial credentials of the First Imcrna-
wrong and iniquitous io the world, its abandonment-and the project, rional, a report in the Beehiveon its inaugural meeting pays particular
thereby, of anti-imperialism-came to carry, we will see, the promise of attention to Beesley's condemnation of Britain's colonial and foreign
ideal community, a utopian order of thing9. pclicies with regard to Ireland and other parts of the world: "England
While unique in its emphasis, the anti-imperial subculture of late wrongfullyheld possession of Gibraltar from Spain, and her conduct in
Victorian radicalism with which this book is concerned, and the socialist China, Japan, India and elsewhere was cowardly and unprincipled." 17
revival of the i88os that ushered it in, was certainly not without historical Bythe time of the socialist revival of the 1880s, the political thinking
precedent. Drawing upon an intermittent but long tradition of metro- of thesecongenial preceding traditions was available for appropriation,
politan anti-imperialism in place by the beginning of the nineteenth andtheactivists and revolutionaries of the new era made good use of this
cenrury, socialism in the 1880s also obtained much of the distinctive legacyin forging their own initiatives. At the same time, their take on
cosmopolitanism of its outlook from the move for the internationaliza- theanti-imperial concessions of the British labor movement was almost
tion of labor that had asserted itself in the late years of Cbartism and alwaysinflected with elements from other clas~ing tradjtions, often
reached its apotheosis with the formation of the First International, or regarded veryunfavorably by adherents ofMarxist orthodoxywithin the
International Working Men's Association, in 1864-As is acknowledged, Fmt International. So, for example, in the hands of late Victorian
a strong commitment to transnational solidarities marked the activities radicals the inherited culture of socialist transnationalism was combined
of the Chartist-inspired Fraternal Democrats and lnternational Asso· withideological materials from a deeper history of utopian thought and
ciation. manifesting itself especially in sympathetic partisanship toward experimentation in England, to transform the measured principle of
Polish militants engaged in the Cracowuprising and participants in the cosmopolitan solidarity into a battle cry for the uncompromising es-
revolutions of 1848, and finding further expression, when these move- chewalof all "given" community. Likewise, while drawing readily on
ments were suppressed, in the forging of novel alliances between British socialistinternationalism's permission to oppose domestic elites in the
workers and revolutionary exiles and emigres from Poland, Franee, Ger- exerciseof transcultural solidarities, the radicals of the 1860s found
many, and elsewhere. greaterenergy for insurrectionary action in the extreme anti-authoritar-
Long after the demise of Chartism, this spirit of transnational col- ian commendations of dissenting anarchist factions within the First
laboration continued its forward momentum through the slow socialist International, preferring to declare war on the very idea of government
revival of the 1860s, articulating itself in gestures of solidarity from in their ardent pursuit of utopic sociality.18 Thus, weaving together the
British labor toward the aspirations of the Italian Risorgimento, the disparateenergies of Marxism, utopjan experimentation, and conti-
Polish uprising of 1863,and the abolitionist North during the American nental anarchism, these individuals and movements facilitated the mu-
Civil War. The subsequent network of alliances, between domestic and tation of"intcrnationalism" into a series of counterculrural revolution-
migrant workers, between socialism and struggles for national libera- arypractices for which I claim the name "politics of friendship." I will
tion, and (more guardedly) between white workers and the faceless argue that this politics rendered metropolitan anticolonialism, albeit
mass of black American slaves was finally gathered and formalized briefly, into an existentially urgent and ethically inventive enterprjse.
within the structure of the First International. Inaugurated in London . There are two principal reasons for my use of the term "politics of
under the chairmanship ofE. S. Beesley-and soon given its true direc- friend ship": first,this book builds its theoretical claims upon the nar-
Affective Communities Affective Communities
rative and historical scaffolding of multiple, secret, unacknowledged lifeandworkof the socialist reformer Edward Carpenter. My aim is to
friendships and collaborations between anticolonial South Asians and .-ess the circuits along which the libidinal economy of late-rune·
marginalized anti-imperial "westerners" enmeshed within the various u:enth-centuryhomosexuality came to traverse equally the incongruoui.
subcultures oflate Victorian radicalism. Second, it privileges, after Der- circuits
of crosscultural affinity and same-sex desire. What, in other
rida, the trope of friendship as the most comprehensive philosophical words,were the ethico-political ingredients in Carpenter's late Vic-
signifier for all those invisible affective gestures that refusealignment torianhomosexual self apprehension char required him to c:tll, in an
along the secure axes of filiation to seek expression outside, if not article written for the Humant Rroiew in 1900, for the "ruin ... tht
against, possessive communities of belonging. Chapter 2 will amplify 20
soonn tht heller of these fatuous Empires"? Why could h1 homosex-
the theoretical ramifications of a "politics of friendship" with reference uality, more often than not, only speak its polemical nam, in and as a
to E. M. Forster's famous defense of friendship in 'JwoCheersfor Democ- denunciation of western hegemony? Similar questions apply to the dis-
racy:"lfl had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my courseof late-nineteenth-century British vegetarianism in its curious
friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." 19 Forster's linb with anti-imperialism. For many late Victorian vegetarian and
epigrammatic manifesto (in which the idea of the "friend" stands in as a animal-rightscampaigners, such as Henry Salt, prevailing attitudes
metaphor for dissident crosscultural collaboration) is once again ap- toward nonhuman life were tragically symptomatic of imperial reason,
posite and urgent in the maelstrom of the contemporary world, where; a illtirdcssbinarism, and its insistence upon rigid dichotomies between
range of individuals find it increasingly difficult entirely to condone the nca, cultures, species, genders, sexualities. In th.is context, dietary re-
inccrnational commitments and networks forged by their governments. amandthe language of animal rights were very often postulated as
In their recent book Empire (2001), Michad Hardt and Antonio Negri ftliations on the theme of anti-imperial politics. What, I ask in chapter
argue that the current era of powerful global and supcrnational alliances 4t arethediscursive and ethical continuities between the critic of the fox
marks the emergence of a new "empire" that places more and more llunt and the critic of empire? Is it possible to read the politics of animal
onerous ethical and political burdens on the "citiun": can one simulta- welfareu a form of revolutionary sociability whose anti imperial ener-
neously condemn global terrorism and global "pcacek~eping"? Sym· ~ derived,_to borrow some words from Hardt and Negri, from an
pathizc simultaneously with the victims of both projects? Who is the -.cbropologicalexodus," fiercely resistant to systematic "boundaries
friend or the enemy? For Hardt and Negri the time is ripe to refuse the ~n the human and the animal, the human and the machine"?2 1
ambivalent mantle of citiunship in order to foment a new politics of Whereconceptual links between sexual dissidence, animal rights,
anti-imperialism, closely attentive to forms of transnational or afliliative llld anti-imperialism arc readily accessible to view, chapter 5 will at-
solidarity between diffuse groups and individuals. Something of this ~ t~ establish a more contentious continuity between fin-de-siecle
project, and its descent from Forster's manifesto, is captured in Derrida's lplritualism and coeval critiques of empire by giving close attention to
commentaries on "friendship," "hospitality," "cosmopolitanism," and
therda. h.
tions tp between the Jewish French mystic Mirra Alfassa and
"forgiveness," with which we will engage in some detail while keeping theIndiannationalist, extremist, and mystic Sri Aurobindo. Drawn to
an eye upon earlier renditions of these themes from within the scene of ~ religion (like so many of her contemporaries) through her cxplo-
late Victorian radicalism. ~ ofTheosophy, Alfassa entered into a lifelong spirituaJ collabora-
With chapter 3 will begin closer historical consideration of the sites tion wi
th Sri Aurobindo with whom she founded a devotional ashram
and subcultures of fin-de-siecle anti-imperialism. Set against the back- ~unity in Pondicherry, South lndia. Together Mirra Alfassa and
drop of Victorian evolutionary biology, social anthropology, and sexol- nd
;~i ~ developed a culturally collaborative "spiritualist" critique
th
ogy, this chapter on sexual dissidence examines the strange and em- . _ imperial culture and its anticoloniaJ nationalist derivation. By
phatic conjunction ofhomosexua)jty and anti-imperial thought in the Polittnga neglected variety of anticolonialism in its arguments on behalf
Affective Communities
of heterodox theism, chapter 5 also undertakes a direct critique of the
secular rational calculations of European political thought. The effort to
liberate alternative understandings of"the political" is"l!ugmented in the
defense of aestheticism that engages chapter 6, expressed in two claims:
first, and contrapostcolonial orthodoxy, that late Victorian aestheticism MANIFESTO
consistently translated "literariness" into a critique of Empire, and sec-
ond, that far from being, .is alleged, a "mask of conquest," English AnticolonialThought and the
literature more often than not fueled the energies of anticolonialism in
South Asia. The discussion will take as its point of departure the story of PoliticsofFriendshi-p
Manmohao Ghose: a late Victorian, Oxford-educated Hindu, drawn
through a series of ideological accidents into tbe welcoming space of
Oscar Wilde's circle. Hailed briefly as a minor decadent poet, Ghose
PREAMBLE: CHARLIE'S ANGELS
returned to India to disseminate a radical reading of"aestheticism" as a
profowid and effective rehearsal of anti-imperial "autonomy." Afewkilometers from the outskirts of South Delhi, just before the city
Typical in many ways of their milieu, Edward C3!penter, Henry begins
its smoggy cannibalization of the tiny hamlets of Sheikh Sarai
Salt, Mirra Alfassa and Sri Aurobindo, and Manmohan Ghose and andYusuf Sarai, there rises on the road, briefly. and unmemorably, a
Oscar Wilde, like others who populated the subcultures that I examine ebambolicconcrete settlement cast in the mold of those numerous ad
in this• book, gained their energies from the chaotic world of late- boccolonieson the eastern side of the riverYamuna. Andrewsganj, as it
nineteenth-ccntury anarcho-utopian politics. The concluding chapter ii known,is unmarked on the pink tourist map of Delhi published by
returns to the scene of utopian socialism in the 1880sto trace how it was the Official Survey oflndia, and indeed Andrcwsganj is unremarkable
disqualified by the discourse of scientific socialism. Condemned by in all but name. But this innocuous settlement commemorates, in high
Engels as a hopeless "mishmash" and later by Lenin as an "infantile municipalstyle, the life and work of Charles Freer Andrews (1871-
disorder" exemplifying an inadrnissibly "immature" form of the politi- 1940),an English Anglican priest who arrived in India in 1904 to take
cal, the anti-imperial politics to which this book attends had all but on thepost ofvice-principal at St. Stephen's College of Delhi Univer-
disappeared from view by the beginning of the twentieth century. We sity, and whose lifelong association with the country drew him deep
are, I have been arguing, still hostage to this occlusion; and any chance withinthecontentious heart of aoticolonial nationalist politics. 1 A~the
that we might have of giving credence to and reviving the diffuse trans- "ganj" or "storehouse" of Andrews's memory Andrewsganj is rather
national politics that Hardt and Negri, among numerous others, posit moresepulchral than comucopian. Yet it bears witness, in its own way,
as prophylactic against the all-consuming malaise of contemporary ;m- to this colonial Englishman's political entitlement to a share in the
pcrialism demands that we revisit and interrogate the charge of"iroma- landscape ofpostcolonial India. Other figures of western anti-imperial-
turity'' which led to the historical eviction of utopian socialism and its ism arc less well acknowledged in contemporary India, on account of
offshoots from the space of the political. In undertaking the task of thecomparative untranslatability of their politics into the grand modal-
such interrogation, however, it is not-the business of my conclusion to ities of anticolonial nationalism. These figures will account for most of
rehabilitate fin-dc-siecle radicalism as a respectable, "adult" form of my study, laying claim to its concerns precisely for reason of their unas-
politics. Rather, I hope to defend ''unmaturity" as the ethical and liinilabilitywithin "major" forms of the political. But it is with Andrews
philosophical hallmark-the crucial ingredient-in that politics of ~t 1 wish to begin. For closeted behind his crucial public demonstra-
frie11dship to which this book is ultimately committed. bons on behalfoflndian nationalism, we find an equally significant if
 A11ticolonial
Thought
AnticolonialThought
more covert affective refusal of colonial division: an insinuation of oflawand thereby reinscribing the battle lines of Empire. On the other
"friendship," as Susan Visvanathan points out, into "the question of eideof the divide, however, the troublesome figure of C. F. Andrews
Tndian nationalism." 2 Let us consider, then, some episodes from the life continued to confound the manichean logic of colonization hy prevent-
ofC. F. Andrews as a narrative preamble to our proposed theorization, ing anticolonial nationalism from resolving itself into pure opposi-
in this and subsequent chapters, of "friendship" as the lost trope in tionality.1
This Gandhi recognized, with his clear genius for the politics
anticolonial thought. oftransgression and small gestures, urging a mass meeting in Lahore on
In 1914,having resigned his past at St. Stephen's and donated his tS November1919 to pay due attention to Andrews's tapascharya,his
admittedly meager passessions to the Indian National Congress, An- "invisiblesacrifices" always "hidden from the eyes of men." "Aslong as
drews set sail for South Africa to lend support to a certain M. K. thereis even one Andrews among the British people," Gandhi said, "we
Gandhi in bis campaign on behalf of Indian indentured laborers. Gan- must, for the sake of such a one, bear no hatred to them." Only such

dhi, the records tell us, was waiting for Andrews on the dock, unrecog- resisfance
to polarization would, in his reasoning, "ensure early success
nizable in his new incarnation as coolie-ascetic: "head-shaven, dressed of our efforts, for ... the British will have no occasion to visit their evil
in a white dhoti and kurta of such coarse material as an indentured propensities on us."8
3
labourer might wear, looking as though in mourning." Approaching My final example of Andrews's anti-manichean practice concerns
Gandhi, Andrews, as he records in a letter to bis friend Munshi Ram, hispoisedintervention into the controversy caused by the publication of
"stooped at once instinctively and touched his feet." 4 The rich symbol- Katherine Mayo's MotherIndia in 1927(this time no fcetwere touched).

ism of this encounter invites further comment. Indeed, one might claim Dismissedby Gandhi as "a drain inspector's report," Mayo's best-sell-
it as an iconic anticolonial frieze: the London-trained Indian barrister ingandexcoriating account oflndian sexual and social morality offered
defying imperial polarities of class and station in an elaborate costume international readers a catalogue of horrors: eight-year old child brides,
drama; the Anglican priest reversing the fundamental civilizational hi- desperatewomen licking the blood of freshly sacrificed animals in the
erarchy of Empire in a single, defiant gesture of self-abnegation. hopeof~gctting sons, and sexually abusive mothers, prone, as Mayo
In 1919Andrews touched another paii: of Indian feet. Traveling at coylyputs it, to "practice upon" their children, "the girl to make her
Gandhi's request through the Punjab in the wake of the Jallianwala ,leepwdl,"the boy "to make him manly.'19Predictably, Mayo's critique
Bagb tragedy to investigate the indignity and provocation caused by WU t"eceived in much the same spirit as that in which it was composed: a
martial law in the region, he chanced upon a young Sikh victim of growingnationalist counterpolemic extolled the unmatched wonders of
imperial policing, deranged after a public Bogging on the unverified Indiancivilization while simultaneously imprecating the lax morals of
suspicion of having damaged telegraph wires in the vicinity of his vil- thewesternworld and its wife. The anonymous author of SisterIndia
lage.' Facing the Sikh in the small room towbich he had since confined (1927)attributed Mayo's crosscultural incomprehension to sexual un-
himself-and now well tutored in habits of anti-imperial histrionics by fulfilment; an enraged Kanhaya Lal Gauba penned a rejoinder called
Gandhi himself-Andrews immediately "stooped down and touched Unde Sham: Being the Strange Taleof a Civilisation Run Amack (1929);
his feet, asking from him at the same time pardon for the great wrong and in a similar vein, Dinshah Gadiali, a Parsi in New Jersey, undertook
my fellow-countrymen had committed."" Once again, the minor affec- to expose the sexual subjection of American women in his American Sex

tive transactions of this closet drama i:mport an incalculable excess into Prol,Jems(1929).Some ten years after this controversy Charlie Andrews
the impasse of colonial encounter, collapsing for a brief moment the publisheda small book called The True India (1939).Characteristically
mutually quarantined categories of colonizer and colonized. In time, we unders~ated and anti polemical, Andrcws's quiet volume postulates itself
might note, the House of Lords cleared the name of General Dyer, u testimony: offering to nationalist Indians a foreigner's defense of
justifying his action inJallianwala Bagh as appropriate to the fulfillment
"Indian m or als,"10 an d rn
· equal measure offering to Mayo's readers an
AntiCQ/onialThought AnticolonialThought

Englishman's profession of"deep reverence for Indian civilisation as a a sign of modesty, an attempt to explain his cthico-political activities
11
wholc." 11 Inboth cases his position eludes capture within either oppos- "unofficial" or "c:xrra-institutional," attributing their energies to an
11
ing suburb of civilizational identity: he addresses the Indian as a sympa- unpremeditated or spontaneous rush of passion? 18 The trope of friend-
thetic but irreducible outsider, and to the ''westerner" his address is ship, let me suggest, certainly gives evidence for the (m1~)guiding im-
likewise intractably "alien." What should we discern in this protean perativesof desire and affect in Andrews's life and work. Bur closer
manipulation ofidentity? In Andrews's disruption of the fixed and set- examination of his writing reveals something exrr.t: the shape of what
tled places of polemic? How might we better organize our catalogue of we might call an "affective cosmopolitanism," the ethico-1i<>liticalpqc-
his disparate acts of dissent into a more coherent typology? The answer, tice of a desiring self inexorably drawn toward difference.
I submit, attaches to the single word "friendship" that circulates as a W;-.findbetter material for these conjectures in Andrcws's creative
refrain through the vast archive of works by and about C. F. Andrews, readingof the New Testament's apostolic foundations, especially in his
qualifying almost every public and private action in his unassuming keenemphasis on the centrality of"fellowship," "friendship," or koino-
career. Some select examples: in 1913 he offered urgent prayer "for one nu,in the Gospels, a creed that he takes consistently as exhorting be-
thing to be granted-an Indian bosom friend";U through his life he lieversto depart from the possessive claims of inherited or received
gathered an exorbitant list of such friends (S. K. Rudra, Zaha Ullah, identity and belonging. "When our Lord," he writes in The GoodShcp-
Gandhi, Tagore, Munshi Ram ... ); and it was to friendship with S. K. bmi (1940), "had chosen and ordained his first Apostles, He brought
Rudra that he attributed his evolving sympathy with "the new progres- ahemso close to Himself that He called them ne longer servants, but
sive life of lndia." 1J Upon his death, the poet Rabindranath Tagore friends
... 'Greater love,' He declares, 'hath no man than this that a man
wrote in a somewhat hyperbolic vein, of the day when "from one who laydownhis life for his friends.' "19 For Andrews the sacrificial impera-
was till then a complete stranger to me, there was poured out upon me tiva of friendship thus extolled in the Gospels <lemand a radical unfet-
this generous gift of friendship. It rosclike a river from the clear spring teringof the theistic, believing self such that its affective intensities are
of this Christian sadhu's devotion to God." 1~ During his speech on the equallyliberated toward strangers as to kin: "No external distinction of
Qi_it India Resolution, at a meeting of the All India Congress Commit- raceor caste or creed, or even familymust come before the one supreme
tee on 8 August r942, Gandhi, quietly but insistently competitive with factof the deepest fellowship of all earnest souls in doing the will of
20
Tagore, offered this epitaph for Andrews: "It is true that he was a friend God." Such, for instance, is the lesson that Andrews gleans in South
of Gurudev, but he looked upon Gurudev with awe. Not that Gurudev A&ica.
where a decision to resign his ministry in face of the racial
wanted it ... But with me he became the closest friend." 15 And most odusivi.ty of imperial Christianity is inspired by an epiphanic insigh~
obituaries attribute the following "last words" to Andrews: "God has inro apostolic friendship. "It became clear to me," he writes of this
given me in my life the greatest of all gifts, namely; the gift of loving experience, "that I must take up a firm stand, even against my own
friends. I would acknowledge again what I have acknowledged in my fellow-countrymen and fellow-Christians, since as a Christian it was
books; this supreme gift of friendship both in India and in other parts of ncc:cssary
to bear witness for Christ's
sake ... Even when Christ's own
the world." 16 motherand brethren sought to speak with Him, He said, 'Who is My
Does Andrews's insistent discourse of and on friendship simply be- motheror Mybrcthren?Whosocvershalldo thewill of God, the same is
tray an excessive emotionalism? Is it symptomatic, as Tagore constantly My brother and My sister and My mother.' •·z1 Invoked in this way to
complained, of thal immoderate longing or attachment in his nature ca:chcw
ties of race, nation, class, and religion, Andrews's credo of
that ultimately prevented him from transforming the contingent into &iend_shi_pis equally instrumental in his principled departure from the
the universal, feeling into manifesto, the personal into the political? 17 In '?°re msidious accretions of gender and species. Calling for the ordina-
another way, should we read Andrews's iterative account of friendship tion of women into the Anglican clergy in 1940, he invokes the rhetoric
AnticolonialThotJght Anticolonia/Thought

of the imitatio Christito insist that "just as in Christ there is 'neither Jew • Yet when confined to the canonical generalization of established
nor Greek' so also in Him there is 'neither male nor female' ... no ~
,«ectivcformations (of family, "fr. aterm~, g:ne alogy, fili')~non , ~ommu-
subordination of one race to another, or one sex to another." 22 And in oity lapses all too often into~ dull, r~p~cat1veeconomy, ~:qUJpped to
The True India, writing against speciesism in the fierce idiom of Gan- the raskof positing alternatives. It 1s Ill response to this 1~pass~ that
dhi's flind Swaraj, he laments the "butchers' shambles" of the andro- Derrida,writing in the timbre of a C. F. Andrews, recogruzes in the
ccntric West. 21 wucripted relation of "friendship" an improvisational politics appro·
Deriving in large measure from his idiosyncratic rereading of Chris- ·ate to communicative, sociable utopianism, investing it with a vision
tianity, C. F.Andrews's creative variations on the thematic of friendship pn
of radical democracy: yet " to come, """dfi'I
1
m e rute y penec tibl""al
e, ways
27
were also profoundly enabled and clarified, as I will be arguing in the insufficient and future." Such is the vision to which we will attend in
following pages, by the politics peculiar to the utopian socialism to the remainingdiscussion, seeking some paradigms for the figuresand
which he was formally exposed: during his Cambridge years (1890- groupsunder consideration. But first, to clarify the cartography of our
1904) by Brooke Foss Westcott, bishop of Durham, Christian socialist, argument:apprehended by Derrida as the means whereby we might
and first president of the Christian SocialUnion, and in his Indian years redesignate"the political" as the place of an always deferred and there-
thrnugh contact with local theosophical circles.24 Yet apart from its mrealwaysopen and hospitable community, "friendship" categorically
muted afterlife in the colonial periphery through the early decades of definescommunity as a countermand against social exclusion.28 Still,
the twentieth century, in 1892utopian politics bad died in Europe. eocleavouring as it does to achieve indefinite gathering, utopian com-
Writing in his monumental Degentrationthat year, Max N<?rdau had munitycannotpredicate the cessation of exclusion either upon the fixed
observed the irreparable ill-health of fin-dc-siecle utopianism, com- _,. of dialecticaltranscendence nor, in reverse, upon the presupposi-
menting at length on its Lamentable enervation, exhaustion, and hys- lionlof a priorifoundationalism. Jean-Luc Nancy is suggestive here.
teria. That was an optimistic prognosis, for by the time that more Being-in-common,be maintains in The lnoperarivt Community,"does
discerning physician Friedrich Engels appeared on the scene with his 1IOtmeana higherform of substance or subject taking charge of the
Socia/ism,fromUtopiato Scientethe patient was finished, leaving in its liiamof separate individualities." Nor does it obtain its genesis "from
exit no discernible trace, no apparent Legacyof the "eclectic ... mish- aut.ofor as an effect of ... a process that emerges from a ground [fand]
mash of ... critical statements, economic theories, pictures of future orfromafund [fonds]of some kind ... It is a groundless 'ground,' less in
society,"25 with which it had been afflicted. Believers insist that the the aensethat it opens up the gaping chasm of an abyss than that it is
ghost of utopianism returned to Europe in May 1968 and has been madeup only of the network, the interweaving, and the sharing of
29
haunting the ruins of "the political" ever since, manifesting itself lingularities." Neither a settled arrangement from above nor one from
among the credulous in the shape of two linked convictions: First, and Wow,the axes of utopic community are horizontal and latitudinal,
incidentally, that an aspirational and inventive politics of alternatives 11:eking cohesion in what Nancy identifies as a process of "compear-
poised at the limits of thought and being, epistemology and ontology, is lncc."As he writes: "compearance ... does not set itself up, it does not
both expedient and inevitable in regard to a terrain where, as in Fou- ~lish itself, it does not emerge among already given subjects (ob-
cault, power is everywhere, "immanent to the social field, distributed ,ectl). It consists in the appearance of the bttwem as such: you and I
through the brains and bodies of citizens." 26 And second, far from ~n us)-a formula in which the and does not imply juxtaposition,
resolving itself only in an aggrieved refusal of, or ffight from, the im- '- exposition. What is exposed in compearance is the following, and
poverished scene of sociality, such politics is obliged creatively to re- ~ IIIUSt I.earnto read it in all its possible combinations: 'you (arc/and/
negotiate ideas of community, communication, conatus. a) (entirelyother than) I' [toi (e(s)t) (tout autre que} moi]. Or again,
There is no dearth of models, we know, for the figuration of commu- .._ simply:you sharesme [toipartagemoi]."30
Anticolon;a/Thought AnticolonialThought

Two consequences relevant to our concerns follow from the recogni- ISIS OF HYBRIOITY
THB CR
tion of"compearance" as the distinguishing signifier of utopic commu-
nality. Fir!tt, as the marker of direct affective singularity "between .. Thetheoretical motivations of postmodern ism and its allies are often
you and l," the ethics of compearancc defiantly contravenes the em- explainedas a reaction against the sort of regulative es:.cntiali5m typ·
bargo on rclationality through which power, colonial or otherwise, or- ified in Kantian notions of ethical agency on the one hand and (pre-
chestrates its divisions and exclusions. It expose , we could say, the dominantly)Marxist notions of political agency on the other Kant and
meditative and antirelationa.l operatives at the heart of modern imperial Marxare, in this sense, rendered inextricable.~ The disciplined soli-
and totalitarian governmcntality recently foregrounded by Giorgio darities0 ( revolutionary politics, 1t is argued, require an ethical agent
Agamben, among others. "The State," in his words, "is not founded on tutored (through Kant) in habits of invulnerability to the anarchic do-
a social bond of which it would be the expression, but rather on the mainof desire and inclination. 35 This renunciatory inheritance Marx-
dissolution, the unbinding it prohibits."31 Thus, insofar as power ex- ism further augments, Bataille complains, through the sly existential
presses itself as tne violence of unbinding, compearing community fo- rransactions attaching to its humanism. Holdmg out to "man" the
ments its nonviolent resistance through an anarchist politics of immedi- promise of sovereign value only in his capacity as a producer, it tempts
ate conjunction, conjuncture, coalition, and collaboration "between" lmnlO relinquish, in exchange, all those diversions ofleisure and affect
the most unlikely of associates. Second, as "the appearance of the be- filtidamental,in one reading, to his humanness. In BataiUe's words:
tween as such" (viz. of the space of rclationality/ conjunction rather than -Fora Marxist ... the sovereign value is man .... But it remains to be
of discrete rehmonal/conjunctive subjects), compearance requires ofits cldllmincd whether man, to whom communism refers .i.s the producer,
agents a qualifying ethico-cxistential capacity for the radical expropria- lililinottaken on this sovereign value on one primary condition, having
tion ofidcntity in face of the other-a capacity, that is, for self-othering. tlnounccd for himself everything that is sovereign ... For the irreduc-
Nancy is appo ite again: "singular beings are themselves constituted by ibledcsitt that man is, passionatl'/yand rapririously,communism has
sharing, they are distributed and placed, or rather spaud, by the sharing llllittitutedthose needs that can be brought into harmony with a life
that makes them others:other for one ;µiother, and other, infinitely ~ly devoted to producing.''M•
other for the Subject of their fusion, which is engulfed in the sharing. "32 Faced with this ethico-polirical demand for an agent constitutively
Affective singularity, anarchist relationality, and other-directedness &a! &om the heterogeneity of consciousness and the distractions of
are, I propose, the constitutive elements of the utopic community that eiperience,postmodc:rnism has perversely begged to dilfcr. Principally,
we are conjuring under the sign of friendship, and in the memory of hi departure
from the dyad of Kant and Marx has relied on the wild
C. F. Andrews, on behalf of the utopian socialism consigned to the c:onjura~on
o~an _emP.iricalor !rybrid su~ect of desire: too slip~ be
wastebi ns of the political in 1892. What follows in the rest of this chap- ~ned within the uni~d au~ijdariti.tuf sex, ra~na-
ter is an attempt to yoke these elements together into a more coherent ~• class;too whimsical to fix, in advance, the .wgning_pf political or
manifesto that obtains its philosophical framework from that ethics of
cth1cal
-
acf
mn "'10d enen~of
-
any articula.roi:ypractice." 17 There arc
the "beyond," simultaneously committed to a transformation of the manyroute~ through which the protestation of desire mighr be said to
; thc enclave of po~tmodern1sm. Some say it amved into French
present, which Drucilla Cornell sees at work in certain strains of con-
temporary postmodern thought. 33 Such thought, we will see, delivers .J_ osoph~ through Alexandre Kojeve's and Jean Hippolyte's careless
guidelines for the program we are seeking in its departure from the cult ,.,mrmulat1on
~ • of Hegel .as a p h.lI osop h er o f sub.1ect1ve
. longing
. (for rec-
of the hybrid subject toward a noncommunita.rian understanding of ..,._ ~n). _Othersblame the early Georg Lukacs and his belated imita-
community. r rnisrcading Mane as a theo st of need who condemns, in his
Anticolonial Thought Antuolonial Thought

account of alienation, the tragic supercession {in the inexorable logic of it takesits cue solely from "the body as a seat of desires." 41 Similar
capital) of use-value by exchange-value, such that the concrete embodi- : attend the tactical politics, of which Michel de Certeau writes,
ments of human labor (the muscles, nerves, cells, needs of real sensual ~ in those moments when "the housewife confronts hctcro-
producers) are progressively erased within the abstract structure of the neous and mobile data-what she has in her refrigerator, the timci;,
commodity form. Both routes spclJ trouble: Kojeve's neo-Hegelian1sm ~teli, and moods of her guests, the best buys and their pos~ible
arguably reanimates a rapacious subject who can onJy claim satisfaction combinationswith what she has on hand at home.".,. Th, ,,·l.l'i ,. f
through the "negation" or destruction of the desired object. And Lu- suchan agent to what surrounds her is that of the pure consumer, and
kacs's distorted Marxism, likewise, infamously ends with the recom- one equipped to consume at wilJ through a figurative or theoretical
mendation that the desiring, vital subject overcome alienation by refus- aftlucnce.•s
Always favored by "plenitude," "excess,""multivalence" and
ing to countenance any independent object outside or apart from itself. "mobility," the liberatory potential of such a subject may only resonate,
Tutored either by Kojcve or by Lukacs, desire (in one rendition of • Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, have recently observed, "with the
this narrative) arrives into postrnodernism under the sign of nihilism. 3M eiluation
of an elite population that enjoys certain rights, a certain level
And indeed, designed ro negate the political as we know it, the hybrid of..ith, and a certain position in a global hierarchy." 46 Polymorphous
subject of new left, queer, and postcolonial theories, among others, has ad perverse, the hybrid subject is cloned, we might say, from the ge-
performed admirably, leaving in its wake "splinters," "fragments," "in- aldicsubstance of corporate capital and the world market.
stability," "disarray," and "ruin," progressively exploding, in the words ""-To-summarize:: in its first (nihilistic) movernent against a priori,
of Chantal Mouffe, "the idea and the reality of a unique space of consti- 11 lnive eacntialism, postmodemism substitutes the austere and
tution of the political." 3q Negation, the philosophers tell us, maywelJ be '-ipped down" subject of Kantian deontology with its antithesis,
the necessary prerequisite to a "different and positive reconstruction of ...ay theaffluent and privileged subject of postmodern desire. In so
the social fabric."40 I lowevcr, on account of its radical unsocializauon, ll6iig.it raises a spoiled child, attentive only to the insatiability and
the hybrid subject has, I submit, proved ill-equipped to undertake the • I I 1ity of its own desires, who (to quote Charlei; Taylor out of
task of"positive reconstruction." Why? ~). "beingin face of a world which offers him no effective re-
Freed from the renunciatory protocols of Kantian and Marxist llllancetendsto sink back into a stupor of self-coincidence. He ap-
thought, the hybrid subject of desire (much like Hegel's "master" in The ...,..._. the stagnant pole where I = l."47 Having traveled this far, let
Phenomenology ofMind) is encouraged to approach the world and social • attompany postmodernism on the next leg of its journey, in the
fabric simply as the source of her enjoyment: 41 And in the very excess of .......,,of Maurice Blanchot.
this demand for existential satisfaction, its project begins to dovetail
imperceptibly with the solipsistic individualism of the Kantian or
AN ANTI-COMMUNITARIAN COMMUNITARIANISM
Marxist agent. Where the latter arrives into self-regard through ascetic
self-enclosure, the hybrid subject reaches similar destination through ~of~ many problems with the project of hybrid subjectivity is that
an insatiable demand for self-fulfillment, consuming the very world at J>aradoxicallysets itself in binary opposition against the dyad of Kant
in/for/from which it must fashion its ethical capacity. Such, Nancy ~ Marx,contesting radical self-sufficiency with radical excess or de-
observes, is the fate of BatailJc's revolutionary subject of passion, con- -i......~But800nbccoming
· "mutat,s· muland,sa
• copy of that by which it felt
demned to self-defeating nihilism through "the violent and unbridled ·-
·•
to be oppressed , "•a ·it starts to replicate
..L..:._,
· the crippling solipsism of
movement of a free subjectivity disposed toward the sovereign destruc
--~ant . n
-.. agomst. rerhap:; no postmodern thinker addresses these
tion of all thi71gsas toward its consumption in NOTH 1NC ."• 2 To these ... ~re eloquently than Maurice Blanchot. His The Unavowa/,le
dangers the contemporary politics of hybridity stands exposed when· .....,,,y,especially, advtses
. th " elf ffi
us at s -su cieacy" meets its great-
Anticolonial Thought Anticolonial Thought
est challenge not in the opposing pole of"excess" but rather in the more )limsel£"52This action is not ~ithout poli~cal ideali~m'. e.x~mpli-
interruptive principle of subjective "insufficiency," which in turn cannot ~ that rofound desire for universal equality (the elimmanon of
be accomplished in the absence of association with other beings. A ~ ':eference, exceptionalism) that we .find in Rousseau on the
being, says Blanchot, achieves its "awareness of ... insufficiency ... ban:
:d in the best traditions of modem neoliberalism on the
from the fact that it puts itself in question, which question needs the :C,,sJ Yetit would appear that Hegel,although in the name of cgali-
other or another to be enacted. Left on its own, a being closesitself,falls . • m, has merely replaced Kant's self-identical subject with a self
asleepand calms down."49 With this shift from an "ethics of excess" tariaDJS
identicalcommunity, exten di ng, ·Blanch'b.
m ot so scrvat1on, ·••1·
its re at.ton
toward an "ethics-ofinsufficiency," postmodemism begins its significant lO bimsdf:
perpetually repeated." 54 Communitarian or partialist thought,
negotiations with the idea of communication/ community, arriving, in a p0 less.absorbs Hegel's valorized relation of Same with Same, always
frenzied anti-Kantian momentum, at a junction already crowded with pcivileging commitments to those who are either "proximate," "given,"
the travel-weary thoughts of contemporary comm unitarians. 50
ot in some inalienable way "our own" ( of the same nation, family, com-
For what has happened in the subtle tum ofBlanchot's thinking is an QIWlity,republic, revolution, etc.). So it is that the most radical commu-
imperceptible (and, as we will see, potentially hazardous) theft of tropes llidcsof difference, founded upon solidarities of class, gender, race, or
from Hegel's monumental effort, contraKant, to lay down the ethico- ,thpicity,lapse into a politics of similitude-privileging separation over
political imperatives of intersubjective community. I .do not wish to •tiooality, demanding uniformity as the price for belonging. K. An-
dwell on Hegel. But for our discussion to proceed, we need to acknowl- ._,. Appiahis to the point: "The politics of recognition requires that
edge again that any meaningful critique of Kantian autonomy con- ••lkincolour, one's sexual body, should be acknowledged politically
ducted through the vector of community, communication, conatusmust .w,aya
that make it hard for those who want to treat their skin and
pass through Hegel's endeavor to reconcile the claimsof moral auton- --1 bodyas personal dimensions of the self. And personal means not
omy with the highest expressive unity within and between "men." The .... but not too tightly scripted ... Between the politics of recogni-
marks of this philosophical passage are proudly displayed by contempo- .. and the politics of compulsion, there is no bright line." 55
rary communitarians like Alasdair Maqntyre, Michael Sandel, and N9W
a number of questions present themselves, both more and less
Michael Walzer, each of whom foregrounds, like Hegel, the "thick" or ~- Doesloyalty to "my own" liberate me of ethical obligations to
embedded nature of ethico-political agency. Our ethical capacity, as .g thosewho are not of my own nation, family, republic, revolution,
Sandel insists, accrues from "the particular people we are-as members -.? Where do I go when the burdens of my deviancyput me at risk
of this family or community or nation or people, as bearers of this pnx:iscly
from those who are unquestionably "my own"? If, following
history, as sons and daughters of that revolution, as citizens of this • .advice of the philosopher Marilyn Friedman, I defiantly choose or
republic. " 51 And in this theorem we can begin to see the first fault lines "elect"
myaffinities, will I escape the deadlock of self-identical commu-
of a Hegelian inheritance, fault lines which postmodernism must repair Will my voluntary affiliations, still desperately seeking simili-
nity?56
before it can make any meaningful claim on a politics of q;immunity. tude(of sexual, intellectual, political, ethical, aesthetic orientation)
What is the problem exactly? endlessly
replicate the deadlock of self~sufficient unity? 57 How, in other
Lest we forget, the projected Hegelian community, outlined in the ~'. can I quarrel with Kant in the language of Hegel while quarrel-
dialectic of the master and the slave, relies exclusively on the principle of lutgWithHegelin such a way that I don't return to Kant? That is to say,
reciprocal recognition, atcording to which I can only enter into inter- c:an I 0 ~se radical individualism with community while opposing
~Ullltar' . ·
subjective or communal alliance with another whom I recognize as -'=--• . . 1an1sm 10 such a way that I don't return to a position of
~'!"IIIQU md ·d al'
myself So too, my "interlocutor" cancels my alterity, seeingin me, as ~- lvt u ism/autonomy? Thus we arrive at the heart of our
Taylor paraphrases, "another, but one that is not foreign, which is at one
 Antico/onial Thought Anticolonial Thought

Seeking, from the outset of its journey, an open (anti-essentialist, conditions of their confinement inward, sealing their bodies
inconsequentialist, nonteleological) ethics and politics of possibility, . theinducements of food and speech with rough stitches through
postmodemism produces a negative and solipsistic subject of desire. ...-: The whiteAustralian woman who has come to fa~twith them
Such a subject can only be taught, remedially, to call itself into question 6lir_: carriesa placard bearing, in uneven, homemade letters, the
through the lessons of community, communication, sociability. Al- ~ consolation: "You are not alone." She wants to perform her
though indispensable, however, the very idea of community (found or
elective) presupposes closure: a circular return, ad nauseam, to the te-
dious logic of the Same. Now what? The arrival, to put it simply, of
utopianism; the reappearance of a long forgotten ghost from 1892. For if
....
.--,
latfon,to embody it, within view of the detamees, face to face, but
cameraon site catches the demise of her incipicni project: an
~ security guard blocks her progress and pushe:. her back.into her
~ car. She breaks down, diminished by her failure. Yet some-
.

the very idea of community is, notwithstanding its necessity, from a thing. howeverimperceptible, is achieved in that single moment of
postmodern perspective inevitably unworkable, inoperative, negative, lioknt dismissalwhen the guard allegedly policing her interests as a
then we can only speak, under erasure, of an impossible community: leiJitimate
Australian citizen turns on her as though she were the illegal
perpetually deferred, "indefinitely perfectible," yet-to-come. In what .,;.,,t, the housebreaker, the foreigner. What name may we give to
remains of this discussion I propose to describe this ingenious compro- Jliisdiarticulated mission? One woman forfeiting the not inconsider-
mise as a project of anti-communitarian communitarianism. At the •fkuurcs of consensus with her own community and elected gov-
heart of such a project we might imagine, also, a reformulation of ,...., for the sake of an ephemeral communication with "aliens"
subject-hood that secs the theme of"individuality" gradually replaced ~ perceived as a potential threat to rhe integrity of the Australian
by one of "singularity": the former always amenable to perpetuation, .... Whatmight we call this minor (insignificant?) gesture of self-
extension, or generalization; the latter marked by an irreducible differ- 1'YIg1m ..11tin the name of a peace, committed, as a Lcvinas might
ence which renders it inassimilable within any system of resemblance. ~•• mitativc proximity to the other, and signifying "the surplusof
Thus unlike "individualities," "singularities," as Agamhen puts it, "can- df I I ty ~ everysolitude-the surplusof sociality and oflove"?SYLet
not form a societasbecause they do not possess any identity to vindicate -.;.iith aeemingarbitrariness, call 1tthe politics of friendship.
nor any bond of belonging for which to seek recognition. In the first firstarchive,the history of friendship in western political philos-
instance the State can recognise any claim for identity ... What the ~ complicatesthe project. Far from being secret and unacknowl-
State cannot tolerate in any way, however, is that singularities form a .,..., uwe might desire it to be, the contiguny berween friendship and
community without affirming an identity, that humans co-belong with- fkllidcaappcars
endemic to this system. "Western political speculation,"
out any representable condition of belonging." 58 "Friendship," I sug- ~HoneHutterreveals in his book PoliticsasFrimdship, "finds its origin
gest, is one name for the co-belonging of nonidentical singularities. •.•~of thought in which the idea of friendship is the major
~ in terms of which political theory and practice are described,
~ and analysed."60 There is another, more serious problem to
POLITICS OF FRIENDSHIP
'llbicb
Derrida,writing some two decades after Huner, alem us. The
First, let me tell you a story. Late January 1002: it's mid-morning and t~t ~tion of politicalthought which so po sessivclycaptures friend-
sun is already cruel over the Great Victorian Desert in South Australia. _,.;:::founding metaphor"rarclyann<>unccs itself without some sort
· dly to
A woman gets out of her four-wheel drive and starts d etermine ~ nee to the State, to the family, without ... a schematicof
walk toward the infamous Woomera mandatory detention center for stock,genus or species, sex (Gesthluht), blood, birth, nature,
"unprocessed" asylum seekers. lns1'd e th e center, dcsperate 1 .nmaces lll!IIJl!I•-.
--hthonal or not, tellurian or not." 61
(mainly Afghan, Iranian, and Iraqi) have turned their protest again 5tthe ~ explicate the precise implications of this Dcrridean impasse
Anti~olonial ThoUght Anticokm.ialThought

in a moment, but first let us give full weight to the verdict that the homogeneity, origin. Our demand is in a sense of philoso-
canonical forms of western politics achieve their taxonomy witbin a •. idllles-.which
after all bears influential etymological traces of phi-
"schematic of filiarion." 1n other words (with a little help from Edward il'I. ~ name and purpose. This is what we ask: if friendship
i,,aa its
oW11 1· . - 1 • h . fu . .
Said), these forms-indeed, "the political" itself as we know it-gain .a-dYinhabits
the heart of the po 1tJc.u,rrug _twe nor 1~ some ~tlvc
their inspiration from the domestic space of the family, thereby per- . of thought smuggle in its place a radical substitute, an 1nfil-
petuating in public life the perennial romance of self-repetition, sim- ,.,,,.t
uator
__nu·gbt unwork the logic of political similitude?
.L
wuO .
Give us an
.
ilarity, resemblance, the order of the same.62 Within such a schematicI ·tarian community? And what, then, might such a friend-
-~rnmuru
the actions of the woman at Woomera, with whom we began this dis-
abipbe?
cussion, do not, needless to say, deserve the name "politics." But do they Forthe moment, we need not stray beyond the confines of post-
deserve the name "friendship"? And here lies the rub. Secraric
philosophy. For the Aristotelian model of philia, with which
In search of answers, let us briefly return with Hutter and Derrida to •&ie'f
-·~.-llina
..... '----0'
meets its most immediate challenge in the fragments
Aristotle: the thinker whom both critics credit (Hutter admiringly, oi Epicurusand his followers, in which friendship is construed very
Derrida regretfully) with the decisive announcement of politics as diffacndy,asphiloxenia,or a love for guests, strangers, and foreigners.
friendship in western thought, a metaphoric association daborated and Ar,J in sharp contrast to Aristotle, this ethic of fidelity to strange
augmented in the thematic unity between the Nich9macheanEthics, fiieads is predicated upon a principled distaste for the racial exclusivity
which pays close attention to the ethical obligations of philia, and the .Eibepolis.The polis, as Philodemus insists, is an. unfriendly place: "If
Politics,which pays dose attention to the political obligations of cit- .... wac to indicate a systematic inquiry to find out what is most
izenship. The gap between these two texts (between, we might add, ~ of friendship and most productive of enmity, he would find
philia and citizenship, friendship and politics) is bridged by Aristotle's __. regimeof the polis."66 Or, to recall Agambcn's gloss on Aris-
conception of friendship as a homophilicbond owing principally, if not ... thepolis ratifies "exclusion'' as the principle that "founds the city
exclusively,to feUowcitizens. If the Politicsupholds the polis,or State, as ..... "locating at the core of politics a principle of exceptioaccording
the natural and highest representation of human sociability, the Nicho- flawmich the promise of the good life for some requires consigning
machean Ethics privileges friendship as the best rehearsal of citizen- ..._.. ID the concentration camp, the detention center, the various
ship-the elaboration, always within the boundaries of the polis, of a --,itable borders of modem civility.67
being-in-common. "Friendship," Aristotle writes, "seems to be the -a'bus Aristotelian and Epicurean conceptions of friendship clearly
bond that holds communities together, and lawgivers seem to attach dilinaad competing types of loyalty, which in turn produce mutually
more importance to it than justice. 63 contradictory effects. Homophilir:loyalties are enlisted as a source of
This nativist conception of friendship, developed in historical condi- .-.city (for the State, the community, the citizen or ethical subject).
tions of extreme vulnerability for the minuscule Greek city-state, 64 bor- ~. and much to the puzzlement of contemporary commenta-
rows heavily, if wishfully, from the sparse vocabulary of filiation: "a tlor8.,oi/oxerrir solidarities introduce the disruptive category of risk into
friend is another self" (294); "The basis of affection is equality and tbe~se determined Epicurean espousal of the ethical benefits of
similarity" (:i72.);"like is friend to like" (292); and so on. The actions cakivated lltaraxia,or invulnerability, and nutarkia, or self-sufficiency.611
of the woman at Woomera, it wolil.d appear, may not even deserve Anr ~ of friendship (local or global) is emotionally risky, as it mjght
the name friendship unless we were able to identify another model of ~ the tranquil Epicurean sage with anxieties of affective depcn-
friendship capable of proceeding without recourse to "a horizon of ~ But_fricn~hips toward strangers or foreigners, in particular,
recognition." 65 We need also another contingent and nomadic model CX<:eptional nsks, as their fulfillment may at any time "constitute a
of the political, independent from the burdensome nomenclature of contrapatriam."~9 An eloqiient appraisal of such philoxenicrisk is
Anticolonial Thought Anticolonial Thought

available in the updated Epicureanism which informs E. M. Forster's M11.-ar·.,.·ty: the eternal recurrence, we might say, of solipsism. In its
famous defense of friendship in Two Churs far Democracy:"I hate the t efforts to exceed this impasse it relies, as we have been
idea of causes, andif I had to choose between betraying my country and two factors: first,it requires a subject-agent open to forms
l'\iillllllOli'ng.on
betraying my friend J hope I should have the guts to betray my country. .r 711
~ty ng, capable, ,ontrn Kant, o f cxacer batmg . o f .its
. th e con <l'1t1on
Such a choice may scandalise the modern reader, and he may stretch out
his patriotic hand to the tclephone at once and ring the police .
Probably one will not be asked to make such an agonising choice. Still,
there lies at the back of every creed something terrible and hard for
which the worshipper may one day be required to suffer, and there is
=
~ency.
Hegel,within
Second, such a sociality would have to be articulated,
a commumty that was never lt~elf-that 1sto ,ay,
tdf-idcntical or "fusional." 72 Both condition~ arc arguably real-
isedwithin
Theethical
the twinned tropes of hospitality and "gue~r-friendship."
agency of the host-friend relics precisely on her capacity to
even a terror and hardness in this creed of personal relationships, urbane leaKherselfopen, in Blanchot's terms, co the risk of radical insuffi-
and mild though it sounds. Love and loyalty to an individual can run Poisedin a relation where an irreducible and asymmetrical other
cieacY-
counter to the claims of the State. When they do-down with the State, aJwarcaUsher being into question, she is ever willing to risk becoming
say I, which means the State would down me." 70 ..-ge or guestlikc in her own domain, whether this be home, nation,
There is, as Forster reminds us in the histrionic rhetoric of his Epi- eialDUllity, race, gender, sex, skin, or species. So too, the open house of
curean predecessors, something unquestionably political and risky in flolpitalityor the open heart of friendship can never know guests-
the choice of "friend over country." The obvious practical dangers of _.... in advance, as one might a fellow citizen, sister, or comrade.
such a choice notwithstanding (felony, treason, un-American activi- c::rt-..11-,ciality might take the political form of Judith Butler's coalition,
ties), philoxmia is not reducible to a form of masochistic moral adven- ..aging and unpredictable assemblage of positions." 71 Or it might
turism or absolutism, to a sort of ethics-as bungie-jumping-at-any- in the form of Donna J laraway's fabulist cyborg community,
cost school of thought. The expenditure is rather more existentially dy partial ... monstrous and illcgitunate."7◄ Always un-
profound, involving the potentially "agonizing" risk of self-exile which yet-to-come, like the deferred interracial friendship between
haunts any ethical capacity to become (to suffer oneself to become) Fieldingin A Passagelo India:" 'Why can'cwe be friends now?'
foreign to "one's own" and, above all, to onesel£ Derrida's notes on -hbe other, holding him affectionately. 'It's what I want. It's what you
ethics-as-hospitality are apposite here: "the stranger, here the awaited iii.lat.'Butthe horses didn't want it ... the earth didn't want it ... the
guest, is not only someone to whom you say 'come,' but 'enter' ... come "ti ,tla, the tank.the jail, the pabce, the birds, the carrion, the Guest
in, 'come inside,' 'come within me,' not only toward me, but within me: ._···they
:iliiiill,t
didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices , 'No , not
occupy me, take place inme."' 1 ·~ andthe sky said, 'No, not there.' "75
To explicate fully the import ofDerridean hospitality and Epicurean ~ is no moral as such co my story. Utopianism, some might say, is
philoxenia, we need to recapitulate our argument. In its journey away ,-•matter
of taste: you either want it now or you prefer to wait for it for
from solipsism and nihilism, postmodernism (eventually) finds itself at tlilong18 it takes to bring newness into the world. But at this time in
a critical juncrure: there, much like E. M. Forster, it must choose be- ~tics, when our. solidarities simply cannot be fixed in advance
tween two historically parallel (ratherthan successive) regimes of we,r· a&.-~ or Iraq; liberalism or the agonism of the paracular; citizen or
~) IUt •
cm political thought, deriving from the opposed poles of sameness • • . opian mentality shows the way forward to a genuine cos-
(communitarianism, the polis, regimes of security) and difference (hos· tan,sm:always open to the risky arrival of those not quite, not
pitality, exile, risk). Tempted initially by the simple calculations of the ~ by the privileges which secure our identity and keep us safe.
regime of sameness, it comes to recognize in the consolations of~· ~ ~anonicaJ rendition-readily absorbed within the coercive
identical community yet another variation on the theme of self-idenU- Zing logic of former and current colonialisms-cosmopolitan-
Anticolonial Thought Anticolonial Thought
ism, we might recall, was privileged as the stable political zone of"per- eeemperpetuallyanxioll6about dinner ...
pctual peace/' a prescriptive "being-in-common" bearing the promise of Myfftf rum of phrase-Foreigner, hence!-
7"
immunity to the psychic contagion of cultural difference. In its affec- Bctrqedthe web of jocularity
tive mutation, however(as a form of anti communitarian commumtari- I hadspunaround me here; nor could I sense
anism, as a variation on "guest-friendship,"
as comwphilus), cosmopoli- TbepainI felt at home when I could sec
tanism may well be the means to puncture those fantasies of security and Thehunger,half-rc.,1gned, half despcl'lltc
invulnerability to which our political imagination remains hostage. It Of thoselike me but for a freak of fute.711
might, for instance, teach us that risk sometimes brings with it a pro-
found affirmation of relationality and collectivity. "Let us say yes," Der-
rida writes in this spirit, "to who or what turru up, before any determina-
tion, before any anticipation, before any identification, whether or not it
has to do with a foreigner, an immigrant, an invited guest, or an unex-
pected visitor, whether or not the new arrival is a citizen of another
country, a human, animal, or divine creature, a living or dead thing, male
or female." 77
There are many stories to recall in conclusion: of the Buddha who
must leave the consolations of filiality for the unknown and ternfying
promise of impartial compassion; or of the epic hero Arjuna, who must
wage a terrible war against his own kin, eschewing all the learned
maxims of nativist ethics to arrive at an as-yet indefinable and unknow-
able capacity to pluralize the Self and apprehend it in/as all creatures,
all things, atmaupamyena sarvatra. Let me.end, instead, with an excerpt
from a poem by Vikram Seth, called "A Morning Walle":

A web hung from the avocado tree;

The spider rested in the dew and sun
And looked about the grove contentedly
Awaiting visitors; and I was one:
Neither a Californian nor a fly,
And humming to myself in Bhairavi.
Foreigner, hence! he may have thought, but chose
Instead to ,;quat immobile as I came
Further into hi~distnct. Did I poi;c
An unpredictabillty? The same
Was true of him-bloated, yellow, with c;ome
Sepia blotches not Likethose at home.
Our spiders are much blacker and much thinner,
Patrol their webs \vith greater frequency
 Sex

t,etwetn the cause of workers at home and that of colonized

~"abroad.And in an extraordinarily polemical article, "Shall We
Jlaht
for India?," published as early as 1885(well before Indian na
dlJn8lilm
developed a cohe_rentage_nda),~i!nd~an called categorically
SEX {or thecessation of the Indian emp1te, wrttmg, I do say here, however,
...-,allingly, that for the sake of England and of India, I would far
The Story ofLate Victorian litherthat we were driven right out of the country than that we should
tontinue the miserable rule which has disgraced us and injured the
HomosexualExceptionalism people for the last eight and twenty years; and I can orily hope that not
onlySocialists but all working Englishmen will look carefully into the
~-"3 Carpenter also helped to inform a similar sec of disparate affilia-
tibnsin the activities of the Humanitarian League. Begun in 1891,with
In his early prose poem TowardsDemocracy(1883),the late-nineteenth- )ilJtNpp<>rt, to improve the treatment of-animals, the league substan-
century socialist, animal rights activist, prison reformer, and homosex- -eq,anded its constituency and concerns, drawing workers' move-
ual Edward Carpenter excoriates England for the dubious "blessings of ..... cothe cause of animal welfare and simultaneously assening con-
empire." 1 Writing in passionate if somewhat purple register, he con- tiiukybetwecnthe struggles for animal rights and against imperialism.
demns unequivocally all acts of imperial exploitation: "These arc her is indisputable and intrinsically relevant to the concerns of this

E
blessings of Empire! Ireland (dear Sister-isle, so near at hand, so fertile, thatEdward Carpenter was preeminent in the marginaJ culture
once so prosperous), Rack rented, drained, her wealth by absentees in nineteenth-century western anti-imperialism. And in part, the
London wasted, her people with deep curses emigrating; India the discussion will bear historical testimony to his influence.
same-her life blood sucked-but worse:/ Perhaps in twenty years five ...-.: more specifically, however, my project acquires shape at the
8iltbae
hundred million sterling, from her famished myriads, / Taken to feed
the luxury of Britain." 2 Generally traduced by the press when it first •1n
'-re
andemphatic conjunction of homosexuality and anti-irnperial-
Carpenter's work and thought. Everywhere in his extensive
he stubbornly extols the experience and condition of homosex-
appeared, TowardsDemocracywas not exactly a runaway success. Yet
quite undaunted by the meager sale of some seven hundred copies over .., Uthe comucopjan source of his ethical and political capacity, as
seven years, Carpenter continued to make additions to the book until ~ rehearsal ground for his strange affinities with foreigners,
1902, when a new edition was released, once again to lukewarm press ~outsiders.Reading Carpenter with any degree ofbiographi-
notices. By this time, however, the book had already become something cil idelity, we are thus obliged to consider the proposition (as this
of a subcultural classic, circulating as a manifesto among the numerous dlapter will do) that however incidentally and inscrutably, "western"
dissident communities clustered at the margins of imperial culture, ~ali~ might be secreted somewhere within the culturally com-
many of which would echo, in different contexts, the spirit of Carpen- gcnettc structure of anticolonial thought. But what if we re-
ter's fierce and unpatriotic critique of empire and "western civilisation." ~schemaand, foUowing Carpenter's hyperbolic intent, ask the
Evidence of his influence can be fuund, for instance, in the pages of ~ci· ~an _a case be made for aoticolonialism (or a critique of
Justice,the journal produced by the Social Democratic Foundation, to Jlllli.L Vllization)as an affective detcrminartt of the homosexual con-
-~?4 Did th e lib"d•
1 mal economy of late-nineteenth-century homo-
which Carpenter gave substantial financial and ideological support.
Edited by H. M. Hyndman, William Morris, and J. Taylor, justice ty traverse, equally, the incongruous circuits of crosscultural af-
maintained a systematic attack on British imperialism, asserting full and same-sex desire? If the figure of the homosexual, such as
Sex Sex

Carpenter, is constitutively anticolonial, on what basis can we accolll- of Carpenter and his kind by exploring some of these
modatc him within a history of sexuality? How might we givehill\ a complications
and possibilities.
corporeal habitation and a sexual name? To bring these themes into
sharper focus, my overarching query in this chapter is quite simply to
ask: What were the ethico-political ingredients in his late Victorian
homosexual self-apprehension that required Carpenter to call, in an ~ Carpe_nte~
~s h_onored substantiall! by contem~rarie~ >r
article written for the Humane Review in 1900, for the "ruin . . tht Mt~ solidannes,his legacy found ambivalent reception among
soonerthe helter of these fatuous Empires"? 5 Why, in other words, could ~ing generations of British homosexual activist:>. For many
his homosexuality (more often than not) only speak its polemical name ,..,.- homoscxwlls,
coming out in the shadow of his agacity, Car-
in and as a denunciation of western hegemony? ,....., politicaldilettantism appeared all too often as a form of homo-
In the ensuing pages it will be my claim that Carpenter's antiwestem flilll1
Cftliycness: a chaotic profusion of political aims that wilfully
polemic, and his attending affinities with Europe's subject races, can .,.._ the particular social pressures entailed by discrepant sexual
only be explained in terms of a homosexual politics whose distinctive- Thus Lawrence Housman, the homosexual-rights cam-
ness accrues less from dissident "sex acts" and more from a radical andyounger brother of the poet A. E. Housman, observed in
reconfiguration of association, alliance, relationality, community. That s ethical eclecticism a sort of guilty, and ultimately uncon-
is to say, I seek to argue that Carpenter arrives at his anti-imperial , doaking of homosexual designs. Carpenter, Housman insists
sympathies (not to mention his accompanying sympathies wtth crimi- · tion to Gilbert Beith's Edward Carpenter:An Apprecia-
nals, prostitutes, workers, women, and animals) only after he has made underutilized his political platform: "his public utter-
it homosexuality's business to think of itself, first and foremost, a, a behalf
of certain underdogs-especially on behalf ofhomosex-
e2pacity for radical kinship. There arc particular historical pressures, as mannerof speaking often struck me as too indirect and evasive
we will see, that drove Carpenter to this position. After Darwin, the ·ngto really get home ... his chum for right of way wastoo
colluding discourses of evolutionary anthropology and psychology her- in by an appeal to extenuating circumstances." 6
metically sealed the frontiers of"civilizcd" community, only admitong ___ ._.of verdicts such as the e was not in 1ny way mitigated by
within this privileged circle certain types of human being and, con- • strangelycoy iterations of (homo)asexuality; his awkward
comitantly, certain congruent forms of human alliance. The homosex- •; ~pie, t~at _he"had never to do with actual paedestry,
ual, unsurprisingly, was among the first to be denied admission. To ~ Y chief destie m love is bodily nearness or contact as to
more precise, the historical moment of his psycho-pathological defiru- with a naked friend."7 ln context, E. M. Forster's' post-
tion and emergence was already the moment of his exclusion. He.~- published
• . Maurict
· (1970) , which unembarrasscdly espouses
Iived, or came into being, at the outer margins of"civilized" or intelligi- . ~ as_ a~able to reading as a riposte to Carpenter's (often
ble sociality, and in the company of a crowd of outcasts and outsiders eclipsmgof sensuality. Conceived and completed in r914,
whose numbers included Europe's subject races. Faced with these e.xis- ~ us, after a visit to Carpenter's ashram-household in
tential materials, any speaking back in the name of homosexuality car- Ma11rice
IIIIIJlllll>e., inaugu t d .
~-- . . ra cs a new an recognizable era of homo-
ried with it an obligation to refute, creatively, the elite prerequi 5 ite, fo: ~
tile 1___
m •Its• Lawrent ian t ale o f a sexually hberatory
• affair be-
civilized, intelligible sociality, and in so doing to posit a more all e~- c-·pnvtle~d
1DClontrovcnv
M · d
aunce an a common gamekeeper. Dcter-
. . . m ofth•s
compassing alternative. What follows1sthe story, m m1crocos • .. is ll!
NIIDe,.. .. n, th rough its unapologetic defense of "lust," the
endeavor one wh osc housmg
>
. w1"thi n a "pure " homose.xual thematt1.:
• fle.X'
thu. . a t he so Ie excuse for any relationship between
tition th t "
at rernampurcl 1 . "8 ,
subject to severe theoretical complications. We might begin our re Y P atonac, Forster s novel retains at the
Stx Sex

edges some portion of Carpenter's utopian inclusiveness. The differ- •IOIIS:XUlUcxceptionalism and, as such, demands an aggressive
ence is thar this time round any extrasexual ethical imperative-fi
or
andtelling in a world where homophobia and AJDS conspire
example, Maurice's heroic determination to "live outside class, without against the hope of living fearlessly, homo~cxually.
relations or money'"l-constitutes a subclause to the compelling speci- die&ccof the compelling case for sexual specificity proposed by
ficity of sex acts and the choices that attend them. In short, and (as we 'W:"'a-..s gayand lesbian scholars and activists,we are left with three
will see) contraCarpenter, Maurict puts the sex back into homosexuality -,.coaddressthe "problem" of Carpenter's sexual evasiveness. First, a
and, m so doing, foregrounds the rights of sc.x-ualityas the originary ..,.,-ending historicization might allow us to credit hun, as Hous-
postulate of a homosexual politia;. iao doa, withprovoking radical homosexual effect$ despite his sexual
Forster's initiative, if we might call it that, has been comprehensively ~on. In Housman's words, "there has come a change of enor-
amplified within much recent gay and lesbian scholarship. Thus, for }ioal significance-a great and hopeful revolution. Carpenter, one of
instance, Gayle Rubin's influential essay "Thinking Sex" is especially pietistrevolutionaries ever known, lived to see the beginning of it;
notable for its reprehension of"sex-negativity" in all its variants, right- · · which, without his help, might not have been ruscem-
wing or radically feminist. Impatient with the pretensions of sexual [.lopSecond,following Monique Wittig and Eve Sedgwick-in an
seriousness-the oWigation always to fabricate a metaphysical alibi for alra.dymore conducive to our ends-Carpenter's euphemiz-
sex-Rubin disinvests sex acts of moral significance so as to create a eaualitycould be condoned as one way of facilitating the impor-
hospitable social space for sexual alterity. The claims of sexual pleasure, ~ a "minoritizing" to a "universaliztng" politics: namely,
her argument implies, supply adequate justification for the facts of sex- iila which enables the self-representation of a small and rustinct
ual deviancy. Or, to put this differently, sexual minorities must demand toone that discloses homo/heterosexual definition as/at the
their rehabilitation within the social fabric, unapologetically, as sexed · alcore of everyday sociaLry. 13 As Sedgwick explains: after
creatures. In such acts of uncompromising self-sexualization we might inlumment of that nineteenth-century schema (which we will
learn finally "to recognise the political rumension of erotic: lifc."10 Ill pater detail) m which a global homo/heterosexualisation
Rubin's position gains support in Leo Bersani's recent demand for a upon the deterministic gender binarization of every hu-
rarucal respecification of homosexual sex acts. Imprecating all homo- . there was no longer any "space in ... culture exempt from
sexual politics that seems ashamed of homosexual desire, Bcrsani's mcohcrencies of homo/heterosexual definition."1• Such def-
Homoscharges (homo)asexuality with the suicidal fulfilment of the in- rth came to vitiate "even the ostensibly least sexual as-
visibility that a hetero-ized sociality wishes upon its pervcns. For as If personal exi~~enc~."15 So, we might argue, somewhat mega-
Bersani reminds us in salutary vein, the wstinguishing stigmata of ' all polittcs 1s to ipso a sexual politics, and Carpenter
homosexual identity are vested in the corporeal peculiarities of homo- was_talking sexeven when he wa.s talking anti-imperialism.
sexual practice: "preferences do exist ... Gay men mainly go to bed Wltb ~rm largepart with the impulse behind chjs conclusion
M:t 1 .
other men ... and lesbians-pact Wittig-do 'associate, make love, live ~ at cast entertain the prospect of rehabilitatmg Carpenter
with women' ... It is not possible to be gay-affirmative, or politic~Y ~g the fact of his sexual evasiveness; consider, however
effective as gays, if gayness has no specificity. Being gay has certain ' . ~ sexual evasions as a condition of possibility for another
consequences, which may lead us into making alliances with other op· Politicsofhomosex
. . · alism. •r10 bearanyweightwc
ua J exception
pressed groups. But ... we want something that is unique aJTIOng to amplifyth is project withfo the historical field of nine-
oppressed groups: the right to have the sex we want without being • turysexology and Its
· errect
1r
upon th e emergence ofhomoscx-
punished for it." 11 Same-sex sex, to paraphrase, is the ontological baS•S as we now kn . Thi .
ow It. s we will do. f"ust, though, let us
Sex
Sex
elaborate our third "defense" of Carpenter's sexual evasions across th
theoretical terrain liberated by the contentious first volume of "' c ,utbority."He seems to draw the conclusion," Zizck com-
rou-
cauJt's The HistoryofSexuality. ,esistancc is co-opted in advance, that it cannot seriously
In a thesis which notoriously disqualifies sex itself from the aetiology the system-that is, he precludes the possibility that the
of resistance, Foucault, it will be remembered, refuses to credit "power" -~ on account of its inherent inconsistency, may give birth to
as an agency of sexual repression, as a force invested only with the ..- whole ':'cc~s it is n~ longer able to _mast~r an<l~l~ich thus
0
prerogatives of refusal. "We must," he writes, "abandon the hypothesis .. m ill uruty, its capaaty to reproduce itself 20 Yet 11 •~ not 0
that modern industrial societies ushered in an er2 of increased scxua) .... lhat TIN HistoryofSexualityprecludes the possibility of, as it
16 • detonating the system's capacity for reproduction :u, that it sus-
repression," for the most cursory review of the compact between mo-
dernity and sexuality reveals in the place of sexual prohibition the scan- ,,_,,., 6omthescene of successful antagonism those deluded forms of
dal of an authorized "discursive explosion" of sexualities. Lookingto a i I n; confinedto a merely reproductive and replicative relationship
find a moralizing incentive in the prudish soul ofVictorian governmen- MflC>l«I'•
Thus in Foucauldian terms, we might implicate as collab-
tality, we are confronted with the reverse: "the multiplication of dis- •• tilt (or inadequately resistant) the anticolonial nation-state
courses concerning sex in the field of exercise of power itself: an institu- ,S t firihto m:ognizc its tragic duplication, ad nauseam, of the very
tional incitement to speak about it, and to do so more and more; a ~ from which it originally coveted its autonomy. Or for
determination on the part of the agencies of power to hear it spoken -.ons, we might rehearse greater reticence with regard to the
about, and to cause it to speak through explicit articulation and end. claimsof homosexual self-representation. For as Foucault
lcssly accumulated detail." 17 How can we make sense of this anomaly? th-century psychiatry, jurisprudence, and literature ...
By apprehending sex, Foucault suggests, as the means of extending the the formation of a 'reverse' discourse: homosexuality
cartographic purview of power, such that it becomes a thing not merely !plk in its own behalf, to demand that its legitimacy or
to judge but to administer and manage-a path of access into the covert ~ acknow!cd~ed, often in the same vocabulary, using the
enclaves of psychic and corporeal life, facilitating "the encroachment of bywhichit was medically disqualified. "ll
a type of power on bodies and their pleasures." 18 . in contextandwithin Foucault's paradigm, any admissible
Within Foucault's schema the perverse "sex act," indeed sexuality that successfully short-circuit the tedious gener-
itself, changes its colors of revolution for those of recreancy. Far from ~ undermodernity? Its incarnaaon in and as an age of
occupying an autonomous and libratory "exteriority" in relation to . ~ch, at the very least, trouble the doggedly filiative
power, sex/perversion is now shown to be constituted and produced by •a•biia •Wha~pera_tives of modern power? Or, as Foucault him-
the very apparatus that it seeks in vain to counter. Thus every "speak- lM ccbe . t is Enlightenment?": "How can the growth of ca-
ing" or "performance" of sex is susceptible to the risksof collaboration, lfil discon~ecte~ from the intensincation of power rela-
10 thi
to the charge of extending the prurient arm(s) of power: "Pleasure 1iiW«t
lllli ~• s essay, is to underwrite as resistance the bent
spread to the power that harried it; power anchored the pleasure it "1Pt i,1q.~ess secret d · hi
F°llldin. e wit. n a truly countermodern aesthetic
uncovered." 19 111ft1 • r....__ gin _Baudelaire an exemplary instance of such "in-
All too often Foucault's account of the appropriative deployment of
z, avucault
et.Ide · IY at forms of resistance which
the hints t ant a1izmg
power in volume 1 of The HistoryofSexuality is read as a pcssimisric - .. forBpowerof power to reproduce itself. In his words:
invective against the possibility of resistance per sc. Slavoj 2:izek ex· - ~ audelalr · not th e man who goes off to discover
e, 19
emplifics this reading in a.recent critique of Foucault's apparently myo· Thisand his hidd en tru th ; he 1s
· the man who tries to
pie underestimation of the disruptive force of antagonism within an)' hanto facmodernitydoc snot 'libe rate man m. his. own being';
.
e the task of producing himsel£"2J
Sex Sex

But how, we might ask with reference to the concerns of this di's "1.'I Peculiar ro modernjty is the family cell, mediating
cus- iallllP'"'s.
sion, does this romantic acstheticizing of resistance translate into th of alliance and sexuality"30 through that sec ofinter-
iaMn:ballgc
discursive field of sexuality? Stripped as he is of the insurrection c
force of sex/ speech acts, how can the homosexual perform, like a
delairc or even a Sir Philip Sidney, such poetic inventiveness as might
B: ~ axes which link, crosswise, the husband-wife and
urdation in a sacramental tableau of normalization. The sex
ill(l,,cnu·
a,extrlcably twinned to alliance, sociality, and community. A..:-
bring forth anew things that never were either in nature or in culture? ~ 1 practice of effective homosexual cxceptionali:.m needs to
To put this differently, which feature of homosexuality, if not sex, could J,lli faMl not only the m~ties of ~ex but also'. per~ap s more irnpor-
form that"locus ofintractability" which, in Judith Butler's terminology, ~ theattending modalities of alliance and kinsh1p.3 1
might breach "the possibilities ofimaginable and realisable ... config- ToIUfflmarizeour argument so far: after Foucault, the sex-speech-
urations within culture"? 24 ........ robe hopelessly implicated in the production of power, so
Some answers are given by Foucault himself in tlie course of a frac- .., thatits performance-its showing and telling-becomes in
tious interview conducted at his apartment in Paris in March r9s2 • an act of collaboration with power. This conclusion does not
Throughout the interview Foucault is at pains to demystify the revolu- signal an apocalyptic death of se>.,bur it does signal the
tionary potential of homosexual sex on the grounds that "what most of sex qua sex (or homosexuality-only-for-the-sake-of-
bothers tliose who arc not gay about gayness is tlie gay life-style, nor sex -scx) as a viable or effective form of autonomy or resjstance.
acts tliemselves."25 Under the heading "life-style," and with charac- theclaims of The Histuryof Sexuality make it possible to con-
teristic semantic idiosyncrasy, Foucault lists all those forms of gayrela- evasiveness as a judicious and purposive refusal to collude
tionality, compelled as with Baudelaire, co produce themselves in the • economy of power. But what then of resistance and the
absence of established codes or guidtlines. The unsettling power of 6>ritscountermodern couplingwith inventiveness that we have
homosexual resistance, its radical inventiveness, he suggests, may well ebewhercin J.oucault? Perhaps, and in&ofaras the normaliza-
accrue "from tlie prospect that gays will create as yet unforseen kinds of 'ty achieves its authorizing effects in tlie normalization of
relationships that many people will not colerate."26 Thus unlike the wec:ould recuperate as politics that variant of(homo)ascxuality
perverse sex act, the creative intolerability of gay relationali ty eludes the • n of sex qua sex makes way or is the prelude for a radical
reproductive intensity of power by manifesting itself as an anomalous andreimagining of community, kinship, and sociality, such
and unprecedented homosexual effect upon tlie scene of everydayso· figure
of the homosexual comes to traverse, in Foucault's words,
ciality. In these terms, gay relationality works against power through its · and transitory points of resistance, producing cleavages in
reification of"new life-styles not resembling those that have been in· chatshifts about, fracturing unities and effecting regroup-
sti tu tionalised. "27 ltwu certainly a similar figuration of homosexuality tliar Ed-
Foucault's predictions in tlie interview implicitly obtain from h~ . . tcr had in mind when he claimed-by way of cxpla, ning his
account, in TheHistoryofSexuality,of the frequently overlooked symb•· !'191lllUllism-rhatthe homosexual was uniquely equipped to show
otic relationship between sexuality and systems of alJjance. Here he ~ wealtliand variety of affectional possibilities which it has
reminds us that in the main, sexuality safeguards and delimits imagin·
able circuits of sociality by imbujng- systems of alliance with a ~nc~
U:" 33
B~t _what might a queering of community, kinship,
association entail? 14 Before we turn to the scene of the late
tactic of powcr."28 In any society relations of sex produce, sustain, ~n century let us briefly consider an exemplary and inventive
autliorize, in their turn, "a deploymmt ofa/Nonu: a system of mart•~ of queeredrelationality in the strange tableau of M,chelan-
of fixation and development of kinship tics, of transmission of natn Puta.
 Sex
Sex
INTERLUDE: PIETA
,,long with other refugees from the Cathedral, to the Musco
There are countless references to Michelangelo in the literature offi delDuomo. Thus the modern viewer's experience of the
de-siede homosexual apologetics. He is praised as an apostle of"fr· n- 6lmcdby its abrupt transformation, doubtless 1n sharp viola-
tCnd-
ship-love" in Carpenter's The IntermediateSex (1908), as a noble c gelo'spurpose, from sacral object to artefact, from the
xam. ofworshipto the secular business of appreciation. But this is
ple of "sexual inversion" in Havelock Eilis's path breaking study Stx
Invmion (1897)1 and as a heroic votary of "Greek love" in John;:_ __ a Theamateurtourist, in hot pursuit of Michelangelo through a
35
dington Symonds's The Lift of Michelangelo (1893). Yet each of these ~,ammcrofltalian cathedrals, expects to find in a />wtathe farnil-
writers, among others, is at pains to foreground the enigma of the 4'q mration of a "Virgin seated and holding the dead Christ in her
sculptor's man-loving asexuality. While asserting Michelangelo's ab- ... He had been taken down from the Cross." However, in-
normal predilection for male beauty and attachments, Ellis finds w00 enclosedfamilial compact of a mother and son we are faced
reason to suppose that he formed any physically passionate relation- ..,....,,_--an,wd,eachmember comforting the others as strangers might
ships with men." 16 His assessment is endorsed by Symonds, who dis- catastrophe,and in that comfort interrupting and revers-
cerns in Buonarotti's "inverted" temperament a poignant physical fri- " circuits of affective intensity.
gidity. ''Self-control," he writes, "seems to have been the main object of towers at the apex of the group, assuming the dominant
his conscious striving." 37 And indeed, whilemaking due allowances for ofthe Virgin in most recogniza.ble putas,and the Mag-
the defensive censoring intent of thebe late Victorian pro-homosexual overthe Virgin's traditional place Ol'I the right of Christ.
commentators, Michelangelo's oeuvre is curiously reticent about sex, on_herforehead confirms this appropriation through its
representing, as a recent critic observes, the sex act only m a ~,ngle die~. amonno'. or symbol of love, shown opening its
drawing, "as one of the seven deadly sin~."18 Such sexual reserve (or _V~ns breast m an earlier P,eta drawing. The twice
nausea) notwithstanding, the text of Michelangelo's homosexual desire m tum, mirrors the Magdalene on the left, and in her
is subtly elaborated m the misalliances which animate his pictorial and aomple_tcs
~he ~rofound relational inversions of the group,
sculptural arrangements, perhaps nowhere more so than in the group 1DthemstituuonaJ priorities of generat1onality and gener-
that composes the thrcnodic tableau of his last "Florence Pie/ii." ~ mother and female companion, traditional bearers
Clustered around and supporting the body of Christ in various pol"" ~ of genealogy (of blood, birth, and sex), now traverse
axu0 f affiliaoon
· (of voluntary association) across the
tures of psychic grief and physical effort, the Florence Pietadisplays the ,

linked figures of the Virgin, Mary Magdalene, and Nicodemus, named .._11n11L Andvice versa, the vertical or filiative line descends
in St.Joh n's Gospel as the disciple who came to his master in the deadof dangerously along the upright male bodies of the friend-
night and also prepared his body for burial: "And there came alsoNic- ~-. ~thisder. mu: and his friend-master Christ. What is achieved if
111
odemus, which at the first came to Jesus by night, and brought a mixfUIC
reformulatio
n° fki hi . . '
ns P, associauon, and re1a6onality
of myrrh and aloes, about an hundred pound weight. Then took tbef 11111,1~ ~mapping of gender and erotic performativity. The
11111111
Nicodemus y· · fi
the body of Jesus, and wound it in linen clothes with the spices, as d,r: ofM· h - trgm gure, widely acknowledged as a
manner of the Jews is to bury." 39 Intended by Michelangelo for his own .-a.a.;.·• ic elangelo, stands as mother to the freshly released
. b(fotC the5CU.lptorgi . b. h
tomb, the group passed through a number of hands and locations t,c Pl'tsled . vtn.g lit to marble children, one hand
10 th
ant·o· e Virgin's back. The Virgin herself is sculp-
it was installed be.hind the high altar of the Florence Duomo, ~lllll!hi"iR
d ,note .t.-...Lg tactil~ty with her son: her left hand passing beneath
moved m 1930 to one of the chapels of the north transept an
-.aica at h,s breast fin b l . . .
, gcrs are y massing b1s left nipple;
Sex Sex

his left leg, now missing, was once draped over her lap; from one sid
their faces appear to dissolve into each other, the right side of her f: e
ace
obscured by the stony folds of his hair. And on the other side, the uteful
in theoretical terms to situate Edward Carpenters
Magdalene's hands betray a similar restless promiscuity, one supportin .__,..• • :nwhich we began this discussion-in a generalizable prob-
111
Christ's right thigh, another placed across Nicodemus's right leg, b<~ ofhc,molhcterosexual definition, its ideological and lexical pc·
hind the group. wereframed by quite specificlocal developments witlun the
How similar the complex significations of this group are to tho!>t: of ii/lfi4ylC(Oriandisciplines of evolutionary biology, scxial anthropol·
the Antigone story, recently retold by Judith Butler as dramatizingthe ... _,}ogy· To be more prease, we could explain the entire field
fatal antagonism between normative heterosociality on the one hand homosexual polemics as a mediated reaction
1111:=:oceei-:ennth-cencury
.........ii-tllil"
and "uruecogni-uble" forms of kinship on the other. 41 Simultaneously ---rpublicai_... tion in 1871of Charles Darwin's two-volume study Tht
daughter-sister to her father-brother Oerupus and sister-aunt to bis -.--.-.,Mo. mrdSelectionin &lotion to Stx.
sons, and bearing a name that can be construed as "anti-generation," of two vast subjects, man's putative "descent" from ani-
Butler's Antigone introduces into the heart of Sophocles, through her andtheroleof ..sexualselection" in the process of evolution,
infraction of the family cell, the sort of"kinship trouble" that Michel- achieved enormous popularity in 'its time and became in
angelo arguably introduces into the soul ofChristianity. 42 And in both the toun:e book for at least a generation of evolutionary
cases we may discern in the transgression of socially intelligible linesof racetheorists, and ethnographers)~ The success of the
kinship an appeal for what Butler names the "liveability"43 of mis- attributed in part to its mitigation of some of the anxieties
aligned desires. generated by Darwin's Tht· Ongm of Spurts (1859):specifi-
We have painful evidence that Michelangelo understood too well . of an evolutionary schema in which "Man," as Gillian
the discrepant alliances of the Florence Pitt/J as a tragic embodimentof Ir.•• a determining absencc,"4 ~ and one in which he is en-
his own discrepant desires. Apparently when the work was nearlycom- through the laws of natural ~eJect1on,to the random
pleted he approached it with a hammer, and in a frenzy set about vagariesof the environment. Replacing the disciplin-
pulverizing the marble of his creation. There was nothing random in ofbiologywith those of anthropology, Darwin's Descent
this self-destroying violence. For each time the hammer fell it waswith agitatedreaders through two concessions: first, by restor-
deliberation, severing the links between the various figures.The left Jllmltiwcentrality, and retelling the story of evolution from
arm of Christ, breaking at the shoulder, took with it the Virgin'sinap- · and second, by foregrounding those unique features of
propriately searching left hand; his left leg, slung over her lap, cracked exempt, in ~ome measure, from the leveling laws of
into pieces. Another blow to the right arm of the Magdalene divi~ed
her connection from the body of Christ, even as his shattering nght
hand, amputated from wrist to knuckles, withdrew its tentative ~ares;
from her shoulder. Some have attributed Michdangelo's destr0cnon_~
the group to a growing. .1mpanence
. wt
.th t he 6aws .in the marble w1
which he was working, others to a loss of creative nerve. It suit<~
. • of life·
purpose to imagine otherwise, rearung in his final subsurunon , •
1111
giving chisel for life-taking hammer an elegy for the dream of~ • 11
. h goolltlo
po5$iblecommunity. To a considerably more sober Englis ne
of such a dream at the beginning of the last century, let us now tuJ11·
Sex Sex

ral selection. 'With civilised nations," Darwin writes "a f: )east of all for the role of women, whose gender incarcera-
' s ar as
advanced standard of morality, and an increased number off: • I an 'IIDWbe explained as an altruism for the sake of the race;
air YWelJ
endowed men are concerned, natural selection apparently effect • • thtf immunizing reproductive economy which curtailed the
1.1ttle."46 Neediess to say, D arwrn
· ·in his wis
· dom reserves the ev I s but ofnatural selection.S4 But for our purposes, Darwin's assertion
. f . ill" . c E 1 " o Ut1on- continuity between "civilization," "reproductive sex,"
ary magic o c1v zation 1or urope a one: the western nat"
ions of
Europe ... immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors ~ difference"also added up, as late Victorian sexology rec-
stand at the summit of civilisation."47 and .Q .•,eel,to an insistence upon the compulsory heteronormativity of
But what, if any, are the characteristic features of "civilization" t,dtrr'll) civilization.~s _the redoubtable lwa_n-~lo<:11 w_ouldobserve,
evolutionary priority? Darwin's epochal answer, "sexualselecn·on," an- or • .Darwin, "obvious1s1t that the whole of ctvilisanon 1sthe product
nounces the major theme of Descent, asserting, as Sullowayputs it, "that ~physical and mental differentiation of the sexes, that civilisation
the ultimate test of biological success lies in reproduction, not in "the ~ta&ct. to a certain extent a heterosexual character."55
survival of the fittest.'' For if the fittest do not reproduce, Darwin well principles of sexualselection, as we will see below, were thus
knew, they are generally of "no evolutionary importance to the spe- in producing the nonheterosexualor homosexual as a "civ-
cies."48Other consequences follow. The tasks of successfulreproduc- aberration. But in so doing, they also conferred upon this
tion demand an acute sexual dimorphism in nature, -sharplydistin- symmetricalrelation to all those other savage,colo-
guishing the secondary sexual characteristics of males and femalesas concurrently relegated to the jealous margins of western
romantic (or aesthetic) inducement to the grisly business of productivt ••..,ly not cvt'.rynineteenth-century homosexual was alert to
mating. In Darwin's words: "the sexes often differ in ... secondary , butfor those who were, the critique of colonialism was
sexual characteristics, which are not directly connected with the act of ..u.hle u an affectiveor political response to the constraints of
reproduction; for instance, in the male possessing certain organsof 1Xmdition.Let us pursue the development of these themes
sense or location, of which the female is quite destitute, or in having doecrlook at the scene of contemporary sexology.
them more highly developed, in order that he may readilyfind or reach
her; or again, in the male having special organs of prehension so as to l'JCATION OF IIETERONORMATJVlTY
hold her securely."49 But herein lies the rub. For once again, those
crucial signs of sexual difference, which make men men and women trilnslationofDarwin's Descentinto a manifesto for heteronor-
women, only come into view among higher speciesand societies.So,for Clteurred within the nascent sexology movement, which first
ua recogn izedecueld of study in the 1870sand early 1880s.56 ln
example, secondary sexualcharacteristics never appear among the paor
mollusca, "for most of these animals ... have their sexesunited in the .-ritersin this tradition obtained from Darwin the belief that
washeld in place by the enthusiastic practice of consensual
same animal."50 Nor are they visible among the lower races. ''The sex~
of the American aborigines do not differ from each other," and
51 111 or!ai
" .
rep~ctive s~, and at the same time by the immuta-
differencewhich made such sex possible. Thus, her-
most "savage"societies, a distressing gender ambiguity erasestheclilfer-
cliscursive
•-- . eiml · " w h'1ch rf'OUcaulrpoints to in The His-
..,. os10n
ence between the sexes:"the men are more highly ornamented thank..H5] rbc
--aal,ty, sexology n1 h d •
women, and ... the women ... perform the greatest share of wot ~Pltbol011i· u eas c , m the name of medicine, a vast
Only in the "civilised"world do we witness the comprehensiveirnplt· cal ~teraturc in praise of the marvels of straight sex.
mcntation of the sex or gender divide, which in rurn holds the keYto ' thc introduction to Krafft-Ebing's influential Psycho-
extols
,, "sexual
. life"as the "potent f:actor m. .m diVJ"dual and
successful{monogamous)reproduction.53
s conse' ascribingto i't var·1ously "the rrug. h nest
. 1mpu
. Js1on
. to
Darwin's peculiar arguments in Descent had nuxnerou
Stx Sex

the exercise of man's powers, to the acquisition of propertv t

-·1, 0 t hc by the exclusionary prose of"dcgeneration," which cast
establishment of a domestic hearth, to the awakening of altruistic fi unforgiving eye on those disruptive pathologies internal to
1
ings." 57 Writing in a similar vein, August Fore! passionately denou:: • the homosexual was progressively (though not b) any
the "sexually anaesthetic individual," while fulminating at large l!M C$ ) diagnosed as a throwback to a former stage of "ttv·
~..inst
the "jumble of hypocrisy, mysticism, prejudice, pecuniary interests outeaStor at best an irrelevance to civilized society.61 Thus,
111
veneration for old traditional customs called good manners ... which on fromhis panegyric to heterosexual sex, August Forcl dis-
absolutely confuses all ideas of a healthy sexual morality."'" The deriva- ~ity as a bad joke: "It seems abi.urd," he claims, "that
tive I wan Bloch likewise protests against the pretensions of"spirituaJ" IOUalappetite and amorous ideas of a man can be directed all
affection, on the grounds that love-being quintessentially treelike-- personsof his own sex ... and it is obviously n.bsurd to apply
10
gains its fundamental nutrients from the dark soil of "sensory" love, 'normal'
to a sexual appetite absolutely devoid of its natural
remaining "irrevocably as ever dependent upon the physical."" tion."6-4Concurring with this verdict, Bloch directly in-
As signaled earlier, sexology's cncomia to sex were consistently ac- ~ in muted form, the vocabulary of degeneration to reject
companied by a Darwinian insistence on the immutability of sex differ- 'ty as a "primitive" and "markedly retrogressive step." 65 Re-
ences. These were singled out by Bloch, among others, as "the original to that sublime hetero·ized schema according to which
cause of the human sexual life, the primeval preliminary of all human le that evolution and the progress of civilisation have
civilisation," and by Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson as the tnexttemely marked differentiation bcr;ween the two sexes,"
foundational principle of human evolution, labor, and sociality.60 But as all"varieties"that diverge &om the "genuine man and the
with Darwin, this subsidiary discourse of sexual dimorphism began " as "phantoms, monstrosities, vestiges of a primitive
subtly to police the frontiers of civilization, disqualifying as inade- • • .""" For the5e reasons, he asserts categorically, inverts
quately "differentiated" the contiguous figures of the nonwestern ''sav- anyserious part in the future course of human evolution." 67
age" on the one hand and the western homosexual on the other. The aotingthat the homosexual's expulsion fromcivilization, and
discrete sexual allotments of the human species, as the liberal Havelock u "foreign" matter in the dear substance of evolutionary
Ellis confirms in concurrence with the verdict of his generation, are lllo madehim or her particularly susceptible to charges of
simply more developed in Europe "than arc usually to be found in affiliation. So, as David Hilliard has argued, the heavy
savage societies. "61 The homosexual, or invert, as he argues elsewhere,is ... IIIDoeexww· ty attaching to Anglo-Catholicism left its votaries
likewise tainted by a determining psychic hermaphroditism that sees,as die suspicion of being simultaneously "un-English and un-
in Darwin's mollusca, both sexes tragically "united in the same animal": Forsimilarreasons, by the turn of the century sexual perverts
"Each sex is latent in the other, and ach, as it contains the character of -l!ali·lllJrlvfigured as, in Lucy Bland's words, "traitorous lovers of
69
both sexes ... is latently hermaphrodite. A homosexual tendency may Gennan.nAnd in such ascriptions we can perhaps discern
thus be regarded as simply the psychical manifestation of special ch; forE. M. Forster's curious notion, in 'l'woCheersfor Democ-
acters of the recessive sex, susceptible of being evolved under chao . b choice-for the claims of"friendship"-as a potcn-
· d wit
circumstances, such as may occur near puberty and are associate act against the competing claims of"country."
changed mctabolism." 6l -~~• • the homosexual was undergoing the discursive surgery that
lt is important to note that the tenuous homology of t he "sa•"I:>·
• ~ him into a savage,primitive, foreigner, and traitor, a
and the "homosexual," produced by the discourse of sexu
aJd'ffcrc
I
0ce,
tWO operation was slowly and surdy rendering
~IIIICl2ic::tl-semantic
. an d I"dentl"ficanons
gave way to a symbiosis, as the functions . of th~C
suio· ~-West into thtzone of(homo)sexual perversion. These
excluded figures began imperceptibly to collapse into each orbet. tbcir cue, mistakenly, from the publication in x885of the
Sex Sex

first ten volumes of Sir Richard Burton's acclaimed and unex collected oeuvre would play an imponant part in
dll1111tlfl's
translation of the Arabian Nights, complete with a "Tcrmin!u~~t~ ()rient into a homosexual utopia for Europe's sexual
which identified the non-West, specifically the "Orient," as a "sot~
zone 11 w h ere homosexu· ali ty t hr.1ved wit· h out soc1'al constraint s· ad,c
J4orejmmediatcly,
_._,._.~_..,
however, the defensive rhetoric of the
hdped fuel the energies of a moralizing chorus intent
1.,
· ,uatcd
in pseudo-geographical jargon, approximately between the latitud ' (homo)scxual evidence for the savagery of Europe's
. . . es430
and 30° north, Burton's sotad1c zone JUStincludes "meridional Franc mflCIC-. It was rhus Burton's dubious ethnography that allowed
the Iberian peninsula, Italy and Greece, with the coast-regions of~~ eo,Jdemn homosexuality as an Oriental national tradition,?~
19
rica from Morocco to Egypt ... embracing Asia Minor, Mesopotamia cli,gnOSC it as an Eastern affiiction,7 5 and William James to
and Chaldea, Afganistan, Sind, the Punjab and Kashmir ... enfolding co,nmonknowledge "the fondness of the ancients and of mod-
China, Japan and Turkistan ... the South Sea Islands and the New forfonnsof unnatural vice." 76 This ubiquitous and mutu-
World." 70
Invoking throughout the essay the laws of sexual dimor- identification of homosexuality and the non-West would
phism, he subtly discloses in the apparent and acknowledged sexual MagnusHirschfeld, the homosexual-rights activist ex-
indeterminacy of savage, nonwestern peoples the decisive somatic index . Germany,to write bitterly about the insidious collusion
of their homosexuality. The effeminate and smooth skins of Egypto- heteroscxism and racism: "Heterosexuals, who regard
African priests, the distressing flat-chestedness ofTuskish and Kash- w ~al' because they are in a majority, and who (in the
miri women, the "kohl'd eyes and rouged cheeks" of Afghan boys, the at any rate) are apt to have an instinctive dislike for
cross-dressing proclivities of Lahori men, all catalogue the rich variety andtheirways... hypocritically incline to pretend that
of"Le Vice," as Burton campily calls it. 71 And while at pains to establish practicescannot have arisen spontaneously in their own
the continuity between ancient Greek and Oriental varieties of homo- amongtheir own fortunat&fy endowed 'race.' Hence the
sexual love, Burton's study effectively displaces the sexual precedent of ·on that homosexuality must have been introduced
Hellenism upon the putative Orient, granting to an amorphously non- . _fromt~e foreign land or by the foreign people with
western world the cultural prerogative of same-sex desire.
•• assooated."77
Written in a contradictory idiom that simultaneously excoriates aod tame _c~nclusioas, we could argue that the disciplinary
exalts "sotadism," Burton's "Terminal Essay" is readily available to s Deseent-in particular his theoryof"sexual selec-
reading as a doubled defense of homosexual and nonwestem culture, a strangekinship upon the "homosexual" and the "sav-
and a critique ofheteronormatlvity and western culture. Thus his lyrical wen:exiledto the desert surrounding the heavily policed
testimony to the Sufi idealization of homosexual intent as the "beau heteronormative civilization, and in the ideological
th is desert was prone, their features slowly began to
ideal which united in man's soul the creature with the Creator" dovetails
60
with his wide-eyed defense of Islamic cultural achievement at a time ..Ral~th.er that no one could any longer say for certain
when "the dark clouds of ignorance and superstition hung so thick on . homosexual or who was the ''true" savage. The two
•
after
"
Batat'IIe, found themselves inhabiting a "negative'
the intellectual horizon of Europe as to exclude every ray of learning
or a community
. • 0 fth ose without
.
a community," thrown
that darted from the East and when all that was poljte or elegant in
th COalit1onthro } h .
Literature was classed among the Studia Araham." 72 In this regard e n civili ug l t econ Juncture of their shared expul-
fictive and ever-widening latitudes of Burton's "sotadic zone" testify Jess tbnun· ty. But the compact of savage and homosexual
to his scholarly acuity than to his wishful identification of the "East'' as .._ ~n~ here also lays claim to the more complex con-
-e-tl'Vlty". B
a world free from the theological and moral repressions of we5rel'll . n of -~ ataille's thought, implying not only the
Christendom. p0Sibvc value but also a means of troubling the
Stx

Hegelian dream of self-identical communirv, realized as Wi Sex

·r • c ob
in chapter 2, at the summit of the master-slave dialectic in th ni of Narcissus that opens straight away onto the pos-
Croeno
nologyofMind. ~ ,"Bl Conceived in these terms, as the constitutmg
As 1t will be remembered, in that fleeting moment when Ii ••..-the authenticating symptom of its "ungroundcd-
master and slave first face each other they are both suffused bcgd'• Hegeliannegativity also possesses a compelling utopic
experience of desire as separation and negativity. For human de/
thc
.,..P'l5the hounded subject to apprehend the nonplacc of

ulates the subject's relationship to that which is not itself, that

different, strange, novel 1 awaited, absent, lost." However, the neccs
~h:~
Judith Butler notes in her gloss on 11yppolite's reading of Hegel .lf'C,.a,,

11
a an invitation to take place or to find plal'e .Among
· tcdothers-to collaborate, as Nancy put~ it, in the
ofoneput-out-of-itselfby one put-out-of-it!SClf."8J
satisfaction of this desire in Hegel demands "the transformatio:'1 1besecomments in line with our discussion, I am not pro-
difference into identity: the discovery of the strange and novel asfaroi}~ we «fuse, in the name of neo-Hegelian theory, the plea-
iar, the arrival of the awaited, the reemergence of what has been abseut and enabling recognition to the western homosexual
or lost.'' 78 In other words, to achieve self-identical community the two savage.Nor am I suggesting that this recognition
characters in Hegel's drama must progressively negate the very nega- achieved.Rather my claim is simply that any
tivity that constitutes their initial desire. Thus cornmun,ity or rclational- thesetwo _setsof ~utcasts, forged as it is not only
ity within this paradigm is predicated upon a formative violence10 ~mu~1ty, ma~fests the radical "negativity" or
difference. Bur could we imagine another kind of anti-communitariaa cal difference to which Baraillc refers, safe-
community, where the participants refuse the reciprocal negation fll • something ineluctably foreign, strange, and un-
negativity, defiantly preserving ontological difference as the basis,.- ~ ~ of socialiry, association, and relationality. ln
deed as the signature, of their communication? In these terms, and • " qua1iC) of•resistance that
aducvcs the: "·mventive
following Jean Luc Nancy's reading ofBataille, the "negative co~ u the decisive hallmark of a homosexual politics,
nity" might be reconceptualized as one which comprehends "sepan- _pcrform_swhile philosophising, like Niet-1.Scbe,
tion" as ethically exigent, such that the dialectic of Hegel's self-identical uponhislast Pwa. Ir is time, finally, to return to Ed-
community is "suspendedon the limit of its access to self"; that is, at die Ind the scene of his anticolonial homosexuality.
point of its resolution into an order of similitude, similarity, identity."
In recent years several thinkers, Nancy and Agamben preeminelll
at the
among them, have thus attempted to arrest Hegel's Phenomenology
moment when it first articulates the experience of "negativity~ in die " ~litics, with which we are concerned here,
1
dialectic of recognition. Ar that moment, they contend, Hegel~ the law f.
negative com · "·
mun1ty m two ways: first, by liber-
available to reading as "the first to take thought out of the rcahnofi~ a-.J o immutable sexual difference, au.horized by
.. au second by · ·
and subjectivity," thus intimating the possibility of radical cornrn~lf 'Jlll!ll•butiii"
wi'calJ ' reJectmg categorically the very princi-
For inaugural negativity expressesa unique experience of insu~:;: stra• . y extolled by sexology and its offshoots. We
(also recommended, as we might recall from chapter 2, by Bl •tgies for tb· ·
• • • is proJect through a close reading of
which draws us sharply into "the very heart of ethos,hurnanicy's~ lhecfouble Writing But n · ·
: rst, tt t<i useful to amplify the thco-
res1stance we a • 'd .
dwelling place": that is, into the imperatives of being with ot~ Witti• . . re cons1 enng through a quJck
others. 81 Exemplifying the limits of bounded, reflexive, and 'of"ltll of ~s critique of"the straight mind" and Michel
cultivated "· . ,.
subjectivity, negativity thus becomes a declaration, as in Nanc)', asces1s or asiesisin volume 2 of The
Sex

Wittig's The Straight Mind, we might recall, sees heterosexuali Sex

__ :,: ·a1 r ty- endeavor-discussed earlier-to dissociate homosexual
an institution, indeed as the prcv-..:Ungsoc1 con~~ct IOU~dcd on the
ineluctable categories of sex. The category of sex, she Writes, "isthe 6om homosexual sex. Such dissociation, he suggest:.,
political category that founds society as heterosexual .. Forto live. in Greekantiquity as pan of the recommendation
society is to Hvc in hcterosexuality."1-4Framed in these terms, hornoSC: desireand pleasure through strategies of ethical self-
9
ual desire and identity are inescapably politicized in and as an C>cistcntiaJ « ,uhsis. 1 In its Foucauldian .incarnation, Greek askesis is
obligation to break with the prevailing social contract by destroying the to a ,elf-denying austerity or even to "asceticism" as tt 1s

sociological reality of the sexes:85 "If we as lesbians and gay men,eon- understood.
Rather, it is seen to fumi~b an ethical (and
aathetic) access to such forms of self-mastery-or distancing
tinue to speakof ourselves, and to conceive of ourselves aswomen and
as men, we are instrumental in maintaining heteroscxuality."86
B imagining homosexuality as a third position outside the binary
a(
--·, fi-o1n
the (mis)identifying flux of desire-as might enable
to reconstitute himself not in sex alone but in the
Y thereby outside the social contract 1tse
sex, and . lf., w·1tt1g
. securesa ix,.- ·cy.By mastering, ascetically,our impulse to find
erfully utopian provenance for the business o:homosexual ~-identifi- of our beingin our desires we might, Foucault implies,
cation, 87 one that demands at its heart a radical reformulanon of rda- 11>query
"what sorts of relations can be established, inven-
tionality. The act of withholding consent to _the ca~egories of sex,~ modulatcdthrough homosexuality ... the problem is
insists, is alwaysaccompanied by the fomentmg of voluntary assoaa- in oneselfthe truth of one's sex, but rather to use, from
tions" with a range of other "fugitives.''" For if, as Wittig suggests,die 'ty to achieve a multiplicity of types of relation."92
"straight mind" is susceptible to the wider inequities no~rished by~ paradigms-for asceticism and against sexual dif-
nary think.ing-"Shouldn't we mention that the paradigm to wha lllpther in the period under consideranon in the trope
female, dark, bad, unrest belong has also been augmented b! Slaw, . a highJyeuphemistic designation for the homosexual,
other, different?"-then the "bent mind" is, or ought to be, in :: :l,ythe maverick German activist Karl I leinrich Ulrichs
green, Blakean world, constitutively exempt from and innately en6- · • aeries of extravagant writings penned under the
of these suscepti·b·1· .
1 1ttes. Furt h ermor e, to borrow some words Numantius. Based very loosely on passages in Pla-
Butler it is precisdy because th e "to«wty
~,: " O fW"tt:g'shomosexualutO-
1 . . UJrich's urning owes its genealogy to a socratic discus-
• u•Is permanently deferred, never fullyw at It .is at any given pmctulC
' h . ~ Pausaruas
explains that there are two types of Eros
pia · r,or « open coalition• •·an open
in time," that it also possesses th ecapacity ,.,, , two Aphrodites. The elder gajdess, Urania, cre-
assemblage that perm.itsof multiple convergences and divergences.
h .. - eiJdUra.nos
parthcnogenetically, lacks two sexes in her
. its emp asis
Wittig's polemic finds a Foucaul di.an resonance m ,:_1,.
ur-
be- and presides exclusively over spiritualized same-sex
. · "The
homosexuality as a form of revolutionary "associano_n. . . 111""'
cedill . the )'Ounger or "common" Aphrodite, coming to
~-r
tween the two theorists are further re,morce d.in Witt1g's sns1sten
. tolr ttproductive manner through the joint labors of
--.ill!.su li h
. . l
homosexuality is principally an eth1co-ep1stemo ogt cal resistance
. d preffl" pP es er heterosexual genius to your everyday
nary thought and only incident allya matter o f scxual
' acnon an ~y ci-r Jove~.
So it is that the "urning" (that privileged vo-
.,.
ence. As she notoriously observes: st wo uld be incorrect
, hto. eani'f ~or). "is not a man~ 3 but ra'.her the member of a
. w1"th women, fjor 'woman as 01 lllf. _guished both by its capacity for exalted loving
lesbians asrociate, make love, hve wo,neo, th h
h
only in heterosexual systems ofth oug t. . . Lesbians. are not -~
roblc:IIP"""' "1i ~ (or er) dispossessed minorities. "Our posi-
. I
While Foucault does not entire y concern himself with
. . the P •
. h Wittil ~tn every in~tance is on the side of the victims ...
. li ·t1
ation of the sex and gender system, he tmp Cl y J oms wit • Hanovenans, Jews, Catholics ... We battle
of despotic majorities. ''94
Sex Sex

It is in U)richs that we can identify the distant source for disparllteand shifting groups. "Eros," he writes, in an
Carpenter's homosexual critique of s~ual difference and of SC)(, lie •· of homosexuality, "ts a great leveller. Perhaps the
elaborates this critique, in the deceptively muted prose of Vier . ,e,ts, more firmly than anywhere else, on a ~ntimcnt
evolutionary psychology, across a range _of texts of which his :: passes
the bounds of class and caste, and unites in the
Coming of Age (1896) and The fotmned1ate Sex (1908) arc the 11\oat • the most estranged ranks of societie-,,"98 El cwherc,
representative. In the main, his recoil from the categories of SC)( con- -•liol\Cd earlier, he singles out the homosexual for hi~ affective
ceives of hcteconormarivity as a closed masculine economy 10 which apcoduct
of a doubled or hybrid nature which enables him
femaleness (or effeminacy) is variously effaced, repressed, and banished endto revealto society "the wealth and variety of affectional
from modes of production and signification. Thus L(J'!Je's
Comingof,ff! whichit has within itself.''99
squarely blames the late Victorian cult of masculinity (sustained, Car- diejudgments of evolutionary psychology, Carpenter thus
penter argues, through a dialectical relation to f~mi~nity) for a multi- bc,moiexual'sgender ambiguity as proof of his exception-
tude of sins, including imperialism and race pre1ud1ce. The pure man, similarconsequences, he extends this privilege to the
factory-produced by the public school system on a diet of sportand tiatcd"savage," also relegated, as we have seen, to
beef, is fashioned, Carpenter protests, to rule India and exploit South · 's phyletic ladder. In his Intermediate Typesamong
Africa,9S his flaws exacerbated by the bad offices of tl)e pure womm, a,Lt), Carpenter wntes enthusiastically in this vein of
herself "twisted ... into a ridiculous mime of fashion and frivolity.• andspiritual valori7.ation of bisexuality in nonwestern
Modern civilization, in Carpenter's understanding, is di<.easedwida the greatest awe for the "tendency to cultivate and
sexual difference and C2nonly be cured, on his strong recommendation, "tism" within Hindu mythology: "Brahm, in the
through the therapeutic intervention of"intcrmediate types" or homo- is often repre~cntcd as two- cxed . . Siva, also, the
sexual phy icians. . GftbeHindu divinities, is originally bi-sexual. 100Linking
Drawing on and subverting the rhetoric of eugenics and evolutllllt' andthe"primitive" in a double encomium, Carpenter's
ism, Carpenter projects homosexuals as a possiblt: species of the tu• . .thehomosexual's sympathetic capacity to appreci-
who might improve upon the palpably inadequate temperaments pie- ~ of "primitive intcrmediacy," while at the
.. • f As h argues in The'""" "primitive" cultures for their perspicacious exalta-
duced by the prevailing categories o sex. e .
"bl lunons arc• imldetcrminism. So it is that the "savage" and the "invert"
mediate Sex, "We do not know, in fact, what poss1 e e~o e workd"
th
come ... It may be that, as at some past period of evolu~on bce-,e:lld, ~ alliesand collaborators in a shared battle against
bee was without doubt differentiated from the two ordinary __ of sex: bound to a common cause through uncom-
fh kind may be eu,...11
so at the present time certain new types o uu:ian . . of the~
ing, which will have an important part to play in societies db a --A ••bomosexuaJ
excep r·mn a1·ism reli es .m part on a derer-
• ·c; attende Y 8""""
-even though for the moment t he1r appearance 1- . n°' 11c of sexualdifference, it also gains substantial energy
. h . I
deal of confusion and rrusappre ens1on. t may
_
be so· or it rna)
• . . sil"'
-•neethatthe •··tnterrne d iary, .. unlike
.
the heterosexual, is
' . al utop1an1s111 ...__ b . al f .
do not know." I lere as elsewhere, Carpenters tactic· nttsiOII' bis y.the
. base ch
cm,c s o sexual desire and practice.
b d reprc~c \Vnllng a ficrce •mvccnvc
· against
·
ates the homosexual beyond knowledge, and so eyon ho~ ..a_ sex, he appeals con-
- · · · 1 b "thholding from ,....asurc
8 0 f"
But-as with Witt1g-1t 1s precise Y Y Wt _ al c10SU" "the non-satisfaction," the need "to transform
uality what Butler calls "the normative tclos of defininon coal•,!J/1. ..i. ~tivation of"hardy temperance" between lovers
"open ,,.,ys1calde · " I . '
that he reformulates the homosexual project a~ ~n d coun o.L.,~ sire, t le practice of asceticism. 101 Carpcn-
U111em h ·
capable of accommodating conjunctural solidanues an P asis, as most nineteenth-century pro-homo-
Sex Sex

sexual literature is united in its determined espousal of"inv .....

~,s10
. allloveinto "a mere egoi:sme adeux." 106 Discerning,
0 ~ 11
mastery over sex. So, for instance, John Addington Symonds Valo. t Foucault, a hard contract between forms of sexuality
1
albeit hysterically, "Greek love" for its capacity to transform w• n~ iw.r.rnenter rants at large against marriage, monogamy, and
· en th us1asrn,
g1onous · .
a wmge d sp Ien dour, " t he "passion
· which grov Is.1
into findingin eac h " a lifie sen tence "£ or "th e ... immense
.
102
the filth of sensual grossness." In a similar vein, Magnus liirsc.~~ "the"differentiation ... ofneeds of the human heart," the
insists that "just as same-sex acts infrequently point to c.ontrary s andtolerance of ... other loves." 107 ln such a world, and
feelings,its total lack does not rule them out; to the contrary, its a= ,-ural inhibitions upon his sexual expression, the intcrmedi-
ent lackcan be a sign of especially strong homosexual sensibility."'OJIt is . ) haseasyaccess to the asceticism, or askesis, that holds
possible, of course, to read in the too-muchness of these protestations a in Foucault, to a "multiplicity of types of relation": "it is
defensive posture. Homosexual behavior was subjected to muchgreater in this class of men we have the love sentiment in oneofits
scrutiny after the infamous Labouche£e Amendment to the Criminal iilliwtorms-a form in which from tl1e necessities of the situa-
Law Amendment Act of 1885,which extended the scope of the law to element ... is exquisitely subordinated." 108 Carpen-
cover all homosexual acts, committed in public or private. Asis ~ mm forthis perfected love sentiment is "friendship," and
known, these increased legal sanctions eventually culminated in the its themes in Joliius:An Anthology of Friendship (1904), a
trials of Oscar Wilde in 1895,radically changing the.experience and ing a rich variety of cxtrafiliative associations be-
expression of homosexuality in fin-de-siecle England. The long terror andunorthodox pairs, separated byculture, color, class,
consequent upon these trials certainly finds its way into the anxioua i'bn.,ed underground by the conventions of modern exis-
apologetics that inform much contemporary homosexual Literature. • Carpenterproposes, is on the verge of a renaissance,
Anomaly's The Invert {1927)is a case in point, urging abstinence aspart :ID triaeagain,and become a recognised factor of modern
of the desperate struggle to "encourage every symptom of sexual nor- in I more extended and perfect form than at fust." 109Its
malisation" in the face of potential blackmail. 1 °" the ageof the intermediary, that species of the future,
Written directly after the Wilde case, Carpenter's LO'I.Je's
Comini,f logicof dimorphism and the imperious desires that it
Age is likely to have been informed by similar fears. But it is not sexual disc:ern
a similar emphasis in John Addington Symonds,
circumspection that we find in Carpenter so much as aggressive sex· •=-ITi·•
'"tes the homosexual capacity for friendship to an
negativity. Isolating in the sexual overdevelopment of heterosexual so- sexualabstinence. Drawing on Walt Whitman's distinc-
ciety the pernicious first cause for "half-grown" natures, Carpenter finds mutually antagonistic "arnariveness" of sexual love and
two reasons to recommend his own form of askesis. The first, fasmonecl llll'lleDess'"
of friendship, Symonds discerns in the latter form of
as opprobrium, identifies in sex the basic nutrient of tyranny and ~e will and political virtue ... destined to regenerate political
to mastery, manifest especially in the oppression of women and as unpt' tlement nations, an intense, jealous, throbb~g, sensitive,
• · oducd of man for man:•110
rialism. Whenever"sex pr rrte1S
... retains the first place," hewntes, it
th
"men so fatuous that it actually does not hurt them to see c s L•t l!alllll!'i'•zc:standing on the outslcirts of civilized socia.lity, the
· nanirnl c,..
crammed with prostitutes ... men to whom it seems quite bodief ol • tury homosexual understood his eviction, and negative
our marriage and social institutions should lumber along the arisl' 1fitbthe nonwcstcm 6avage, robe an dfoct of their shared
women, and our "imperial" enterprise over the bodies of barb;ndl ~ psychosomatic rules of sexual dimorphism and so of
races." 105 Second, he argues, the libidinal economy of hetero-s~ ;efll cesthat made alliance intelligible. His response, posed
itself to such egregious brutality because it stunts the free deve:d al of evolutionary psychology, was categorically to reject
of affectional possibilities, inhibiting sympathies with the opp JllllaiotDal
laws of western civility, on the grounds that they
Stx Stx

inhibited rather than promoted the free and ethical development of But by some coincidence, it fell into the hands of the young M. K.
human community. The rigid categories of sex spawned affectively Gandlii during a four-month visit to London in 1909, where he had
handicapped forms of hypermasculinity; the practices of hetero-sex, come unsuccessfully to campaign for the rights of South Africn\ Indian
indeed sex itself, cloistered the relational possibilities of the human minorities. On the voyage back to South Africa, bitterly di~illusiooed
heart. In this dystopian world the "invert" alone was exceptional: a with his unfavorable reception in England, he produced I /ind Sw,1raj,11
species of the future destined to correct the inequities of western het- scathing critique of western civilization thirty thousand words long and
eronormativity through his capacity for radical kinship. Liberated from written over an unbroken ten-day stretch, bOmctimc~ with his right
the dull monochrome of sexual dimorphism, this con~ritutively doubled hand and sometimes with his left (demonstrating, we might note, the
and hybrid intermediary was endowed with variegated sympathies and ambidexterity often associated in both western and eastern culn1ral
desires. His asceticism likewise equipped him for the complex affiliative psychology with bisexual temperaments). Condemning in no uncertain
demands of friendship. Here, in a nutshell, we have the raw materials terms the British presence in India, this early work clearly announces
for Carpenter's critique of western civiliwtion and congruent affinities the Gandhian demand for swaraj, or self-rule; the techniques of non-
with Europe's subject races. That he directly turned to the East we cooperation required to achieve it; and the ethics of ahimsa, or non-
know from his odyssey to India and Ceylon in 1890, recorded (with violent passive resistance, which must constitute the improved soul of
vivid examples of imperial bigotry) in From Adam's Ptak to Eltphanta nonwestern anticolonialism. To be regarded in due time as the key
( 1892); his lifelong friendship and correspondence with the Sri Lankan manifesto of the Gandhian revolution, Hind Swaraj acknowledges
P. Arunachalam; his seeking of wisdom from a Hindu "Gnani" who Carpenter, along with a few other like-minded writers, in its bricfbibli-
taught him, among other things, secret techniques for "the subjection of ography. r le is also cited, m paSJant, in the text: "A great English
desire."111We could easily end our narrative here, having given an ac- writer," Gandhi announces in a chapter on "C1vilisarlon," "has written a
count of Carpenter's part in expanding, however briefly, the ideological work called 'Civilisation: Its Cause and Cure.' Therein he has called it a
scope of "modem" homosexuality. But what of any part that modern discasc.''114 Hardly cV1dence to give Carpenter pride of place at the
homosexuality and the literature of inversion might have played in the formative origins of Indian anticolonialism. But evidence enough to
history of anticolonial thought? To answer this question comprehen- note his welcomed presence at these origins.
sively we would have to undertake a monumental un-closeting of his- How much, we may wonder, did Gandhi observe of Carpenter's own
tory, which is entirely beyond the scope of this discussion. However, we ethics of inversion? Did he even register Carpenter's fleeting defense
do have access to one very small and revealing story of cuJrural traffic. of Greek hom_osexualityas an improvement upon heterosexual mar-
Let me retell it on our way to a conclusion. riagc?115Did he read Love'sComingofAge and TheInttrmtdiate Stx? We
In 1889 Carpenter wrote his polemical Civilisation: Its Caust and haveno way of knowing. We can, however, claim-asAshis Nandy has,
Curt. Diagnosing imperial Europe as perilously diseased with "civilisa- BO persuasively-that Gandhi's cthico-political practice was animated

tion," Carpenter's book continually asserts the superiority of "savage" byhis own peculiar brand of bisexual radicalism. 116 In a milieu where
and "barbarian" societies, prescribing a cure for the West in "a fresh onhodox Indian nationalism was countering imperial allegations of
influx of savagery."112 The "present competitive society," he claims, "1s •effeminacy" through a hysterical recuperation of a lost Indian "man-
more and more rapidly becoming a mere formula and husk within hood," Gandhian ahimsawaspredicated on a rigorous refusal ofhetero-
which the outlines of a new and human society arc already discernible. Dormativc masculinity, western or e11stern.117 In Gandhi's understand-
Simultaneously and as if to match this growth, a move towards , • ing,the ahimsaicagent is obliged to feminize the activity of resistance by
savagery is for the first time taking place from within." 113 Ci'Uil,sation, emulating the admittedly stereotypical selflessness of motherhood,
like many of Carpenter's writings, elicited a mixed welcome at home. self-containment of widowhood, and so on. His own "queering," as it
 &x Sex

were, of gender positions is frequently expressed in his aspiration to lad placed the homosexual outside the fixed binary of heterosexual
transcend gender relations or, as he puts it, "mother" his companions dfFerence.In his words: "Psychoanalytic research is most decidedly
and in so doing become "God's eunuch." 1 IR So too, and with reference ~ to any attempt at separating off homosexuals from the rest of
to our discussion so far,his religious hermaphroditism does not signify ,nanlclnd
as a group of a special character. By studying sexual excitation
the zone of a transgressive sexuality so much as project sexlcssness-rruc c,dter than those that are manifestly displayed it is found that all
hrahmacharya-as the necessary clfcct of bringing femaleness to bear human-beings arc capable of making a homosexual object•choicc and
upon maleness. And his own aversion to sexuality is sharply crystallized !Jave
in fact made one in their unconscious ... psychoanalysi~ considers
in his insistence upon the inherently violent or h;m1aicnature of mar- thata choice of an object independently of iti; sex-freedom to range
riage and thus of the family cell, whose enclosed sexual economy re- equally
over male and female objects-as it is found in childhood, in
quires and condones repetitive acts of violence upon the naturally non- primitivestates of society and early periods of history, is the original
consenting bodies of women. In his words, "Young men in India ... are basisfrom which, as a result of restriction in one direction or the other,
married early ... nobody tells them to exercise restraint in married -1,odithenormal and the inverted types devclop."lll
life ... The poor girl wives are expected by their surroundings to bear In other words, after psychoanalysis the homosexual could no longer
children as fast as they can." 119 lilyanyclaimto ontological exceptionality and its relational effects. Nor
The resonances between Gandhi's "sexual politioi" and Edward fiJrthatmatter would he be allowed to valorize his kind on the basis of
Carpenter's homosexual exceptionalism are striking enough for us to theirconscientious objections to sex, because of Freud's second move:
ask whether the famous writer of H;nd Swaraj found in Civiluation: Its tlarough his relentless pathologizing of all sexual inhibition, Freud in-
Causea11dCure a sympathetic critique of (western) civilization or a anuptcdthe discursive logic of the homosexual recoil from sex by
sympathetic politics of inversion. But aswe have been arguing, perhaps 4'1gnosingas illness such forms of (homo)asc.xuality as we have cn-
the two projects arc indistinguishable after all. What we have in either eountered in the likes of Carpenter and Symonds. Thus, while writing
case is grounds for sympathy, collaboration, and kinship across multiple 111,our
homosexual sex with apparent lack of moral judgment-indeed
registers between Gandhi and Carpent~ a friendship, of sorts, be- 1fithdeliberate compassion-Freud renders Leonardo da Vinci's al-
tween an Indian aoticolonial revolutionary and an English homosexual li!gedhomo-asexuality, for example, into a revealing symptom of ill-
polemicist. Acknowledging these complex shared circuits, the animal- haalth.Theartist's "cool repudiation of sexuality," his "chaste ... even
rights activist Henry Salt took care to write to Gandhi at the end of tllatinent"lifestyle, his privileging of work over sex, "place him," Freud
1929, the year that Edward Carpenter died. "All good causes," Salt allscrvcs,
"close to the type of neurotic that we describe as 'obsessional';
reported to the Mahatma,"have suffered a loss this year by the death of ~ we may compare his researches to the 'obsessive brooding' of neu-
Edward Carpenter." 120 lbtica,and his inhibitions to what are known as their 'abulias.' " 112 Else-
1llha-c
Freud explains neuroses as a pathology peculiar to the repression
ordenial of aberrant drives: "symptoms arc formed in part at the cost
CODA
°!abnormal sexuality, neuroses are, so to say, the negative of perver-
llOn,."UJ
But Edward Carpenter "died" well before 1929, his politics helped into
a shallow grave by the eager aunistrations of Sigmund Freud. Although Farfrom being the prelude to a mclioristic social order, then, the
inadvertently, Freud dismantled the complicated edifice of homosexual ~ of sex (straight or gay) was henceforth reconstituted as the onset
cxceptionalism in roughly three ways. rirst, and to most effect, by de- afl)ly\:hological disease. This leads to our third point, which is Freud's
fining homosexuality (or diffuse object choice) as an originary and uni- laiatancc, underwriting these rcfabrications of the homosexual condi-
versal condition he categorically denied the "thiro-sex" position which .._ and contra Carpenter and others, to any adversarial relationship
Sex

with "civilization" itself.While conceding the profound psychic costs

entailed by the civilizingprocess, Freud deems it simply ungrateful to
demand its abolition.124Anathematizing, for these reasons, utopianism
and ascetic withdrawal as particularly delusional flights from the Real,
he claims that "whoever,.. sets ... upon this path ... will as a rule attain MEAT
nothing." 125And sothe homosexual and the savage, we might add, were
denied recourse to that common ground for their negative community A Short Cultural History ofAnimal
at the liminal outskirtsof western heteronormative civility. In return for
all these sacrifices,the homosexual after Freud was granted compensa- Welfareat the Fin-de-Siecle
tory access to the rich consolations of normalization and relatively
guiltless, if"immarure," sex. No small gains these, and not to be under-
estimated. But let us also not forget that these Freudian gifts were in
PREAMBLE: HOMESICKNESS
fact expensive psychictransactions, demanding invention as collateral
for acceptance, liberatingthe homosexual body at the cost, we could say, It's lunchtime late in the century before last, and the young Indian man,
of the homosexual soul. whom we must imagine standing hungrily on Farringdon Street, is not
charmed by London'. At least not today, Monday, 22 October 1888,a
greyday announcing the irrevocable onset of winter. His disenchant-
ment with the imperial metropolis carries the contagion of failure: to
borrow the language of his devout vaishnav family, 1t is almost his
dharma as a colonial arrivant to love London unequivocally, enthusi-
astically. A month hence, recalling in his diary the initial affective and
financial impediments to his legal studies in England, he will note
defiantly, "The difficulties which I had to withstand have made London
dearer to me than she would have been." 1 Three yearslater his memory
will cleave even more vividly to the exilic fantasies of his misspent
youth: "I thought to myself, 'Ifl go to England not only shall I become a
barrister (of whom I used to think a great deal) but I shall be able to see
England, the land of philosophers and poets, the very centre of civilisa-
tion.' "2 In time, true to that perverse psychic distortion which makes us
homesick for those places in which we were foreign, he will come to
miss London bitterly: "So much attached was I to London and its
environments, for who would not be? London with its teaching instiru-
tions, public galleries, museums, theatres, vast commerce, public parks
• .. is a fit place for a student and a traveller, a trader and a 'faddist.' " 3
For the moment, however, on Farringdon Street, his homesickness is
rathermore conventional: an acute state of corporeal diaggregation, a
rnaladjustment of a body ill at ease among sofas, carpets, cornices, por-
Mtal Mtat

ticoes, vestibules, flower beds, pavements, morning suits, bread, por- actions in as far as they tend to diminish his happiness; disapproving of
ridge, and potatoes. Mostly bread, porridge, and potatoes. To put it them in as far as they tend to augment it.''9 To the unconscnting object
plainly, he is distraught about food, its lack and its unrecognizability. of this utilitarian instruction, however, every gesture of scrupulous self-
No stranger to meat eating and its guilty pleasures (but more of that denial affirms the family he has temporarily lost, distilling an intangihle
later), he has had his sojourn authorized by the elders of his modh bania spiritual pleasure from the viscosity of physical discomfort. Yet tht•
family only under condition of a vow to abjure, as brahmacharyare- untranslatability of his vow into this alien culture, the seemingly int-
quires, the triple temptations of liquor, meat, and sex. Trouble sets in passablechasm between vegetarianism and filiality on the one hand,
from the moment he boards the Clydtin Bombay on 4 September 18881 andmeat eating and imperial civility on the other, compounds his sense
to find the steamer's kitchen ill prepared for Indian vegetarian con- of homesickness: "My mother's love ... haunted me. At night the tears
tingencies, although profuse in provisions of "oatmeal porridge ... would stream down my cheeks, and memones of all sorts made sleep
bread, butter ... meat and potatoes ad libitum."4 An English passenger out of the question. It was impossible to share my misery with anyone.
noticing the boy's tortured abstemiousness commends meat as a medi- And even ifl could have done so, wpat was the use? I knew of nothing
cine: "It is all very well so far but you will have to revise your decision in thatwould soothe me. Everything was strange-the people, their ways
the Bay of Biscay. And it is so cold in England that one cannot possibly ... their dwellings.... Even the dishes I could cat were tastdess and
live there without meat."S insipid.'' 10
Some weeks later, while boarding at temporary lodgings in Rich- Recently, though, the Anglo-Indian landlady of his new digs in
mond on a staple diet "both for luncheon and dinner ... [of] ... spinach West Kensington, and author celebre of many plates of porridge, has
and bread and jam, "0 a fellow lodger and friend will similarly protest in mentioned the curious mushrooming of vegetarian restaurants in the
vain on behalf of nonvegetarian transgression: "I lad you been my own city.And today he has come to Farringdon Street with a mission, deter-
brother, I would have sent you packing. What is the value of a vow made mined to find the ominously named Porridge Bowl at 278 High Hol-
before an illiterate mother, and in ignorance of conditions here? It is no bom.Instead he stumbles upon the Central at 16Saint Bride Street, the
vow at all. It would not be regarded as a vow in law. It is pure supersti- sightof which, as he writes later, filled him "with the same joy that a
tion to stick to such a promise. And I tell you this persistence will not child feels on getting a thing after its own hcart." 11 He notices for sale
help you to gain anything here. You confess to having eaten and relished under a glass window near the door a copy of Henry Salt's Plea For
meat. You took it where it was absolutely unnecessary, and will not Y,gttarianism. Buying the book for one shilling; he walks into the din-
where it is quite essential. What a pity!"7 On another occasion the ing room. We do not know exactly what he ate that day, although his
friend will read out passages of Bentham's "Theory of Utility" to his earlynotes describe in some detail a menu typical of vegetarian eating
vegetarian companion, presumably to make the case that the measure of housesin London for the month of October 1888. There are three
"civilised" sociality consists in maximizing pleasure (in this case eating l'llrietics
of soup (green pea, scotch broth, florador and milk), four kinds
well) and minimizing pain {in this case starving wilfulJy). "By utility," as of porridge in sugar or syrup (oatmeal, wheaten, maize, and anglo
Bentham has it, "is meant that property in any object, whereby it tends acotch),a choice oflentil cutlets with sprouts, turnips, or tomatoe~, and
to produce benefit, advantage, pleasure, good, or happine s {all this in fuurkinds of vegetarian mains (tomato and macaroni, yorksrure pud-
the present case comes to the same thing) or {what comes again to the dingwith haricots, curried egg and rice, sprout and baked potatoes).
same thing) to prevent the happening of mischief, pa.in, evil, or unhap- puddings offer a grand finale: "college," tapioca and custard, blanc-
F"ave
piness to the party whose interest is concemed." 8 Or perhaps, the friend Dlangcand jam, maize and peaches, wheat and jelly. There is al~o a
chooses as the text of his sermon one of Bentham's many fulminations ~ of stewed fruit, cakes, and cheese. u Choosing, we have reason to
on the errors of asceticism: that inversion of manner "approving of believe,
a six-penny dinner for three courses in the "first division" of the
Meat Meat

restaurant, over the gourmand "second division" (where "you select your thewide cultural sympathies of contemporary English vegetarians. The
dinner according to your appetite and purse"), he sits down with his authorsentimentalizes the land of his birth ad nauseam,testifying sans
13
book and begins to read hungrily. Some time in the next three years at embarrassment to the endemic worship of cows, the unorthodox tooth-
a vegetarian convention the author, Henry Salt, will meet this young brushing habits oflndian shepherds, the delicious idolatry of his pan-
man, who in an unreliable version of this encounter will say wjth the theistic faith. So too, although tentatively, he refuses the cultural priority
obstinate singsong of Kathiawar in his vowels, "My name is Gandhi. of Europe in matters of physique, religion, and ethics, all the while crit
You have, of course, never heard ofit.'' 14 ln a more authentic testimony icizing the imperial government for a series of admittedly minor misde-
Salt claims to "remember the now famous Mr Gandhi, who co-oper- meanors, from the deleterious importation into _poor India of alcohol,
ated with us much more willingly than he has since done with the "that enemy of mankind, that curse of civilisation, "18 to the besetting sin of
cultural insularity: "Almost all Englishmen who go to India keep up their
Indian government." 15
In his compelling and histrionic autobiography My Experiments with ownway of living. They not only insist on having the things they had in
Truth, composed in Gujarati during a prison term at Yeravada between England, but will also have them cooked the same way ... One would
1927 and 1929, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi rates his encounter with havethought that they would look into the habits of the people, ifonly out
Salt's oeuvre as a life-changing experience: ''I read Salt's book from of curiosity, but they have done nothing of the lcind."19
cover to cover and was very much impressed by it. From the date of Condoned, presumably, for this muted invective by his vegetarian
reading this book, I may claim to have become a vegetarian by choice. I peers,Gandhi's growing confidence in 1891foundexpression in an ini-
blessed the day on which I had taken the vow before my mother ... tiativeto start a new vegetarian dub in Bayswater. He also volunteered a
vegetarianism ... henceforward became my mission." 16 Over the re- paperon "The Foods of India" at the Waverly Restaurant and was
maining three-odd years of his legal studies in London, Gandhi in- appointed an official delegate of the London Vegetarian Society to the
creased his involvement with fin-de-si~de vegetarianism exponentially. conferenceof the Vegetarian Federal Union at Portsmouth between 5
He devoured, as he puts it, "all books available on vegetarianism,"
17 and 6 May, an event graced by a plenary paper on "The Return to
including, with particular favor, Howard Williams's The Ethics ofDiet Nature"by Gandhi's vegetarian hero, Henry Salt. Upon his long
and Anna Kingsford's The Perfect Way in Diet. These urgent private awaitedbut now painful departure for India, the Vegetarianfeatured an
dietetic studies Gandhi supplemented with organizational and evan- interviewwith this Indian collaborator, in which he gave voice to the
gelical activism. By1890 Josiah Oldfield, an official of the West London mief of having survived England without abjuring his vow, that is, to

Vegetarian Society, had invited Mohan (as he was known to his friends) thesimple but substantial satisfaction of returning home more or less
to attend the International Vegetarian Congress held at Memorial Hall ~nquered: "I am bound to say that,-during my nearly three years' stay
from rr to 13 September of that year. By the end of 1891 Gandhi had ID England, I have left many things undone, and have done many things

earned a position on the executive committee of the London Vegetarian whichperhaps I might better have left undone, yet I carry one great
Society. In the meantime a generous invitation arose out of his evolving consolation with me that I shall go back without having taken meat and
friendship with Oldfield, who offered to make his residence in Bays- wine, and that I know from personal experience that there are so many
Yegetarians in England." 20
water available for the remainder of Gandhi's stay in London.
Totally immersed now in the vegetarian cause, Gandhi contributed a . Gandhi'smany biographers are undecided about the true import of
series of nine articles, six on "Indian Vegetarians" and three on "Some hisearlyimmersion in English vegetarian affairs. Some like Stephen
Indian Festivals," also his first published works, to the Vegetarianbe- ~aycrcditthis encounter as a formative initiation into the crucial polit-
tween i February and 14 March. Acts of cultural translation, these ical.•killsof biculturalism. "As a bicultural person," Hay writes of his
otherwise unremarkable articles are notable for the clues they give us to 1'1b_iect,
"he would prove able to negotiate with, and on occasions medi-
Meat Meat

ate between, both British and Indian National Congress leaders during Indian going to England to let the editor know of his doing so."2s
the decades that led to their peaceful separation ... Many more years of Notwithstanding the comparative dearth oflndian students in London
exposure to both British and lnd.ian ideas ~d ways w_ereto come, b~t at the end of the nineteenth century, Gandhi brings back to India a
these London experiences were pivotal ones. 21 For RaJmohan Gandhi, palpably excessive invitation from Msvegetarian allies.26A testimony,
somewhat differently, the concord with English vegetarianism delivers we might say, to vegetarian xenophilia:that susceptibility to outsiders,
for Gandhi a "vital legitimacy" to "his Indian inner voice," confirming a aliens, strangers, foreigners, ratified in the enduring Epicurean i:hal
heady coincidence between the opinions of the adva:ccd "'!'est" ~nd lcngc to the Aristotelian-Hegelian circumscription of community,
the injunctions of his beloved but illiterate mother. W~e- lending consolidated in its transmission as a flight from self-identical, self-
credence to both perspectives in his ever slippery and shifting self- confirming sociality. But what then of the aetiology of risk integral to
narrations, Gandhi seems consistently to honor the English vegetarians this project? The structural demand that in this case, Indian-loving
-and their role in his fashioning-as exemplars of hospitality, and it is must be accompanied by a readiness for self-estrangement? A willing-
this reading that I wish to privilege in this chapter. nes5, as in E. M. Forster, to "run counter to the claims of the State"? 17 It
In the unpublished, twenty-thousand-word manu~cript o~ his is worth referring here to a public letter of 24 April 1894 from Pretoria
"Guide to London," begun in 1893upon his return to India as an aid to to Indians in England, circulated by Gandhi and subsequently re-
other young Indian students and travelers to the im~ial metro~~s, printedin the Vegetarian. Writing now in the more commanding prose
Gandhi warmly commends English vegetarian hospitality as a pallianve bornof increased political agonism, Gandhi informs his Indian readers
to the alien environment: "the people of the London Vegetarian Society d.t collaboration with English vegetarians is a duty, on the grounds,
are always kind and hospitable towards Indians and a more genial man amongothers, that "the vegetarian movement will aid India politically
23
than the editor of The Vegetarianit would be difficult to find." lndeed, ••• inasmuch as the English vegetarians ... more readily sympathise
there is ample evidence to confirm Gandhi's experienc~ of th~ Englis.h withthe Indian aspiration$ (that is my personal experience).',;ia Here
vegetarians as keepers of uniquely open houses. Oldfield s opening of his • haveit in rudimentary form: secreted within the culture of English
home to the Indian foreigner was matched in spirit by a chain of board- ,egetananism, a variety of hospitality orxenophilia whose logical fulfil-
ing and private homes made available to Gan~ wh~never he trav~ed ment may at any time "constitute a felony contrapatriam,''29 defying the
to Brighton, the Isle of Wight, Veotor, and even Pans. Once, puz-zling imperialstate in order to honor the "aspirations" of dispossessed (and
over a French menu in a restaurant in Brighton, he was approached b~ an hungry)
Indian visitors. Such "unconditional hospitality," Derrida sug-
"old lady" who helped him to decipher the card and invited him to dme pta, rehearses in affective code, and on behalf of the master's house-
at her house in London henceforth every Sunday.:M Wdlhost culture, a fantasy of surrender, inviting the guest to take the
While cognizant of being the personal and pam
·cu1ar reopien
· · t of ~r-host's place, to repossess his territory. In Derrida's words, "It is
111 if. · · then, the stranger could save the master and liberate the power
these favors, Gandhi talces care to generalize vegetarian kindness as a
. · __, · · 1 ·al strangers deter- ofbis.host; 1t
. Is as if
t the master, qua master, were prisoner of his place
temperamental or 1deologi\.-dlreceptivity to co om
ritorialized at the flawed heart of empire. And it is on this faith that he 111d
his power,of his ipseity, of his subjectivity (his subjectivity is hos-
urges all Indian student travelers to knock on vegetarian doors: "Hav· :· So it is indeed the master, the one who invites, the inviting host,
ing landed in London, where to go-seems to present some difficul:
Th e editor of The Veuetorian,
o
a paper published in London Mcmon
.
Hall, Farringdon Street, has kindly consented to give necessary
djrcc·
_
=::, becomes the hostage-and who really always has been. And the
the invited hostage, becomes the one wbo invites the one who
themaster of the host. The guest becomes the host's host." 30
tions and find them the proper lodgings where they can have eve!Y Ctnwe read the vegetarian hospitality encountered by Gandhi in
b · for evetY
thing cheap and nice ... It would, therefore, e a great gam n between 1888 and 1891as such a fantasy of dispossession, a
 Meat
Meat
cloistered invitation to breach the oppressive fabric of imperial house- mainstream eating establishment. He was less successful in his speech,
keeping? Or, to put it simply, as quintessentially anticolonial? That the well-meaning but nervous. Nonetheless spirits were high, and in the
English vegetarians were anticolonial, or that they manifested them- midst of the ongoing festivities, or so tJ1e Vegetarianof 13June 1891tells
selves as such to the young Gandhi, 1 will attempt to establish in the us,the president of the London Vegetarian Society, Mr.Arnold l Iills,
following pages. The question of what it was in their peculiar scripture rose and took the Boor, with the clear intention of honoring the young
(in the intellectual conjunctures which enabled the evolution of their Gandhi: "then, in that eloquent and beautiful speech of which he: 1s
ethic) that might have made them hospitable to Gandhi in Derrida's such a master, proposed the toast of the evening, 'Our host ... "' 32
sense is rather more complex, inviting consideration of Donna Hara-
way's claim that rich anticolonial possibilities accrue from ethically in-
THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS
formed reassessments of human-animal sociality. As she writes in Sim-
ians, Cyborgsand Women:"Perhaps ... we can learn from our fusion Let us begin our enquiry into vegetarian anticolonialism by drafting a
with animals and machines how not to be Man, the embodiment of fuller picture of the groups and organizations that Gandhi is likely to
Western Jogos.''31 It is apropos of Haraway's suggestions that this dis- have encountered during his first formative sojourn in England, most
cussion takes on the tasks ofhistoricalinquiry, asking why and how the but not all of which were vegetariaoist, and all of which were without
reformulation of human-animal community at the end of the nine- qualification motivated by a comprehensive concern for animal welfare.
teenth century provided a conduit for mutinous thought, attracting to "Ethically," as Gandhi writes in his autobiography, "they had arrived at
itself the distinct but contiguous energies of socialism, anarchism, radi- theconclusion that man's supremacy over the lower animals meant not
cal evolutionism-Darwinism, and so, anticolonialism. Answering this only that the former should not prey upon the latter, but that the higher
question is in a sense the chief burden of the following discussion. We shouldprotect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between
will concentrate below on the peculiar accidents whereby late-nine- thetwo as between man and man."33
teenth-century animal welfare came into conflict with utilitarianism: Of these groups those calling themselves "vegetarian" sought their
that philosophy of governmentality whose force was experienced most genealogywithin a long-standing if distinctly minor western tradition
directly by the working classes at home, and the colonized races abroad. of complaint against meat eating: a discourse well in circulation, as
It is in the working out of this conflict that fin-dc-siecle animal libera- KeithThomas points out, by the beginning of the eighteenth century. 34
tion in general, and vegetarianism in particular, opened themselves to Thus far overdetermined by considerations of health, however, English
contemporary radical thought, and in so doing substantially increased ~gctarianism achieved its specifically ethical provenance in about the
the political scope of any subsequent critique of speciesism. Derrida's 1790s, .firstgaining popularity among the Swedenborgians and other
notion of "hospitality" and Haraway's of a fused "cyborg economy" or dissenting sects as an essential accoutrement to a life of restraint and
"primate order" frame this enquiry. abstention, and then gradually finding expression in an uncompromis-
But before we move on to a fuller application of the Decridean ing critique of kreophagy, or meat eating, as a type of murder. This
tropes with which we are concerned here, let us record a notable histo~- accond,extremist str-ain in English vegetarian thought owes its inspira-
ical detail. As he was preparing to leave London, grateful for the hospi- tion directJy to the work of the British soldier John Oswald, whose The
tality extended to him by his vegetarian friends, Mohan Gandhi de- Cryof Nahm (1791)1 an impassioned denunciation of meat eating as
cided to hold a party. Booking for a private gathering the notoriously violence, was composed after a close study of Hinduism while the au-
vegetarian-unfriendly Holborn Restaurant, the young man 'persuaded ~r served as an officer with a Highland regiment in lndia. 35 Deriving
the management to cater for a strict vegetarian meal, thus delighting lts arguments from "Eastern" sources, Oswald's work played a signifi-
his friends with this parting takeover, or "retcrritorialization," of a cantpart in ensuring that India would be enduringly identified as a
Meat Mtat

compassionate haven for the animal kingdom and the "West" con- dercurrent of contemporary vegetar1amsm: vegetarianism in your
demned as a wasteland of anthropocentric brutality and carnage. It is hand, would make a capital article-its connection with philosophy i5
notable in this regard that the most common synonyms for "vegetarian" very curious-dating from the earliest Greek days, and taken by the
during the late eighteenth century and the early nineteenth appear to Greeks from the East-and so is its connection with modern socialism,
have been "Pythagorean" (in honor of that notable ancient and occiden- atheism, nihilism, anarchy and other political creeds. It is mange tha1
tal vegetarian) and "Brahmin." 36 This strain of"orientalist" vegetarian the most violent republicans I know are all vegetarian~: brussel ~prouts
ism was readily absorbed and amplified by the second generation of seem to make people bloodthirsty, and those who live on lentils and
self-professedly iconoclastic romantic poets, reaching its apotheosis artichokes are always calling for the gore of the aristocracy and for the
with the publication in 18IJof Shelley's A Vi,,dicationof Natural Diet, a severed head ofkings. Your vegetarianism has given you a wise apathy-
text which merges its hysterical condemnations of kreophagy with the so at least you told me once-but in the poLtical sphere a diet of green
author's signarure expostulations against the institutional and authori- beans seems dangcrous."JQ
tarian evils of western life.37 It seems extremely unlikely in context, given his hungry consump-
Thus leavened in its originary moments by a civilizational contesta- tionof vegetarian literature, that Gandhi would have remained unaware
tion well in excess of its basic theme of dietetic reform, English vegetar- of this close identification of dissident politics with the vegetarian
ianism by the rime it entered the nineteenth century was primed, we cause. We gain indirect confirmation that he recognized contemporary
might conjecture, for anricolonial polemic. Certainly vegetarianism, animal welfare as a window onto the scene oflate Victorian heterodoxy
most scholars and historians of the subject agree, m1Xedin as it was in it~ in the intimate accounts of his life and opinion recorded by his secretary
rransmisi,ion with the intellectual and political matter of positive ro· PyarclaJ, for whom the significance of Gandhi'~ early vegetarian ac-
manac orientahsm, millennialism, and indigenous traditions of dissent, tivitiesaccrues precisely from their larger political ramifications. Pya-
was already the preserve of radical counterculture, already possessed of Rlalwrites: "The leadership of the Vegetarian and Anti-Vivisection
excessive revolutionary aspirauons. IIIOYementsin England wasdrawn as much from the Thoreau Societies
For our purposes, the disparate strains of indigenous vegetarianism andWalt Whitman groups as from among the Socialists and Fabians.
summarized above first obtained an organizational character Ul 1847 Vegetarianismwas part of their humanitarianism and humanitarianism
with the formation of the Manchester Vegetarian Society, which gradu- oi theirsocialism. They were socialists because they were humanitar-
ally increased its regional base to gain eight hundred official members iansand because they were humanitarian they were also drawn into the
by 1856and some five thousand by the end of the century. 38 Appealing in fermentof the vegetarian movement.""°
the first instance to minimizing human rapacity vis-a-vis the natuntl Thispicture of composite politics painted by Pyarelal was realized
world and its creatures, organized vegetarianism had in no small mea- lbnostexactly over the years of Gandhi's English adventure, which saw
sure recovered by the last decades of the nineteenth century the wide theemergence and consolidation of a range of animal welfare journals
reformist canvas of its radical forebears. ~ magazines such as the Vegttarian Messenger,the Vegetarian,the
There is pleasing testimony for the close association of fin-dc-siec_le l6a,,,,.,jJ.r,end, and Almonds and lumin.r. After being scattered across
10
vegetarianism and radicalism in a letter written by Oscar Wilde ::;,,di_spara~e publications, v~getarian opinion finally achieved an ''of-
1888-the year Gandhi arrived in London-to Violet Fane, in response ftum11_nk~th extra-veg~tanan ~e~es through the auspices of the
to her tentative proposal to contribute an essay on vegetarian matters to ~'.tanan Le~gue and its publieat1ons. Founded in 1891(the year of
The Woman} World,a Jouma.l edited by Wilde between 1887and 188 5
0

. 9·e most active involvement with vegetarian matters) and led by

Beginning with a mock paean to the ethereal pleasures of roas~ snip_ Salt, the league sought a clear unity of contemporary radical
and burgundy, Wilde concedes, albeit teasingly, the nonconform 1stun all the while postulating a necessary continuity between the
 Meat Meat

exploitation of animals and that of human underdogii opegoats. domineering editorship of the journal Zoophilist.In circulation within
"The suffering of animals at the hand of man," as JoJ,,~orthy, a England until 1956, a French edition called Le Zoophilewas rapidly
notable member of the league, comments in a represcr- imd some- abandoned after an unsuccessful year in which French readers, much to
what pontifical passage, "is the counterpart, the extcn5: thesuffer- Cobbe's extreme annoyance, complained about its dryness of tone and
ing which man infilcrs on man. The animals, in shorr• .:quallyin- underlying atheism. 45 Not especially famed for its organi7.ational har
volved with ourselves in our social conditions. Salvatio- rman
means roony, anti-vivisection was often troubled by internecine battles be
salvation for animals, but while man suffers, the ar,_ must also tween Cobbe and other leader-aspirants; among these was the accom-
suffer."41 Such was also the burden of a letter whiellilwrote to plished and beautiful Anna Kingsford, whose The Pn-factWayin Diet
Gandhi in 1931,affirming his sympathies with the am,l:cialmove- remained, we might recall, one of Gandhi's favourite vegetarian tracts.
ment in lndia while reiterating the view that imperiafu::'llloneof the His contact with Kingsford's cause was greatly assisted through his
many perverse manifestations of kreophagy: "I feel au:::;lyas ever evolving friendship with her collaborator and amanuensis, the mystic
that food-reform, like Socialism, has an essential pa::rp!ayin rhe EdwardMaitland, with whom he maintained regular correspondence
liberation of man-kind. I cannot see how there be ~~ and full until Maitland's death in 1897.46
recognition of Kinship, as long as men continue eithen.::t, or to eat, Althm-1gh much narrower in scope than the vegetarian movement
their fellow-beings!" 42 Well before this correspondm explicated withwhich it was eventually conjoined through the good offices of the
Salt's personal allegiances, anti-imperial reserve appci,11one in a Humanitarian League, the anti-vivisection movement retained through
family of linked humanitarian causes enthusiastically ,-=:Jmfcdby the its links with Theosophy and contemporary spiritualism a profound and
Humane Review, one ofrhe league's two flagship journ:. ,sinaugu- abidinginterest in e,astern religion and ethics. Jn this way it provided an
ral issue: "Among the subjects dealt with will be: first rcreatment importantlink with the orientalist vegetarianism of the late eighteenth
of native roces, the sweating system, the criminal law a:.-;on system century.For the same reason, however, it often tried the patience of its
... and secondly, the various problems relating to t.:tatmenr of rationalistadversaries in the august establishments of nineteenth-
animals ... which subjects will be regarded as part IC.i!celof the centuryscience and medicine, gaining a reputation for acute eccentricity
social question, and not as a separate or subordinate b.n:iiit." 43 lt is to match, often with very good cause, the reputation for crankishncss
for this issue that Edward Carpenter penned his furi(.)':=x:rmentof longenjoyed by contemporary vegetarians. As Harriet Rirvo observes,
colonialism in his article "Empire: In India and Else~· discussed "Bythe early years of the twentieth century anti vivisection had become a
more comprehensively in chapter 3. fringemovement, appealing to an assortment of feminists, labour activ-
Among the numerous causes thus harbored under n~ circum- ists,vegetarians, spiritualists, and others who did not .fit easily into the
ference of the league's umbrella, special favor was alsoi:::x!edto the cstablished order of society."◄7 Such then was the company that made up
small but vociferous anti-vivisection movement. For~aoot 1870in Gandhi's social circle in England toward the end of the cenrury. How,
opposition to the belated growth of experimental or t..~.mory medi- wemay now ask, did they manifest-if at all-their dietetic and affective
cine in England during the last decades of the nineteer :mniry,rhc anticolonialism to the callow youth in their midst?
anti-vivisection movement gained momentum and na-:i• rhrough
the activities of the idiosyncratic Frances Power Cobbet lf Victoria
AN'l'l-coLONIAL HOSPITALITY
Street Sociery.◄◄ Cobbc aimed with little success co int eeffcctivc
legislation against experimental medicine. Her labor O'I consisted On2 9 January 1898 the Vegetarianpublished an interview with Dada-
mninly in reforming public opinion through a verit11bt.lanche of bbaiNaoroji, three times president of the Indian National Congress and
books, pamphlets, letters, petitions, and articles pubL.JJnder her thefint Indian member of Parliament, presumably on the assumption
Meat Meat

that as an Indian he would extol unequivocally the virtues of a vegetarian The paucity of authentic, dal in London at the fin-dc-siecle notwith-
diet. Early in the piece, however, Naoroji disabuses the interviewer-the standing, vegetarian restaurants were rather more eclectic and imagina-
bluff and genial Raymond Blaythwayt-of this mis perception by declar- tive in their menus {surely more likely to appeal to Indian or Indianisr
ing himself a committed carnivore. Undeterred by this confession, palates) than their nonvegetarian counterparts. We have some evidence
Blaythwayt presses on: "you arc a very anti-British ruler and naturally for the relative monotony of nonvegetarian cuisine in Behramji Mal-
enough pro-native ... your viewsare sure to please my readers ... you abari's ethnography of the English, The lrtdian Eye on Et1gli.1h Lift
will meet with their approval in every sense of the word, unless, indeed, (1893).While generally enthralled by English culture, Malabari finds
your avowal of non-vegetarianism doesn't rather horrify them." 48 If indigenous English food sadly wanting: "In no respect does the average
accustomed to antic.olonial polemic, as Blaythwayt's comment reveals, Englishman show himself so slow of _imagination and wanting in taste
the readers of magazines like the Vegetarianwere more often than not as with respect to his daily food ... As a rule the Englishman's dinner is
primed for this strain in their dietary credo through consistent exposure plain and monotonous ... The cook knows nothing of proportion in
to essays and opinions valorizing and promoting difference against the seasoning his food ... The cookery is often worse than the materials,
cultural monochrome of Empire. which may be seen any day hung up in the. shops; carcasses of large
Frequently purveying fawning interviews with notable Indians and animals and small ... The sight is invariably unpleasant, and the smell is
at times overpowering." 51
In defiance of this bleak picture, the nu-
Indophiles, and reports on their activities, animal welfare publications
peppered their fare with informative articles on Indian customs and merous gormandizing recipes regularly printed in vegetarian publica-
manners, among which were included, as we have seen, Gandhi's tions appear to pride themselves precisely on generating variety in the
youthful perorations on Indian vegetarianism and Hindu festivals. En- preparationof food. Something of this effort is reflected in the often-
glish contributors, many of them entirely untraveled, were not far be- timesculturally diverse fare on offer at vegetarian restaurants. A review
hind in offering encomia of"Eastern'' ways.A typical article in.4/monds in the VegetarianMmimger in January 1887of the new Orange Grove
and Raisins insists "that in gentleness to the dumb creation, Europe has eating house in St. Martins Lane, Charing Cross, lavishes praise upon
much to learn from Asia"; and in a similar vein, Annie Besant describes theecumenical board, which includes "Macaroni and Indian sauce,"
India as a veritable nation of St. Francises to the Animals Friend: "So in "Macaroni Napolitanc," and the enticingly named "Home-Rule Po-
India you will find man after man in whom this same spirit oflove and tatocs."Thc same review is accompanied by an advertisement for tofu,
compassion is seen, and in the woods and the jungle and on the moun- or "Japanese bean-curd." 52
tain these men may go wherever they will, and even the wild beasts will During his time in London Gandhi would undoubtedly have seen,
not touch them." 49 in pleasing testimony to the small but loyal demand for Indian cuisine,
Besant's unapologetic lndophilia here is matched, much like that of regularadvertisements for pre-cooked and somewhat indistinguishable
her other vegetarian compatriots, by an unusual culinary cosmopolitan- Indian preparations; the most widely featured was a curious notice for
ism.In an interview with the Vegetarianin 1898,she publicizes her high "BriggsMuscle-forming Indian Food," sold in tins "for 10d and r ii 6,"
opinion oflndian cuisine: andaccompanied by a picture of a ferocious, turbaned Indian with
alarming pectoral development. This image and its message about the
"Do you mind telling me whar is your favourite food?''
bodybuilding properties oflndian vegetarian food would have struck a
"Dal and rice."
"The former you bring over from India, don't you?" deep chord with Gandhi, addressing if not allaying colonial anxieties
"I used to, but I don't now, so I only get the dal when I am in India; here 1 about the myth of Ilindu effeteness: that ubiquitous fable common to
cat beans and lentils. I prefer the dal and rice, however, it is lighter and ~nglish impcriaHsts and their Indian nationalist counterparts, attribut-
more nourishing."50 lllg the conquest and enslavement oflndia to the physical enervation of
Meal Mtal

the malnourished Hindu male body. It is worth pursuing this theme in by labouring day and night, is one of the causes of the loss of our
some greater depth, for it holds in some ways the key to the direct national freedom.">S
political import of English vegetarianism for Mohan Gandhi. Many of these ideas spread into the Gujarat of Gandhi's childhood,
Macaulay is relevant here, setting the tone for a pervasive imperial coming into sharp conflict with the strict vegetarianism of his predomi-
critique oflndian physical culture in one of his many damning verdicts 1 and jam milieu. As he tells us in his autobiography, nn
nantly 'llaish11at
on Indian civilization: "The physical organisation of the Bengali," he older friend particularly susceptible to this wave of "reform" eagerly
asscrvates, "is feeble even to effeminacy. He lives in a constant vapor alerted Gandhi to the pernicious linksbetween vegetarianism and colo-
bath. His pursuits are sedentary, his limbs delicate, his movements nial subordination: "We are a weak people because we do not eat meat.
languid. During the many ages he has been trampled upon by men of The English arc able to rule over us, because they are meat-eaters."S 6
bolder and more hardy breeds. Courage, independence, veracity, arc Simple logic, reinforced in doggerel composed by the Gujarati poet
qualities to which his constitution and his situation are equally un- Narmad ("in vogue," as Gandhi tells us-with an unflagging eye for
favourablc."53 O!,iickly absorbing this stereotype into a negative self- fashion-"amongst us school-boys"): "Behold the mighty Englishman
image, Bengali intellectuals (the principal object of such imperial invec- / He rules the Indian small, / Because being a meat-eater/ He is five
tive) had by the 1860s and 1870s, as John Rosselli observes, launched cubits tall."57 Converted under peer pressure to a medicinal regimen of
into a fervor of self-castigation, variously blaming cn,vironmcm, cli- meat (until the fateful vow to his mother in 1888), the young Gandhi
mate, and most of all the errors of national diet for their deficient readily identified vegetarianism with colonization ;ind meat with anti-
masculinity. Thus they consolidated a schema in which vegetarianism colonial freedom: "It was not a question of plea~ing my palate ... I
emerged slowly but surely as the baneful signifier of colonial vulnerabil wished to be strong and daring and wanted my countrymen also ro be
ity. As Rosselli claims, "Diet was often invoked. Bengalis arc too much; such,so that we might defeat the English and make India frce."S8
or they ate too little ... A rice diet, short of meat and other animal However much we might underestimate the role of Gandhi's En-
products was 'weak and innutritious.' "54 glishvegetarian companions in his political formation, there can be no
Of the many figures leading the charge for revivifying the national doubt that they were instrumental in freeing him at the very least of his
body politic none was more commanding than the charismatic Swami specifically dietetic colonial anxieties, and so too of defying the physiog-
Vivekananda, who promoted "Beef, Biceps and Bhagvat Gita" as the nomic basis of imperial argument. Tract upon tract in animal welfare
reinforced tonic that would dispel the symptoms of colonial slavery. literature contradicts the correlation between vegetarianism and colo-
Needless to say, he was less than sympathetic to Hindu vegetarianism, nial enfeeblement, simultaneously mocking the long association of beef
as he reveals in a fiery letter of 14 April 1897to Sarala Ghosal, editor of and virility in English national culture. 59 A/11umdsand Raisins de-
Bharati: "About Vegetarian diet I have to say this ... So long as man nounces "Britain's twin superstitions, beef and beer," and Anna Kings-
shall have to live a Rajasika (active) life under circumstances like the ford's erudite ThePerfectWayin Diet assails as entirely false "the opinion
present, there is no other way except through meat-eating. It is true that that Aesh-food contains the elements of physical force." The "most
the Emperor Ashoka saved the lives of millions of animals by the threat capable workers among animals," she maintains, "are precisely those
of the sword, but is not the slavery of a thousand years more dreadful which never taste flesh-meat: Their force and their endurance arc invin-
than that? Taking the life of a few goats as against the abiliry to protect cible and surpass beyond comparison that of their beef-fed masters.''"°
the honour of one's own wife and daughter, and to save the morsels for Almost always such protestations arc buttressed by detailed testimonies
one's children from robbing hands-which of these is the more sinful? aboutthe unique strength-giving properties of a vegetarian diet. Henry
... the forcing of vegetarianism upon those who have to earn their bread Light's Common-Stnu Vegetarianismis a case in point, ratifying its di-
Meat Meat

etetic commendations with photographic accounts of boxing cham- karlanism) is throttling patriotism and common sense and virility of
pions who practice vegetarianism "only when in training and desirous of ,individual character ... Our forefathers burned, and marooned, and
attaining the highest form," and of unbeatable fruit-eating marathon t,cheaded and shot, and fought cocks ... So they bred hardihood.
runners completing 26 miles on hilly ground in a mere "2 hours 29 Brutesas you may call them, on these unhumanitarian principles they
minutes 541/4 seconds.'' 61 Examples closer to Gandhi's home and heart builtthe British Empire." 65 QE.D. For it is precisely upon the head of
appear in Ernest Crosby's encomia to meat-averse native races: rice-fed 1,eefymasculinity chat animal welfare lays the sin ofimperialism, isolat
Hindu coolies in Calcutta capable of carrying a chest which four able- ing in cruelty to animals the first cause of all consequent errors of
bodied Englishmen could scarcely lift; a bean-eating Egyptian fellahin, European supremacy. As Salt opines in his Ki/lingfar Sport:"Under the
moving with agility despite the two trunks strapped to his back "in a way fosteringwing oflmperialism, brute force is developed more and more
that would take away an Anglo-Saxon porter's breath to look at it." 62 intoa political science ... The Englishman, both as soldier and colonist,
Notwithstanding the consolations made available through such case isa typical sportsman; he seizes on his prey wherever he finds icwith the
studies, it is only in its mon: nruvemoments that the literature of animal hunter'sprivilege. He is lost in amazement when men speak of the
welfare works its arguments into a field of rudimentary oppositions in rightsof inferior races, just as the Englishman at home is lost in amaze-
which the series beef-Europe-imperial strength is replaced, defiantly, mentwhen we speak of the rights of the lower .orders. Here, as yonder,
with the contrasting but hopelessly contingent series vegetarianism- he is kindly, blatant, good-humoured, aggressive, selfish, and funda-
native races-anti-colonial vigor. Far more interesting is the ideological mentallysavage."66
tactic by means of which the discourse equating beef with imperial What Gandhi may have made of thC$eideas is beyond the scope of
virility is hoist with its own petard, such that colonialism is rediagnosed thepresent discussion. The animal welfare groups that he met did make
precisely as the lamentable a.fRictionof kreophagous virility. An occa- available to him, as we have been claiming, an ultimately hospitable
sion for elaborating a competing and "improved" masculinity, this tactic discourse, in Derrida's sense: hopeful in the main of surrendering the
dovetails with the literature of homosexual apologetics, discussed in prerogatives of the (imperial) master's house, and excoriating enpassant
chapter 3, in its insistent attribution of all social evil to the straitjacket- thefigurc(s) of beefy masculinity-that corpulent phantom haunting
ing of gender identity. "Trne manhood,'' as an article in the Vegetarian thescenes of colonial lack-as the pernicious link in a chain connecting
demurs, inheres in the capacity to master the cravings-in this case for audty toward other species with the exploitation of other races. In his
sex and meat-of physical nature. 03 An earlier essay in the same journal mature political life Gandhi continued to invoke the concerns and met-

on 18February 1899appeals for a .restitution of"true" masculinity in the aphors of vegetarianism and anti-vivisection, famously describing the
face ofits "brute" counterpart. "Again and again," the author proclaims, partitionof India as a vivisection of the subcontinent, the final and
"let us din it into the ears of a careless world that this is not a manly age, audest cut of imperial rationality. In addition, fin-de-siecle animal
and that beefy-mindedness is not another word for manliness, but ooly welfare demonstrates a deeper discursive claim upon that association of
a very excellent synonym for cruelty and every form ofbestiality." 64 unharmfulness and.anticolonialism, compassion and anti-imperialism,
What the cruelties attending beefy-mindedness might involve be- fundamental to the rudimentary grammar of Gandhian ahimsa.But in
comes the subject of a lampoon in the single mock-issue of The Bru- Gandhi'scharacteristically idiosyncratic idiom, this trope meaning
taiitarian:Ajournal ofthe Saneand Strong,published in October 1904 by "~on-violence" is also (and bafflingly) elaborated as a rhetoric of revolu-
the Humanitarian League. Asserting the monstrous kinship of blood tionaryobstinacy, a refusal of government, a character signifying the
sport, flesh eating, vivisection, war, and imperialism, the issue show- ~age of contradiction. Itemized variously in his oeuvre as "passive
cases, in a column called "Words of the Wise," a fulmination frorn ltlistancet "boycott," ''non-cooperation," and "civil-disobedience 1" it
G. W. Stccveas in praise of brute masculinity: "This (the new human- - invoked again toward the end of his eventful life as a synonym for
Meat Meat
"anarchy," bearing the promise of his last, unfolfilled dream oflndia as pursue these themes with any seriousness, however, we must change our
an ungoverned society. So in the essay "Enlightened Anarchy: A Politi- looking glass, substituting our interest in late Victorian denunciations
cal Ideal," published in 1939,Gandhi argues that India can only achieve of those who were palpably cruel to animals for a perspective on their
a condition of true ahimsa ifit agrees to an experiment in statelessness, conflicts with their contemporaries who were kind to animals. For what
for the reason that the very structures of governance arc hopelessly Gandhi encountered at the scene of animal welfare between 1888'llnd
contaminated by violence, or himsa: "Political power, in my opinion i891 was not only a movement newly committed to the well-being of
cannot be our ultimate aim ... In an ideal State there will be no political animals but also one split into a civil dispute between two pro-animal
institution and therefore no political power. That is why Thoreau has lobbies. One, which I call the "fin-de-siecle animal welfare" group,
said in his classic statement that that government is the best which consisted of the cranks and eccentrics with whom Gandhi kept com-
governs the least."67 Writing on the subject a year before the advent of pany1and while interested in legal reform it was principally concerned
Indian independence in "Congress Ministries and Ahimsa," Gandhi with achieving an improved affective relationship between the human
reiterates the conviction that Indian freedom can only be substantial as a andthe animal worlds, between mice and men. The other, which I call
freedom from all "rule": "I am convinced that so long as the army or the"early animal welfare" group, was much more respectable, main-
police continues to be used for conducting the administration, we shall stream, and closely linked to the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruel-
re.main subservient to the British or some other foreign power, irrespec- ty to Animals (Rs PCA);it did its work through the channels oflegisla-
tive of whether the power is in the hands of the Congress or others ... tive parliamentary reform. Coincidentally, the th,:oretical executors of
We might remember though that a Stateless society does not exist theutilitarian position were also the architects of colonial government
anywhere in the world. Jf such a society is possible it can be established in India.
first only in [ndia." 6R It is the quarrel between these two factions, as I will argue in the
What possible connection can there be between this idiosyncratic following sections, that comprehensively distilled the anticolonial es-
rendition of ahimsa and the more straightforward embargo on human sence of Gandhi's friends, bringing their politics more in line with the
violence toward the "lower animals" rehearsed in the inchoate thoughts eocialist-anarchism of his own later years. There is an interesting anec-
of the early Gandhi? It is my contention that Gandhian ahimsa obtains dote worth retelling, en route to this theoretical exegesis, that offers
at least some of its semantic density from the self-definition of late direct narrative evidence of at least a minor traffic in anarchist ideas
Victorian zoophilia precisely as a resistance to what we have learned, between Gandhi and fin-de-siecle animal welfare. In 1929 Henry Salt
after Foucault, to call "govemmentality" -a resistance poised on the was engaged in helping a friend to write a fuller version of his own
estimate that if modern power was a pathological form of nonrela- •Life" of Henry David Thoreau, sage of "civil disobedience," and a man
tionality, achieving its most pernicious dimension in the sequestering who Salt believed had "a constitutional No in him ... part of his mission
logic of imperialism, then its refutation had to proceed from the rehear- to question, to deny, to contradict.'' 69 Curious about Gandhi's relation
sal of unmediated or immediate and extreme forms of relation between to Thoreau's thought, he composed the following letter on 18 Septem-
beings with "vastly difterent phenomenologies and ontologies," that is, ber1929,his first to the Mahatma: "You will hardly remember me; but I
across genders, races, classes, and paradigmatically across the species hadthe honour of seeing you mention my book, 'A Plea for Vegetarian-
barrier. This unacknowledged strain in late Victorian animal welfare ism,'in a translation of your Autobiography, and I once saw you, I think,
would prove crucial, J submit, to the affectivity and anticonstirutional_- at theoffice of the Humanitarian League in London. On the strength of
ism of Gandhian ahimsa and, congruently, to his anti-imperialism. It is this,I am taking the liberty of writing to you. Some forty years ago I
to the elaboration of this strain as an explanatory context for the seem- published a Life of Thoreau ... and an American friend of mine is now
ingly ragged genealogy of ahimsa that I will now turn my attention. To collecting material for a new and fuller Life ... In the last letter which I
 Meat Meal

received from this friend ... he asked me whether I thought that you had in Liverpool in 1809 and again in London in 1822, until in 1824 a group
been a reader of Thoreau, and had at all been influenced by him, as on including Richard Marrin met in a tavern in London to launch the
many subjects your views and Thoreau's seem rather akin ... That is the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (s PCA), officially com·
cause of this letter."70 autted to bringing about in the sphere of "morals" the c_h,tng-esthat
The sixty-year-old leader of Indian nonviolent civil disobedience Martinhad introduced within the law. The s PCA was alwayl>better
and noncooperation replied to Salt on 2:2 October 1929:"l was agreeably established and more respectable than the Manch~tcr Vegetarian So
surprised ro receive your letter. Yes, indeed your book which was the ciety (and its various affiliates), which it preceded by over two decades.
first English book I came across on vegetarianism was of immense help Favoredfrom its inception by the patronage of the rich and famous, in
to me in steadying my faith in vegetarianism. My first introduction to ia40 it secured permission from Princess Victona to prefix the much-
Thoreau's writings was, I think in 1907, or later, when I was in the thick coveted"Royal" to its name. 73
of passive resistance struggle. A friend sent me Thoreau's essay on civil Fewearly reformers directly called themselves "utilitarian," but the
disobedience. It left a deep impression upon me ... That essay seemed Victorian milieu of organized and official benevolence to which they
to be so convincing and truthful that I felt the need of knowing more of laidclaim was, to borrow some words from F. R. Lcavis, "in a general
Thoreau, and I came across your Life of him, his 'Walden' and other ecnseutilitarian.' 17• It was utilitarianism, as Keith Thomas has argued,
short essays, all of which I read with great pleasure and equal profit." 71 thatimplicitly animated the "mode of thought which ... as Cowper put
it . .. wished 'all that are capable of pleasure pleased,' and although its
mainimplications were for the human species, whether slaves, children,
UTILITARIANISM, ANIMAL RIGHTS, AND COLONIALISM
thecriminal or the insane, the relevance to animals was mescapable.'' 75
To argue the case for the socialist-anarchist anticolonialism of Gandhi's Indeed, so comprehensively did utilitarian philosophy capture in its
friends, we need to exami_nethe peculiar political and ideological pres- inception the ethical foundations of animal welfare that even today
sures that shaped their emergence at the fringes oflate Victorian cul- philosophers of contemporary animal liberation like Peter Singer con-
rure. Significant in this regard is the way they defined themselves tinueto insist that utilitarianism alone comprehend~ and enables the
against an earlier and dominant tradition of animal welfare well in place appealto the maximizing of pleasures and the equ.tl consideration of
by the beginning of the nineteenth century. The years 1800, 1802, 1809, interests that gives the anlffial world any chance for justice m the face of
and 1810 each witnessed efforts to introduce into the English Parlia- llltbropocentric dominion. As Singer avers, "we very swiftly arrive at an
ment legislation for the prevention of cruelty to animals. These efforts iaituillyutilitarian position once we apply the universal aspect of ethics
finally bore fruit in 1822, when a historic bill, introduced in the Com- to simple, pre-ethical decision making ... The utilitarian position is a
mons by Sir Richard Martin, member for Galway, succeeded in extend- minimal one, a first base which we reach by universalising self-inter-
ing protection to "Horses, Mares, Geldings, Mules, Donkeys, Cows, esteddecision making. We cannot, if we arc to think ethically, refuse to
Heifers, Bull Calves, Oxen, Sheep, and other Livestock." Henceforth takethis step."76
anyone having charge of these creatures and caught wantonly beating, It is not incidental, in this regard, that the .fir&tserious mention of
abusing, or ill- treating them was liable for a fine ofberwecn ten shillings rightsfor anunals comes directly from the pen of Jeremy Bentham,
and five pounds, or imprisonment for up to two months. 72 These stir- Popularizer of the adage that civility and rationality proceed only and
rings of Parliamentary reform to improve the condition of animals in always from consideration of the greatest happme.,;s of the greatest
the early decades of the nineteenth century also inspired efforts to create llllmbcr.In a footnote to a larger discussion about ethics toward the end
an effective vigilante organization committed to animal protection and of bis monurnentalA,1 Introductionto tht Principlesof Moralsand LtgiJ-
legislation that furthered it. Attempts were made to form such a society '-ion, Bentham records the words that would arguably change the
 Meat
Meat
course of rights. The self-fashioned "platonist" Thomas Taylor, for one,
status of animals in the eyes of the law, thus confirming his position, wrote an impassioned critique of the political costs likely to attend the
Singer writes, as "perhaps the first to denounce 'man's dominion' as profligate expenditure _of ~rivileges u~n. in~erior bein~. "We may
tyranny."n Here is the substance of Bentham's footnote: "The day may therefore,"he protests in his tract A Vmdicatton of the Rights of Brutes
come when the rest of animal creation may acquire those rights which (1792), "reasonably hope, that this amazing rage for liberty will con-
never could have been witholdeo from them but by the hand of tyranny tinually increase; that mankind will shortly abolish all government as an
... The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is intolerable yoke; and that they will as universally join m vindicating the
no reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to rightsof brutes, as in asserting the prerogatives of man." 81
the caprice of a tormentor. It may come one day to be recognised, that But in Taylor's critique we are, I submit, in face of a supreme misunder-
the number oflegs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os standing.In Bentbamite hands the language of rights, far from conspiring
sacrum,are reasons equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to anoverthrow of government, is principally if not exclusivelyconcerned
to the same fate ... the question is not, Cao they reason?Nor, Can they withamplifying government activity to a vertiginous degree. If available
78
talk? But, Can they su.ffar?" to reading as a subsidiary history of nineteenth-century benevolence, the
It is widely acknowledged that Bentham's footnote strikes a signifi- storyof utilitarian-inspired animal rights also contains in microcosm the
cant blow to western anthropocentrism, ,i.nd it does so in a grand ges- secrethistory of modem governmentality. This is the crux on which the
ture of philosophical iconoclasm so typical of his style. In making the ensuingdiscussion turns, and to understand it betteJ'we must return once
question of animal rationality irrelevant to the right of animals to pro- moreto Bentham's famous and influential defense of animal rights. Herc,
tection from human cruelty, he directly refutes a position defended by in the text framing his footnote, we find arguments for increasing both the
Kant in a series oflectures on ethics in 1780, the same year that Bentham ICOJ>C and scale of the law, that summum bonum of utilitarian theology.
completed the manuscript of his Introduction.Justifying the subordina- What,then, is the burden of Bentham's argument?
tion of animals on grounds of their deficient rationality, Kant, it may be The question of our relation to other humans and to other animals,
remembered, acquits "man" of any ethical obligation toward brute cre- Benthamopines, is properly speaking the subject of private ethics, or
ation: "So far as animals arc concerned, we have no direct duties. Ani- "theart of directing men's actions to the production of the greatest
mals are not self-conscious, and are there merely as a means to an end. quantityof happiness, on the part of those whose interest is in view."R2
That end is man." 79 Thus crossing swords with Kant, Bentham's claim But maximizing happiness r<-quirespolicing individual desires to such a
about the unimpeachable validity of animal suffering, based on their degree that morals, to quote Halevyon Bentham, "assume a command-
status as sensate beings, also posits a direct and plain dismissal of Des- ing governmental nature."83 From the perspective of utility, Bentham
cartes's earlier decree that animals are incapable of pain or sensation, insists, "private ethics and the art of legislation go hand in hand. The
since they are mere machines or automata. end they have or ought to have is of the same nature. " 84 H owever,· if
Many early animal reformers claimed direct inspiration from Jeremy ethics and legislation, so defined, are of the same epistemic family, what
Bentham. Lord Erksine, for example, putative author in 1809 and 18ro is to prevent their active collaboration, making "legislation," again in
of the abortive bills for preventing cruelty to animals, diligently para- Halevy'swords, "a special branch of mora1s"?85 Nothing-since for
phrased Bentham's contentious defense of animal sensation in the Benthamthe ethical subject is intrinsically the consenting object of
course of a heated Parliamentary de'bate. "Almost every sense," he as- legislation,and conscience, concomitantly, is that critical rupture in the
serted to the unsympathetic Commons on rsMay 1809, ''bestowed on fabricof the otherwise integral self through which the law can enter,
man is bestowed on them; seeing, hearing, feeling ... the sense of Without breaking, to work with and upon the innermost recesses of the
pleasure and pain." 80 Not everyone was as much impressed by the in~s- tlllpathetic individual. It is this process, whereby utilitarianism trans-
c.riminate democratization apparently endorsed by the utilitarian dis-
Meat Meat

forms the "man of feeling" into the ideal citizen, that Foucault has in That early animal welfare offers a pretext for meddling governance is
mind in his famous exculpation of Bentham as the genius behind "what amply revealed in Pultney's arguments on behalf of his defeated bill,
might be called in general the disciplinary society": the bid, in other condemning bull baiting not only because "the practice was cruel and
words, to achieve an automatic functioning of power that transforms inhuman" but chiefly because ofits multiple "inconveniences" to gen-
the moral subject into the author of her own subjection and lends to the tlemen. The sport, he argued, "drew together idle and disorderly per-
exercise of modern government the opaque features of"governmental- sons;it drew also from their occupations many who ought to be earning
ity.''86Where once, Foucault argues, the offending individual experi- subsistence for themselves and families; it created many disorderly and
enced power as a singular force exerted ritually, violently, as a constraint mischievous proceedings." 90 Pultney's sentiments arc endorsed and re-
from the outside, the utilitarian intervention achieved the opposite: iterated by most subsequent would-be legislators for animal protection
reducing the costs of government and capitalizing on the unmanageable in the early decades of the nineteenth century. William Wilberforce
increase of human population through an inspired dispersal of power finds in the embargo on blood sport a means of checking the lamentable
within "the cumulative multiplicity of man." 87 We will rerurn to Fou- profligacy of the working classes; the Hon. Mr. Smith similarly ap-
cault later: understanding the precise techniques by which utilitarian proveslegislation against cruelty to animals as an opportunity to "raise"
governmentaJity is held in place is a prerequisite to identifying the theworking poor "in the scale of behaviour ... to cultivate their man-
principles upon which its undoing might proceed. For the moment, nersand to instruct thern in the principles of morality"; Lord Redesdale
however, I simply wish to argue that the distinctly utilitarian inspiration complains that the main evil in bull baits is their "great terror and
forearly animal welfare-in Parliament and through the activities of the annoyance to the neighbourhood"; and the redoubtable Lord Erskine
RS PC A-makes itself visible in a sustaining will to governmcntality, one sees in legislation to improve the condition of post-horses a welcome
authorized to enforce the habits of conscientious obedience upon all chanceto discipline the insubordination of their driver:;,91
those with underdeveloped or untutored natures: women, children, the These legislative efforts to civilize and invigilate the working poor
working poor, the inferior races. through the welfare of their animals were corroborated by the activities
A closer examination of early animal reform, most historians of the of the RSPCA. In its inaugural meeting of 1824, for instance, the chair-
movement agree, reveals a constitutive class bias and a relentless subjec- mannoted in acutely utilitarian jargon that the object of the fledgling
tion of the working classes to increased scrutiny from the law, as the organization was not only "to prevent the exercise of cruelty towards
subtly widening sphere of amerciable transgressions made the task of animals, but to spread among the lower orders of the people ... a degree
policing the poor gradually overwhelm the ostensible commitment to of moral feeling which would compel them to think and act like those of
protect animals. 88 These fearures are deployed as arguments against a superior dass." 92 But of course, as we know from Bentham, such self-
animal protection as early as 1800 by William Windham, parliamen- 8(JYemingmoral acumen needs careful supervision and training, or, in the
tarian and conservative champion of"old" English ways. In response to language of the RSPCA, "eternal vigilance" &om the superior classes,li 3
William Pultney's proposed bill, in that year to prevent bull baiting, Such was the motivating watchfulness that S. S. Monro, RSPCA secretary
Windham contends that the sentiments of animal welfare are doubly furTunbridge Wells, demanded as late as 1890 in a pamphlet called Hints
tainted: by a deplorable, myopic prejudice against the sports of the poor lo Workersin tht CauseefHumanity. Urging all uscl'S of the notorious
(while the equally bloodthirsty sports of the rich are disregarded), and London cabs to observe, from the state of mouth and fetlocks, that "hired
bya mean spiritoflegislativc intrusiveness: "This petty, meddling, legis- animalswere not overwom," Monro also exhorted respectable house-
lative spirit," he maintains, "cannot be productive of good: it serves only holders vigilantly to "notice the condition of animals used in bringing
to multiply the laws, which are already too numerous, and to furnish coalsor any household or other goodsto our houscs.' 19~ To achieve more
89
mankind with additional means of vexing and harassing one another." professional supervision over the "butchers, drovers, carmen, grooms,
Meat Meat

coachmen, farm servants, railway servants, domestic servants," under sus- more acutely than the difference (and distance) between natural or
picion in Monro's pamphlet, the Rs P CA by 1838employed permanent and nongovernmental society on the one hand and political or governmen-
paid inspectors authorized to impose the law and deliver wrongdoers into talsociety on the other. To put it simply, where savage men in a state of
the arms of overraxed local magistrates. An illustration of 1833shows a nature lacked habits of obedience, and therefore a right to democracy,
voluntary RSPCA inspector engaged in such service, directing (with the civilized or political men were constitutively obedient and congmenrly
approving collaboration of a well-dressed and overfed owner of a pedigree deserving of democratic privilege. As Bentham maintains, ''govern
dog) a duly disreputable-loolsi.ng bird seller to deliver his (now happy) ments, accordingly, in proportion as the habit of obedience is more
captives into the unfriendly London sky.95 perfect, recede from, in proportion as it is less perfect, approach to a
In every way, and as Windham had predicted in 1800, early animal state of nature." 98 Receiving this gift of government from within a
welfare substantially increased the intrusion of the law into the lives of discourse of "improvement," political men, we might add, were also
the poor to render them capable of self-regulative obedience. Notably, it entitled if not obliged to spread the gospel of govemmentality as a
is precise! yin praise of this increased government interference that J oho civilizing mission. So it is that Mill rewrites colonialism as the forcible
Stuart Mill underwrites, in his Principlesof PoliticalEconomy{1848),the attempt to civilize or govemmentalize the East-the ends, as always,
achievements of early animal welfare, a tradition provoked in no small justifying the means. For "those backward states of society in which the
part, as we have seen, by the labors of his famous predecessor: "The raceitself may be concerned as in its nonage," Mill observes, "the early
reasons for legal intervention in favour of children, apply no less difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress arc i;o great, that there is
strongly in the case of these unfortunate slaves and victims of the most seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler full of the
brutal part of mankind, the lower animals. It is by the grossest misun- spiritof improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will
derstanding of the principles of liberty, that the infilction of exemplary attainan end, perhaps otherwise unattainable. Despotism is a legiti-
punishment on ruffianism practised towards these defenceless creatures mate system of government in dealing with barbarians, provided that
has been treated as a meddling by government with things beyond its theend be their improvement, and the means justified by acrually
province; an interference with domestic lifi:. The domestic life of do- achievingthat end. Liberty, as a principle, has no app]jcation to any
mestic tyrants is one of the things whi-ch it is most imperative on the law state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable
to interfere with."96 ofbeingimproved ... Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit
Claimed as a means to justify the regulation of the working classes, obedience." 99
indirectly, through the rhetoric of animal welfare, Mill's defense of Theyounger Mill's justification of colonialism as the principled rec-
government interference also points the way, directly, to the colonial tification ofinadequatcly governmental societies directly echoes similar
imperatives of utilitarian philosophy. His advocacy of untrammelled arguments proffered by his father, James Mill, in the infamous The
legal intervention is framed by utilitarianism's abiding "romance" with Historyof British India. This detailed invective against Indian customs
govern mentality, one articulated within the defining paradigms of what andmanners, composed, as the author confesses, without the strength
Asa Briggs has so fittingly defined as an "age of improvement'': the of a single visit to the country, paints a picture of unmitigated barba-
confident period between 1783and 1867guided by Macaulay's convic- rism. Mill withholds the prerogatives of civilization from India on both
tion that "the history of our country during the last hundred years is familiar l Iegelian grounds (the lack of"history" or "historicism" in the
eminently the history of physical, moral, and of intellectual improve- East) and familiar utilitarian grounds (the absent traditions of law,
ment. "9 7 In this milieu, so preoccupied with enumerating indices for government, and obedience, in Indian culture). ''So bad a government
progress, utilitarianism offered yet another benchmark, talcing the view 18 theirs," he argues voluminously, begs the intervention of "a great

that nothing marked the distinction between savagery and civilization man, full of the spirit of improvement ... to induce a people, jealous and
Meat Meat
impatient of all restraint, to forgo their boundless liberty, and submit to animal welfare gets caught up in the utilitarian project of producing a
the curb of authority." 100The lasting and popular appeal of these util- disciplinary society, one whose force is felt at home by the indigenous
itarian maxims is confirmed in Kipling's "Servants of the O!icen," a working classes (incidentally through the evolution oflegislative animal
story from The jungle Books in which a chieftain from Afghanistan, reform), and abroad by the colonized races. This enmeshment of ani-
accustomed to a world where "we only obey our wills,"is informed that mal welfare and govcrnmentality or cLsciplinarity is, J propo~e, chal-
imperialism is the price for unregulated sociality:" 'And for that reason,' lenged in two ways by the fin-dc-siecle dissidents whom Gandhi meets
said the native officer, twirling his moustache, 'your Amir whom you do in London between 1888and 1891.The first, easier to apprehend, con-
not obey must come here and take orders from our Viceroy.' " 101 sists in their efforts to detach the project of animal welfare from the
Eric Stokes, in the company of a few other scholars, has convincingly surrounding utilitarian agenda by making it perversely and directly co-
demonstrated the intimate philosophical contribution of utilitarianism extensive with the liberation of the domestic working classes and the
to the formulation of colonial government in India. And as is well foreigncolonized races-in other words, transforming animal welfare
kn.own, several notable utilitarians were directly involved in the busi- intoan associated form of socialism and anticolonialism. Less obviously
ness oflndian administration. In 1819James Mill entered the executive butpossibly more profoundly, fin-de-siccle animal liberationists undo
government of the East India Company as an assistant examiner, to be thesymbolic logic of class- and race-oppressive (or colonial) govern-
duly promoted to the chief executive office in 1838.His son, J. S. Mill, mentality by recasting, as we mentioned at the very outset of our discus-
followed suit as the company's chief conductor of correspondence with sion, human-animal relations as an enlightened model of anarchic, dis-
India in the matter of native states between 1823and 1858. Both father obedient, and paradigmatically nongovernmental sociality, which in
and son, Stokes argues, saw their service as a means to achieve "practical timeGandhi would call ahimsa. These procedures arc inextricable and
realisation of the utilitarian theories," thus fulfilling Bentham's abiding interdependent.
interest in the reform of Indian legislation. Bentham's papers reveal
plans to frame a constitutional code for Jndia, and his influence guided a
UNDOING COVERNMENTALJTY: CYBORGS ANO SOCIALISTS
generation of utilitarian Indian administrators, intent on realizing "the
simple authoritarian logic of the Utilitarian mind" through an admin- Toproceed with the reading of fin-de-s1ecle arumal welfare hinted at
istrative and judicial machinery that "continued to supply the daily abovewe need to draw upon Foucault's analysis of the precise tech-
framework of State action to the end of British rule and beyood." 102 niquesof utilitarian disciplinarity, most palpable, he claims, in the
This was the machinery that Gandhi encountered during his political D10del
of Bentham's Panopticon or ideal prison. This model, Foucault
struggles in imperial India, struggles whose emphasis on a vocabulary of ~~• is designed to keep inmates in a condition of constant, exposed
conscientious law breaking ("disobedience," "resistance," "boycott," ~bility (subjected to "eternal vigilance") and eventually rhe perpetual,
"non-cooperation") can now be read in context as a direct rebuttal of unpas. d.
sive an impersonal gaze from the central watchtower translates
specifically utilitarian govcrnmentality: the vast bureaucracy of British dldfinto the guilty and unforgiving eye of self-regulatory conscience.
officjaJs that Pyarclal excoriates in Gandhian terms for "its domineering Butthe law of visibility enshrined in the structure of the Panopticon
habits and tradition ofunqucstiomngobedience." 103 alsorerics heavily
· upon, and complements, its harsh architecture of
To gather this discussion into the larger themes of our argument, ICJ>aration.The technique of "d1sciplina.ry partitioning" constructed
what bearing does this utilitarian compact with colonialism have upon throughthe isolating cell walls makes each inmate singularly visible to
the history of fin-de-s1ecle animal welfare) To reiterate: 1t is our cl:um the~pcrvisor and in so doing simultaneously "prevent[s] him from
that through a series of accidents the history oflarc-nineteenth-ccntur) CIOlning into contact with his companions." 104What is the logic of
 Mtat
Mtat
panopticaJ separation? How is the project of power qua disciplinarity
served, its catechisms of obedience rehearsed, through these concrete condition of horizontal, direct, or immediate relationality-relational-
cell dividers contromng the relations of men? ity sans obedience-equals a state of prepolitical, nongovunmcntal, and
Within the Benthamite model, Foucault explains, it is understood anarchic sociality. Govcrnmentality becomes shorthand for the im-
that the inmate can only intenonze the disciplinary eye of power com- proved culture of mediated relationality: the superintending third term
prehensively if he is compelled into a state of extreme, pathological in a pyramidal structure continually interrupting the even groundwork
individuation: quarantined from collectivities, from their affective dis- of dialogic communication, compelling conven;ants to addrcs:; each
tractions and their tendency to foment (in collaboration, through con- other henceforth only through the intercessory language of law. So it i.s
versation) the logic of counterdiscourse, countermanding the singular- that of the many nightmares that beset modernity, one m particular
ity of any law. As Foucault writes, "discipline ... must ... master all the looms large, translating, to borrow some words from John Durham
forces that are formed from the very constitution of an organised multi- Peters, the "spectn: of the mesmerised mass in the dutches of the
plicity; it must neutralise the effects of counter-power that spring from leader"into "the fear of the lonely crowd, atomised and mutually obliv-
them and which form a resistance to the power that wishes to dominate . s."107 In oth er wor d s, th e pn'vil eges o f govcrmen tali· ty require the
1ou
it: agitations, revolts, spontaneous organisations, coalitions-anything sacrifice of direct conversational pleasure. Vice versa, the unmediated
that may establish horizontal conjunctions. Hence the fact chat the •face-to-face" relation must eschew (or undo) the civilizing conve-
disciplines use procedures of partitioning and verticality, chat they in- niences of disciplinarity.
troduce, berweeo the different elements at the same level, as solid sepa- It is relevant to our argument that Bentham's allergy to immediate
rations as possible, that they define compact hicrarchicaJ nerworks, in mationality is accompanied by a corresponding nausea for untram-
short, that they oppose to the intrinsic, adverse force of multiplicity, the meled"feeling," "sentiment," "emotion"-the glue, that is, of affective
technique of the conunuous, individuating pyramid."IOS affiliation. '½mong principles adverse to utility," he writes in the Intro-
The incxtricability of disciplinarity and the logic of separation made illttion, "that which at this day seems to have the most influence ... is
physically manifest in the Panopticon recurs at a discursive level whatmay be called the principle of sympathy." 108 Elsewhere in the text
throughout Bentham's writingi.. The work of the early Bentham, espe- he condemns the "caprice" of sympathy or sentiment as intolerably
cially, conveys the clear sense that unmediated relationality, the hori- •anarchical."109 1n a we U- known passage, J. S. Mill similarly testifies in
zontal arrangement of the "face-to-face" relation, or what he calls "con- hisAutobiographyto utilitarianism's informing suspicion of feeling: "the
versation," is constitutively antithetical to the vertical axis of power cultivation offecling (except the feelings of public and private duty) was
along which are arranged the motions of obedience, the disciplinary not much in esteem among us, and had very little place in the thoughts
rotations of governmcntality. Formulating this schema in terms of the of most of us, myself in particular ... we did not expect the regeneration
distinction between "natural" and "political" society in his A Fragmtnl of mankind from any direct action on ... sentiments." 10
on Govtrnmtnt, Bentham notes the following: "When a number of . ,:'1though addressed primarily to the problematic of human sociality,
persons (whom we may style mhjuts) are supposed to be in the habit of utilitarianism's credo on behalf of separation and against the claims of
paying obedience to a pen.on, or an assemblage of persons ... (whom we ~ntiment also spread by contagion in the nineteenth cenrury, showing
may call governor or governors) such persons altogether (subjects and Its symptoms within all available circuits ofinteraction: between human
governors) arc said to be in a state of politirolsoeiety ... When a number anddivine and also between human and animal. Accordingly, most
of persons arc supposed to be m the habit of conwrsrngwith each other, tpokesmcn of early animal reform render feeling or excessive sympathy
at the same time that they arc not in any such habit as mentioned above, between the species at best irrelevant and at worst detrimental to the
they are said to be in a state of natural society."Hl6That is to say, the cause of animal liberation. They are also determined that an equal
consideration of animal interests docs not in any circumstances imply
Meat Meat

tiveliterature and endorsed by most major journals. "Sentiment," as the ,instance,discJoses an affective askesis in the art of poetry, finding in its
Humanitarian declares in the inaugural volume of its new series, "how- ,enunciation of epistemic certainties (in favor of the inchoate language
ever fools may decry it, is the mainspring of progress, and the man who of the heart) techniques for dissolving the disciplinary partition~ that
is devoid of sentiment-that is of feeling-is a dullard and a dunce." 111 aw human rationality. His critique of contemporary education is re-
A characteristic issue of the Anima/1 Friend likewise cmphasi1,es the .Ung in its appeal for the restitution of the "soft" disciplines, and itb
view that animal welfare begins with the cultivation of reciprocal equationof the "humanities" with "humane-ncss"· "the weightic:,t
friendship between humans and arumals. "Those poor dumb beasts and chargeagainst University education is one which least of ten finds ex-
birds," an impassioned contributor writes, "would most of them fain to prasion-that a learning which would strengthen the intellect only, and
be our friends if we would allow it ... and ifwe are too hard-hearted and docsnot feed the heart, is in the main but barren and unprofitable, a
selfish to be their friends and protectors, then it would seem there is cultureof the literae inhumaniores."121 Salt's favored champion (along
something noblCEin them than in us."118 In most of these writings, true withSchopenhauer) against anthropocentric rationality is, predictably,
to the spirit of earlier romanticism, sentiment is clearly assumed to be a Shelley, described by him ad nauseam as the exemplarrman of feeling,
critical faculty crucial to the ethico-political transformation of the pre- onewhose largeness of heart is eo ipso a capacity for transgression,
vailingsocial order. Searching for authorities to support this view, most .unmindful of the sequestering categories of race, class, gender, and of
writers find a sympathetic ally in Schopenhauer, whose On the Basis of -4IOUISCspecies. Affect, in other words, is privileged as the defining prop-
Morality is enthusiastically received for its "unequivocal inclusion of the tflty of Shelley's poetic war against separation. ''There is nothing more
non-human races within the scope of ethics," its equally unequivocal ,idelightful in Shelley," Salt observes, "than the utter absence of the
annexation of feeling or compassion as "the sole source of disinterested -.,crior person' ... both as regards his human and non-human fellow
action and the only moral incentive," and last but not least, its ratifica- Wnga.Whenever he speaks of animals, it is with an instinctive, child-
tion of feeling as a salve for "the barbarism of the West." 119Such 1sthe Jib.andperfectly natural sense of kinship and brorherhood."llJ
spirit in which the parodic single issue of the Brutalitarian, cited earlier, Muchlike Salt, Frances Power Cobbe also places poets at the van-
posits "sentimentality" as a countermanding force against the perils of il'Wdof the sentimental revolution, honoring them especially as bca-
"manliness and patriotism": "It is full time . ·.. that some trumpet- ~ foranimal welfare in her curious anthology of animal verse, The
tongued protest were raised against the prevalent sentimentality, and J+vntlof Man; and His Friends-the Poets. Celebrating those poets
that there should be an attempt to organize and consolidate the forces M!lpable of conjuring the irreducible particularity of animal-human so-
... We think our party has hitherto made two great mistakes in its atti- ~. Cobbe defends affect as the ability to register the conjunctural
tudes towards the sickly sentimentalists of the Humanitarian League ~ty of all relationship. She poses her arguments against the max-
and other bodies attempting to undermine the vigour of the national . 'ng and universalizing protocols of utilitarian ethics, which she
character. In the first place we have underrated the ability of these ttleecribcsas the "coldest of philosophies," and defends zoophilia as an
faddists to do mischief ... Secondly, we have made the mistake of ~sively minoritizing perspective, ineluctably partisan, defiantly
quibbling over words, of trying to pose as the true 'humanitarians' .. • \\IIMmcdiatc.123 Where, she argues, the undiscriminating eye of benev-
instead of avowing and glorying in the fact of our anti-humanitarian dlenccor philanthropy makes no distinction between one dog and an-
principles ... and standing loyally shoulder to shoulder-Imperialist ' treating all as grist to the mill (or, indeed, the Bentham) of utility,
with sportsman, sportsman with vivisecrionist."120 . committed zoophile is incapable of "polydoggery," that "thing
While more or less unanimous in the affective thrust of their radical- t which all feeling rcvolts.''12◄ Relentlessly particularizing the aru
ism, most representatives of the group arc at pains to variegate the many of her acquaintance in False Beasts and True, Cobbe lovingly de-
applications of"love," and the means for its cultivation. Henry Salt, for the unique criminality of one as against the signatory intensity of
Meat Meal
another, elsewhere valorizing the "divine law oflove" as a force against pares the route to contemporary utopian socialism, through an internal
the utilitarian calculus of pleasure and pain: "we might reasonably have logic that makes "love" a synonym for ascetic "sacrifice" and the sim-
hoped that in our day we should have certainly ceased to hear much of plification of Life-the dissolution, in other words, of the disparity be-
'Rjghts' and 'Duties'; and certainly that these dry as dust definitions tween rich and poor, the owning and the laboring classes.129 "Love is
would not have been set up as a barrier against the extension of duty to sacrifice,"thunders l Icnry Light in his Common-SenseVeg~tariani.rm,
the lower animals." 125 "the perfected article finally breaks the bonds that would restrict its
If eccentric to say the least in her passionate zoophilia, Cobbe's exerciseto but one person, one family, one country, one race, or even
intensities are entirely overshadowed by those of her fellow anti-vivisec- one person. Love is noble, not selfish."130In strong agreement with this
tionist rival and ally, the occultist Anna Kingsford. What appears in the pasirion,Cobbe hails for its demonstration of exemplary sacrifice the
prose of others as protestations on behalf of "sympathy" or "feeling" storyfrom the end of the Mahabharata,in which Yudhishtra refuses to
becomes in Kingsford's practice a form of acute psychic excess, elaborat- enter heaven without the dog (really his divine father in canine dis-
ing itself in visionary dreams of agonizing self-identification with tor- guise),who has mysteriously attached itself to his company upon the
tured animals. A gothic dream about a house leaking blood from secret wasteland after Kurukshetra: "Nothing in any literature ... affords any
animal experimentation onto the suburban street below provokes in the parallel to the wonderful moral conception of a Duty of Fidelity owed-
dreamer feelings of"despair," "anguish," and claustrophobia, while in not by a Dog to a Mao, but-by Man to his Dog; a duty calling on him
another dream, recorded as "The Laboratory Underground," animals for the sacrifice ofbeatitude itself. We may smile ~nour smug Utilit.ari-
reveal themselves to Kingsford in human form, insisting on the un- aniamat such an idea as this, but the poet of the Mahabharata was one
acknowledged kinship of species: "Then they brought a rabbit and ofthose Seers of whom I have spoken." 131
thrust its eyes through with hot irons. And the rabbit seemed to me, as 1 It is the imperatiyes of wophilia as sacrifice or affective self-denial
gazed, Like the tiniest infant, with a human face, and hands which thatinform condemnations of the sports and fashions of the rich as
stretched appealingly towards me, and lips which tried to cry for help in "indulgent,'' "luxurious," "greedy," and "superfluous." The Human-
human accents." from this dream she wakes, "sobbing vehemently." 126 itarianLeague is again representative, excoriating in its New Charter of
A strong advocate of the theory of spontaneous hydrophobia, Kings- 11196 the indolence and vanities of upper-class cruelty: "It is a settled
ford often defends the view that dogs become rabid in reactive fear of opinion among our idle and wealthy classes, that the taking of animal
vivisection and human persecution. U7 Thus, commending dog-love as lifeis an enjoyable and reputable pastime ... the Prince of Wales and
a natural vaccine against rabies, Kingsford's career also chronicles an theGerman Emperor sitting-sitting, mark, behind their screens, with
incremental and corresponding mistrust of the human race which finds anelaborate equipment of guns and array of attendants, and shooting
expression once again in her vivid dteamlife, through anarchic fantasies down the poor little half-tamed birds by scores, are, from any sane point
of violence against leading vivisectionists: ''Yesterday" she records, afvicw,ridiculous ... And now their lust for slaughter carries them over
"November n, at 11 at night, I knew that my will had smitten another theworld; the man-and sometimes the woman too-who goes abroad
vivisector! ... for months I have been compassing the death of PauJ mustbring back as trophy the skin, the tusk, or claw of something he or
Bert, and have but just succeeded ... I have killed Paul Bert as I killed thehaskilled."lJl Where once cruelty to animals bespoke the brutality
Claude Bernard; as I will kill Louis Pasteur, and after him the whole andprofligacy of the laboring poor, it now be.comes a signifier of con-
tribe of vivisectors."128 'Picuousconsumption: an indelible trail of blood connects the milliner's
To summarize, the trope of "love" in fin•dc-siecle animal welfare "-kshop, the glover's boutique, the aristocrat's hunting fields, the
symbolically resists the credo of separation and the embargo on "senti· talonizcr's touristic pursuit of exotic big game. In this regard, the league
ment" underscoring utilitarian governmentality. Additionally, it pre- ~ its class sympathies quite clearly through several contentious
Meat Meat

campaigns, especially those against the r~pectable traditions of the to the austere household of a man, clearly an amalgam of Salt and
Royal Buckhounds and the Eton Beagles. 133 Throughout such cam- EdwardCarpenter, called Eustace Sandal. Committed along with his
paigns Salt is at pains to emphasize the contrasting class hypocrisy of sister to the bare and bald principles of"Plain living and High think·
early reformers: "lt is not as widely known as it ought to be that since ing,"he is described as "a vegetarian and a Primitive Social Something,
the prohibition of bull and bear baiting, more than half a century ago, anall-wooler, and things like that ... as good as he can stick, only most
there has been particularly no further mitigation of those so-called awfully dull." Suffering from acute food anxieties-for what can be
sports which in this courtrry absorb a great part of the thoughts and expected from a household where milk and bread are the food of choice
energies of the wealthier classes." 134 ratherthan of punishment?-the children receive plenty, "but all of a
Such condemnations of recreational class-indulgence are matched milky,bunny, fruity, vegetable sort." 137
by the contiguous discourse of vegetarianism which takes as its target Although alarmingly acute in her teasing expose of the puritanical
the culinary excesses of kreophagy. In this vast literature, perhaps the condiments in vegetarian food culture, there is one regard in which
most coherent and influential case for vegetarianism as the key to the Nesbit confuses the ethos of early animal reform and the RSPCA with
simplification of life comes from Count Leo Tolstoy. His The First Step, thatof contemporary humanitarianism and vegetarianism. Portrayed as
written in the first instance as a preface to the Russian translation of a man determined to improve the working classes, the hapless Mr.
Howard Williams's The Ethics of Diet, condemns meat eating on two Sandalsuffers an accident, bringing welcome relief to the Bastables'
counts: as self-indulgent gluttony, in which "killing ... is called forth tedious holiday, when climbing up a scaffolding.to lecture an already
only by greediness and the desire for tasty food," and as giving rise to an teetotaling worker about the perils of alcohol: "he fetched down half a
industry that relies, for the satisfaction of a few palates, upon the exploi- dozenplanks and the workman, and if a dust-cart hadn't happened to
tation and dehumanization of a whole underclass of slaughterers, bepassing just under so that they fell into it their lives would not have
butchers, drovers, and cooks. As Tolstoy writes: "A moral man, living a beenspared." 138 Unlike Sandal, however, Salt et al. are not in the least
life of comfort, a man even of the middle class (I will not speak of the pzeoccupied with converting or "improving" the working poor. If any-
upper classes, who daily consume to satisfy their caprices the results of thing,their espousal of vegetarianism takes its cue from a movement
hundreds of working days), cannot live quietly, knowing that all he is distinguished, at least since the formation of the Manchester Vege-
1 5
using is produced by the labour and crushed lives of working people." ' tarianSociety in 1847,by a strong working-class constituency well re-
Painting a vivid picture of the army of servants and workers required to flectedamong the readers and contributors of journals such as the Vege-
bring a nonvegetarian meal to an affluent table, Tolstoy's lament for the ltlrian Messenger and subsequently the Vegetarian.The Vegetarian
labor involved in meat production finds many sympathizers among Messenger.in particular abounds in testimonies from working-class veg-
contemporary radicals. Kingsford, one of the few vegetarians in the etariansinsisting upon the productive symbiosis, on ethical and dietetic
anti-vivisectionist lobby, is especially eloquent in her anticipation of grounds, between meat abstinence and a life of manual labor. In one
Tolstoy's objections. "Is it morally lawful" she asks, in The Perftct Wayin issue in r856 a man from the ''heavy-edge tool trade" attributes his
Diet, "for cultivated and refined persons to impose upon a whole class of legendary strength and focus to a staple diet of scotch oarmeal. 139 "Veg-
the population a disgusting, brutalising and unwholesome occupa- etarianism and Manual Labour," a pamphlet published later in the
tion ... ? ... Butchers are the pariahs of the Western world." 136 century by the Vegetarian Society, likewise testifies to the vegetarian
Henry Salt too is characteristically devout, and his crusade for the achievements of the preceding decades: "we may well maintain that our
cult of vegetarian abstemiousness becomes the subject of an affectionare l}'Stcm is adapted to hard manual labour ... when we find puddlers,
s:ttire in E. Nesbit's New TreasureSeekers.An episode in the story shows ~nglcrs, moulders, forgemen, blacksmiths, engineers and platers liv-
the reluctant Bastable children being packed off for a disastrous holiday lllgweU, and doing their work well upon a vegetarian diet.''t 40
Meat Meat
The class affiliations that mark vegetarianism are less evident among sympathy defies the mediating logic of disciplinarity. Moreover, in its
the anti-vivisection movement. Often criticized for its predominantly sacrificial modality-that is, as a form of"abstinence," "self-restraint,"
middle-class constirution and discourse, this lobby nonetheless enters "simpli6cation"-the language of zoophilia paves the way for socialist
the odd field of animal welfare socialism, if inadvertently, through two classcritique, exposing upper-class blood sport and fashion, krcophagy,
routes. First, it takes for its target the overweening middle-class com- andexperimental science as selfish ruling-class luxuries. But there is
position of the scientific and medical est-ablishment, and the battle is one other minor footnote to this story: this war against disciplinary
applauded and endorsed by the Animal~ Friend specifically in class partitioning and its ideological consequences also gains immeasurably
terms: "We do not propose to merely save dumb animals from vulgar from the daims of Darwinian evolutionism. Darwin's hypotheses, es-
cruelty inflicted by ignorant carters and drovers and quietly consent to pecially his insistence upon the interconnectedness of sentient life, en-
their torture at the hands of persons who call themselves 'men of sci- ablesthe fin-de-siecle politics of love that we have been discussing to
ence."'141 Second, anti-vivisection enters the discursive field of late- transform itself into a ''creed of kinship." This credo, as I will suggest
nineteenth-century socialism-specifically, its rhetoric oflove as sacri- brieflybelow, is instrumental in translating the ethics ofhuman-animal
fice-through a complex formulation of scientific knowledge as the sociality, once again by degrees, into a subtle form of anarchist anti-
epistemic greed of the educated classes, thereby redefining abstinence colonialism.
as a willingness, on affective grounds, to sacrifice the dubious benefits of
experimental medicine. This is the reasoning that informs Kingsford's
CHARLES I)ARWIN AND ANTICOLONIAL ANARCHISM
condemnation of contemporary science as a voracious "desire to know."
J n her words: "There are certain means of acquiring knowledge of On 27December 1831Charles Darwin sailed out aboard the Beagleon a
which man cannot make use without forfeiting his place in the Divine voyagehe would describe in time to come as "by far the most important
Order." 1 ◄Z Articulated widely and across a range offorums, anti-vivisec- ewnt" in his "life and ... whole career." 144 This opportunity, we might
tionist exhortations against the experimental indulgences of medical note in passing, was entirely framed by colc>nialimperatives. The car-
science are often addressed to women mepical srudcnts. 1n 1888,for tographic investigations of the Beaglealong the South American coast
example, the Zoophilistlaunches a concerted campaign against the par- wereintended to furnish the admiralty with information to assist in
ticipation of students at Girton and Newnham in vivisectional demon- futuremilitary and commercial operations, and also, in the words of
strations conducted at Cambridge by Professor Michael Forster. Draw- Janet Browne and Michael Neve, to "enable Britain to establish a
ing on the familiar antinornies of sacrificial love and selfish rationality, stronger foothold in these areas, so recently released from their commit-
the journal urges women to greater self-consciousness about the perils ment to trade only with Spain and Portugal." 145 Ever susceptible to such
that might attend the selfish, hungry pursuit of their education: "It is a designs and aspirations, Darwin's own commitment to British expan-
consciously self-reg_ardfuland onlya self-regard.ful sacrifice in which the sionism is revealed in a glowing encomium to Empire recorded toward
student takes part. It follows that her natural feelings of pir;y and pain the end of the journal of .Researches, which is devoted to his amateur
... are subdued for the sake of purely intellectual instruction ... Love naturalist and anthropological musings. "Jt is impossible," he writes,
and tenderness, arc made to give way to that thirst for knowledge "foran Englishman to behold these distant colonies, without a high
which, at its best and purest, is an inferior part of our being." 143 prideand satisfaction. To hoist rhc British flag, seems to draw with it as
So, to recall our paradigms, fin-de-sicde animal welfare posits a 1 certain consequence, wealth, prosperity, civilisation." 146

counter-discourse against the procedures by which the doctrine of"sep- In large part, Darwin's patriotic fervor :ind singular failure of sympa-
aration" brings the force of governmentality, by degrees, specifically to thywith the "native" races he encounters is fashioned by a distinctly
bear upon the working classes. Its appeal to direct interspecies "love" or Utilitarian view: that because these races lack recognizable forms of
Meat Meat

The class affiliations that mark vegetarianism are less evident among sympathy defies the mediating logic of disciplinarity. Moreover, in its
the anti-vivisection movement. Often criticized for its predominantly sacrificial modality-that is, as a form of "abstinence," "self-restraint,''
mjddle-class constitution and discourse, this lobby nonetheless enters "simplification"-the language of 2oophilia paves the way for socialist
the odd field of animal welfare socialism, if inadvertently, through two class critique, exposing upper-class blood sport and fashion, kreophagy,
routes. First, it takes for its target the overweening middle-class com- and experimental science as selfish ruling-class luxuries. But there is
position of the scientific and medical establishment, and the battle is one other minor footnote to this story: this war against disciplinary
applauded and endorsed by the Animal's .Friendspecifically in class parrjtioning and its ideological consequences also gains immeasurably
terms: "We do not propose to merely save dumb animals from vulgar from the claims of Darwinian evolutionism. Darwin's hypotheses, es-
cruelty inflicted by ignorant carters and drovers and qwetly consent to pecially his insistence upon the interconnectedness of sentient life, en-
their torture at the hands of persons who call themselves 'men of sci- ablesthe fin-de-siede politics of love that we have been discussing to
ence~' " 141 Second, anti-vivisection enters the ruscursive field of late- transform itself into a "creed of kinship." This credo, as I will suggest
runeteenth-century socialism-specifically, its rhetoric oflove as sacri- brieflybelow, is instrumental in translating the ethics of human-animal
fice-through a complex formulation of scientific knowledge as the sociality, once again by degrees, into a subtle form of anarchist anti-
epistemic greed of the educated classes, thereby redefining abstinence colonialism.
as a willingness, on affective grounds, to sacrifice the dubious benefits of
experimental medicine. This is the reasoning that informs IGngsford's
HARLES DARWIN AND ANTICOLONIAL ANARCHISM
condemnation of contemporary science as a voracious "desire to know."
In her words: "There are certain means of acquiring knowledge of On 27December 1831Charles Darwin sailed out aboard the Beagleon a
which man cannot make use without forfeiting his place in the Divine voyage he would describe in time to come as "by far the most important
Order.'' 142 Articulated widely and across a range of forums, anti-vivisec- event"in his "life and ... whole career." 1 ◄-1 This opportunity, we might
tionist exhortations against the experimental indulgences of merucaJ note in passing, was entirely framed by colonial imperatives. The car-
science are often addressed to women medical students. In 1888,for tographic investigations of the Beaglealong the South American coast
example, the Zoophilistlaunches a concerted campaign against the par- wereintended to furnish the admiralty with information to assist in
ticipation of students at Girton and Newnham in vivisectional demon- future military and commercial operations, and also, in the words of
strations conducted at Cambridge by Professor Michael Forster. Draw- Janet
Browne and Michael Neve, to "enable Britain to establish a
ing on the familiar antinomies of sacrificial love and selfish rationality, strongerfoothold in these areas, so recently released from their commit-
the journal urges women to greater self-consciousness about the perils ment to trade only with Spain and Portugal." 145 Ever susceptible to such
that might attend the selfish, hungry pursuit of their education: "It is a designs and aspirations, Darwin's own commitment to British expan-
consciously self-regardful and onlya self-regardful sacrifice in which the sionism is revealed in a glowing encomium to Empire recorded toward
student takes part. It follows that her natural feelings of pity and pain theend of the Journal of Researches,which is devoted to his amateur
•.. arc subdued for the sake of purely intellectual instruction ... Love naturalistand anthropological musings. "It is impossible," he writes,
and tenderness, are made to give way to that thirst for knowledge "foran Englishman to behold these distant colonies, without a high
which, at its best and purest, is an inferior part of our being." ◄
1 3
prideand satisfaction. To hoist the British flag, seems to draw with it as
So, to recall our paradigms, fin-de-siecle animal welfare posits n • certain consequence, wealth, prosperity, civilisation." 1'41>
counter-discourse against the procedures by which the doctrine of"sep- In large part, Darwin's patriotic fervor and singular failure of sympa-
aration" brings the force of governmentality, by degrees, specificall~ ro thywith the "native" races he encounters is fashl6ned by a distinctly
. . "love or
bear upon the workjng classes. 1ts app eal to dir ect mterspeoes 11tilitarianview: that because these races lack recognizable forms of
Meat Meat

government, mediation, and obedience they also lack civilization, prog- alldescended ... from common parents." 149 It is this notion of a shared
ress, and improvement. As he observes of the tribes in Tierra del Fuego: community of descent which fuels Darwin's contention that all sentient
"The perfect equality among the individuals composing these tribes, life is therefore knitted together in an "inextricable web of affinities." 150
must for a long time retard their civilisation. As we see those animals, Ashe writes, with rising excitement, in a notebook entry of 1837:"If we
whose instinct compels them to live in society and obey a chief, are most choose to let conjecture run wild, then animals, our fellow brethren in
capable of improvement, so is it with the races of mankind. Whether we pain, diseases, death, suffering and famine-our slaves in the most la-
look at it as a cause or a consequence, the more civilised alwayshave the borious works, our companions in our amusements-they may partake
most artificial govemments." 147 Yet, and inadvertently, the evolutionary [of) our origins in one common ancestor-we may be all netted to-
train of thought to which Darwin succumbs during the voyage of the gcther."151
Beaglecomes eventually to contravene the principles of governmentality lt is not hard to imagine why Darwin's hypotheses would be of
-certainly as they have been identified in the preceding discussion. revolutionary significance to late Victorian advocates of unmediated
Darwin's accidental and indirect countermand to governmentality human-animal relationality. In particular, and with reference to our
appears to have been provoked by a little bird, the American ostrich or largerdiscussion, his characterization of sentient life as an inextricable
"Rhea," replaced in southern parts of the continent by a different but web is eagerly absorbed within fin-de-siecle animal welfare as a the-
closely allied species. The peculiar geographical distribution of the orem for radical cosmopolitanism, authorizing intimacy with apparent
Rhea sets Darwin firmly on the course of contemporary evolutionary strangers and facilitating, for our purposes, the anticolonial hospitality
speculation, particularly in its challenge to earlier naturalist assump- of which Mohan Gandhi becomes a direct beneficiary. Thus, refusing
tions about the immutability of species. From the beginning of the to concede propinquity or "similarity" as a prerequisite for community,
nineteenth century most evolutionary thinkers were agreed that far Salt's The Crud ofKinshipinvokes Darwin to transform zoophilia, and
from being fixed within bounded taxonomic categories species became its claims on behalf of interspecies relarionality, into a rehearsal ground
mutable through principles of lineal descent, changing constitution in forxcnophilia, and its unpartisan favor toward foreign guest-friends.
the slow transition from vanishing to extant forms. To this advance in Condemning imperial patriotism and nationalism in these terms, he
nineteenth-century evolutionism Darwin acknowledges his debt in The evokesthe subtle pleasures of imaginative identification with strangers
Origin ofSpecies:"Some few naturalists ... have believed that species andoutsiders: "in a happier age than any the world has seen it will be
undergo modification, and that the existing forms of life are the descen- possible,and indeed necessary, that each individual, while not less con-
dants by true generation of pre-existing forms." 148 But Darwin's Origin sciousthan now of the claims of neighbourhood, shall also be moved by
poses an even more radical challenge to earlier theorists of the immu- a widerregard for the well-being of others-of those who are at present
tability of species. Dispensing with the current notion of separate lin- lookedupon as 'outsiders'-and bya determination that they shall not
eages, according to which mutation only occurs vertically in a linear besacrificedto any interests or supposed interests of his own." 152
series linking one species in the dead past to one in the living present, Salt'ssentiments are ubiquitous in the literature of fi.n-de-siecl; ani-
Darwin proffers two modifications. First, he claims, species also branch malwelfare, and no writer of note fails to see in Darwinian evolution-
horizontally in time, so that any given species might leave a variety of ism a means of recasting the political as a demand for the claims of
seemingly disparate descendants all intimately related to each other •trangcness over propinquity, alterity over simi.larity, or, as Howard
through shared a.ncestor&.Second, dramatically extending the first ob- Moore puts it in The UniversalKinship,as a struggle between "altruis-
servation, Darwin asserts the single origin of all extant species: ''Several tic"and "provincial" ethirs. 15•1 And in each case, Darwin is invoked to
classes offacrs ... seem to me ro proclaim ... plainly, that the innumer- COnfera new status upon animal welfare, corroborating the view chat
able species, genera and families, with which this world is peopled, are human-animal sociality holds.the key, as in Haraway, to a more gener-
Meat Meat

ally egalitarian world. The "culture of sympathy," as a writer for the and from the pulpit that the instirutions in which men formerly used to
Vegetarianavers, is subject to "the law of exercise," and a tutored identity embody their needs of mutual support could not be tolerated in a prop-
with the animal world tends accordingly "to strengthen our sympathies erly organised State; that the State alone could represent the bonds
in all dircction."ISABut while Darwin's metaphor of a "web of affinities" between its subjects ... The absorption of all social functions by the
finds tacit political expression in these ways, it is his attending theory of State necessarily favoured the development of an unbridled, narrow-
ecological cooperation that achieves, once again despite his intentions, minded individualism. In proportion as the oblig.uions cowards the
direct revolutionary articulation. State grew in numbers the citi'l,ens were evidently relieved from their
Even as nature, represented variously in Origin as a branched "tree" obligations towards each other. 1n the guild ... two 'brothers' were
or "coral," confirms the kinship of sentient life, it also, Darwin argues, bound to watch in turns a brother who had fallen ill; it would be suffi-
demonstrates in the apparently harsh economy of its selective pro- cient now to give one's neighbour the address of the next paupers'
cedures the necessity of cooperative coadaptation between successful hospital." 158
species, augmenting the subtle relation of life forms with a demand for Kropotkin is not by any means the only conduit for anarchism into
their interactive sociality. Changes in one organism directly produce late Victorian England. 159 But his intervention at this scene is crucial for
contingent effects in all other organisms with which it interacts in the the concerns of the present discussion, explicating through a specifically
prevailing ecosystem, thus creating complex genetic material. Thus the Darwinian model of human-animal sociality the terms of conflict and
evolving strucrure of woodpeckers, for example, will depend in large contestation between the discourse of immediate love, relationality, and
part on successful relations established between previous generations of affect, extolled by fin-de-siecle animal welfare, and the discourse on
woodpecker and coeval tree, bird, and insect forms. In Darwin's words, behalf of separation and against the claims of feeling that underpins the
"As natural selection acts by competition, it adapts and improves the grim protocols of Benthamite or utilitarian govcrnmentality. A crucial
inhabitants of each country only in relation to their co-inhabitants."ISS node in the complex historical processes which gave to fin-de-siecle
In due course, Darwin's view of nature as "a tangled bank" demon- animal welfare a distinctly anarchist provenance, Kropotkin's ideas are
strating the complex interdependence of palpably different organisms amplified and echoed throughout the literature associated with this
falls into the hands of the anarchist Peter Kropotkin, settled in England movement. Leo Tolstoy's influential writings on vegetarianism are typ-
from 1886and a close ally of Salt's circle. 156 Reformulating anarchism as ically shaped by a profound mistrust of ruling institutions; Elisee Re-
the law of immediate and cooperative sociality or "mutual aid," Kropot- clus, friend of Kropotkin, early theorist of"mutual aid," and author with
kin gains from Darwin a case for the irrefutable amity at work in the Ernest Crosby of The Meat Fetish, consisrently combines vegetarian
animal world. As he observes apropos of evolutionary thought in his apologiawith a demand for the end of all government; and Edward
Mutual Aid, "we maintain that under any circumstances sociability is Carpenter, the homosexual activist, vegetarian, and anti-vivisectionist
the greatest advantage in the struggle for life. Those species which encountered in chapter 3, seamlessly connects his own belief in a Dar-
willingly or unwillingly abandon it are doomed to decay; while those winiancreed of kinship with entreaties for nongovernmental sociality.160
animals which know best how to combine, have the greatest chances of These are also the imperatives operating behind J Ienry Salt's lifelong
survival."157 Such animal sociability, however, is entirely natural, oper- appealin the name of zoophilic kinship for an end of government at
ating without the intrusive mediations of governmentality and the law, home and abroad, that is, in its class and imperial manifestations. "Op-
providing a model for cooperative human association. Indeed, Kropot- pressionand tyranny," he claims in Animal Rights, "are invariably
kin writes, the jealous, vertically organized State has historically re- founded on a lack of imaginative sympathy; the tyrant or tormentor can
sisted the horiwntal circuits of voluntary association, curtailing the haveno true kinship with the victim of his 'justice.' " 161
affective intensities between people: "It was taught in the Universities A complex ideological mixture of affective socialism and post- Dar-
Meat

winian evolutionary anarchism sustains the anticolonial hospitality, .in

the Derridean sense, that fin-de-siecle animal welfare offers to Gandhi
between 1888and 1891.But what is visible in the first instance as hospi-
tality becomes over time a form of ideological parity, as Gandhi, much
in the manner of his early companions, distils in the affective language GOD
of ahimsa the prose of anarchist refusal, demanding that the British quit
India and that independent India in tum quit governmcntality. ls this a Mysticismand Radicalismat the End
case of influence? Most certainly. In very large part the business of my
argument has been to claim that mature Gandhian politics owes at least of the Nineteenth Century
part of its inheritance to the inchoate murmurings of a few radicals on
the margins oflate Victorian culture. But, equally, in a gesture-let's call
it "postcolonial" -that Salt would doubtless condone, it has also been
my purpose to offer a Gandhian reading of fin-de-siecle animal welfare, At the end of the nineteenth century numerous European men and
to assert under the comprehensive sign of ahimsa the integrity and women, some more gifted than others, arrived in India in the hope of
organicity of its various and seemingly disparate obsessions: zoophilia, finding a guru and a spiritual vocation. Indeed, we could safely argue
anticolonialism, affect, the simplification of life, class critique, social- that by the last decades of the nineteenth century J.ndia had become the
ism, cosmopolitanism, kinship, and anarchism. Let us end, in honor of principal reference point for a vast array of non-Christian spiritualities
anticolonjal collaboration, with a somewhat clumsy poem that Salt andspiritualists. It wasalso, of course, the principal reference point for
wrote about Gandhi toward the end of his own life. Ir is called "India in empire.Yet emerging as they did against the backdrop of fin-de-siccle
1930": radicalismin Europe,which offered a heady blend of mysticism, social-
ism, suffrage, vegetarianism, (homo)sexual politics, and anti-imperial-
An India governed, under alien law, ism, many western seekers assumed an easy continuity between their
By royal proclamation, spiritualattachment to India on the one hand and their disidentification
By force, by pomp of arms, that fain would awe
fromthe spoils and circuits of imperialism 00 the other. Despite their
Her newly-awakened nation;
strongsympathies for the claims of anticolonial nationalism then taking
While he who sways the heart of Hindustan,
To more than Kingship risen,
formin India, however, critics and historians in om own time {in India
ls one old, powerless, unresisting man, andelsewhere) tend to view the spiritual proclivities of a Sister Nivedita
Whose palace is-a prison!162 or Edward Carpenter with suspicion, as a disqualifying mark against
the maturity or seriousness of their politics. The objections of two
groupsof postcolonial critics and historians are representative. Mem-
bersof the first, drawing upon a nationalist idiom, tend to base their
reservations upon a narrowly orientaJist typology. The second group,
with whose objections this chapter isprincipally concerned, invokes a
broaderliberal or Marxist thematic to announce the dramatic incom-
patibilityof spiritualist endeavor and (progressive) ethicaJ and political
capacity.
So, for instance, Parama Roy discredits the anticolonial efforts of
God God

Margaret Noble, or Sister Nivedita (r86r19n), the Irish disciple and Gandhian appeal, in the manner of Hind Swaraj, to a culturally or
coUaborator of the nationalist-mystic Swami Vivekananda, on the civilizationally different understandi.ng of politics and ethics, but rather
grounds that her nostalgic spiritualism appealed exclusively to recessive through a renewed attentiveness to moments of departure and flight
strains within fndian nationalism, favoring orthodoxy and revivalism within western philosophy and culture itself. Ir is precisely in such
over rationalism and reformism. 1 Likewise, and in an uncharacteristi- moments that we might find some clues about the complex constitution
cally Adornian reading of mysticism,2 Ashis Nandy discerns a contami- of the dissent exemplified in the lives and careers of heterodox late·
nating authoritarianism in the spiritual style exercised by the French nineteenth-century western pilgrims and radicals.
Mother of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram in Pondicherry, accusing her of Aiming to enter into dialogue with nonsecular conceptions of the
reinforcing rather than mitigating colonial hierarchies: "The Ashram social and political, we will take issue with what Dipesh Chakrabarty
itself became, under her powerful presence ... highly status conscious, hasidentified as the two central ontological assumptions of European
politically conservative and a means of oppressing the people around. palitical thought. These are, in his words, "that the human exists in a
After Aurobindo's death, for a while it even opposed the decolonisation frame of a single and secular historical time that envelops other kinds of
of Pondichcrry." 3 And in an otherwise sensitive account of western time/' and "that the human is ontologically singular, that gods and
women in British South A~ia, Kumari Jayawardene consistently views spirits arc in the end 'social facts,' that the social somehow exists prior to
spiritualism as a distraction from, or constraint upon, the ethico-politi- them." 7 We will argue that these assumptions in tum, and the modern,
cal agency of her historical protagonists. Privileging those "foreign" liberal conception of justice through which they ar~ sustained, owe their
women whose critique of western imperialism was accompanied by an inheritance to a specifically Kantian understanding of moral agency-and
unambiguous rejection of"orthodox Asian reformers, religious gun1s, knowledge, one predicated upon a subject who is constitutively tran-
and leaders whose nationalism lacked a Socialist vision of the future,"~ scendental,self-sufficient, unified, and as such invulnerable to both
Jayawardene extols the exemplary secular focus of the Marxist feminist desire(or that which is "empirical" in human nature) and prayer (or that
Evelyn Roy (1892-r970), whose summary dismissal of western soul which is or craves the "metaphysical" in human nature). Read from the
searchers is resonant in the context of the present discussion: "The tired perspective of recent radical theory (queer, postcolonial, etc.), it is pos-
intellectuals of Europe may look to the East in search of a new Messiah sibleto identify the "empirical" and the "metaphysical" as varieties of
... But to all honest revolutionaries who understand ... great move- "hybridity," and so to disclose Kantian ethics itself as a powerful dis-
ments as the Russian and Indian revolutions, all talk about 'spiritual COUrseagainst hybridity.
welfare' ... is ... the babble of children or the fevered eloquence of Over the last few decades, two broad streams of anti- and post-
intellectual degeneration in search of new illusions."5 Kantianphilosophers have attempted to reclaim hybridity as the basis
Evdyo Roy's paradigmatic insistence on the gap between "honest for a more humane and humanizing ethics. The first, more popular,
revolution" and "spiritual welfare" (the one adult, rational, scientific, stream, represented by Michael Sandel and others, takes exception to
the other immature, incoherent, utopian) is symptomatic of those nar- theausterity of Kantian subjectivity and endeavors to recuperate as
row (and narrowing) theoretical adjustments through which the "politi- tthics the pluraliS'tn and affective irregularities of human experience.
cal" itself has come to be viewed exclusively as a sign of the philosophi- Thesecond, quieter, stream, secreted within Derrida's corpus, nags
cal and ethical exhaustion of religion. Our conception of the ''political" relentlessly at the contradictions inherent in Kant's extradition of reli-
or "ethical" is in many ways hopelessly circumscribed by the secular, gion from the realm of ethics and justice. It does so to posit a certain
rational calculations which underscore the movement of modern Euro- typeof metaphysical experience {Derrida calls this "fiduciary" faith) as a
pean thought-from Europe "out" into the (post)colonial world.b It is Jbofound and utopian address to the other. Drawing on the efforts of
such calculations that this chapter aims to critique: not only through a ~ Sandel and Derrida, this chapter seeks out a project that radically
 God God
departs from Kant by proposing an empirical-meta~hysi~~ politics ~f draw the two together into lifelong spiritual collaboration on eastern
hybridity. The outline of this project can be found m William James s soil. In March 1914Alfassa accompanied her husband to Pondicherry
oeuvre and at the scene of fin-de-siccle radicalism-the context for on a trip, ostensibly for electoral purposes, that would result in a mo-
James's work, and also for the European mystics and occultists who mentous meeting between her and Sri Aurobindo, memorable:, she later
arrived in India in the age of empire. Thus, presentingJames's work as recalled, for its shock of mutuaJ recognition: "] came here ... But
meditation upon, for instance, the links between spiritualism and the something in me wanted to meet Sri Aurobindo all alone the first time.
plurality of the selfdivulged by the Society for Psychical Research, or as Richard went to him in the morning and I had an appointment for the
a response to Edward Carpenter's attempt to bring sexual difference afternoon. I le was living in the old Guest House. I climbed up the
and spiritualism into the very heart of socialism, I hope to f~regr_ounda staircase and he was standing theFe, waiting for me at the top of the
forgotten variety of hybridity whose refusal of secular ranon_ality ~d stairs. .. EXACTLY my vision! Dressed in the same way, in the same
transcendental subjectivity is quintessentially palirical and ant1colorual. position, in profile, his head hdd high. He turned his head coward me
Let us begin our exploration with a closer look at the story of ~ne ... and I saw in his eyes that it was He.' 19 In his turn, at a seance attended
exemplary mystical arrivant in India in the early years of the twentieth bythe Richards during their visit, Sri Aurobindo received, as automatic
cenrury. writing, confirmation from his occult interlocutors of the intimate com-
pact between him and Mirra: '1 was going to say what you have said-
COlNG EAST, OR, HOW TO READ LATE-NlNETEENTH-
Sheis a great soul always with you." 10Turning this otherworldly kin-
ahipinto practical partnership, Sri Aurobindo and the Richards quickly
CENTURY SPIRITUALISM
agreedto combine resources in producing a bilingual review to be called
Toward the end ofx9n a thirty-four-year-old French-Egyptian-Jewish Arya in its English edition and Rro114dt la Grande Synthht in the
mystic called Mirra Alfassa (1878-1973)began diligently to write a spir- FROch.Early issues of Arya would feature Sri Aurobindo's first detailed
itual diary every day in the house at 9 rue du Val-de-Grace in Paris_t~at writingson, and cultural defense of, Indian spiritual history and philos-
she shared with her second husband, Paul Richard, a minor politioan ephy,defiantly composed against the backdrop of the imperial civilizing
and amateur occultist. In the same year, the Cambridge-educated clas- mission.Most of these were translated into the French by Alfassa.
sicist nationalist extremist, and mystic Aurobindo Chose also began to Notwithstanding the force of this creative inaugural encounter with
recor~ his puzzli~g spiritual experiments from within the solitude of his Sri Aurobindo, the Richards left Pondicherry in February 19151 their
new habitation in the lawless French comptoirof Pondicherry, where he Mum to the West recorded by Mirra in her diary, while journeying
had arrived surreptitiously on 4 April 1910, seeking amnesty from the 1rack on board the Kamo Maro, as a dark night of the soul: "Solitude, a
punitive jurisdiction of the imperial British administration. Under sus- Mrlh,intense solitude, and always this strong impression of having
picion for a range of real and imputed terrorist actions in West Bengal, -.i flung headlong into a hell of darkness. Never at any moment of my
Ghose was for long regarded by •,mpen'al aut h onties
· · as "th c most. dan-
life.in any circumstances, have I felt myself living in surroundings so
gerous man in India" and would remain under close British surveillance tlltirdyopposite to all that I am conscious of as true, so contrary to all
8
during his permanent retreat in Pondichcrry. 6- is the essence of my life."11 After a separation of over five years-
.
But for the accidental s1multane1ty • o f thcir
· sty 1· · allYvery different
1st1c lilostofthem spent iri]apan, where Paul.Richard had gained a commis-
. . ·1 . f . cumsrancc ro
spiritual log books, there is little apparent s1m1amy o cir ' • .aor. to advance the export of French products in Asia-Mirra Alfassa
Link Sn Aurobindo, Anglicized Bengalirevolutionary, and !vfora Ald i'!'llllll'lllCd
finally to Pond1cherry in April 1920, where she became in due
•
tassa, • and someume
Paris bohemian · confidante ofA uguste Rodman all the Mother of the devotional Ashram community and Sri Auro-
l lcnri Matisse. Yet, a combination of chance and will would eventu y 's spiritual collaborator.
God God
One of various European women and men who arrived in colonial nagging pressure from the British administration, the French govern-
India at the turn of the century to fulfill the secret imperatives of a ment of Pondicherry .finally ordered the expulsion of the Richards in
spiritual vocation or destiny, the Mother, like her counterparts, strongly January 1915.Nonetheless, even in the period of their tenure in Japan,
identified with the cause of Indian independence and the contingent while continuing the work of spiritual experimentation, Mirra 1n par-
reformation of Indian social and political life. The inexplicable spiri- ticular assiduously cultivated the company of those Japanese renowned
tual-affective pull toward India that she notes in her earliest writings for their opposition to European imperialism. The Richards' insistent
inevitably gained a distinct anticolonial complexion in the company of dabbling in anticolonial matters while abroad did not escape official
Sri Aurobindo, who kept close watch, albeit in occult register, upon the attention, and an Indian government document from this time disap-
progress of the nationalist agitation throughout his retreat, constantly provinglydescribes a close associate of theirs, the Asian historian
recording his spiritual assessments of various revolutionary leaders and ShumeiOkawa, as "the leading spirit of the pan-Asiatic movement in
their seemingly "moderate" negotiations with imperial authorities. As Japan... a person of considerable influence, who is deeply interested in
late as 1941, frustrated by his sense of the mishandling by Congress Indian affaia wd is bitterly opposed to British rule in India." 15 Through

officials of the "Cripps Proposals," which offered dominion status to Okawathe Richards also came into direct contact with Rasbehari Bose,
India in exchange for the promise of unequivocal commitment to the eelf-exiledin Japan from 1915 after a failed assassination attempt on
allied war effort, Sri Aurobindo would intervene directly, dispatching VJCCroyHardinge, and founder of the local Indian Independence
an emissary to Delhi to convey strong arguments for accepting the League.to
proposals, which he believed might forestall the partition of India. Many years later, when independence finally came to India, the
While Congress chose not to act on these recommendations it did not FrenchMother of Sri Aurobindo Ashram would raise a flag in Pondi-
forget Sri Aurobindo, regularly inviting him to resume his position at cberry-on French imperial territory-over the terrace of Sri Auro-
the helm of the agitation. In 192.0, when Gandhi launched his epochal bindo'sroom, while a gathering, which included some of the extremists
noncooperation movement, Sri Aurobindo received two invitations to whohad fust accompanied Sri Aurobindo to Pondicherry, sang Ban-
shape the future of revolutionary policy, on~ from B. S. Moonje, current kim's Bandt Mataram in praise of the liberation of India. At the end of
chairman of the Reception Committee of the National Congress, who theceremony, a disciple recounts, Mirra Alfassa "called out 'Jai Hindi'
urged him to preside over the Congress session of 1920. u In the course (Yic:tory
to India] with such a look and gesture that we still remember
of the movement Gandhi himself sent his youngest son Devdas to themoment." 17 How might we best account for this complex braiding
Pondicherry in an unsuccessful effort to draw the radical yogi back into ~er of"sacred" and "secular" in the life and actions of a figure like
direct action. 13 MirraAlfassa? Which are the circumstantial and philosophical ingre-
Well aware of Sri Aurobindo's continuing transactions with the na- 6:ntsthat allowed for the admissibility of faith within her political
tionalist cause, the administration kept close vigil over his visitors and endeavor?Speaking historically, the hybrid admixture of theism and
associates, and the Richards soon found themselves listed as pro-revolu- ethics,belief and social justice, to which the Mother of Sri Aurobindo
tionary suspects by the British imperial police. An official dispatch on ~ laid claim is firmly anchored in the style of the spiritualist
Paul Richard is tellingly alarmist: "He is reported to hold dangerous IIIVolutionthat spread, in subcultural form, across Europe and America
opinions and starred a soderycalled 'Union de lajeunesse Hindoue' f~r
· p0 nd1-
~ the second half of the nineteenth century onward. To comprehend
the political, religious and literary education of young men in _ u· ~ movementwe must pay close, more sympathetic attention to what
cherry. He is constantly in the company of extremists there and himsc
. . . . d Gh "H 1 response to
~ Barrowdescribes as the "zig-zag connections" between late Vic-
claims a five years' friendship with Arbm a ose. n heterodoxy on the one hand and late Victorian radicalism on the
 God
God religious belief: 'We have the right to refuse the name of socialist to
other. 1s How were these connections forged and realized? What his- chose who have not grasped the economic truth. But an economic the-
torical circumstances secured the inextricability of late-nineteenth- oryalone, or any number of economic theories will not make a religion
cencury spiritualism and contemporary forms of dissent? _ •.. you must widen your definition of socialism. You must draw our all
By the end of che nineteenth century, scholars of the field te~ u~, if theethical and spiritual implications of these efforts and desires for a
the potent combination of evolutionary biology,_geology, ~d ~1blical juster social order ... A new conception of life is taking shape, to which
criticism had provoked a reaction against the claims of (Chnstta~) re- icis affectation, if not folly, to refuse the name ofReligion.'' 21
li ·ous orthodoxy and a tum toward empiricism and seculansm- Profoundly syncretic in inspiration, utopian sociali11mof the r88os
t:ward the prerogatives, in other words, of Experience, Feeling, and gainedits anticolonial energies from the peculiar conditions ofits emer-
Life-it bad also paved the way for the clamorous arrival of a range of gence, and specifically the reaction to the multiple failures of Glad-
religious heterodoxies among those either unwilling or ~able to in- 111>nc's Liberal government, held responsible for a depression and rising
habit a wholly disenchanted world. 19 Arriving into belief under the unemployment at home, and an aggressive foreign policy involving
unlikely sign of science, most new religious heterod~~es found t~e~- military interventions in South Africa, Afghanistan, and Egypt, not to
sclvcs in conjunctural alliance with the radical politics also ~nvmg apention a reign of police terror against the nationalist movement in
under the glareof contemporary empiricism, some forms of which we kdand.A growing awareness of the interconnectedness between dispa-
have reviewed. For those whose heterodoxy manifested itself expressly .-te domestic and foreign causes, combined with.a skepticism toward
against mainstream Christianity, Theosophy and_ i~s contiguous off- 1fhat
William Morris described as the sham of the parliamentary game,
shoots offered a spiritual alternative in eastern religions, one that de- ,-videdan ideal breeding ground for an earlier "subjective moment in
manded a corresponding disavowal of the claims of"modem" weste~ ftlitics,"elaborated through a dizzying variety of interest groups and
civilization. It was this tendency that brought the movement and its 411Ct1.Espousing the prerogatives of the body and the demands of affec-
hugely middle-class adherents into intimate commerce wi~ pa~allel, tMtyand personal transformation within the realm of the political-
secular, avant-garde critiques of western civilization, exemplified ~n the diet, dress, health, and sexual reform-the new radicalism was
linked projects of dress and sexual reform, and homos~~ excepttonal- principally for its heterogeneity and coalitional style. Despite
ism; dietary politics, anti-vivisectionism, and vegetar1arusm; an~ ~e~- differences, Christian Socia.lists, anarchists, New Lifers, suffrag-
theticism, or the repudiation of bourgeoisie materialism and philiSt1- ~ans, prison and land reformers attended each others' meet-
nism in the form of class or colonial avarice.io contributedto each others' journals, and organized joint demon-
Comparable coalitions and cross-alliances, againanti colonial in cex- . Catering to this profoundly mixed clientele of the faithful, by
ture also marked the experience of the heterodox but not avowedly endof the century socialism had overtaken Theosophy not only in
, . . f~~
"anti-Christian" working classes, for whom, m the wake o O • · combination of religion and politics but al~o, as H. M. Hynd-
religion, utopian socialism came increasingly to supply mitigatory spir- putative leader of the Social Democratic Federation, noted with
. ill · · t Robert Owen
icual content. As early as 1857,the utopian m enar1ams irritation,as the favored "depository of old cranks, humanitarians,
.
saw no inconsistency .1ll di rccong
. hi s M"ll I enru
'al Congress address to a · s, anti-vivisectionists ... anti-vaccinationists, arry-crafties." 24
. . f" .all . . all t nd secularists."ll Sorne
composite audience o soc1 sts, spmtu s s a h• ~ as a middle- or working-class phenomenon, the paths of fin-
· t Theosop },
decades later, in the famous defense o f h er conversion
. f d'
° ..
. b een soc1ahsrtt
. e spiritualism, even in its wider European and American man-
Annie Besant refuted all allegations o a 1spanty etw . f s, passed almost invariably through the ideological suburbs of
. . 18 a new sencs o
22
and theosophical pantheism. And intr ucmg m 97 od _ Theosophy or socialism, picking up en route inm1ctable habirs of
L bo Church rno\'C
articles to the LabourProphet,the journal of the a ur . ry of 'ty vis-a-vis the self-aggrandizing claims of the modern impe-
ment, Robert Blantchford explicitly claimed socialism as a vn.r1e
God God

rial West, both at home and abroad in the colonized world. The spir- revolutionary impulses in Alfassa's practice to the ideological cartogra-
itualism to which Mirra Alfassa laid claim in late-nineteenth-century phy of the fin-de-siecle spiritualism in which she found herself impli-
France certainly manifested the "zig-zag connections" to which it was cated. In that set of historical conjunctures the path to heterodox the-
so prone across the channel. 25 Her formative rum toward India and ism, as with the aJternative movements of our own time, often passed
concomitant aversion to the "modern" West was shaped, though indi- through the sidestreets of political radicalism. And it did so at least in
rectly, by the inJiuences of French Theosophy. Alfassa's first occult part because the epistemological and ontological fiber of late Victorian
guide, Max Theon, a man well versed in Sanskrit and Hindu spiritual- heterodoxy made faith amenable to the realm of the ethical and the
ism, had collaborated with H. P. Blavatsky in Egypt, and she counted palitical. It is to the terms of such amenability that we must now turn,
among he.r closest friends in Paris the Theosophist and ori1:ntalist ad- searching for the discursive components in the materialist and emeiri-
venturer Madame Alexandra David-Neel True to her era, Micra's spir- cist philosophies underscoring Alfassa's context that supplied her with
itualist idiom is also heavily inflected by the rhetoric of contemporary an occult disposition capable of seeing theism as instrumental to the
anarcho-socialism, alwaysdemanding freedom from possession (mate- ethico-political transformation of subjectivity. Always accompanying
rial and affective) as the first principle of spiritual development, and hermanifest support to a range of radical causes, the Mother's records
extolling the spiritualist as an egoless "worker" or "servant" among and writings detail the progress of an agonizing spiritual labor, in-
"brethren." 26 As early as 1907 the publications and manifesto of the formed by a conviction that the risky rehearsal of faith facilitates such
spiritualist group in Paris to which she belonged had attracted the pluralization of the self as is crucial to the credo·of noncoercive rela-
attention of an exiled Russian revolutionary seeking, for his own cause, tionality with difference. lo her idiom, belief is the only means effec-
"a synthetical teaching which does not limit itself to theory, but encour- tively to countermand that ontologicaJ assumption of human singular-
ages action." 27 Years later, visiting the Richards during their time in ity (or of unified subjectivity) upon which the manichean divisions of
Japan, the Theosophist J.H. Cousins was similarly struck by the force race,class, gender, and species are predicated. So, for instance, one of
of their enduring socialist convictions: "I recall ... a conversation in the thefirst entries in her spiritual diary incants her profound aspiration for
drawing room of Paul and Mirra Richard,at whose home in the suburbs thedissolution of personality, "the day when I can no longer say 'I,'"
of Tokyo I was a frequent visitor. Politics were then at the top of the whileanother laments "the gross illusion of'me' and 'mine,' the intoler-
conversational bill among people who trusted one another ... I heard ableburden of this obscure and cumbersome self "30 Such pleas for the
more socialism talked than I had done since my early twenties, when I erasure of personal limits or personality preface Alfassa's fierce re-
was a devotee of Robert Blantchford with his spicy weekly paper, 'The sistanceto the illusion of separation between "ourselves and others," her
Clarion.' "28 At the age of ninety, toward the end ofher life, ever faithful desirealways to "find the category of affinities which binds us cooth-
to the radicalism from which she had distilled the substance of her ers."Jt This, we might note, is also the staple of Sri A11robindo'saskesis,
spiritualism, the Mother greeted the events of May 1968, as they broke Reordedas a series of bizarre experiments in "thought sharing" with
out across her former city of Paris, with unguarded enthusiasm. "It crows,butterflies, plants, squirrels, and alien human beings, each predi-
doesn't look like a strike at all,'' she noted in conversations with a disci- catedon the will to overcome "our egoistic appropriation of whatever
ple later published as Mother'sAgenda,"it looks like a revolution. I know comes to us in our subjective experience." 32
that. I don't know ifl have ever told you, but there has been-there has . _Tomake proper sense of the collaborative transformation of subjec-
always been-an identification of this body's consciousness with • • · tnrityto which the Mother and Sri Aurobindo devoted themselves from
1 1
revolutionary movements ... in Russia, in Italy, in Spain and else~ 9 4, when they first met, and to which mnny of their contemporaries
where-always, everywhere." 29 'Werealso committed, we must now tum to that Kantian understandi11g
We can thus safely attribute the startling coincidence of mystical and bf what it means to be an ethical political agent. It is to this conception
 God
God
that fin-de-siecle spiritualism posed its most profound philosophical really involve doing nothing at all."36 By bringing the anxieties of the
and political challenge. work ethic to bear upon ethics itself, &Jigion perversely refonnulates
worship as a form of moral idleness.
If Kant's monumental philosophical labor succeeds in capturing
IMMANUEL KANT ANO TH£ DISCOURSE AGAlNST HYRRIDlTY
moral agency and the contiguous capacity for social justice as the pre-
Committed in all his philosophical work to an elaboration of the project rogative of a certain sort of subject-one who is singular, self-identical,
of autonomy, Kant conceives of morality as the radical freedom of the self-sufficient, immune, and transcendental-it also simultaneously re-
ethical agent-subject. While the CritiqueofPure Reason(1781)explains leasesinto liberal ethical and political thought an influential bias against

epistemology as the rational agent's progressive liberation from the what we might call "hybridity": the mongrelization of subjectivity
external physical and natural world, the subsequent Fundamental Prin- viewedin the body of Kant's work as the unwholesome byproduct of the
ciplr1sof the MetaphysicofMorals (1,785)and The Critique ofPractical affectivity which attaches either to desire or to prayer, and which
Re4son(1788) together elaborate a similar formula for the problem of springsfrom the perils of relationality either with other beings in the
moral cognition. In these later texts reason intervenes to liberate the world(human, animal) or with God. We might say that in its implicit
moral agent from the empirical contaminants of her own nature. For to discourse against hybridity Kantian thought establishes a strange kin-
be moral subjects in the Kantian sense, we must rigorously stand aloof shipbetween empiricism (the realm of desire, inclinations) and meta-
from the contingencies of our humanness and maintain strict indepen- physics(the realm of prayer, unknowable reality.), insofar as it treats
dence from the domain of "luck" which circumscribes our desires and them as similar types of threat or temptation to the integrity and agency
inclinations at any given moment. To be such a transcendental and of the ethico-rational subject.
unified ethical agent is thus to be constitutively free from the heccro· Over the last few decades a range of anti-or contra-Kantian think-
genei ty of consciousness, from the distractions of experience. 33 ers have attempted to reclaim hybridity as the basis for a more humane
This long cherished view of creative human autonomy elaborated andhumanizing ethics. Rarely, such theorists argue, does an ethical
through the three critiques-and, lest we forget, informed by a quiet but action or decision proceed from the dictates of a self-sufficient imagina-
felt objection to prevailing political and religious orthodoxies 34 -finds tion or from the imperatives of a wholly transcendental rationality. 37
its apotheosis in Kant's still later work, Religion within the Limits of Indeed, as Michael Sandel claims in his critique of Kant and Rawls, our
Reason Alone (1793). A statement of and for absolute h.uman moral capacityfor good is in some ways inextricable from our capacity to
freedom, Kant's Religionis pivotal to the questions being rehearsed in pluralizeourselves, either through "intrasubjective" self-understand-
this discussion, insofar as it can be said to inaugurate the birth of mod- ing,,which allows "that for certain purposes, the appropriate description
ern secular ethics by comprehensively denying the moral subject access of the moral subject may refer to a plurality of selves within a single,
to all external influences: human, physical, and divine. A subject who, individual human, as when we account for inner deliberation in terms of
Kant insists, can "be judged morally good only by virtue of that which a pullof competing identities, or moments of introspection in terms of
can be imputed to hi.m as performed by himself," necessarily fails the occluded self-knowledge," or through "intersubjcctive" self-under-
obligations of self-sufficiency whenever he endeavors to "win favout standing, namely the recognition "that in certain moral circumstances,
through mere worship. JS Prayer leads man morally astray by persuading the relevant description of the self may embrace more than a single,
him "either that God can make him happy ... without his having co individual human being, as when we attribute responsibility or affirm an
become a better man ... or ... that God can make him a better rnan obligation to a family or community or class or nation.") 8
without his having to do anything more than ask for it. Yet since, in th e It is worth noting that much in the spirit of Sandel's ru1ti-Kantian
eyes of a Being who sees all, to a'lk is no more than to wish, chis would ethical recalculations, the insurrectionary or revolutionary subject of
God God

recent "radical" theory is also a constitutively hybrid entity. The disrup- edge," a long and combative meditation on Kant's R.eligi.on to which we
tive work of queer theory, Judith Butler maintains, is performed by the might briefly turn our attention.
unstable, incoherent and discontinuous subject of desire who eschews The Kantian discourse against religion, Derrida reminds us in ''Faith
in favor of a ''fragmentation in the ranks" all appeal to a preemptive or and Knowledge," makes a crucial distinction between two families of
prescriptive politics of''unity": "unity set[s] up an exclusionary norm of religious belief: the one "dogmatic," the other "reflective." Of these it is
solidarity at the level of identity that rules out the possibility of ... only the first (religion of cult) which cannot be accommodated within
actions which disrupt the very borders of identity concepts, or which the limits of reason alone, in that its morally transcendent appeal to
seek to accomplish precisely that disruption as an explicit political "works of grace," as we have seen above, makes for an indolent morality
aim.''39 Writing in similar terms about the emergence of heterodox new in which doing (being) good is tantamount to doing (being) nothing. 44
social movements in Britain (especially those that encompass the poli- Reflective faith, on the other hand, a moral religion entirely amenable to
tics of race), Stuart Hall and Paul Gilroy each document the inaugura- the limits of rationality, enjoins man to action-"good-life conduct"-
tion of a "subjective moment in politics," 40 which emanates from "the byscrupulously withholding from him the certain knowledge of divine
body as a seat of desires" and from the rich "nexus of interpersonal cooperation. 45 However, and here lies the rub, only Christianity gains,
relationsbips." 41 And postcolonial theory is increasingly no less deter- in Kant's eyes, the prerogative of reflectivity: "of all the public religions
mined to track the emergence of radically protean subjectivities whose which have ever existed," he writes, "the Christian alone is moral.'' 46
politics and ethics-produced, as Said would have it, "between do- Andso, this discourse of and for the limit, and against the imaginative
mains, between forms, between homes, between languages" 42-consist and risky hybridity of prayer and desire, starts to limit the field of
principally in exceeding the foundationalism of racial, colonial, na- toleranceitself. According to its formulations, Derrida observes, "the
tionalist discourse and avoiding capture by its various agents. ideaof a morality that is pure but non-Christian would be absurd; it
This diverse and complex theoretical rapprochement with hybridity, wouldexceed both understanding and reason ... The unconditional
summarily reviewed above, exemplifies a new and urgent sympathy for universality of the categorical imperative is evangelical. The moral law
and belief in the ethico-political worth of the empirical circumstances inscribes itself at the bottom of our hearts ... When it addresses us, it
of human existence. Nevertheless, it does little to revoke the Kantian eitherspeaks the idiom of the Christian-or is silent."47 Faced with this
extradition of worship and metaphysics from the realm of justice. In- impasse,Derrida provocatively redefines Kant's genealogy of religious
deed, all too often postcolonial "authorities" like Salman Rushdie insist belie£Reflective faith, when read with deconstructive suspicion, reveals
that an aesthetics or ethics ofhybridity is constitutively opposed to the itself as a homogenizing attachment to the "unscathed" (the safe, the
domain of the sacred. Wedded to a camivalesque politics ofirreverence sacred,or the saintly), "which produces the same as much as it confirms
and demystification, Rushdie's version of hybridity paradoxically de- it ... a persistent bond that bonds itself first and foremost to itself ... A
Jjvers, as in Kant, a potent immunity against the threat and temptation Rsistance or reaction to dis-junction. To ab-solute alterity."48 Against
of religious belie£ 41 Yet unless we wish to make a categorical distinction this,dogmatic faith offers a positive exemplar of the "fiduciary" (trust-
between "good" and "bad" hybridity, a truly comprehensive critique of worthiness, fidelity, credit, belief, or faith), manifest as a moment of
Kantian ethics obliges us to remember that the metaphysical (the re- "interruptive unravelling" which ''exceeds, through its structure, all in-
ligious, the mystical) is as much an agent of self-pluralization as the tuition and all proof, all knowledge." 49 Such a faith, one that refuses to
empirical, and that as such, metaphysical hybriditics may well (may yet) close itself off into a totality and thus leaves itself open to the threat and
help furnish the discontinuous, incoherent, unstable, provisional, affec- ~ptation of the unknown, the unthought, the unseen, is of course
tive requirements of a queer or a postcolonial justice. This hope or already, in the work of a Levinas or Derrida, ''the ether of the address
possibility gain~ serious attention in Derrida's essay "Faith and Know1
4

Ind relation of the utterly other. "50 As rhe scene of self-pluralization and
 God
God
othering, prayer, marked by its fidelity to the ethic of non-knowledge, is
also marked byan "invincible desire for justice ... [that] is not and ought of Kantian rationality, can these two critiques be combined in the form
not to be certain of anything, either through knowledge, conscience, of, say, an empirical-metaphysical politics of hybridity-namely, in a
forseeability or any kind of program as such." 51 That is to say,contrary to politics or ethics that demonstrates the role of the metaphysical in
the limirs (of reason, tolerance, culture, religion) which circumscribe producing or enabling empirically meaningful types of hybridity?
Kantian morality, a "fiduciary" mentality offers a crucial rehearsal Such, we have been arguing, was the endeavor of many of the fin-dc-
ground for the openness, uncertainty, and inconclusiveness which must sicclc spiritualisrs and mystics with whom this chapter is ulumatcly
underscore any truly utopian expectation of radical inclusiveness. Need- concerned. And we gain substantial philosophical insight into their
less to say, there are many varieties of meaningful politics besides the efforts to forge an idiom for an empirical-metaphyi;ical hybndity in the
utopian. So too, there arc many reasons for asserting the meaningfulness writings of William James, the American proto-psycholog1st, psychical
of utopian politics, as Derrida does variously under the signs of religion, researcher, and pragmatist whose complex and somewhat eccentric
hospitality, and friendship: "For democracy remains to come; this is its oeuvre constitutes, as Charles Taylor maintains, an extended apologia
essence in so far as it remains: not only will it remain indefinitely perfect- profide sua, taking direct exception to the proscriptions of Kantian
ible, hence always insufficient and future, but, belonging to the time of ethics to launch a series of arguments for the admissibility of belie£ But
the promise, it will always remain, in each ofirs future times, to come: where Taylor sees in James's work the rhetoric of a highly affective and
even when there is democracy, it never exists, it is never present, it individualistic theism inadequately attentive to the more muscular de-
remains the theme of the non-prcsentable."52 mands of collectivity or sociality, the following·discussion proffers a
Let us recapitulate the movement of our discussion so far. In seeking different reading. It is my claim that James's philosophical labors ex-
to explore the possible compatibility of religious belief and socialjustice emplify and clarify the aspirations of his fellow spiritualists in their
we have worked our way through two critiques of Kantian morality, effort to bring the experience of mystical and metaphysical self-plural-
both determined to justify a more flexible ethics of and for hybridity· ization to bear upon the reformation of relationality in a hierarchical
the one, elaborated in the work of Sandel and other recent "radical" andimperial world. Theism, as James has it, accelerates the dissolution
theorists, reclaims the pluralizing effects of that which is empirical in of that sovereign Kantian ego upon which the divisions of self and other,
human nature; the other, elaborated in the work and philosophical subject and object are predicated, disclosing in place of a separated and
tradition of Derrida, recommends, with equal enthusiasm, the self- disenchanted world a concatenated "multiverse,n strung together, in
pluralizing benefits of that which is, or which craves, the metaphysical Darwinianfashion, into a horizontal web of relations.
in human nature. One group speaks on behalf of desire, the other on
behalf of prayer, and both present a challenge to available conceptions
-.LLIAM JAMES AND THE WILL TO RADICAL PLURALISM
of the political and ethical The protestations of desire or subjective
experience, as Gilroy notes, "are unlikely to be able to make the transi- Composed in the interstices of spirirualism and psychology, William
tion to more stable forms of politics."SJ So too, the protestations of James'soeuvre is distinguished by its insistence upon the ontological
prayer, in their wishful address to the rcalm of the immaterial or un- andepistemological primacy of experience. His own predilection to-
manifesr, herald a social order which, as Colin McCabe complains in a wardthe experiential is gleaned in large part, as he concedes, from the
negative review of Derrida's Friendship,"can neither be described nor materialismof his era, specifically the overwhelming influence of evolu-
prescribed but only experienced in a transformed future ... there is no tionary biology upon fin-de-siecle western intellectual life. "It is diffi-
relation between what 1sto come and what must be done."s◄ Held apart cult," he writes in his Essays in Radical Empiricism, "not to notice a
despite their common modality and shared recoil from the impassivity C\lrious unrest in the philosophic atmosphere of the time ... Life is
confused and superabundant, and what the younger generation appears
God God

to crave is more of the temperament of life in iu philosophy, even of Possibility for the ethical or the political, conjuring a subject whose
though it were at some cost oflogical rigor and of formal purity."55 But rnoral or cognitive agency is a function of her implication in, rather than
James protests that the pull toward the existential, constitutive of his autonomy from, the muddy perplexities of desire or relationality. In
thought, does not reflect mere intellectual fashion; rather, it responds to these terms, the ethical agent according to James is a "conjunctive"
a change in the very fabric of the time, as a result of which life and the subject for whom being in the world meaningfully or well is a function
living of it have come once again to be regarded as a sufficient good. of being in relation to others: "with, near, next, like, from, toward,
Defending this principle fervently, James sees it as his enterprise to against, because, for, through." 58 Far from being bound by the dogma-
search out conditions under which experience and life can themselves tism of absolute teleological unity, or indeed by the dogma of unified
yield the ethical effect$ reserved, in earlier philosophical systems, for subjectivity, the human propensity for good, James argues, accrues pre-
the action of austere and transcendental rationality. It is this effort to ciselyfrom our capacity for provisional coalition, conjunction, and rela-
distill the substance of a materialist ethics that leads James, it would tionality: "It may mean your loyalty to the possibilities of others whom
seem paradoxically, on the path to theism, disclosing, as we will see, the youadmire and love so that you are willing to accept your own poor life,
empirical-metaphysical politics of hybridity of which we spoke earlier. forit is that glory's partner. You can at least appreciate, applaud, furnish
Variously called "pragmatism," "pluralism," and "radical empiri- the audience, of so brave a total world ... Identify your life therewith;
cism," James's philosophical credo defines itself against Kant and then,through angers, losses, ignorance, ennui, whatever you thus make
Hegel, whose allergy to pluralism, contradiction, and experience he ofyourself,whatever you thus most deeply are, pi.cks its way.''59
holds responsible for the impoverishment of western thought. Where YetJames concedes that for all their ethical potential, the horizontal
both thinkers-Kant especially-predicate their "systems" upon the demandsof conjunctive relationality in a pluralistic w~rld deliver a
solid and clear substance of monism, rationalism, and absolutism to terrifying schema of uncertified cooperation: an obligation to coexist
deliver "a world ... simple, clean and noble ... a kind of marble temple withirreducible difference that few are equipped to handle. Such are
shining on a hill," James, creature of his q>och, proposes a philosophy thesummons that Hegelian thought typically contravenes in the name
that cleaves enthusiastically instead to the "world of concrete _personal ef"badinfinity," proposing that the "true must be essentially the self-
experiences ... multitudinous ... tangled, muddy, painful and per- mlccringself-contained recurrent, that which secures itself by includ-
plexed."56Seeking a palliative variety of thought less at war with life, he ingits own other and negating it; that makes a spherical system with no
attempts to confer on "being" the philosophical respectability preserved looseends hanging out for foreignness to get a hold upon; that is forever
in Kantian thought for reason alone: "The 'I think' which Kant said IOUodedin and closed, not strung along rectilinearly and open at its
must be able to accompany all my objects, is the 'I breathe' which ends."'60 What agent, however enamored of the world and the con-
actually does accompany them ... thoughts.in the concrete are made of tingenttug of desire, can surrender herself to that conjunctural form of
the same stuff as thin~ are."57 Nlation in which the other consistently eludes possession, offering no
Any philosophy that thus restricts itself and its postulates to the gllarantee of reciprocity, no comfort of finality? "Things," James warns,
facticity of experience and the material world, while eschewing types, •uc 'with' one another in many ways, but nothing includes everything,
essences, taxonomies, precedents, and laws, James maintains, deserves or dominates over everything. The word 'and' trails along after every
the name empiricism, one to which a long line of English and conti- lentcnce. Something always escapes. 'Ever not quite' has to be said of
nental philosophers can justly lay claim. But, James goes on to aver, ~ best attempts made anywhere in the universe at attaining all-inclu-
empiricism in its turn can only earn the mantle of radicalism-call itself llVeness.The pluralistic world is thus more like a federal republic than
"radical empiricism"-when it takes being in the world as the condition ancmpire.'' 61 How, then, might we submit to the psychic hazards of the
God God

nonimperial relationality upon which our ethical capacity as experien- ity of orthodox Christianity, standing outside of history and thus valo-
tial beings is predicated? How can you "trust yourself and trust other rized in Hegelian thought, is wholly inadequate to the ethical reforma-
agents enough to take the risk"?"l tion of empirical reJationaJity. Such is the monarchial deity, dtbpensing
Suddenly introducing the specter of risk into rhe benign narrative of faith as imperial command, whom fin-de-siecle spiritualism endeavorb
pluralistic justice, James brings us face to face again with Kantian to "reform," the better to guide its own ethico-political imperative~. As
thought and its offer of unconditional rational immunity precisely James writes, "The vaster vistas which scientific evolutioni~m h:h
against such terrors of affcctivity. For the Kantian, as Martha Nuss- opened, and the rising tide of social democratic ideals, have changed the
baum reminds us," 'irrational' attachments import, more than any oth- type of our imagination, and the older monarchial thei~m is now ob-
ers, a risk of practical conRict and so of contingent failure in virtue. And solete or obsolescent. The place of the divine in the world must be more
even when passional activities are not deemed in themselves valuable, organic and intimate.'' 67 That is to say, the demands of empirical-meta-
the passions can still figure as a source of disruption ... To nourish them physical hybridity, as James sees them, are contingent upon rhe imma-
at all is thus to expose oneself to a risk of disorder or 'madness.' "63 But nent and heterodox theism realized in his time, positing a new model of
turning away from cautionary morality, James invokes instead the God as the cooperative collaborator with life, the divine as "therefore
model of the agnostic-theist, whose moral stamina, or ability to live the most intimate of our possessions, heart of our heart, in fact.''68 In
courageously in the midst of empirical humanity, is at least partly an this new form of"intimate" theism the actions of prayer become more
effect of her daily rehearsal of a credulous, cooperative relationship with readilycongruent with the actions of desire. God, acting as guru rather
God, the unseen and unknown "helper, primw interpam, in the midst thangovernor, draws the timorous believer-disciple into the necessary
of all the great shapers of the great world's fate."~ Herc, much like temptations of contingency: "I am going to make a world not ccrrain to
Derrida, Jameb defines the habit, as 1twere, of God as a habituation to besaved,a world the perfection of which will be conditional merely, the
the hazards of alterity. ln a characteristic philosophizing through word- condition being that each several agent does its own 'level best.' I offer
play, Oernda, we might remember, proposes that the phrase "adieu," )'OU a chance of taking part in such a world. Its safety, you see, is
which signals a moment of departure and separation from all that is unwarranted.It is a real adventure, with real danger .. Will you join
familiar, also carries within itself the possibility of an "a Oieu," or a theprocession?"n9
coming-before-God. Or, in reverse, the experience of tentative agnos- The theoretical conjectures thus explored in Jarnes's work find
tic-theism is available, etymologically, as a moment ofleave taking from pater practical elaboration in the two contiguous fields of early British
certain knowledge and, as such, is indistinguishable from a surrender to psycliology and socialism: both typical of the fin-de-siecle, and both
the erratic demands of otherness: "The a-dieu [can mean], for God or ~ments with which James is linked through personal and profes-
before God and before anything else or any relation to the other, in .llOoalcircumstances. In the following pages I would like to assess first
every other adieu. Every relation to the other would be, before and after 1rithreference to Frederic Myers's monumental Human Persona/i~ an;
anything else, an adieu."65 /Is~uroival afttr Bodily Death (1903),the impact of spiritualism upon an
To enter the culture of belief, in other words, is eo ipso a schooling in ethicallymotivated psychology ofintra/intersubjectivity. Second, I will
the risk of uncertain (uncertified) cooperation: an apprenticeship to brieflyreassess aspects of the thought and career of the socialist, homo-
those "trusting" philosophies that will equip us existentially for the ~ reformer, and author Edward Carpenter, whom we encountered
rigors of a politics of "irrrimacy.''61> But James offers the qualification -.IDanother setting in chapter 3, as illustrative of the productive rap-
that all cultures of belief are not equa.lly amenable to the conjuncuve, JIIOchcmcnt between mysticism and radical plura]jsm which we have
horizontal, and democratic requirements of this politics. God comes in beenpursuing in this discussion.
many shapes and the alienated, authoritarian, remote, "Absolutist" de-
 God God

~N EMPIRICAL-METAPHYSICAL POLITICS OF HYBRTDJTY psychology the notion of the variegated self, which in turn, Alex Owen
claims, exposed "the paucity of any analysis based on the often un-
In i88:2a group of agnostic Oxbridge intellectuals pioneered the foun- acknowledged notion of the unified subject." 76 But far more important,
dation of the Society for Psychical Research (sPR.). In the hope of in its insistent dramatization of self-variety as the intervention of un-
proving the friendliness of the universe, the group, which came to in- seen "higher" powers in incarnate life, spiritualism also, though briefly,
clude William James, aimed to study those psychical or paranormal rescued the multiple personality from abnormal psychology and deliv-
phenomena commonly associated with mid- and late-nineteenth- eredit to ethics. And it is this, really, which constitutes the contentious
century spiritualism.70 Although the SP R's various investigations into principle conjecture ofMyers's magnum opus. Addressed in many ways
table tapping, planchette writing, spirit possession, and tho'-!ght trans- to the discipline of abnormal psychology, Human Personalityrefuses to
ference often appeared tO reveal a culture of fraudulence, they also concede that the "divided" self is symptomatic of disease, degeneration,
brought to less skeptical researchers a growing consciousness that the or criminality, on the grounds that it "affords a path of transition" co the
seemingly singular self was in fact haunted {or susceptible to haunting) benign "agency of disincarnate minds or spirits," indeed-in the context
by a curious secondary or tertiary consciousness.7 1 And of ~l. the phe- of spiritualism -to the existence of God and the immortality of the soul
nomena which fell under the scholarly ambit of the s l>R, spmt posses- itself: "It would be a great mistake to suppose that all psychical upsets
sion especially seemed to point in this direction. During a seance, the are due to vanity, anger, to terror, to sexual passion. The instincts of
medium's otherwise unified self was revealed and performed as an un- personal cleanliness and of feminine modesty are responsible for many a
stable compound of multiple agenc;ies, sometimes of a discrepant age, breakdown of a sensitive, but not a relatively fttble organisation. The
gender, race, or class.72Moreover, as James observes in his writings on loveof one's fellow-creatures and the love of God are responsible for
the s PR, trance-mediumship exemplified-albeit in bizarre circum- manymore.''77 Thus self-division may well mark the pathology of the
stances-a glimpse into the complex web of conjunctive relations or hysteric,but all too often we neglect to observe that the hysteric belongs
cooperative intersubjectivities not ordinarily visible to the secular eye: to thesame typology as the reformer whose "moral genius" is in effect a
"The sitter with his desire to receive, forn:is, so to speak, a drainage "possessionby some altruistic idea which lies at the root of so many
opening or sink; the medium with her desire to personate, yields the heroiclives."78
nearest lying material to be drained off, while the spirit desiring _to I am not, let ~e hasten to add, proposing an argument about the
communicate is drawn in by the current set up and swells the latter by its necessary
credibility ofMyers's hypothesis. Rather, my concern is with
own contributions." 73 thosesubtle processes whereby the mystical and metaphysical is made
Among the sPR's researchers, it was Edmund Gurney and Frederic to collude with ethically founded notions of hybridity. Indeed, while
Myers in particular whose first-hand encounters with spiritualism came commending Myers's demonstration of the "queer and cactus like na-
to supply the blueprint for a new psychology of"double-consciousness." ture of the self," William James himself remained seriously uncon-
Convinced that "a single individual lives in turn two (or more) separate vincedofMyers's claim that the "Gothic" self was evolurive and moral
cxistences,"7◄ Gurney strongly disavowed the conception of unifi~d ratherthan dissolutive and morbid. 79 Nonetheless, if somewhat more
subjectivity in a long essay called "Monism," which he published 10 extreme in their enthusiasm, the conclusions of Human Personalityare
r887. The posthumous publication ofMyers's Human Personalitygath- notdissimilar in essence from those reached in James's oeuvre. Nor are
ered these incipient conjectures into an even more coherent argument, theydissimilar from the puissant tonic of mysticism and socialism
further displacing the notion of "homogenous character " wit· h "the whichsustained the culture of contemporary radicalism.
multiplex and mutable character of that which we know as the Pe~~n- Inattentive to the ethical component of the psychological interven-
ality of man."75 Thus, spiritualism directly ushered into early Bnt15h tionsof Myers and his colleagues, contemporary reappraisals of the s PR
 God
God
combines in himself the profound repose of Oriental thought with the
. f. b so
frequently underscore the middle-class conservatism o its mem ers. reforming zeal of the West; he is at once occultist and publicist, dreamer
But this was not necessarily the consensus of contemporary observers. and reformer, exponent of philosophic reverie and of humanitarian
In his autobiography, Edward Carpenter offers a much more sympa- zcal."~6 Initiated into socialism through a combination of Marx, ac-
thetic assessment, counting the SPR among those new movements quired through H. M. Hyndmao's England for All (the first popular
"tending towards the establishment of mystical ideas and a new social exposition of Marxism in English), and metaphysics, acquired through
order." As he writes: "Hyndman's Democratic Federation, Edmund a revelatory reading of the Bhagavad Gita in 1881,Carpenter elaborated
Gurney's Society for Psychical Research, Mme Blavatsky's Theosophi- a program of social justice which promised deliverance from the separa-
cal Society, the Vegetarian Society, the Anti-Vivisection mo~ement, tion between selves and, contingently, from the notion of singular or
and many other associations of the same kind marked the conung of a unified subjectivity. If Marxism, via Hyndman, clarified the inequities
great reaction from the smug commercialism and mater~alism of the of "the existing competitive system, 87 the Gita and other Hindu and
mid-Victorian epoch, and a preparation for the new uruverse of the Buddhist texts helped diagnose the ill-effects of capitalism as a conse-
twentieth century." 81 quence of the obscuring "clouds between us and others." 88 Carpenter
It is also worth noting the political affiliations of several individual drew these formative insights into a cogent ethics of radical intersubjec-
s p R members: Henry Sidgwick and his wife were serious allies of wom- tivity, which he describes in an explanatory note on his long prose poem
en's education and deeply involved in the establishment of Newnham TowardsDemocracy(1883):"I ... immediately saw, or rather folt, that this
College; Myers enjoyed a long association with Josephine Butler, fa- region of Self existing in me existed equally ... in others. In regards to it
mous for her campaign against the Contagious Diseases Act in the early the mere diversities of temperament which ordinarily distinguish and
c8 os; and perhaps most significantly 1 Frank Podmore was also a mem- divide people dropped away and became indifferent, and a field was
7
ber of the socialist-utopian Fellowship of the NewLife, founded under opened in which all might meet, in which all were truly Equal. Thus I
the leadership of the itinerant Scottish philosopher Thomas Davidson. found the common ground which I wanted; and the two words, Free-
An associate of William James, Davidson was typical of his radical domand Equality came for the time being to control all my thought and
· "Kantan dC om t"e
contemporaries in his critique of monism. 82 Holding exprcssioo." 89
(along with Descartes and Locke) jointly responsible for taking "the ~un Invariably, this mystical-democratic apprehension of interconnec-
out of life,"83 Davidson proposed an early, reparative version of social- tedness is accompanied by a corresponding awareness of intrasubjec-
ism based on the principles of personal transformation and interper- tivity. ln The Art efCreatio11(1904), Carpenter invokes Mycrs's notion
son~ involvement. 84 Formed in 1883, the fellowship boasted a diverse of a "subliminal mind," and with it the central hypothesis of Human
membership which included J. Ramsay MacDonald, Havelock Ellis, Pn-sonality,to confirm the (metaphysically induced) multiplicity of self:
Edith Lees, Arthur Ransom, and the humanitarian and animal-rights "I do not doubt that the body and its organisation are the scene and the
campaigners Henry and Kate Salt. Perhaps the most influential member ltat of ... other orders of consciousness-which, though usually hidden
of the group was Edward Carpenter, who commemorates his early from... us arc still readily operating within and around our minds." 90
association with the New Lifers as a period of''hopeful enthusiasms- Such a belief in the spiritual basis and potentially progressive nature of
life simplified, a humane diet and a rational dress, manual labour, demo· "rnixed" identity produced in Carpenter the informing conviction that
cratic ideals, communal institutions." 85 • • therigid antinomics of species, class, race, and gender could only be
Involved in one way or another w1'th many o fth era di cal and socialist resolved through a cultivated hybridization of subjectivity. And turning
· h"15 career
gr oups which mushroomed during the 1880s, Carpenter in . thepitfalls of his own sexuality to great advantage, he identified the
. d
and work sharply exemplifies the creative para oxes o n
f fi -de-s1ecle
homosexual, we have seen, as an exemplary or inspired figure of such
·
politics. In the words of a contemporary reviewer: "Carpenter · · ·
God God

r/evolutionary hybridity, intrinsically self-pluralized and other-di,- never been my aim in this chapter to proffer late Victorian radicalism,
rected. His two major works on sexual reform, Love's Comi11g-of-Age seamlessly, as a model for our own politics. Rather, I have suggested that
and The Intermediate Sex, effectively reformulate the homosexual proj- once we concede the varieties in religious experience, the metaphysical
ect as an "open coalition," uniquely amenable to intersubjective soli- may often prove to have much more in common with those questions of
darities and cooperative counterallegianccs between disparate and multiculturalism, pluralism, and complex equality which constitute the
shifting groups. 91 Attributing his own bent toward socialism as an effect positive ethical preoccupation of our own time, and much less in com·
of the instinctual sympathy between homosexuals and workers, 92 he mon with the ''fundamentalisms" and "extremisms" that we fear. The
also made the case for a natural affinity between male homosexuals and sphere of the "political," as Dipesh Chakrabarty tells us, does not have
women, combining forces with the Woman's Freedom Leag4e (formed to be "bereft of tbe agency of gods, spirits, and other supernatural
in 1908) to further the cause of tbe suffrage campaign. Active alongwith beings." 96 For each of the figures whom we have reviewed, it is precisely
Henry Salt in tbe animal-rights movement, Carpenter was also notable the idea of divine-human coexistence or cooperation which assists in
as a passionate anti-vivisectionist and advocate for the establishment of the dissolution of personal limit, of the self-sufficient self-regard, that
animal sanctuaries. 93 comes in way of sympathetic identification with those unlike ourselves.
Returning to tbe concerns with which we began this discussion: the Theism may not be indispensable to this enterprise but it was no doubt
experiments conducted by the SPR, and the spiritualist components of propitious to Mirra Alfassa's anticolonial socialism, to William James's
Edward Carpenter's socialist career, offer historical exemplification of vision of social-democratic or conjunctive-horiwntal relationality, to
the hypotheses developed in the philosophical work and thought of Myers'saltruistic subject, and to the affectional possibilities claimed on
William James. They also offer a tantalizing glimpse into the con- behalfof Carpenter's homosexual activist. Belief, in these cases, may
structive availability of religious ideas to social reform at the scene of annul that hope of individual autonomy with which Kantian thought
fin-de-siecle spiritualism, insofar as reform is amenable to a hybrid style guaranteessafety to its moral agents. But in so doing, by bringing the
of politics. Or, to put this differently, Carpenter and Myers endorse the themeof risk back into the business of justice, it turns the pious face of
role of religious ideas in the positive hybridization of the political. By ethicsand politics toward the unknown and unprecedented, making it
the end of the nineteenth century, however, hybridity went out of fash- possibleat the very least for the agent to experience, in his or her
ion (to be reinvented, perlraps, in 1968). In 1892, as mentioned in chap- goodness, the self-endangering pleasures of radical inclusiveness.
ter 2, Max Nordau condemned _fin-de-siccle mysticism and socialism,
contra Myer, as a symptom of degeneration, and it was in the same year
that Friedrich Engels, in his Socialism, from Utopia to Science, pro-
nounced, contra Carpenter, the obsolescence of the "kind of eclectic,
average Socialism, which ... has ... dominated the minds of roost
Socialist workers in France and England ... a mishmash allowing of the
most manifold shades of opinion; a mishmash of ... critical statements,
economic theories, pictures of future society by founders of different
sects."94 Through the 1890s, or so historians tells us, spiritualism and
spirit fammars also began to disappear from the sccne. 95
ln a crucial way, we arc the heirs of this shift in attitude, this turning
away from the compound enthusiasms of .fin-de-siecle spirituality and
socialism. While querying this change in our attitudes, however, it has
 Art

Jtwas, let me say frankly, the sort ofletter I would in a happy but wilful
moment, have written to any graceful young man of either University,
who had sent me a poem of his making." 1 It is thus, as a bemused and
charmed older writer, that Wilde, tongue lightly in cheek, celebrates
ART Primavera for manifesting "the exquisite art of idleness" so diligently
taught by Oxford in its summer term. Bestowing a happy and wilful
Aestheticismand the Politics kindness on each individual writer, he endorsed the volume as one that
"undergraduates might read ... with advantage during lecture-hours." 2
ofPostcolonialDifference Standard Wilde. One review ih a corpus of similar pieces, justly
ignored by Wilde biographers. Yet the postcolonial critic cannot over-
look the special favor reserved for the young Indian in the chorus.
"Particular interest," Wilde writes, "attaches naturally to Mr Ghose's
STORM IN A TEACUP
work.Born in India, of purely Indian parentage, he has been brought up
On 24 May 1890, in his last year of regular reviewing, Oscar Wilde entirely in England and was educated at St. Paul's School, and his verses
published in the Pall Mall Gazette an affectionate but inconsequential showus how quick and subtle are the intellectual sympathies of the
notice for a new volume of poems called Primaverabrought out by Basil Oriental mind." 3 Praising Ghose's somewhat deafening lyricism for its
Blackwell earlier that month. Gaining its title from Botticelli's painting, "lovely" faults, exemplary influences (Keats and Arnold, mainly), and
the delicate-looking volume of wan poetry, featuring a Selwyn Image consummate show of"culture and taste and feeling," Wilde confidently
woodcut design of interwoven leaves and Bowers on its cover and title predicts that he "ought some day to make a name in our literature."
page, showcases the early verse efforts of four friends, Laurence Binyon, What merits this attention for which, we must reluctantly concede,
Anhur Cripps,Manmohan Ghose, and Stephen Phillips-the first three Ghose's musical gifts are in themselves insufficient?
undergraduates at Oxford, the last an aspiring actor recently hailed for his There is evidence of a personal acquaintance between Chose and
unlikely performance as the Ghost in Hamlet at the Globe Theatre. Wilde,enough to place G hose at the fringes of the Oxford undergradu-
Primaverawould do surprisingly well given the relative anonymity of its lk coterie of which Matthew Sturgis writes in PassionateAttitudes: an
poets, quickly running into a second edition and engaging the jealous gaze informal group held together only by the magnetism ofits guru, cluster-
of literary London after commendations from John Addington Symonds ing around him at private viewings, theater openings, the Cafe Royal,
in the Academy,Lionel Johnson in Hobby Horse,and perhaps most re- not so much homosexual as homoaffective, yet defining "the flavour of
markably the CambridgeRe<Uiew. Of all these, however, Wilde was the therniacle" byan unmistakable "deviancy."◄ Manmohan's brother testi-
first to welcome the new ephebeinto the house, as it were, of Literature. fieswith some exasperation to Ghose's place in such a set, claiming that
Ever susceptible to the charms of youthful Oxford men, especially "tta time Manmohan was almost Wilde's disciple."5 It is certainly with
those with flawed poetic affectations, Wilde praised these "new young theBattered incredulity of an unexpectedly favored acolyte that Chose
singers" in that teasing and hyperbolic vein of which he would write ~ Wilde's notice, recording his pleasure in a letter of 27 May 1890 to
with bitterness some years hence, from Reading Gaol, to Lord Alfred hisfriend Laurence Biny-0n: "good soul that he is, he praised me so
Douglas: "You send me a-very nice poem of the undergraduate school of IIIUch,so out of proportion to my merits, and gave me a sort of intro-
verse, for my approval: I reply by a letter of fantastic literary conceits: I duction to the public as well. You, by getting the Newdigate, and Ste-
compare you to Hylas, or Hyacinth, Jonquil or Narcisse, or someone phenas an actor, are already before the public in other ways; but I was
whom the great god of Poetry favoured, and honoured with his love· · · quiteunknown until Oscar's generous notice of me." 6
Art Art
There is doubtless an element of goodness and noblesse oblige in ing an estranging idiom into English prosody, the capacity to liberate
Wilde's minor critical favo( to Chose, not to mention something of that the "aesthetic" from its nervous conformity to the world, so that it can
carefully cultivated taste for the exotic and foreign, de rigueur for late begin the work of postulating an alternative reality? In "The Decay of
Victorian dandyism, and well expressed on its behalf by Lady Henry at Lying," he praises any impulse toward "orientalism" in the decorative
the beginnings of Dorian Gray: uYou have never been to any of my arts in such terms, for "its frank rejection of imitation ... its dislike to
parties, have you Mr Gray? You must come. I can't afford orchids, but 1 the actual representation of any object in nature . . m which the visible
spare no expense in foreigners. They make one's rooms look so pictur- things of life are transmuted into artistic conventions, and the thing&
esque."7 Explicitly drawn to the sympathies of Ghose's "Oriental that life has not are invented and fashioned for her delight,"U None of
mind," Wilde is not alone in his partiality to the younger poet's exoti- these wider tenets of the aestheticist credo are di •ectly explicated in the
cism. John Addington Symonds, in his review of Primavtra, likewise review in the Pall Mall Gazette. They remain as shadowy possibilities
confesses that uMr.Manmohan Ghose's work possesses a peculiar in- whose insistent invocation, of the kind we have been engaged in, gener-
terest on account of its really notable command of the subtleties of ates something of a storm in the unprepossessing teacup of Wilde's
English prosody and diction, combined with just a touch of foreign incidental piece on yet another incidental volume of fin-de-siecle po-
feeling." 8 Yet where Symonds's attention suffers perhaps from too much etry. There is, however, a single line upon which we might pause a little
surprise in the face of Ghose's English-language skills, and from setting longer, for it gestures toward the discursive oppositions that are the
too small an aperture for the admission of "foreign feeling" (''just a main business of this chapter.
touch"), we can readily situate Wilde's xenophilia in this instance with- Once again, drawing upon an acstheticist lexicon in which the signs
in his relentless wider critique of imperial narcissism. Recall, for in- a ,poetry," an d" cu Iturc " stan d"in one reading for "difference," "free-
•rt""
stance, this startling aphorism from the preface of Dorian Gray: "The dom,"and "alterity," Wilde observes in Ghose's poetic negotiation of
nineteenth-century dislike of Romanticism is the rage of Caliban not theEast-West divide a form of relation that might come to dissolve the
seeing his own face in a glass."9 Some lines from Terry Eagleton's play coercive bonds of imperialism. "His verses," Wikle writes in a rare
Saint Oscararc also apposite for their critical explication of the fierce momenr of sobriety in the piece, "suggest how close 1sthe bond of union
antipathy between Wilde's aestheticist xenophilia and his imperialist thatmight one day bind India to us by other methods than those of
xenophobia: "You subjugate whole races, you condemn the mass of your commerce and military strength." So here we have some faint battle
own people to wretched toil, you have reduced my own nation to misery lines,with the relation of poetry,literature, art on the one side and that
and despair ... You prate of liberty and crush anything that differs from of thecolonial encounter on the other. Yet how difficult it is to foment a
you as soon as it stirs. You look about you and can tolerate no image bur politicsout of such discursive content, as it is precisely the oppositions
your own; the very sight of otherness is intolerable to you.1' 10 The busi- betweenculture and imperialism, literature and history, aesthetics and
ness of art, in context and in its defiant autonomy, is precisely to inter- materialism that postcolonial thought has so scrupulously trained us to
ject a countermanding newness or difference into the self-same world. ~d with suspicion as the first symptom of ideological foul play. Thus
"There steals over us," as Wilde writes of the impulse to creativity, "a JO thedisarming substitution of imperialism with culture proposed by
terrible sense of the necessity for the continuance of energy in the same W'dde,postcolonial analysis is likely to discern only the raw materials of
wearisome round of stereotyped habits, or a wild longing, it may be, CoJonialhegemony: that form of"binding" based on methods of con-
that our eyelids might open some morning upon a world that had been -.it rather than coercion. Does Wilde's review bring us face to face with
refashioned anew in the darkness." 11
chat procedure, detailed by Gauri Viswanathan, whereby the transcen-
Thus in celebrating the "sympathies" of Ghose's "Oriental mindt dental
• categor·es
1 1 ra tu re, "''Ar t, " an d "Cul ture " always ms1d1ously
"L"tc · · ·
docs Wilde observe in his beguiling foreignness the means for imp<>rt- ta "mask of conquest"? Or another, predicated upon the belief that
 Art Art

only in its radical autonomy-that is, its separation from materialism, barty argues, betrays a disabling generic bias that owes its origins to "the
historicism, objectivism-does art obtain its powers of dissidence, earn familiar political desire of the modern to align the world with that
(in context) its anticolonial credentials? To put this more simply, is which was real and rational." Seeking an epistemology always "amena-
aesthetic autonomy-the argument for the freedom of art from the ble to historicist and objectivist treatment," and always suspicious of the
realm of the real, an argument inaugurated within western aesthetics by erratic agency of"vision" and "imagination," modernity iteratively con-
Immanuel Kant's Critique of judgement-a conservative or a radical demns the political to constitutive singularity. 13 Inhospitable to gods,
discourse? spirits, and other supernatural beings, such territory is also unable, for
These questions arc at the heart of the following discussion, which similar reasons, to house the insistent recourse to a "poetic view" of self-
continues the enquiry into the starus of the "political" explicated in determination that Chakrabarty observes at work in the anticolonial
chapter 5. In so doing, it will interrogate-this time under the sign of nationalism of a Tagore. In the face of these prejudices the task of
"art"-the constitutively modern demand for realism in politics man- restoring semantic plenitude to the category of"the political" demands,
ifest in other contexts as an allergy to the revolutionary claims of uto- Chakrabarty says, that we "breathe heterogeneity into the word 'imagi-
pian, metaphysical. affective, and "spiritualist" endeavor. Reading nation' -and, we might add, all other terms within the same typology:
Wtl.de's sentence in praise ofGhosc at face value, as simply and radically poetry, autonomy, art, inventiveness, enthusiasm.1 4 Contiguously, we
anticolonial, I wish to disclose some greater variety in forms of the must reexamine more critically the realist epistemology to which post-
political than modernity allows. Concurrently, it is also my aim to colonialism, among other disciplines in the new humanities, proffers its
mount a postcolonial defense of poetry, to find a model of aesthetic allegiance.
autonomy that might be recoupable within anricolonial politics and A favored legatee of the deeper biases of modern political thought,
thought. To this end, we must first enter into critical relation with postcolonialism's peculiar anticolonial, antiliterary fallacy owes some-
postcolonial orthodoxy, asking how it came to pass that the disciplinary thing to the circumstances in which the discipline emerged, its coarticu-
tasks of anticolonial critique took the form of an anti-aesthcticist fallacy. lation in the late 1970s with the "sociology ofliterature." Let us consider
Second, pursuing a counter to this bias, we will attempt to locate, at the these circumstances briefly. lo 1976, as 1swell known, the University of
interstices of Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics, a model of aesthetic Essexinaugurated a series of historic conferences, symposia, and pub-
autonomy that makes political or anticolonial sense of Wilde's insistent lioations under the rubric of the "Essex Sociology of Literature Project."
polarization of poetry and empire, one wedded to the belief that some- Committed in part to the disciplinary enrichment of sociology, the
times art discloses its radical provenance precisely in its defiant flight project was equally-and often rightly-insistent upon the benefits of
from the realm of the real. aociological analysis for the seemingly moribund field of Literary Srud-
ies.15Informed, John I Jail writes, by the conviction "that literature can
onlybe understood in its social context, or that an external referent is
MASKS OF CONQUEST
necessary for any full comprehension of the text," the sociologization of
The discursive logic whereby anticolonial thought seeks its contempo- literature delivered complex strategies of reading whose full creativity
rary articulation in and as a bias against literary autonomy displays wouldbe realized in work conducted under the sign of"culrural mate-
further symptoms of our impoverished understanding of the polincal rialism" in the British academy and "new historicism" in the American.
that Dipesh Chakrabarty discusses in Provi11cialising
Europe. Starkly These productive effects notwithstanding, the venture displayed even in
visible, as we ~aw, m the prejudices of secularist humanism, to which its incipience symptoms of an unequal partnership, framed by a zealous
western political thought is both heir and sentinel, the "straightforward tutoring of the "soft" discipline by its hardy, empiricist companion. And
identification of the realist or the factual with the political," as Chakra- in time, what beganas an incentive toward methodological reform-
Art Art

designed to bring materialist analysis within the purview of literary Bourdieu's study La Distinction (1979) demonstrated this sociological
criticism-would give way to a feverish assault on any perceived defense resp0nsibility through an unforgiving identification of aesthetic auton-
of aesthetic autonomy emanating from within Anglo-American En- omy as an instrument of bourgeois domination; Anglo-American
glish departments. scholars quickly followed suit, insisting vehemently upon the irreme-
This antipathy toward claims for culture's immunity from the "real" diable symbiosis between "aestheticism" and "conservatism." "Ever
were determined, as Stuart Hail explains, by the founding neo-Marx- since Th~ophile Gautier launched the idea of 'art for art's sake' in a
ism of scholars within the sociology-of-literature movement. 16 Taking vicious polemic against the followers of Fourier and Saint-Simon," Jan
its cue from the work of Lukacs, Goldmann, Williams, and Althusser, Birchallwrites, explicating the terms of combat, "the idea of the auton-
the subdiscipline might well be explained as an elaborate gloss on that omy of art has been a component of conservative ideology."21
famous passage in The German Ideologyin which Marx insists that even In one of those curious accidents of disciplinary history; it was in this
"the phantoms formed in the human brain" are mere sublimates of a moment, when "the political" was reined into war against "literature,"
"material life-process," always "empirically verifiable and bound to ma- that we can also witness the emergence of a congenial critical space
terialist premises," and that consequently uMorality, religion, meta- withinthe sociological humanities for postcolooial elaborations. For the
physics, ail the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of con- project that demanded, in its assault against aesthetic autonomy, a coun-
sciousness ... no longer retain the semblance of independence." 17 As teractive "worlding" of literature was also impelled by a radically plu-
elaborated in the late r970s, this Marxist edict against the illusion of ralizing momentum, bringing art down to level with the empirical vari-
ideological independence found itself newly inflected by a politico- etyofhuman history and sociality. As Catherine Belsey insists, with the
philosophical charge agajnst the very theme of "autonomy" in all its adventof the new sociology in the 1970s,it became the task of radical
discursive incarnations. So where some scholars who were identified teachersin crisis-ridden English departments to transform "the central
with the field under consideration simply dismissed as mythical the ideological apparatus by the introduction of counter-knowledges,
motif of"human autonomy," others such as Catherine Belsey discerned eountcr-meanings which demonstrate the plurality of what might be
in "the knowing autonomous subject" the very "lynch-pin of capital- llid and thought and what can in consequence be dorte."l2 It is not
ism," an ideological portent of Thatcherism, right-wing "nouveaux incidental that Edward Said's Orienta/ism,the inaugural articulation of
philosophies" in France, and the growth of American neoconservatism postcolooialism as an unrelenting critique of "disinterested knowl-
and libertarianism. 18 Or as Boyd Tonkin puts it in an essay from this edges,"
appeared in 1978, in the thick of the sociology-of- literature
period, "conservative publicity" always "adopts a language ... of unfet- Initiative;
and Said's work explicitly dovetailed with the initiative in the
tered liberty and of abstract, transcendent subjectivity" to disguise its tylnposiaat Essex in 1984, which resulted in the publication of the
narrow economic incentives. 19 influentialtwo-volume study Europe and Its Others.Showcasing Said's
This was the basic theoretical agenda which produced the putative l8tay"Orientalism Reconsidered," as well as work by Homi Bhabha,
"crisis in English" of which Chris Baldick has written in The Social Gayatri Spivak, and Lata Mani, the study demonstrates the housing of a
Mission of Eng/uh Criticism.As a result of this sleight of sociological l'Oltcolonial problematic within an initiative whose own radical rnate-
hand, the discipline "English" and its curricular content "Literature" ~sm is inextricable, as we have been arguing, from an anti-aestheticist
were suddenly identified as repositories, bastions, and safe houses for diaJ>ensation.To speak the political (postcolonial, feminist, gay and
the conservative trope of autonomy, and neomaterialism became in- leebian, Marxist) within this space is already and intractably coded as a
vested with the revolutionary chore of displacing, in Stuart Hall's 'Peaking against all aspirations to literary and cultural immunity.
words, "the notion of the radically autonomous text which bad held the Howreadily visible this bias is in the three founding propositions
centre of English literary studies for so long."20 On the continent Pierre t structure Said's magisterial Orienta/ism: One, there is no such
Art Art
thing as a pure or disinterested knowledge formation. Two, whenever Oscar Wilde's gentle claim that their radical autonomy from the gross,
knowledge protests its purity too much it is a symptom of that knowl- ,natcrialrealities of imperialism arc precisely what enable literature and
edge's lack of the very purity to which it lays claim, and the extent of a artto proffer a "bond of union that might one day bind India to u~ b}
knowledge's interestedness in power is in direct proportion to its pro- other methods than those of commerce and military strength." There
testations of disinterest or autonomy. And three, most famously, Orien- arc,however, two routes through which we might attempt a poskolo-
talism is such a form ofimplicated knowledge posturing as autonomou~ aialrecuperation of the ethic hinted at by Wilde. The first i, sugi.;~,1,·J
or disinterested. These themes are further a~gmcnted in Culture and in Priya Joshi's /,, Another Cou,,try (2002), a study that counteracts the
Imperialism,especially through Said's insistent designation of postcolo- biasof Viswanathan, Said, and the sociology-of-literature movement
nial theoretical practice as an effort to take "Western cultural forms ... againstliterary autonomy through a subtle shift of scholarly focus from
out of the autonomous enclosures in which they have been protected," questions of colonial intent to those of colonized reception-that is,
to place them instead "in the dynamic global environment created by fiom the politics of the colonial literary-cultural-aesthetic.commodity
imperialism."23 to the hitherto occluded archive of colonized consumption. Working
So, I suggest, it was as disciplinary participant in the neomaterialist .ery much within the materialist domain of postcolonial sociological
idiom of the new humanities academy in the late 1970sthat early post- analysis,Joshi tells another set of competing stories in a painstaking
colonialism yoked its own belated anticolonial imperatives to a so- demonstration of the authority and selectivity with which colonized
ciological refutation or "worlding" of aestheticism, literature, and cul- Indian readers received imperial "literariness,'' al>Vaysastutely distin-
ture, that it acquired, in other words, the antiliterary fallacy adumbrated guishingthe romance of the English book from the realism of English
in Gauri Viswanathan's Mas/tsofConquest,invoked at the outset of dus celonialism.To some extent our own project borrows from this initiative
discussion. To recapitulate the arguments: much in the spirit of Said's initt effort to delineate the story of Ghose and Wilde as a counternarra-
oeuvre, Viswanathan insists axiomatically upon imperialism's enmesh- tift.revealing in it a confident anticolonial negotiation with the claims
ment with literary culture, arguing specifically that in an age of empire fJiMStem aesthetic and literary autonomy. Yet ultimately it is theoret-
the rhetoric of literary or cultural immunity is always evidence of an ically unsatisfactory to ascribe our quarrel with postcolonial orthodoxy
attempt to mask the harsh reality of imperial interests: "The introduc- tinthe name of Wilde and Ghose) only to a matter of differing or
tion of English Literature marks the effacement of a sordid history of eompetingarchives, for such a strategy does little to unsettle the founda-
colonialist expropriation, material exploitation, and class and race op- tionalclaims of that realist epistemology to which our notions of the
pression behind European world dominance. The English literary text politicalhave long been hostage. To breathe heterogeneity, as Chakra-
functioning as a surrogate Englishman in his highest and most perfect llutydoes, into a "poetic view" of anticolonial self-determination , we
state, becomes a mask for economic exploitation ... successfully cam- tbu8talso, and urgently, attempt a radical rehabilitation of the very
ouflaging the material activities of the coloniser ... The split between tlaemc of aesthetic autonomy, pursuing the postcolonial sociologizingof
the material and the cultural practices of colonialism is nowhere sharper literatureinto the matrix of its philosophical antipathy to .i.estheticism.
than in the progressive refinement of the rapacious, exploitative, and Ouraim in so doing is to supplement the counrcrnarrativc of colonized
ruthless actor of history into the reflective subject oflireraturc."2◄ llladcrshipwith a countermodel of literary autonomy that mighc be
Ag;iinst this perceived literary conspiracy, Viswanathan and other Congenial,as we have been saying, to the ethico-political demands of
like-minded postcolonial scholars have called categorically for armed lllticolonial thought.
historical response: unmasking acstheticist protestation to disclose the To this end, we must negotiate the "problem" oflmmanuel Kant's
unpalatable reality of imperial content. Needless to say, there 1slittle Oriti9,uofJudgement,a work famously identified by Bourdieu in Dis-
space within this theoretical paradigm to read as political or anticolonial tl,,ttion:A SocialCritiqueoftheJudgementofTasteas the source-text for
Art Art
the bourgeois trope of aesthetic autonomy, and one that is guilty as space we are seeking for an adequate reading of Oscar Wilde's review of
charged of imbricating all subsequent aestheticism with a surreptitious Primavera.
will-to-power. In Culture and Imperialism,Said Likewisenames Kantian
aesthetics as the founding paradigm for the motivated lie of cultural
'fHE SPACE OF AUTONOMY
immunity in western thought. As he writes, "Cultural experience or
indeed every cultural form is radically, quintessentially hybrid, and if it In Distinction,it will be remembered, Pierre Bourdieu charges Kant1an
has been the practice in the West since Immanuel Kant to isolate cul- aesthetics with a disenchanted negation of the social and ordinary
tural and aesthetic realms from the worldly domain, it is now time to world. The autonomous, "selbststiindig"sphere of aesthetic experience,
rejoin them." 25 Thus, we might say after Said, in its definin_gcommit- or "judgment," is predicated, he argues, upon a constitutive "disgust"
ment to the "worlding" of culture, sociological postcolonialism is eo with the realm of necessity. Although obscured, strains of nausea and
ipso a departure from the principles of Kantian aesthetics. Furthermore, nihilism underscore the ascetic imperatives of Kantian ethics and epis-
given the logic of this 6.ight~from cultural immunity toward cultural temology, specifically (we argued in chapter 5) in their neurotic rework-
materialism-it also tends, theoretically and implicitly, toward the field ing of the expressivist dream of freedom as the austere desert of"sepa-
of Hegelian aesthetics: originary, it will be remembered, in offering ration": between the knowing subject and the external world, and
"materialism" and "historicism" as a riposte to Kant's appeal for the between the rational subject and her own unregulated nature. Radical
radical freedom of aesthetic experience. Before: Hegel, Kai Hammcr- freedom in the Kantian sense, Charles Taylor tcJls us, "seemed only
meister tells us, "no phHosophical attempt had been made ... to deduce possible at the cost of a diremption with nature, a division within myself
the necessity of historical changes in art from an ovenirching principle betweenreason and sensibility more radical than anything the material-
that itself depends on historical anfold.ing."26 To choose Hegel over i8t, utilitarian Enlightenment had dreamed, and hence a division with
Kant (or vice versa), however, is no simple matter, as we saw earlier, for external nature from whose causal laws the free self must be radically
what look very much like radical differences between the two philoso- independent, even while phenomenally his behaviour appeared to con-
phers often disguise deep and complicating affinities: for example, the form."17Committed unforgivingly in all his philosophical oeuvre to this
Hegelian critique of the solipsistic Kantian subject (re)produces, in the self-dividing project, Kant nevertheless offers in his third critique, The
end, the logic of an even more violently solipsistic community. A similar CritiqueofJudgement (1790)-although in a manner barely perceptible
problem, I will argue, attends the implicit choice of Hegel over Kam andquickly recanted-a sudden deflection, amtra Bourdieu, from the
that guides postcolonialism in its assault on aesthetic autonomy. For monkishness of his own thought. For where this critique will, in the
where certain appeals to the immunity of aesthetic experience in Kant spiritof its companion volumes, come to found the freedom of the
are generative of that elitist, imperialist subject-of-power condemned subjectof judgment, or of aesthetic experience, upon her uncom-
by Bourdieu and Said, the countervailing subject of Hegelian material- promising "separateness" from nature, it will also, if nervously, instanti-
ism does not really deliver an alternative amenable to anticolonial ap- ate a protest. This protest will claim as a salve to the burden of her
propriation. Indeed, at least within the limited field of aesthetic theory, rq,aratenessthe subject of judgment's autonomy not only from "sen-
closer examination reveals clements within Kantian aestheticism to be sibility"but also from "reason," not only from "nature" but also from the
far more recoupable for anticolonial use than the harsh postulates of capturing,universalizing concept-categories of"cognition" and "moral-
Hegelian materialism. Nonetheless, to be adequately responsive to th c ity."It is this divided idiom of"autonomy" in Kant's third critique-the
complaints of historicism, such a recuperation of Kant can only be bafflingliminafay of the subject of aesthetic experience-that we need
effected as it were, after Hegel-that is, as a post- Hegelian critique of 10 examine more closely in the following discussion.
judgme~t. Such too is the critique in which we might find the political The experience of beauty, Kant writes-that is, the faculty of pica-
Art Art
sure or displeasure-occurs at the unmarked threshold between knowl- "autonomy" to the safeguard of"separation." As he notes in a moment
edge and desire, neither purely a priori nor purely empirical. Registered of philosophical panic, even though the reflective activity of judgment
through the unique "reflective" capacities of the subject, it signals the resists caprure by the possessive ditio of cognition, its claim to mean-
action of musing "upon the objects of nature with a view to getting a ingfulness (to philosophic consideration) demands submission of its
thoroughly interconnected whole of cxperience."28 The organicity of hitherto whimsical estimate of nature to a project of "finality": "an
undcrstandjng to whlch reflection aspires, however, presupposes, in a endeavour to bring, where possible, its heterogeneous law& under
Kantian idiom, some action of those universal concept-categories with- higher, though still always empirical, laws."31 Where outside the realm
out which the world would remain chronically unintelligible, and on of concept-categories may we recognize the cohering moment of final-
account of whlch the world must eventually be separatec;Ifrom the ity? In the experience of pleasure, Kant avers with perverse circularity:
desiring sel£ Yet in thls instance-in face of the beautiful-reflective an experience restricted, furthermore, to the subject of judgment, to her
judgment is never entirely captured by the categories of cognition. faculty of "taste" rather than to any quality in the object(s) being ap-
Tending, in the sensations of pleasure and displeasure, toward the em- prehended. Thus, finality does its work by reintroducing a normative
pirical wealth of nature, it can only hope without knowing for sure that breach between subject and object of pleasure: a state of "separation"
nature will yield the "systematic unity" upon whlch another kind of issuing this time from the irremediably self-protective Kantian subject's
freedom (from self-division, from the alienating partiality of purely newly snobbish credo of "disinterest," a freedom from interest in the
rational knowledge) depends. Thus the subject of judgment gazes upon materiality or "necessity" of the objects that provoke the subject's plea-
nature, awaiting what Kant calls the "lucky chance" of intelligibility, sure.Herein lies that other ground for the autonomy of aesthetic expe-
always knowing that chance might not prove favorable. "The specific rience so fiercely condemned, and with such good cause, by Bourdieu:
variety of the empirical laws of nature," Kant writes, "might still be so an experience of the beautiful predicated upon a disenchanted and
great as to make it impossible for our understanding to discover in negatingbreak from the material world, uncontaminated by the base
nature an intelligible order.'' 29 The characterizing "confusion" and "het- perilsof want, need, and necessity. As Kant has it, "Of all ... kinds of
erogeneity" of nature may well thwart any effort "to make a consistent delight,that of taste in the beautiful may be said to be the one and only
context of experience."30 Aesthetic experience thus includes in its in- disinterested and free delight; for with it, no interest ... exhorts ap-
ception a movement of hazardous surrender to the realm of difference- proval. .. All interest presupposes a want, or calls one forth; and being a
Kant calls thls the "dwelling place," or "domicilium"-designated by ground determining approval, deprives the judgement on the object of
nature's ineluctable contingency. 31 Anytenancy withln thls domicilium, its freedom."s4
however, is simultaneously and vertiginously a gesture of autonomy The Kantian thematic of disinterest has been justly censured by
from the legislative realm, or ditio, ruled over by cognitive concept- others besides Bourd.ieu for introducing a narrative of death into the
categories.32 So in that initial moment of its exposition which we are trope of aesthetic autonomy, indeed into the very experience of the
interrogating here, Kant's third critique liberates the possibility that the beautiful.In its ascetic brutality Kantian disinterestedness, according to
autonomy of aesthetic experience consists at least in part of a capacity to Nietzsche, paralyz.es the will, wrenching from its grasp the ''promise of
dwell with difference. Let us name thls strain of aesthetic auronomy happiness" that Stendhal once witnessed in the beautiful. 15 So too,
"the ethics of domicilium." Giorgio Agamben sees in the self-denying criterion of judgment and
It is only very briefly, however, that Kant surrenders thesubject ofh'.s tastea reduction of the ''living body" of art to "an interminable skeleton
critique into the risky ethics of domiciliurn, quickly recoiling from ~s of dead cltments.'' 36 lt is, we might concur, precisely while possessed by
tentative compromises with the discourse of radical freedom to c~in this deathly, narcissism that Kantian judgment also declares war on
new terms with which to effect a diremption from nature, thus restoring difference, giving rein yet again to a self-englobing subjectivity freely
 Art Art

defending, in the name ofits own ethical and epistemological safety, the In Pierre Bourdieu's estimation, disinterest requires urgent material-
unchecked territorial expansion of its ego. Thus misperceiving, in Terry ist operation: a reconnection of aesthetic tissue with social sinew that
Eagleton's terms, "the quality of the object" for a "pleasurable co- might reveal the "eye" of taste to be "a product of history," underscored
ordination ofits own powers," the disinterested Kantian subject of aes- by the belief that "aesthetic perception is necessarily historical.'' 1v His·
thetic judgment arrives at an imperialist denouement: "once I am estab- tory is thus presumably the "lack" that disinterest enforces within the
Hshed in ... autonomy, I can then proceed in the real social world to realm of aesthetics, whose reintroduction will complete the picture, as it
strip those others of their own equivalent indcpendcnce." 37 In addi- were, restoring a lost plenitude to art and to its experiencing subject(s).
tion, not only docs disinterest potentially liberate in judgment the But in fact, "history," in Bourdicu's sense, is not a reparative, organic
difference-er;idicating territorialism to which other Kantian subjects agency, seeking to fill in with the excluded stuff of file, nature, and
are prone, it also bestows on the facultyof taste the equally homogeniz- matter the barren spaces of "separation" to which the subject of judg-
ing action of a civilizing imperative. For those privileged with taste, ment is condemned. It enters rather the domain of the aesthetic as a
Kant tells us, are eotitled if not obliged to demand consensus: "he must self-righteous invading army might: convinced that its encroachments
. believe that he has reason for demanding a similar delight from every- are liberatory; replacing a repressive older regime with a revolutionary
one" (50); "when he puts a thing on a pedestal and calls it beautiful, he alternative. So within the pages of Distinction, if the realm of "disin-
demands the same delight in otliers" (sr); "He judges not merely for terest," or what Bourdieu calls the "pure aesthetic," stands simply and
himself;but for all men ... Thus he demands this agreement of them" categorically for bad (conservative) politics, that of materialism, or ne-
(52). Let us name this demanding strain of aesthetic autonomy "the cessity,is posited as simply a good (revolutionary) alternative. In other
colonising imperative of disinterest." 38 words,if aestheticism is a corollary to a file of bourgeois case; privilege,
To summarize: we may discern in the vexed fiber of Kant's third and domination, then "objectivism," "historicism," and "sociologism"
critique an idiom stretched between two strains of aesthetic autonomy. conversely designate a space of and for the oppressed."° This is precisely
The first, which we have called "the ethics of domicilium," construes theopposition that we arc attempting to complicate, not least because it
the experience of beauty as freedom from the possessive concept-cate- excuses an unexamined anti-aestheticism in Bourdieu's thought and,
gories of cognition and morality, and in so doing releases the subject of concomitantly, the anti-literary fallacy within postcolonial orthodoxy.
judgment into a psychically perilous cohabitation with difference. Th_e In Distinction, as i11Bourdieu's later The Rules ofArt, the proposition
second, which we have called "the colonizing imperative of disinterest," "historicism is better politics than aestheticism" collapses into the adja-
recoils from these compromises of reflection to reclaim for judgment an cent propositions "sociology is better than philosophy," "there is no
autonomy premised on division from nature. This puts us again in face political value in abstract thought," "the real and the factual are the only
of a territorializing and civili~ng subject, constitutively at war with acceptable realm for the political," and "history is better than art." 41
alterity. To make brief reference to our guiding concerns in this discus- Subjecting the "colonising imperative of disinterest" to materialist op-
sion, the first strain of autonomy is clearly amenable to the demands of eration would appear at first glance to be a somewhat drastic procedure
anticolonial thought, while the second is clearly antithetical to it. Let us that threatens the very space of art, leaving little scope for elaborating
issue a tender, in the name of anticolonial imperatives, for some discur- the distinctly aestl1ctic "ethic of domicilium" that we wished to safe-
sive surgery that might amputate the limb of "disinterest"-already guard. But perhaps we might find within tho category "history" a simi-
fileJess, by the report of Nietzsche er al.-from the body of "domi- lar,indeed improved, ethic, congenial to difference and uncontami-
cilium," but let the surgery be delicate enough to preserve, to keep safe, nated, as its apostles claim, by the exclusionary prerogatives of Kantian
that capacity to live among foreigners, aliens, and strangers that is se· disinterest.
cretcd within the aq,,uments of Kant's third critique. ln Hegel's oeuvre, however, originary, as suggested earlier, in its
Art Art

specifically historicist riposte to the terms and conditions of Kantian feared, the subject and object, subjective will and objective laws, arc
deontology, the contest between "history" and "art" (objectivism and similar and identical, rendered "same" through grace of that shared
aestheticism) achieves a strangely colonial dimension, ahd nawhere subjectivity distributed in raw, unrealized form by the itinerant Spirit
more so than in his influential Philosophyof History. 1n this work, zeal- on its travels. True freedom, in context, obtains from a recognition that
ous as ever in the task of allocating civilizational priority, Hegel makes a the world is a familiar place, buc a recognition that can only be liber-
crucial distinction between those cuJtures (good and progressive) that ated within history and as thought-that is, in shape of the cogrutive
possess history and those (bad and retrogressive) that possess only po- concept-category (which Kant relinquishes in the third critique). In
etry. "Legends, Ballad-stories, Traditions," he writes, "must be ex- precis: the freedom disclosed within history (through the concept-
cluded from ... history. These are but dim and hazy forms of historical form) is palpably less self-dividing-than the lonely and austere auton-
apprehension, and therefore belong to nations whose intelligence is but omy jealously safeguarded by the disinterested subject of Kantian deon-
half awakened ... The domain of reality ... affords a very different basis tology. Here we may be in face of a claim that might satisfy a Nietzsche
in point of firmness from that fugitive and shadowy element, in which or an Aga.mben, except that in making the business of freedom so much
were engendered those legends and poetic dreams whose historical more existentially comfortable for the subject of history, Hegel delivers
prestige vanishes, as soon as nations have attained a mature individu- us at a scene startlingly similar to the one disclosed by "the colonising
ality.''42Thus India and specifically the "Hindoo" race, although gifted imperative of disinterest." Hegel's assault on the "separation" upon
with "treasures ofliterarure," nevertheless has "no history.'' 43 Only Eu- which "disinterest" is predicated does not, of course, liberate the subject
rope, Hegel insists, with its universal social forms, is equipped to pro- into an "ethic of domicilium" but into an even more radical order of
duce the empirically grounded "prose" of history.44 In its Hegelian similitude, replacing what Mary Louise Pratt describes as "master-of-
detour, the proposition "history is better than art" gathers up as a re- all-1-survey" with what Helene Cixous describes as "the empire of the
siduum, and retains a faint trace of, an adjacent proposition: "Europe is self-same." 47 "Recognition," we might say, is to a Hegelian idiom what
better than Asia," a secret code that further complicates the exclusive "disinterest" is to a Kantian: close cousins both despite the ostensible
entitlement to "freedom" of the elite possessors of history and ruthlessly differences between their progenitors.
withheld from those limited to poetry. "Universal history," Hegel thun- It is upon the stage of history, Hegel writes in his Introduction to
ders, "shows the development of the consciousness of Freedom on the Aesthetics, that the violent drama of recognition will be performed. Here
part of the Spirit, and of the consequent realisation of that Freedom." 45 "man" will bring "himself before himself in whatever is directly given to
Or to inflect this proposition otherwise, as Robert Young does, we him,in what is present to him externally, to produce himself and therein
might claim that Hegelian world history "not only involves what Fred- to recognise himsel£ This aim he achieves by altering external things
ric Jameson describes as the wresting of .freedom from the realm of whereon· he impresses the seal of his inner being and in which he now
necessity but always also the creation, subjection and final appropria- finds again his characteristics. Man does this in order, as a free subject,
tion of Europe's others.''46 to strip the external world of its inflexible foreignness and to enjoy in the
So what, we might ask, precisely privileges the claims of hist-orical shape of things only an external realisation of himself."48 What his-
freedom over and above those of aesthetic autonomy? Of Hegelian tory enables, furthermore, is exacerbated by the difference eradicating
materialism over those of Kantian deontology? Such autonomy, Hegel "thinking-spirit" or concept-form through "the power and activity of
contends, as is defended by the monkish, stripped down, and disin- cancelling again the estrangement in which it gets involved."•~ It is
terested Kantian subject, is simply misguided in its demand for separa- precisely in the name of this power to cancel estrangement that colo-
tion from the external world. Far from being strange to each other, as nialism, according to Cixous and Clement, lays its dubious claim to
Art Art

history. ln their words, "I saw that the great, noble 'advanced' countries and untested, this incipient "ethics oftbmicilium" was too quickly
established themselves by expelling what was 'strange'; excluding it but repressed by the prerogatives of"separamn," too closely fettered to-
not dismissing it; enslaving it. A commonplace gesture of history: there although not entirely eliminated by-:lc colonizing imperatives of
have to be two races-the masters and the slaves."50 "disinterest.'' The political potential, f«.ourends, of aesthetic auton-
Arc there any means that could puncture the opaque fa~dc of sim- omy, a.sin Kant, thus remained unreafutd, deferred indefinitely until
ilitude engineered by Hegelian historicism? The surprising answer, to discursive circumstances proved more picpitious.In large part, it is to
which we must attend very closely, is offered by Hegel himself in his historicism and materialism that we Owt:hisdisappointed insight into
writings on aesthetics. As the chief venue for the drama of recognition, the contaminating perils of Kantian "O!ulterest."History, we might
history, Hegel tells us, is assisted in its commitment to the su~ject's self- say,proves better than aestheticism in itiilemand, following Bourdieu,
perpetuation by a variety of cultural forms-specifically philosophy, Said, and Hegel, that art must be "interes'.ed" in the world. In pressing
religion, and art. Yet if enlisted as a foot soldier to this project, the realm its case for "interestedness" (against thetparation and estrangement of
of art or aesthetic experience would appear ro fail chronically in its subject and object), however, Hegelian ktoricism reverts tiredly to the
assigned task, refusing containment by historic.al necessity and by the colonizing undercurrent of Kantian tho$t, sovereign in its discursive
regulative economy of the concept-category. ln Hegel's words: "the mastery over difference but for the uncoctainableheterogeneity of ar-
beauty of art does in fact appear in a form which is expressly opposed to tistic production. Art, we might say, tlaispresents itself as the "re-
thought and which thought is compelled to destroy in order to pursue mainder" in both Kantian and Hegelia111nougbt,straining for freedom
its own characteristic activity."51 Why? Because, as Kant recognized too from the possessive claims of"disinrerca" and "recognition," through
well, poised in that liminal space between reason and sensibility, cogni- its intractable congeniality to alterity. Si.chis the utopian possibility
tion and nature, general and particular, universal and contingent, aes- thatTheodor Adorno and Martin Hciiggerhave also beheld in the
thetic experience ih ever susceptible to the heterogeneous terrain domain of art and poetry. For both, art,is, realm that simultaneously
marked in each instance by the second term in this series, intransigent dwellsrunong and gives dwelling to di&;cnce,is a space hospitable to
in the face of the cultural and civilizational diminishment demanded by the singular and the nonidentical, one thitoffers refuge to the induct-
Hegelian historicism. ~i Indeed aesthetic autonomy-in Hegel's words, ablethingness of things, preserving the trhassortment of the world, its
"the freedom of production and configurations that we enjoy in the unqualified empiricism, in what Heicltggerdesignates the liberated
beauty of art"-is a function precisely of art's commitment to the "man- "interior of the,- heart's space." 55 1t s in this capacity to offer
ifold and variegated appearance" of nature, to its "multiple variety of asylum that art lays claim to radical a\JiJnomyfrom the leveling and
content," in a word, to differencc. 53 Accordingly, because of its con- conservative actions of history and ~ht, resisting, for Adorno, the
flict with the governing imperatives of history and the thinking spirit, difference-eradicating nature of the totiitarian concept and, for Hei-
art, as Hegel so infamously demands, must die. Proper fulfilment degger,the colonizing and separating vdence of the thinking-spirit. 56
of the project of recognition demands that we pass "over from the Let us, in one last act of naming, call dtisethics of and for aesthet-
poetry of the imagination into the prose of thought," inro the "prose of icism-that is, of post-Hegelian domio1.urn-"the paradigm of inter-
history.'' 54 ested autonomy."
Let us review the terms of our discussion: searching for some anti- It is, I suggest, precisely such a forlllofuinterested autonomy" that
colonial ground from which to defend aestheticism (against a historicist ManmohanChose is likely to have eoountered in Oscar Wilde: one
and sociological imperative), we found in the nervous inauguration of demandingliberation from the prosaicsumeness of imperi:u realism
Kant's third critique a strain of aesthetic autonomy structured by a andnarcissism in its flight toward the r..rnerousstrange outcasts vari-
capacity to reside, nonviolently, with unlikeness. As yet rudimentary ouslyexcluded from the privileged mair:trtam. In what remains of this
 Art Art

discussion we will elaborate this conjecture through a closer look at the achieve the English education and comportment devoutly wished for
story of the brief and accidental convergence between the lives of th.em by their father, Kristo Dhone Chose, then civil medical officer of
Wilde, Irish interloper in the imperial metropole, and Chose, colonial Rangpur in northeastern Bengal. In time, the harsh features of imperi-
aspirant in the same. Wilde needs little introduction, but what of alism would substantially diminish that love for England with which
Chose? Known principally as one of the brothers of Aurobindo Ghose the elder G hose had been afflicted during his medical trai.njng at Aber-
(the extremist anticolonial revolutionary, poet, philosopher, and mystic, deen Unjversity. However, as yet in that state of uncomplicated anglo
encountered in chapter 5), Marunohan Chose enjoyed a brief tenancy philia to whjch cultured men of his generation were prone, he deposited
within the emerging culture of English aestheticism between 1888and his sons into the care of the Manchester congregational minister Wil-
1894,before returning reluctantly to the inequities of colonial India to liam H. Drewett, leaving strict instructions that they be disallowed "the
take up the post of assistant professor in English at Patna College. acquaintance of any Indian or ... any Indian influence.">7
Haunted for the remainder of his life by the radical discrepancy of In September 1884.,after a few years of erratic study at the Manches-
character between his "aestheticist" friends in England and his colonial ter Grammar School, Manmohan and Aurobindo were enrolled at St.

governors in India-between, we might say, the seemingly disparate Paul's in London, where Laurence Binyon had been unhappily in resi-
worlds of English Literature and English Imperialism-the strangely dence as a foundation scholar from May 1881.Instantly drawn into
vexed figure ofManmohan Chose supplies a means to reengage, micro- friendship with the exotic Ghose, Binyon records bis compelling attrac-
historically, both with postcolonialism's insistence upon a neeessaryeol- tion to Ghose's rare "capacity to bejntoxicated by.poetry." 58 And it was
lusion of European culture and imperialism and with its consequent poetry-its earnest reading and adolescent outpouring-that was the
allergy to the discourse of aesthetic and cultural autonomy. What was it chief matter of Ghose's relationship with Binyon. Exchanging ani-
in a colonial subject like Manmohan Chose that rendered him-as we mated letters about new literary discoveries, the boys extended passion-
will see-so very susceptible to the culture of aestheticism, especially in ate support to each other's early verse e.ffons. "You are the only one,"
its Wildean exemplification? What were the costs, the gains, if any, of Ghose proclaimed in 1887,"who gives me any encouragement to write;
such susceptibilities for a young Indian foreigner in the heart of Em- and I am sure it cannot all be in vain for I know you would tolerate
pire? And what might aestheticism havelooked like to a subject such as nothing but true poetry." 59 Such interchange would result in the shared
Chose? Let us engage some of these questions directly. authorshipof Primavera, and in years to come, after Ghose had left for
Indiain 1894,Binyon would remain committed to promoting and pub-
lishing his poetry. 60
PORTRAIT OF A FRIENDSHIP
Intensely literary in their affect, what was it that accounted for the
The story of Manmohan Ghose's transactions with ae~theticism is expressivesingularity of poetry, of art, for these two young men at the
framed almost entirely by the narrative of his lifelong friendship w:itb historicalmoment in which they came to face each other as schoolboys
the poet, dramatist, translator, art historian, and critic Laurence Bin- and as undergraduates? What, in other words, was so rare about that
yon. The two met at St. Paul's in London, overlapped for a while at mutual capacity for poetic intoxication of which, Binyon laments, he
Oxford, and maintained a correspondence long after Ghose's deparrure "found no trace" in his classmates, and that Chose would find dis-
for India. Of these letters only Ghosc's survive, documenting in the rich tres$ingly displaced in favor of athletics.at Oxford? "The sole success of
language of affect the emergence of an unlikely intercultural friendship allattempts at union i's in Athletics," Chose wrote. "I have no grudge
within the nourishing subculture oflate Victorian decadence. against athletics ... But it grieves me to see such fine physical endow-
Chose arrived in England in 1879along with his two brothers Bc- ments and activities lacking what would so enhance their pleasure and
noybhushan and Aurobindo, all summarily removed from India to -..lue-a little more of reflective and appreciative powers." 61
Art Art

In Binyon's case the category "poetry" emerges and does its work in prose to quarantine the best from the worstofEurope; thus "poetry," far
equal and opposite reaction to the category "prose," shorthand in his from occluding the material, prose realities of imperial force, brings
rualect for Victorian utilitarianism, insularity, inflexibility-in a word, them starkly into relief. It is always the agency of remembering rather
1
'philistinism." 62 To these categories and their antagonism he returned d1an forgetting, a gesture of refusal rather than submission, a means of
throughout his life, once de$cribing the boyhood trauma of St. Paul'~ exposing rather than masking the bad faith of colonial conquest. I lerc
shift in location from the erratic and impractical bylanes of Chea pside we must emphasize that in Ghose's usage (as also in Binyon's) the ~cries
to an expanse of well-ordered sports grounds as a move "to Hammer- paetry-art-culture inhabits a transcendental and utopian rather than
smith and prose."63 An essay of 1912 1 "The Return to Poetry," elaborates gcohistorical or civilizational schema. Incontrovertible proof of an im-
the theme, acclaiming the twentieth century for auguring the triumph proved ethical or existential capacity, it belongs to no culture in particu-
of a "poetic view" over the Newtonian "prose view of the world" where larand is by no means the monopoly of the West. A "reflecrive",ability
"all is fixed, matter is finality."64 In this essay, poetry's conquest of to enjoy Shelley (rather than de Qiincey) or Simonides (rather than
"prose" is enabled by, indeed predicated upon, the admission of non- Mimnermus) does not testify to the cultural triumph of a putative
western or "oriental'' knowledges within the monochromatic plains of civilizing mission. So Gbose attests in a highly strung lener to Binyon
western epistemology: "The secret of this art is all in the paradoxes of in y887- "People have a mistaken idea: they think England has brought
Lao-tzu, and in his d0€trine of the Tao, -rhe Way,-the ever-moving, civilisation to India. India had a civilisation when the English were
ever-changing, eternal and universal rhythm oflife.'' 6' So too, if more barbarians, and it was there just the same when England negotiated
simply, does Binyon conceive of"poetry" in his boyhood, as a space of India into her hands (I won't say conquered, for India was never con-
and for the foreign, and as such embodied in and conjured by his friend queredby the English ... ). We do not want our civilisation done away
Manmohan Ghose. In a memoir published as an introduction to with, and European civilisation brought in."D7 In the same letter, con-
Ghose's posthumous Love Songsand Elegies,he recalls how Ghose's cernedin the main with praise ofBinyon, Arnold, and Lodge (in that
capacity for poetic intoxication instantly brought with it "a breath from order),Ghose moves with case, and without any apparent contradic-
a world outside the wodd of habit," his passionate recitations of Shake- tion, into the sharp rheroric of anticolonial polemic, excoriating the Raj
speare quintessentially foreign to the prosy sameness of Hammersmith: for"the devilishness of their machinery of tyranny," and as a "system of
«The legendary East seemed suddenly to have projected a fragment of government ... rotten to the core ... everything ... in favour of the
itself into our little world of everyday things and humdrum studies, rulersand to the destruction ... of the ruled." 68 In the course of his long
disturbing it with colour, mystery, romance." 66 In adult life it is the tenure as assistant professor of English in a variety of Indian institu-
ethics of"poetry," thus envisioned, that would lead Binyon into a career tions,Ghose would continue to advance the cause of English Literature
pioneering in its commitment to introducing and promoting non- II a gesture against the lapsed imagination of the imperial project. An
western art and thought within the western world. In forty years ar the obituaryfrom one of his students, Nirendranath Roy, foregrounds
British Museum he would consolidate Oriental art collections, write Gbose'spedagogic ability to summon "poetry" as a force with which to
and lecture extensively on nonwestern philosophies and religions, and ClOUntervai]rather than obscure colonial rapacity, conjuring for his sru-

adapt a range of Asian legends for the English stage. ~ts "not the West of economic exploitation and diplomatic dodges
For Binyon, then, the category "poetry" amplifies a muted but prin- Withwhich we a.retoo familiar-but the ... West represented by Soph-
cipled idiom devoted to an internal critique of empire: breaching irs Odesand Shakespeare . . . Raphael and Velazquez, Beethoven and
prosaic realism to receive, gratefully, the romance of artful strangers. MOUrt. ltwas in the atmosphere of this Europe that Professor Ghose
Working this same taxonomy through the somewhat more fraughteX- &.ed.
moved and had his being.''69
perience of colonization, Ghose in turn uses the antinomy of p0etryao d Some lineaments of the "prose" versus "poetry" theme animating the
Art Art

friendship of Ghose and Binyon show up in the pages of Primavera, in the language? They roll above as in a sphere that absolutely disdains
largely in an unmodulated elegiac register, lamenting at large the im- any conception of the divine passions and crimes of the multitude." 74
passable if unoriginal chasm between the ideal world of youth, love, and Clearly, we might note as a theme to which we will return, both friends
beauty on the one hand and the real world of time, loss, and monality understood that the eJjte "sphere" of political disengagement was not
on the other. Every now and then, however, a more accomplished note only distinct from but in some way antithetical to the equally empyrean
strikes home, as in Binyon's "Youth," turning adolescent clich~ into the "sphere" of aesthetic autonomy.
language of social complaint: "How keep unquench'd / and free/ "Mid Interleaved by the variegated subculture of their times, the friend-
others" commerce and economy/ Such ample visions, oft in alien air / ship of Ghose and Binyon found its proper aestheticist provenance
Tamed to the measure of the common kind?" 70 within the secret enclaves of Pater's Oxford into which Binyon arrived
Although peculiar to the temperaments and circumstances of the in July 1888,one year after Ghose; this was also the year in which the
friendships it puts to song, Primavera was also finally a creature of its third edition of The RenaiJSance,the unofficial bible of English aestheti-
time, expressing, as John Addington Symonds observed in his notice for cism, appeared, this time with a modified portion of its controversial
the Academy, the unmistakable "note of the latest Anglican aesthetic conclusion restored. 75 After dining quietly with Pater on 24 March 1892,
school," with, we might add, its doctrinal commitment to the autonomy Binyon left with a gift from the great man, typifying the peculiar aes-
of art. From its beginnings in 1884 the compact between Ghose and thetic of fin-de-siecle decadence: "a little box of incense our talk having
Binyon was ripe for aestheticist elaboration, consistently manifesting chanced on old-fashioned scents, gums & spices." 7~ It was in Oxford
those seemingly paradoxical tastes and symptoms that would find their that both Binyon and Ghosc widened their social sphere to include
apotheosis and proper political charge, as we will see, in the figure of mutual acquaintances who led them inexorably, Ghose in particular,
Oscar Wilde. Thus while their voracious reading was dominated by into the unremarked fringes of Oscar Wilde's circle. Yet the trajectory
Swinburne, direct in intellectual line of descent from Thfophile Gau- that gives the name uaestheticjsm" to their embryonic negotiations of
tier, it was equally possessed by Walt Whitman, sage oflate Victorian the opposition of "prose" and "poetry" was also one thar broached the
radicalism, especially in its homosexual and .vegetarian protestations. 71 first signs of strain between the friends, Ghose's excitable temperament
Worshipful of Arnold, the much berated object of postcolonial critique, having responded rather more fervently than Binyon's quieter nature to
they also maintained an intellectual diet that turned hungrily to the the newinBuences around them.
vague socialist tracts characteristic of the era. 72 ln February r888, true to The fault lines appear in a set of some three letters from Ghose to
the spirit of thjs bibliography and while still a schoolboy, Binyon con- Binyon between rS February and 27 February 1888, each protesting,
troversially supported a motion in favor of socialism at a debate orga- almost in the same breath, the twinned pressures of an inchoate and
nized by St. Paul's Union Society; and in 1891he supported another at unspeakable passion on the one hand and-in a sublimating register-
Oxford's Gryphon Club proposing "that it is the opinion of this House the desire more actively to take up arms on behalf of Literature on the
that the principle of Nationality is pemicious." 73 Expressing strong other. "You are the only company to me," Ghose writes on 18 February,
solidarity with his friend's political views, Ghose writes disparagingly "I triumph in the thought of this. The only doubt and dread that crosses
from Oxford in May r888 about the inability of his privileged (and mymind is that I may suffer some strange resurrection of the passion I
overly athletic) Christ Church peers· to appreciate the noble socialist havesmothered to death ... I wish to be an ascetic." 77 Some nine days
sentiments expressed in Binyon's early poem "John Averill": "l found later, a letter agreeing- to "let all th.is rest, and talk no more about it"
that only two, both of democratic temper, could really enter into it. speaksinstead, and volubly, of a will to turn aestheticist crusader: "Art
What can you expect from people who shudder as tho' from instinct at hasnot the barest representation ... As for Literature, we have no
the name of'socialist' and believe that it hoards all the foulest meanings CCntrc for it whatever: it is my hope-or fond delusion, perhaps-that
Art
Art
we may be able in the future to create one, or at least the germs ofone ...
productive in other ways. An early admirer along with Wilde of Pri-
I want a centre from which and a sphere in which to act." 7K tfllJVera, he reviewed the book for HobbyHorse,inscribing on the flyleaf
While the question of an incipient homosexuality qua homosex- ofhis personal copy an unpublished poem celebrating the fricndslllp of
uality in Chose (or between Chose and Binyon), is strictly speaking
Ghosc and Binyon for its affective and poetic credo:
irrelevant to the main plot of our discussion, there is considerable inter-
est in the psychic dislocation of his aestheticist designs within a ner-
Now is there any love at all
vously articulated homoerotic thematic. For it is this association be-
In all England left, for simple song?
tween homosexual deviance and aestheticism, subtle but unmistakable,
Let all such lovers hear your call:
that finally rescues the 6.n-de-siecle cult of aesthetic autonomy from You have a strain, shall charm them long ...
such charges of elitism as, say, Camille Paglia levels against Wilde and And fair befallyou both! And may
his followers, placing the cult at least tentatively on the side of renegade Yourfriendship hold all grace in store:
outcasts. 79 It is in many ways precisely in its covert homoerotic perfor- Friends in one art: and, day by day,
mativity that decadent aestheticism plays out its defiant, self-marginal- True sons of Arnold's, more and morc.!14
izing strategies of complaint and satire. So, for instance, the effetedan-
dyism of the movement, as Regina Gagnier and others persuasively Ghose and Binyon were further drawn into a Wildean milieu
contend, is available to reading as an aestheticist riposte to the produc-
through association with the painter-engraver Charles Rickett and his
tivity and industry of the imperial bourgeoisie. "The dandy," Gagnier
lifelong partner Charles Shannon, generous hosts of the Vale in Chel-
writes, "showed the gentleman what he had sacrificed: eccentricity,
sea-to which Wilde was a regular visitor-and editors of the Dial, for
beauty, camaraderie ... 'Art' was the magical, fctishized term dandies
10me time the house journal of English aestheticism, especially in its
deployed to replace the losses of the age of mechanical reproduction."80
peculiar commerce with the artful expressions of contemporary French
To such sexually dissident dandyism Chose subscribed readily,develop-
anarchism. 85 Of these new associates, perhaps none was more visibly
ing, in his brother's account, an expensive taste in uvelvet suits, not
infatuated with Chose than Ernest Dowson, the highly strung poet and
staring red but aesthetic ... to visit Oscar Wilde in."81 In June 1891his
Rhymer who in Ellmann's reading maywell have become Wilde's lover
name al.soappeared in a list of potential contributors to TheBookofthe
fura brief period in 1897.86 Describing his new Indian attachment to
Rhymers Club, confirming his implication in that group of tragic aes- Arthur Moore in September r890 as "the beautiful lotus-eyed Ghose"
thetes of whom Yeats writes so vividly in The Tremblingofthe Veil,and
andtwo months later to Charles Sayle as "the Primavera poet: a divinely
linking their conscientious, anti-bourgeois "turn from every kind of
madperson," Dowson bears witness to the aestheticist, decadent com-
money making that prevented good writing" to a perverse ethic of
pany that Ghose was keeping at the beginning of the mauve decade. 87
sexual ambivalence, "a refusal of domestic life.''82
Writing to Moore on 9 October 1880, he reports thus on the malingering
Other evidence points likewise to the homoerotic dispensation un-
ill-effects of a hard night in the company of Chose and Wilde among
der the aegis of which Ghose and Binyon began their fractured ap-
others: "How are you after our potations on Tuesday morning? 1 am a
proach to Wilde's circle. Friendshjp with the New College poet Lionel
little decayed from that & subsequent up-sittings. I had a charming
Johnson,, the man responsible for introducing Bosie to Wilde, provided
night again on Tuesday at Johnson's & at Horne's. Oscar was on show
access to the Hobby Horse House in Fitzroy, creative center in London
andwas quite charming, & in very good form: also Shannon, (the artist
of the arts and crafts revivalism professed by the Century Guild. It was
& editor of The 'Dial': that mad, strange art review(!): also the pro-
there that Binyon fust met Wilde in full conversarional flight on the
totype of the artist in 'Dorian. ')-Chose and lmage." 88 Of such meet-
subject of female emancipacion. 83 The friendship with Johnson was
ingsChose hjmselfwrote excitedly to Binyon, reporting consistently on
Art Art

Wilde's gentle patronage. A letter of 4 August 1890 speaks of the older rareand beautiful souls, who are rich enough in themselves to afford to
man's advice that the younger pursue plans for an Indian fairy tale: "He givewithout asking to receive back again: and these are never poets." 92
was quite charmed with my design for a short Indian tale. 'I should True aestheticism, he avers in an evocatively Darwinian register, de-
advice you,' he said 'to make a bold bid for the public favour ... Write mands"that 'relish of passion,' that frailty which is the touch of nature
rhis tale and make it rich, striking and concentrated and send it to me: I makingthe whole world k.i.n."93 Herc we have some hint at that para-
will get it into the Qiarterly Review or some other Magazine for you.' l digm of "interested autonomy''-quintessentially relational and cos
am going to France for a week or so1 and then we shall be able to take mopolitan in its defiant will-to-difference-that we arrived at in our
counsel together and carry out our little plans. I hope to see much more detour through Kantian and Hegelian aestheticism. To the possible
of you then." 89 Responding a few days later to a possible note of posses- amplification of this paradigm in the work of Oscar Wilde let us now
sive peevishness from his old friend, Chose penned a gentle defense of briefly turn.
his new mentor: "You musn't say anything bad of Oscar ... now I know
him well, I love him very much. He is a wonderful and charming being.
FOR THE SAKE OF OTHERS
You are inclined to think him superficial, I know. You should know him
as I do; and then you would feel what depth and sagacity there is behind Bythe late nineteenth century, Gene H. Bell-Villada writes in his study
his delightful mask of paradox and irony and perversity." 90 of European aestheticism, Kant's Critique of Judgement "came to be
The question of what Chose might have found behind Wilde's "de- viewedas the sourcebook for Art for Art's Sake:-'94 This identification
lightful mask" is of central concern to our discussion, since we are wu a consequence of the gallicizing of Kant begun in the years of
searching precisely for the sober imperatives that might have structured Napolean'sdictatorship by French exiles in Germany such as Mme. De
Wilde's celebration of Ghose's estranging aestheticism as a counter to itae1and Victor Cousin, and then transmitted to Theophile Gautier,
the homogenizing violence of empire. There is little in Ghose's letters j. K. Huysmans, and others. 95 Oscar Wilde is likdy to have made his
that immediately betrays the more serious lessons learned and endorsed ownfirst encounters with German philosophy on native soil. 96 As early
at the feet of Saint Oscar. I le speaks increasingly in the high pitch of •187-4,while at Oxford, his commonplace book shows an easy acquain-
Wildean camp, addressing Binyon as "a dear boy" who must "tolerate" anccwith Kant and Hegel. And the chances are that his initial ex-
Ghose's "wickedness," just as Gbose tolerates Binyon's "goodness," and poeure
to German thought came from his teacher Walter Pater, whose
berating his sober friend with other infuriating aphorisms: "When I see ~ displays the contours of Kantian aestheticism, especially as medi-
feet of clay, I feel as ifI could embrace a man. I see my own sins imaged .-ed through the writings of J. G. Fichte. 97 .Nonetheless, given his
in him, and yearn toward him in fellow-feeling"; "Perfection, my dear ,iltcnsivc commerce with Parisian aestheticism, there is reason to em-
Laurence, is a dangerous virtue; we pay for practising it by cooling thuizc the distinctly French complexion of Wilde's "Germanism"-
our warme.r feelings"; "Practice a little passion, a little levity; and I 'llldthis not for reasons of historical peda.ntry but rar;her because in its
will adore you," ad nauseam. 91 Predictable stuff, and yet even in its de- i'.ench transmission the doctrine of aesthetic autonomy kept, in certain
rivative talk of "fellow-feeling," "warmer feelings," and "passion," ir eitd.es, very close company with the credo of anarcho-socialism. 98 And
expresses something of the insistent humanizing quotient at the per· itis in some ways the telling proximity and coarticuJation of anarchism
verse heart ofWildean aestheticism. Perhaps Ghose's clearest elabora- 'Indaestheticism, socialism and art, in Wilde's thought that accounts
tion of this instruction comes in a quarrelsome letter of August rS9o to ~ his subtle modifications of Kantianism proper-along the lines
Binyon, strongly dissociating the impulse toward "self-containment " 0 r tedat earlier-to produce a discourse of"interested aestheticism."
"disinterest" from the free exercise of poetry. "But why do you wish so Contemporary France certainly accommodated these two seemingly
much to come to such a state of self-content," he asks. "It is only a few ·cal inheritances in Wilde's work. In certain quarters of Paris he
Art Art

was, Dayjd Sweetman writes, "Mister Oscar Wilde, the dandyish poet standing, the anarcho-socialist components ofWilde's aestheticism are as
and poseur," drawn up by Toulouse-Lautrec in white tie and tails, com- readily visible in the paradoxes and perversities of his apparently less
plete with a much-too-conspicuous flower in his buttonhole. But in other serious oeuvre, pointing consistently to the will-to-difference, and against
quarters, better known as "MonsieurOscar Wilde," he received acknowl- indifference, that emerges in the interstices of Kantian and l legclian
edgment in another panel by Toulouse-Lautrec, once displayed at the aesthetics.
Foire du Trone in east Paris, showing Wilde shoulder to shoulder with The theme of aesthetic autonomy is spoken in Wilde's work in .1

FelixFencon, editor of the rndical journal La Revue b/ancheand notorious series of closely orchestrated registers. Art asserts its freedom, in the
anarchist, once cha,rged with causing an explosion in a restaurant in main, from the strictures of Victorian utilitarianism. and industry, the
Paris. 119While relativelyunac.knowledged, Wilde's links with continental realm of the "real" to which belong the inducements of commerce,
anarchism transJatcd into strong sympathy with the indigenous subcul- economy, and force falsely binding lnrua and other imperial possessions
tures of late Victorian radicalism, especially in their utopian-socialist to Britain. lo language much like that of Chose and Binyon, he desig-
exemplification. He was associated with Peter Kropotkin, who began his nates this capturing region the "prose of life" or "the prison house of
British exile in 1886,and whom he describes in De Profimdisas a para- realism," and it is to this space of imaginative confinement that he will
rugm, along with Verlaine, of the pcrfcctlyaestheticizedJife. rnoIn a review condemn Bosie while passing his own sentence of time behind the
in 1889 of Chantsoflabour:A S@g-Bookof the People,edited by Edward impermeable walls of Reading Gaol: "Don't you understand now that
Carpenter, the impulses of art likewise combine with those of revolution your lack of imagination was the one really fatal defect of your charac-
to p.r.tisecontemporary socialism for its gift of song: "Nero fiddles while ter"; "With very swift and running feet you had passed from Romance
Rome was burning-at least, inaccurate historians say he did; but it is for to Realism." 104
Cleaving from the "real" in a charged generic preference
the building up of an eternal city that the Socialists of the day are making for"romance" and "imagination," art also takes flight from the homog-
music; and they have complete confidence in the art instincts of the enizing systematicity of a priori, universal concept-forms, preserved
people." 101 In Wtlde's own work anarcho-socialist sentiments are ex- andenforced in "the standard of one's age," "the cheap severity of ab-
plored in his first performed play, Vera,or;TheNihiliJt, a sincere if clumsy stract ethics."l0 5 Two consequences attend this doubled departure from
critique of"tyrclllJly," potent in the context of contemporary reports about the realmof historicity and the real and from the possessive ditio, we
the repressive regime of CzarAlexander II. Of this play, and the politics might say, of cognition and morality. First, the liberated space of art
informing its construction, he would write thus to the actress Mary Pres- manifestsa rarucal hospitality to what Adorno _calls"the singular" and
cott: "I have tried in it to express within the limits of art that Titian cry of "non-identical" and Wilde, before him, calls "the new" or "uncom-
the peoples for liberty, which in the Europe of our day is threatening mon." It is into the estranging sphere of such perverse ethics that Dor-
thrones, making governments unstable from Spain to Russia, and from ian Gray, for example, is initiated by Sir Henry: "in his search for
north to southern seas.'' 1n2 A more sophisticated elaboration of these ICJlsations that would be at once new ... ,and possess that element of
themes comes in the essay ''The Soul of Man under Socialism," first strangeness that is so essential to romance, he would often adopt certain
published in July 1890and possibly the clearest exposi rion of the symbiosis modes of thought that he knew to be really alien." 106 Second, as "The
between aestheticism and socialism in Wilde's iruom. Postulating both art Soulof Man under Socialism" makes clear, the aesthetic impulse to-
and socialism as complementary demands for freedom from the ryrannY warddifference, against similitude, belongs firmJy to an aetiology of
of the mainstream, Wilde claims rut as an apotheosis of the socialist "disobedience," refusing the leveling, legislative mediations of the State
dream: "For what it seek.~ to disturb is monotony of type, slavery of for the sake of a utrue" freedom that "will not always be meddling with
custom, tyranny of habit, and the reduction of man to the level of 3 others,or asking them to be like itsel£ lt will love them because they
machine." 10J The significance of these direct political utterances notwith• \¥ill be di.fferent." 107 The autonomy of an becomes, in context, the
Art Art
critique of govcrnmentality that we encountered in an earlier chapter- Wilde's stories-between .fishermen and mermaids, swallows and stat-
a strongly anarchist strain emerging, in this case, from a poetic view of ues, nightingales and roses, giants and children, and Lastbut not least,
the world in which the artist voices her refusal of external authority: Irish dandies and Indian poets.
"People sometimes enquire what form of government is most suitable Did Manmohan Ghose recognize entirely the radical fiben;.of"in-
for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. terested autonomy" that rendered Wilde's work and thought amenable
The form of government that is suitable to the artist is no government to anticolonial appropriation? Did he find in his master a more refined
at all." 108 reworking of those tentative oppositions between "prose" and "poetry"
Never a doctrine of self-containment or separation from necessity, that he had rehearsed through his shared adolescence with Laurence
Wildean aestheticism always attaches forcefully to a critique_of disin- Binyon? Is it to such recognition that we might attribute his praise of
terest, amplified particularly in his fairy tales as a discourse against the sagacity masked behind Wilde's paradoxes, of the generous hospi-
isolation and selfishness. So many of these stories begin with the ethical tality to difference cloaked beneath his perversities? Perhaps. We have
and existential confinement of privileged but solipsistic characters, who little record outside Ghose's correspondence with Binyon of his re-
must be trained into affective exchange with the seemingly foreign and sponse to the culture of English aestheticism that he left behind in his
alien world from which, we might recall, the Kantian subje{;trecoils in departure for India in 1894, where he would spend the rest of his days
horror and which the Hegelian subject cancels, negates, erases. Thus teaching Indian undergraduates the crucial distinction between English
the isolated ''young king" will learn of the dispossessed citizens who culture and imperialism before his death in 1923. We can, however, infer
labor to produce his luxury; the antipathetic "star child" will recognize a little more about the import of Wilde's aestheticist politics for an
as his mother the loathsome beggar-woman; the "happy prince" will Indian audience in the writings of Ghose's considerably more brilJianr
make belated reparations, as a statue, for the cloistered life that once brotherAurobindo-a witness, as we have seen, to his older sibling's
preserved him from all the ugliness and misery of his city; and the infatuation with the Irish poet.
selfish giant will restore spring to his wintry garden through a gesture of Between 1890 and 18921 while reading classics at King's College,
invitation to trespassing children. 109 In Wilde's lexicon (shared in this Cambridge, Aurobindo wrote a series of dramatic dialogues in Wildean
instance with the fin-de-siecle animal welfare groups encountered in style,praising the pursuit of beauty as a revolutionary counter to the
chapter 4), it is the motif of"sacrifice" that supplies the most effective commercial spirit of the contemporary West, and, celebrating Oscar
antidote for the ethical petri faction of his selfish and isolated characters. Wilde a.~a patron saint of poetic radicalism. "I think," he writes in an
Always a self-endangering gesture for the sake of others, the aesthetics earlydefense of poetry, "that the soul of the Ith~ao Ulysses has not yet
of sacrifice realize themselves perhaps most vividly in the figure of completed the cycle of transmigrations, nor would I wrong the author
Wilde's Christ, invoked in De Profundisas an exemplar of imagina- ofHippias by ignoring his conclusions. Or why go to dead men for an
tive sympathy: "He realised in the entire sphere of human relations example?The mould has not fallen on the musical lips of the Irish Plato
that imaginative sympathy which in the sphere of art is the sole se- noris Dorian Gray forgotten on the hundred tongues of Rumour." 111 ln
cret of creation. He understood the leprosy of the leper, the darkness Y'=arsto come Aurobindo would speak with greater circumspection
of the blind ... he was the first to conceive the divided races as a aboutWilde, indeed scarcely remembering him as he embarked upon
unity." 110 Sacrifice, we could say, is the substance that yokes the dis· ~ extraordinary career of anticolonial extremism and radical mysti-
course of Wildean "interestedness" to the thematic of ''rclationaliry." ~ of which we spoke in chapter 5. In these years-along the lines of
11
Indeed, such relationality tends toward what Derrida calls "heteroaffcc- ~ early faith in the liberating idiom of"art"-he would come to priv-
tion": the tendency toward the entirely other, manifest in the con· ilegespirituality as the specifically Indian locus for autonomy from,
juncture of those strange and sudden kinships that animate most of llhong other things, the prose of empire. Nonetheless, committed
Art

throughout his yogiclife to the writing of poetry and its encouragement

in his disciples, between 1917 and 192.0 Sri Aurobindo composed a series
of articles devoted to another, this time more substantially elaborated,
defense of poetry, published in 1953as The Future Poetry.The book, a
selective appreciation of English and European literary history, pro- CONCLUSION
claims the familiar encomium to poetry as a zone of freedom frorn the
real, crucial for the rehearsal of spiritual endeavor. But once again, An Immature Politics
despite the intervening passage of time, we hear reiterated a clear iden-
ti£cation of the European impulse toward art as being simultaneously
an impulse of internal critique, dismantling from within that prison
house of imperialism in which India was incarcerated. There are many While there is not much on the face of it that seems to connect the
favorites to whom Sri Aurobindo accords special favor (Shelley, A. E., diverse and disparate subcultures of fin-de-siecle anti-imperialism ex-
Whitman), but at the outset of his discussion he notes that the Euro- amined in this book, each of them, I have been suggesting, obtained
pean impulse toward poetry (as against prose) is "purest" in its "Irish something of its energies and distinct political style from the overriding
foi:m," in which it manifests a particularly defiant "preference of the grammar of contemporary utopian socialism, especially in its second
lyrical ... and of the inwardly suggesrive."112 Belated thank~giving? efflorescence during the 1880s. Thus, we have seon, where anticolonial
More, we couJd say, an acknowledgment of collaboration, conceding contcstations in the name of homosexual exceptionalism achieved their
the worth of the different "bond of union" that could one day bind India discursive and ideological commerce with socialism through the efforts
to Europe "by other methods than those of commerce and military ofEdward Carpenter, those performed under the sign of animal welfare
strength." Perhaps it is time for postcolonial thought to offer similar were molded into socialist shapes by, among others, Henry Salt, a
acknowledgment to a poetic view of the world, conceding its claim to founder-member along with Carpenter of Thomas Davidson's influen-
the hitherto singular space of the political. To refuse this gesture, and tialsocialist-utopian Fellowship of the New Life. So too, albeit more
here is the burden of this chapter, is to surrender the political to the obliquely, aestheticism found itself drawn into the unlikely suburbs of
joylessness of a utilitarian dispensation, condemned eternally to counter contemporary anarcho-socialism under the perverse guidance of Oscar
the prose of imperialism in the derivative prose of anti-aestheticist Wtlcle.And late Victorian spiritualism, emerging in the wake of ortho-
anticolonialism. doxfaith, likewise gained its particular status as.an alternative or coun-
lercultural "religion of socialism."
Everhybrid and eclectic-a "superb mixture," as the theosophists
J.H. and M E. Cousins once observed, "of all the heterodoxies dieter-
.It. political, social, intellectual, aesthetical and religious"-utopian'so-
cialism conferred upon its various affiliates a distinct style of coalition
Ind collaboration marked by apparent disregard for what we now know
11
"identity" or "single-issue" politics, thus enabling the easily transfer·
Ible&yrnpathies and promiscuous alliances that we have witnessed
t:"1°ng unlikely ideological bedfellows (for example, bringing the affec-
- urgencies of zoophilia or homosexual asceticism productively to
:liearupon the cause of the colonized races). 1 Yet where once the disor-
 An Immature Politics An Immature Politics
derly catalogues and creative mutations of utopian politics were cele- rnissed the former as the uncoordinated childhood of adult political
brated as a unique means of showing society, in Carpenter's words, "the consciousness: "Really they are only part of one whole; ideal socialism
wealth and variety of affection.al possibilities which it has within itself," being a kind of preliminary step towards practical socialism, so that we
it was precisely this quality of chaotic admixture that came to signal the might with more reason call them elementary and advanced social-
impoverishment of utopian.ism as a viable and effective form of socialist ism."3 Such charges of"childishness" or "primitivism" slowly attaching
politics, disclosing in place of political versatility an incoherent dilet- to utopianism gained yet another substantial if unexpected endorse
tantism. Thischarge is best captured in George Orwell's mordant de- ment in 1892 with the publication of Max Nordau's opus Degl!11eration, a
scription oflate-n.ineteenth-century utopianism as an undiscriminating book intent on anathematizing the culture of fin-de-siccle radicalism as
"magnetic field" that drew toward itself"every fruit-juice drii:iker, nud- "the extreme silliness of ... the brain of a child or savage."4 Summarily
ist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, 'Nature-cure' quack, pacifist consigned to the wastebin of history, utopianism suffered a further blow
and feminist in England." 2 with the formation of the Independent Labour Party(ILP) in 1893. The
What, I wish to ask in this concluding chapter, explains the progres- JLP was committed from the outset to placing labor candidates within
sive political disqualification of utopian.ism to which Orwell so sharply Parliament, and it firmly, some might say irrevocably, adopted the path
bears witness, one that renders invisible, for our purposes, the minor of respectable, organized, single-issue politics. Socialism, as H. M.
anticolonial agitations conducted under its impossibly copious um- Hyndman, leader of the soF, is reputed to have observed, could no
brella? How might we best contest this debarment: by launching coun- longer remain "a depository of odd cranks: humanitarians, vegetarians,
terclaims for the "competence" of utopian political forms or, as I will anti-vivisectionists anti-vaccinationists, arty-crafties ... sentimental-
propose, by arguing that it is precisely their ineligibility for the drama of ists. They confuse the story." 5
mainstream politics, their lexical inadmissibility within a "developed'' Despite these efforts discurs.ivclyto cleanse socialism of its unwhole-
or established political vocabulary, that is the crucial revolutionary in- some utopian accretions, however, something of the legacy of Edward
gredient of utopian socialism? Carpenter et al. found a new lease oflife within the incipient communist
movement in England and on the Continent. Increasingly dissatisfied
with the dull compromises of parliamentary politics, early-twentieth-
NEWS FROM NOWHERE
century British communism drew upon the inspiration of its anarcho-
Deemed entirely disreputable by the time Orwell was writing The Rood utopian predecessors to resist the unification and homogenization of
to Wigan Pier (1937),fin-de-siecle utopianism was subject to systematic aimsfast becoming the hallmark of the labor movement. Something of
if discontinuous political disqualification across a period bookended by this mood is conveyed in a contemporary dispatch from one W. Gal-
Friedrich Engels's Socialism, Utopian and Scimtific (1892) and Lenin's lacherof the Scottish Workers Council in Glasgow: "The rank and file
"Left-Wing" Communism:An Irifantile Disorder (1920), both texts that of the I.LP. in Scotland is becoming more and more disgusted with the
attest to the lamentable "immaturity" of utopian political forms. Com- thought of Parliament ... This is very serious, of course, for the gentle-
manding socialism ro abandon its playground anarchism (its ''eclectic lnen who look to politics for a profession, and they are using any and
mish-mash") for the science of "conscious organization on a planned everymeans to persuade their members to come back into the parlia-
basis," Engels's epochal pamphlet forcefully corroborated the anri- mentary fold. Revolutionary comrades must not give any support to this
utopian sentiments expressed in !.he same year by Robert Blantchford, &ang." 6
ltwas as a rejoinder to this unexpected communist recalcitrance
editor of the popular socialist paper the Clarion,in his MerrieErzgkmd in face of the project of"practical" or "scientific" socialism that Lenin
(1892). Demanding a distinction and evolutionary hierarchy between 1lrrotehis influential and irascible "Left-Wing"Communism:A11Infantile
"ideal" and "practical" socialism, Blantchford's work categorically dis- Disordn-in 1920, updating Engels's recommendations for the political
An Immature Politics An immature Politics

circumstances of the new century and conclusively recouping "adult- ject'saccess to all external
influences, be they divine, human, or animal,
hood" and "science" as the distinguishing marks of"the political." ien<fering Kant's hypostasized adult into a being wholly immune to the
Sound revolutionary politics, Lenin asserts, must conform to the distractions of faith, nature, desire, and inclination. By contrast, the
protocols of realism in two ways: first, through a rigorously pragmatic "immature" escapee from the prison house of enlightenment rationality
view of revolutionary ends, conceding the adulteration and suspension ,emains a creature of contingency, mired, as Martha Nussbaum h;s
of ideals within the compromised and bourgeois form of parliamentary writtenin another context, "in the 'barnacles' and 'seaweed' of passion,"
democ.racy; and second, through an equally rigorous curtailment of ever"messy, needy, uncontrolled, rooted in the dirt and standing help-
revolutionary means and adoption of an ascetic regimen of "persever- lessly in the rain." 10
ance ... discipline, firmness, inA.exibility ... unity of will .... strictest Drawing upon a recognizable Kantian conception of adulthood,
centralisation and iron discipline ... [an acceptance of] Marxism, as the Lenin's play of generational metaphors in "Lefl-Wi11g"Communism
only correct revolutionary theory ... scient~c principles ... a single mapsthe fantasy of autonomous subjectivity upon the space of "the
Communist Party." 7 By contrast, any pseudo-revolutionary posture political,"substituting unity of purpose for a profusion of aims: central-
that dares contravene the generic obligations of realism, thus defined, ization and singularity of organization for coalition and collaboration-
•
constitutes an "infantile disorder," "a piece of childishness that is even Jftffieditation for conjuncture; detachment and focus for affective ir-
difficult to take seriously."8 Nominating "immaturity" as the single )'egUlarity. By 1920 a politics of spontaneism officially vanishes into the
pathological flaw within any politics remotely redolent of utopianism, "horizon of necessity, and socialism, as Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto
Lenin simultaneously captures "the political" as the privilege and ex- Llclauhave written elsewhere, is reined into a series of fixed a priori
pression of mature adulthood, decisively recasting the old opposition bngcments in which "the concrete is reduced to tbe abstract. Diverse
between "utopian" and "scientific" socialisms as a conflict between "im- ..a,ject
positions are reduced to manifestations of a single position; the
mature" and "adult" politics. jluralityof differences is either reduced or rejected as contingent; the
Although startling for the sharp tone in which they are pronounced, ..._ of the present is revealed precisely through its location in ... a
the tropes deployed by Lenin and his immediate predecessors to dis- ·on of stages."11
credit utopianism are scarcely original. In each instance the hierarchies Thepassageof disciplinary thought between Engels and Lenin
of adulthood and infantilism or science and immaturity designate poli- )immariiy
reviewed above, aiming at a purification of "the political,"
tics as a zone of enlightenment-the exit from immaturity into the ~tlcss exemplifies an incontrovertible commi:rnent to revolutionary
asylum of adult rationality forcefully endorsed by Kant on behalf of his ~ , one underscored by the sound conviction that social transfor-
philosophical generation in his famous essay "What ls Enlighten- ~ demands a certain measure of disinterestedness and moral rigor
ment?'' (1784). Kant's influential conception of adulthood, informed by . its agents. Yet, we are arguing, this endeavor is simultaneously
the imperatives of his wider ethical philosophy, is elaborated once again t as a form of disqualification: a homogenization and "normal-
as a fantasy of autonomous subjectivity: the picture of a unitary and • • n" of the field of politics that can only announce itself along the
sovereign Self armored affectively against the defenselessness of human of a d"1sahrmg hierarchy of knowledges. So Foucault avers through
existence. "To come of age," in Kant's understanding, demands that courseof his lectures at the College de France in 1975-76,maintain-
men secure their "release from ... self-incurred tutelage ... becoming tbatelaborating any thought system in the name of reason, adult-
capable of correctly using their own reason ... with assurance and ~~e and "science" necessarily betrays the impulse to "minorize" and
from outside direction.'"' The "freedom" with which "adulthood
15
tc:•
adjacent thought systems, perhaps most vividly in the dis-
made synonymous in "What Is Enlightenment?" takes shape, we have tra.,ectory of modern socialism: "You know how many people
seen in previous chapters, in a philosophy that severs the ethical sub- been asking themselves whether or not Marxism is a science for
An Immature Politics
An Immature Politics
many years now, probably for more than a century ... The question or IMMATURE POLITICS
questions that have to be asked are: 'What types of knowledges are you
trying to disqualify when you ~aythat you are a science? What speaking Readpositively, the association of"immaturity" and "utopianism" car-
subject, what discursive subject, what subject of experience and know! ries the force of genuine theoretical insight, for in any of the affiliated
edge arc you trying to minorize when you begin to say: "l speak this forms offin-de-si~cle radicalism that we have encountered in this hook
djscourse, I am speaking a scientific discourse, and I am a scientist " it is precisely the qualities of disorganization, provis,onalin. wiric.:i
What thecsretico-political vanguard arc you trying to put on the throne ~encc,_and conjuncture that make up the fabric of a uwpian polittcs of
in order to detach it from all the massive, circulating, and discontinuous 111vent1veness,bearing within itself the mutually complementary gcs-
forms that knowledge can rake?' " 12 nm:s of refusal and relationality; these gestures, in their tum, are in-
As will be remembered, it is against th is will to epistemic sovereignty tensely amenable to the imperatives of anticolonial thought. In this
that Foucault discloses the counteractive operations of"genealogy": the ~d late ..Victor:an utopian socialism can best be explained as a poli-
"attempt to desubjugate historical knowledges, to set them free, or in b~ of the event, a trope celebrated in one tradition by a long line of
other words to enable them to oppose and struggle against the coercion ~ke~, fro~Jean-Paul Sartre to Alain Badiou, as the revolutionary or
of a unitary, formal, and scientific theoretical discourse.'' 13 Yet, and here epistemic ability to instantiate the new.15 Predicated upon a formative
Foucault's mterjections become most apposite tO our concerns, the ge- movement of departure or disobedience, the event announces itse1£
nealogical "desubjugation" of knowledges consistently runs up against B~iou ar_~es, as a "de-sururation," or break from that which alread;
its own desire to posrulare a competing and self-defeating enthrone- exists, be 1t m the form of Law, Truth, or Criteria:• 6 This action invari-
ment or "majorization" of "minor" thought systems: "if we try and abl! ~gins as_an initial moment of rebellious "no-saymg," but it is
protect the fragments we have dug up, don't we run the risk of building :aintam~d _u~,q~cly~.hroughthe event's constitutive auto immunity to
with our own hands, a unitary discourse>" 1• In other words, apropos of ~bstannalizmg or absolutizing." Marked, as it were, by an irreme-
the present discussion, how might we recognize and refuse the modalt diableimmaturicy-"chancc and confluence, coincidence and conjunc-
ties whereby fin-dc-si~clc utopianism is occluded or delegitimized ~~-an event is _coipso a procedure "onto which no knowledge can
through the tropes of"sciencc," "adulthood," and "maturity" without pm its name, or discern beforehand its starus"; "it cannot, therefore, in
succumbing to the temptations of genealogical reconstruction? Per- anyway• • • fall under the remit ofknowledge." 17So it is that the event
haps, and further to Foucault, we might proceed by giving credence to :'fdefinition begins something new." 18 So too, for reason ofits chronic
the notion that the synonyms of"immarurity" leveled at utopianism by nnmunity to substantializing, its intransigence in the face of all struc-
its detractors signal the mutually contradictory actions of debarment tllre, law, axiom, and generality, it posits a radical inclusiveness, "offered
and recognition: the identification of property as much as lack; a mak- to all, a~ru:esse~ to everyone, without a condition of belonging being
ing visible while occluding; an inadvertent gesture of qualification that ableto Jjmit this offer, or this address." 19 That is to say, the structural
also supplies the basis for disqualincation. In other words, inasmuch as ~tures supporting the event's incalculable inventiveness-its will to
the charge of"immaturity" that we have been pursuing so far masks the • nng forth such things as never were before-also buttress its con-
"minor" anticolonialisms and SOCJalismsenacted by the likes of Carpen- ,JUncturalinclusivity. At once the scene of''pure difference," as Foucault
ter, Salt, Wilde, and Alfassa, it djscloses equally the constirutive condi· hasobserved, "devoid of any grounding in an original, outside of all
tions 'of possibility for such a politics. Let us briefly consider some forms of imitation, and freed from the constraints of similitude," an
lenses, theoretical and historical, through which these "conditions of e.entalpolitics is, we might say, atavistically inclined toward a theater of
'1te. JO
possibility" might come more clearly into view. ncy. It dramatizes, to borrow Jacques Rancicre's formulation a
political opening to otherness, with "the other" not so much represe~t-
An Immature Politics An Immature Politics
ing the figure of a reined victim or beneficiary as naming a relation, or The antirelational basis of imperialism is precisely what Carpenter
putting fonh relationality as the characteristic feature of an immatun: and his colleagues aimed to expose and contradict through an inchoate,
politics and rendering politics into a performance of strange alliance, provisional, and incoherent form of politics that might show society its
unlikely kinships, and impossible identification: the elaboration, to re wealth of affectional possibility. The discrete studies in this book have
call an earlier trope from this book, ofDerridean philoxenia. 21 endeavored to detail some varieties of dissident rclational 1cy chuac-
Manifesting thus a space of unpremeditated relationality, immature teristic of the "minor" politics that came briefly into its own at the l.,,r
politics simultaneously discloses (and refuses) the crisis of nonrclation fin-de-siecle. Whilemuch of this history, further to its occlusion at the
upon which juridico-transcendental and universalizing forms of power, handsof"scientific" and "adult" socialism, has since all but disappeared
especially in their totalitarian, imperialist guise, are predicated. It strug- from view, something ofits enterprise can be illuminated with reference
gles against the profound contradiction at the heart of modem political to the political energies unleashed by the events ofM,y 1968 m France,
life-diagnosed by thinkers like Hannah Arendt and more recently as well as the more recent demonstrations against the World Trade
Giorgio Agamben-by which the "mature" promise of collectivity, soli- Organization at Seattle in December 1999 and others still unfolding in
darity, and inclusion is premised perversely upon a logic of caesura, thename of contemporary anticorporatism.
exception, and exclusion. This principle is crystallized in what Agam- It is not that 1968 and 1999 bring, through revealing actions of imita-
ben calls a relation of abandonment or ban, consigning those without tion or repetition, the struggles of the r88os and 1890s into greater
recognizable political attributes to the desert of "bare life" at the mar- coherence or "scienticity," but rather, to borrow some themes from
gins of organized sociality: "The ban is essentially the power of deliver- KristenRoss, that they represent in some way an "afterlife" to utopian
ing something over to itself, which is to say the power of maintaining IOcialism, creating "a new optic" on its "immatunty.'' So, for instance,
itself in relation to something presupposed as non-relational. What has nearly half a century after the first nail is hammered into the unwieldy
been banned is delivered over to its own separateness."" Such is the coffinof utopian socialism, Daniel and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit pose a
logic of nonrelation that Agarnben (like Arendt before him) discerns in diRct rejoinder to Lenin's ''Left-Wing Communism'' in their hastily
predicating citizenship upon the abandonment of the refugee, and that &mtde a la maladit senile du rommu-
mmposcdbook Le Gauchi.sme:
Foucault discerns in the racism secreted within the modalities of the llimtt,which announces "immaturity" as the governing trope for the
modem state, which expresses itself precisely as a power of exclusion, lt)'leof revolutionary politics newly summoned by the epochal events of
ban, and separation. 23 In his words: "racism is inscribed as the basic
mechanism of power, as it is exercised in modem States. As a result, the
modem State can scarcely function without becoming involved with
racism at some point ... It is a way of separating out the groups that
exist within a population ... exposing someone to death, increasing rhe
=
May1968.Le Gauchismetestifies to the youthful, composition and con-
lerns of that brief revolution, led by student leaders and involving the
mobilization of thousands of schoolchildren. Several commenta-
havcread May '68 as archetypal: a replay on a larger scale of the
~ caviling of youth against the cant of the adult world, an insur-
risk of death for some people, or, quite simply, political death, e.xpul· ~ alaPink Floyd, against the petty tynnnies of education, tirne-
sion, rejection, and so on." 24 Concealed in this way beneath the every- ~~•nd _parental s:1'1tiny. For the Cohn-Bendit brothers, however,
day veneer of civil society, the law of exception, or txcrptio,anaJyz.edby gc crattonal conflicts of May '68 appear rather more acutely histor-
Foucault and Agamben acquires a pathological dimension in conditions ital~ psychodynanuc. By directly evoking and reversing the title of
of totalitarianism and imperialism-the forms of power whose purpose 1
pamphlet, they situate May '68 within a peculiar history in
it is according to Hannah Arendt, "to ruin[s) all relationships becwccn the hierarchy of adulthood and childhood aJso refers, as we have
' ~
men," dissolving thereby the being-together or being-in-common t _to the conflict between two types of resistance, two varieties of
should be the basis of political existence. 25 : the one enshrined (this time round) in the organizational
An Immature Politics
An Immature Politics
determinism and electoral aspirations of the "adult" Left, the other
reawakened and defended through the unstructured and disorganized tedlygiving shape to a subversive coalitional modality, and gathering
spontaneity of student revolutionaries. On this occasion, though, it is ingly disparate causes under the same umbrella. Thus the "mixed
adulthood that is discredited through the brutal metaphor of senility. ,areets" of Paris in 1968 stage complex and shifting alliances between
Historians and sociologists have often pointed to the thematic sim- ,tudents, workers, peasants, doctors, churchmen (Jews, Protestants,
ilarities between the socialisms which overcame Britain in the 1880sand Catholics, Arabs), scientific statisticians, museum directors, and foot-
Paris in 1968. Diana Burfield notes in both movements an affinity with hallen.3' Here we might also emphasize the uniquely international
avant-garde ideas; KeithNield discerns a common emphasis on per- dimension of the movement, determinedly combining workers' causes
sonal transformation or "individual liberation ... from capitalist work withthose of anticolonial aspirants in Vietnam and Algeria_J2 Some-
disciplines, from sexual stereotypes and suffocating moralities"; and thingof this disposition is conveyed in Herve Bourgcs's first-hand ac-
Alain Touraine has directly claimed 1968 "as an expression of utopian f,10Wlt in June 1968: "From this point, strictly political commitments
communism" which inherited from the utopian socialisms of the nine- tDa)' be more or less far-reaching in their different directions, but they
teenth century a "global opposition to a specific civilisation and a form :tllUlfbe conceived in terms of priorities and in original forms, even in
of social power." 26 Such accounts of continuous aspirations are crucial lfrance, with an acute awareness that this battle is the best way to unite
for our genealogy. But it is perhaps even more important to recognize, 1rithanti-imperialist struggles everywhere, the best way to oppose the
as the actors and participants of May 1968 did so vividly, that the uto- ittour of neo-colonialism, to support the resolute struggles of the Viet-
pian fui.vorof their movement obtained (as it did for its predecessors) mmcse, Palestinian and Latin American people . •.. This international
from its defiant immaturity. For many writers, such as Touraine, the 41pC11-ness,
which is not in contradiction with the declared intention of
May revolution "failed," in the final analysis, on account of its "un • lghtingon a limited terrain, is demonstrated in the generous cosmo-
defined ... disorganised ... confused'' procedures, its lack of anv ·tanism of the Sorbonne, open to all the hopes of the Third World
developed "theory, party, or pohcy." 27
Yet "disorder" is precisely what •: b~n~g in posters and unexpected meetings of ethnic and political
Daniel Cohn-Bend.it affirms as the positive condition "that lets men ties .. . Utopia, or tomorrow's reality?"ll
speak," 28 and the absence ofleaders, manifestos, institutions, agendas, Much like Cohn-Bendit, Bourges is at pa.ins to underscore the
and aims is what he celebrates in Le Gauchismeas a creative possibility nt's commitment to a discourse of"open-ness," and it is in this
for radical democracy that would make the edenic "beach under the defense of an uncovered, permeable, unknown, undisclosed
paving stones" "open to all." As he puts it: "If a revolutionary movement that 1968 gathers within itself a critical mQmentum of rclational-
is to succeed, no form of organisation whatever must be allowed to dam Givingexpression in part to the "situationism" associated with Guy
its spontaneous flow. It must evolve its own forms and structures ... We and his followers, the young revolutionaries associated with the
suppon everything that widens the struggle." 29 Taking its cue from •ren-ien:t consistently pose a critique to that commercialization of
1968, contemporary anticorporatism likewise ascribes its energies co a . relations held in place by a "society of the spectacle," in which
constitutive disorganization, describing its own revolutionary events as triumph of commodity fetishism, or the supersession of use by
productively accidental, coincidental, and temporary. "It is often said . value, comes to intemipt all direct relations between subject
disparagingly," Naomi Klein writes in No Logo, "that this movement obJCCt,
self and other, by means of various alienating mediations.
lacks ideology, an overarching message, a master plan. This is absolutely ton transftonn·mg rhe pllruttve
· · "separations
· of spectacular society
11
·
true, and we should be extraordinarily thankful." 10 . h the alchemy of compact and communication, May '68 ex-
For the Cohn-Bendit brothers and Klein, provisional.icy is privileged • ~• as several commentators tell us, an explosion of talk and
as the condition of evental inclusivity that we spoke of earlier, unexpec- tJon. The "most effective political forms and actions the move-
t Coulddev e)op, " R oss writes,
· "were those that attempted what has
An Immature Politics An Immature Politics

variously been called the 'dialogue,' 'meeting,' 'relay,' 'alliance,' 'soli- "Wedon't give a damn about frontiers! We are all aliens! We are all
darity,' or even 'alloy' (alliage)."~ German Jews!" 37
Similar imperatives resurface in the politics of Seattle '99. Distin- We have encountered this language of self-estrangement before: in
guished by its resolute identification of global corporatism with neo thefierce anti-imperialism of Sheffield workers in the 1880s; the pro-
imperialism, the movement insists upon a continuum between protests ,uffi-age
activism oflate-nineteenth-century homosexuals; the anan:ho-
against the WTO and those against the putative war on terror. 1; Its lC)Ciansm
offin-de-si~de vegetarians. And we have seen it ,incc on the
declared aim in so doing is to refute the compartmentalization of causes sucets of Seattle in December 1999, in current American dissidence
and specialization of interests so characteristic of the anti-relational against the government's neo-imperialism, in the philoxcnic actions of
style of global or corporate governance, a style determined by the cul- anonymous multitudes giving notice to their own governments and
ture of "branding" and its devastating mediative modality. In context, communities of belonging on behalf of vulnerable strangers. In each of
activists associated with the movement consistently profess the desire to theseinstances we are witness to that critical conjuncture when some of
build "real global connections," seeking "the ultimate anti-commodity dieselves who make up a cultl.U'eloosen themselves from the security
... [in) human communication, between friends, inside communities of andcomfort of old affiliations and identifications to make an unex-
trust." 36 pected"gesture" of friendship toward all those on the other side of the
Does a politics of relationality-the conjunctive modality that Wil- fence.There is no finality in this action, no easily discernible teleological
liam James once described as the distinguishing feature of radical em- aatisfaction.Just the expression, to end with Giorgio Agamben, "of a
piricism-ever change the world? Does it successfully dispatch imperial mediality. .. a process of making a means visible as i.uch."38 A breach,
governments and occupying armies from native soil? Lead a disen thatis, in the fabric of imperial inhospit.ility.
franchised people into the promise of self-determination? Mitigate in
any way the burdens of a colonial inheritance? Certainly not with any
thing like the speed and efficiency of those better organized and better
focused (and more mature) revolutionary movements less inclined ro
found social change upon the painstaking labor of personal transforma-
tion. Yet precisely because of its inability to work its effects at industrial
speed and scale, the politics that we have been pursuing in this discus-
sion often alter the genetic structure of the societies in which they
eventuate, subtly varying for future use their ethical, epistemic, and
political composition. Thus the drama of "impossible identification"
nags unobserved at the reformation of subjectivity, substituting the ag·
grcssions contingent upon the rarefactions of psychic sovereignty with
the creative if messy and tangled ecologism of intra- and inrersubjec-
tivity. We can observe this work of subjective, ethical, and psychic re·
constitution in Paris on Wednesday 22 May, when in response ro the in·
formation that the part-German Cohn-Bendit had been banned from
France, a crowd of student protesters, some of them young Arabs frorn
Algeria, marched onto the heavily guarded National Assembly shour·
 NOTES

:-e"APT ER 1 Affective Communities

1 For an engrossing account ofBritish anti-imperialism see Jonathan Schneer,

London 1900: The ImperialMetropolis(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999). A
complementary perspective, di:awing attention ro the analogy between imperialism's
domestic and foreign prejudices, is offered in David Cannadine, OrnommtaliJm:
Howtht British Sow Their Empire (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
2 Sch.neer, London IIJOO, 162.
3 Ibid., 13.
4 Said, Cultureand Imperialism(London: Chatto and Windus, 1993),xxviii, 36.
5 Homi Bhabha, Tht Locoti1mofCultulY(London: Routledge, 1994), 193.
6 Karl Marx, Tht People'sPoper, cited in Terry Eagleton, Marx and Frttdom
(London: Phoenix, 1997),44
7 Bhabha, Tht LocationofCulture,196.
I These arguments arc famously offered in Edward Said's Culhm and Imperial-
""' and Gaut_i Viswanathan's MOJksof ConqutJt:Lituary Stud:, and British Rule in
lndui(London: Faber and Faber, 1989).
9 Said, Cultureand Imperialism, 19
10 See t:ric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention ofTradition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983),and Partha Chatterjee, Nati/Jno/ist
Tl»ughtand the ColonialWorld:A Derivative Discourse?(London: Zed, 1986).
11 Bhabha, The LocationofCuhure, 175,91, 95.
U Bhabha vigorously and persuasively contests the charge of determinism lev-
eledag;iinst his work by Marxist interlocutors. His essay "The Postcolonial and the
Postmodern: The Qyestion of Agency," in TheLocationoJCulhm, is apposite here in
ib insistence that rhe narratives of hybridity and imerstitiality postulate another
modelof agency, privileging performative and imersubjectivc elements over ddiber-
Mheand individuated clements. AJ ht writes, ~the moment of the subject's indi-
w!uationemerges as an effect of the intersubjecrivc ... This means thnt those
elementsof social "consciousness" imper:i.rive for agency-deliberative, individuated
ICtioriand specificity in analysis-can now be thought outside that cpistt'mology
Notes Notes

that insists on the subject as always prior to the social or the knowledge of the social b,other sun, the birds of the field, the poor and exploited humans, together against
as necessarily subsuming or sublating the particular 'difference' in the transcendent thewill of power and corruption. Once again in postmode.rnity we find ourselves in
homogeneity of the general" (185). Francis'ssituation, posing against the miseryof power the joy of being" (.µ3)
13 Also noteworthy, in context, is Susan Stanford Friedman's demand for a new
feminist geopolirical literacy more keenly attentive to "the role of intercultural ex
Anticolonial Thought
change and symbiosis in all cultural formations, and the heterogeneity ofborh 'the
We~t• and 'the Rest.'" Mappings:Feminisma11dthe Cultural GeographitsofEncounta 1 Sr. Stephen's College was founded in 1881by the missionary Society for the
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1998),6. Propagation of Gospel (s PG),also the main sponsor of the Cambndgc Mission. It
u Ashis Nandy, The lntimale Enemy: Lossand Recovtry of Self under Colonial- wasas a representative of the mission that Andrews first came to India.
ism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983),36. 2 See Susan Visv-,mathan, "S. K. R~dra, C. F. Andrews, and M. K. Gandhi:
15 See Ashis Naody, "Oppression and Human Liberation: Toward a Post- Friendship, Dialogue and lnteriority in the (zyestion of Indian Nationalism," Eco-
Gandhian Utopia, "Thomas Pantham and Kenneth L. Deutsch, PoliticalThoughtin and PoliticalWee!tly,24 August
11omic .2002, 3532-41.
Modern India (New Delhi: Sage, 1986), 438. 3 C. F. Andrews, "Letter from Natal," Modzrn Revuw, March 1914,cited in
16 Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, 36. HughTinker, The Ordzal ofLove: C. F.Andrews and India (Delhi: Oxford University
17 Beehive,1 October 1864, cited in Henry Collins and Chimen Abramsky, Karl Pmis,1998),84.
Marx and the British Lahour Move=t (London: Macmillan, 1965), 34-35. For a .c Ibid.
more partisan account of the anticolonial motivations of the First and Third Interna- s Early in 1919the imperial administration had issuc;d the infamous Rowlatt
tionals see William Z. Foster, History of the Thm Intemalirmab: The WorldSorialist Bill,prescribing harsh punishment and a secret trial for anyone under suspicion of
.from 1848to tht Present(New York: Greenwood, 1968).
and Communist MO'IJtmtnts •tem>rist"activity. To protest the legislation Gandhi, now resident in India, ap-
Although rhe anticolonial agenda of the Second lnremational is considered somc- pealedfor a nationwide satyagrohacampaign. The recommended modes of non-
whar less robust by irs critics, an cngagin.g accounr of its motivations and achieve- wiolcnt
civil disobedience soon dissolved into violence, however, and on 1·0 April 1919

ments is offered in James Joli, The St'Condfotematiofllll, 1889-1914(New York: rietsbroke out in the city of Amritsar. No significant reprisals occurred on the day.
I larpcr Colophon, 1966). Buton 13April, as is well known, a company of British forces led by the infamous
18 The historical and ideological links and continuities between the utopianism GeneruDyer emptied machine-gun fire into a crowd of some twenty thousand
and anarchism th.it so fruitfully combined within the culture of fin-de-siecle radical- peaceful
protesters gathered in an enclosed park,Jallianwala Bagh, killing hundteds
ism have been well observed by a variety of scholars. We might note especially E. H. andwounding thousands.
Carr's observation in Michael Bakunin (London: Macmillan, 1937),434, that nine- • C. F.Andrews, Christ in Silence(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1933},96.
teenth-century anarchism was "the logical conclusion of the romantic doctrine." 'theSikh, we are told, gave his pardon, conceding char "the past had all been
19 E. M. Forster, Two Chursfor Democracy
(London: Edward Arnold, 1951), 66· ~tten and forgiven" (ibid.).
1
20 Edward Carpenter, "Empire in India and Elsewhere," Humam ~iew 7 While this book consistently favors those figures who prevented Indian anti-

(1900): 207. . biloniaiism

from r~lving itself into a stance ofp= oppositionality, it is not in any
21 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire(Cambridge: Harvard Umver- waymy intention to advance the cause of some "enlightened" cosmopolitanism at
sity Press, 2000), 215. Hardt's and N~>ri's configuration of posthumanism and co~- dieexpenseof anticolonial nationalism or, for that matter, to posit a stark opposition
munism within the «new" anti-imperialism is powerfully evocative of the pcculi,lI between
a global and a local discourse; between incernatiomuism and nationalism;
conjw1ctlons of lace-Victorian and wcster-n :inti-imperialism. Note, for exampl~ lietweencosmopolitanism and culturalism. Not only would such a conttast be sim-
. I . h . . • f empire their plistic;
further to the theme of fin-dc-s1edc amma ng ts as ~ cnuquc c> • it would .llso be inaccurare. There arc countless varieties of cosmopolitanism,
rd
valom.ation of Saint Francis of Assisi as a paradigmatic nnri-1mperialasr: ''F ncis '" tad where some take the form of transnational solidarity, others, in councries like
. 10 nru.ceor cap1tabsm
opposition • · refiused evcry ms1rumenta
· . 1 d'sdpline
1 ,
and in op- takethe form of transregional, transreligious, cross-linguistic affinity.1n chis
· h · d order) he
position to the mortification of the Resh (in poverty an d in t c consmute I owe especially to Dipesh Cbakrnb:trty the understanding that even in its
. . . •
posed a Joyous life, including all o f bcin d h
g an nature, t e an11 , · nals sister moon, oppositional and "culturalist" manifestation Indian nationalism, among others,
 Note.s
Notes
bisfriends). He came goodness knows why, and left goodness knows when. In the
was never without its own varieties of cosmopolitan practices, albeit ones perhaps
,neantime,having only one pair of sockswith him, he washed them and dried them
internal to the subcontinent. in the sun. He was travellinglight, he said, but, for all the little he carried, I have seen
8 M. K. Gandhi, CollectedWurh ofMahatma Gandhi (Delhi: Ministry oflnfor- aoone who could make a more fantastic litter of clothes and beddmg and news-
mation and Broadcasting, 1976),16:311-t4. pepers in an hou_ror two. I did some tidying up for him, and he confided in me that
9 Ibid., 33. what he had alwaygwanted was a wife. I had a private idea that what he needed W\lS a
10 C. F. Andrews, The Trudndia: II Pleafar Understanding(London: Ccor~~
husband,for he appeared to me to be a big-hearted woman who had got mixed in hi,
Allen and Unwin, 1939),15. 11tcam11tion."
11 Ibid., 134. n Andrews, The Tnd l11dia,235.
u Lette.r from C. F. Andrews to Munshi Ram, 30 April 1913.Cited in Tinker,
:14 Cousins and Cousins, We Two Together,125.The Cousinses testify to An-
The OrdealofLO'Ue,
31. clrews's involvement with Indian theosophical circles, giving account of his lectures
13 C. F. Andrews, What J Ow, t1J Christ (London: Hodder and Stoughton,
to largetheosophical gatherings.
1932 ), 77. JS Friedrich Engels, Socialism,from Utopia to Science,trans. Edward Aveling
I◄ Rabindranath Tagore, Foreword, C. F. Andrews, The Sennon on the Mount (18cp;New York: New York Labor Press, 1968),21.
(London: George Allen and Uowin, 1942),xi. J6 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard Univer-
15 Cited in Krishna Kripilani, 'tmdrews, Gandhi and Tagore," Deenbandhu
lhyPress,2000).
Memorial Papers, Sr. Stephen's College Library. ;r, Jacques Derrida, Politia of Fricnrhhip, trans. George Collins (London:
16 R. N. Bose, "Two Friends, Gandhi and Andrews," Deenbandhu Memorial
Veno,1997),306.
Papers. JI Jean-Luc Nancy, in The lnoperativl!Community, trans. Peter Connor, Lisa
11In a letter to Andrews dated 7July 1911,Tagore is especiallyemphatic in his Gtrbus,Michad Holland, and Simona Sawhney (Minneapolis: University of Min-
negative reading of desire: "l know that the idea which I have in mind requiresthe
MIOCII Press, 1991),1, conceives of communiry in similu terms as being "at once
elimination of all passions th11thave theirpince in the narrow range oflife: but mosc
-,ondsocialdivisionsand beyond subordination to technopolirical dominion, and
people believe that these passions arc the steam-power which gives velocity to our
thereby
beyond such wasting away of libe.rty,or speech, or of simple happiness as
motives. They quote precedents; they say that pure idea has never achieved any
comesabout whenever these become subjugated to the exclusiveorder of privatisa-
result. But when you say that the result is not greater than the idea itself, then they
laugh at you.tt Rabindranath Tagore, Letters to a Friend (London: George Allen and
2' Ibid., 17.Martin Buber, in his classicsrudy of the ethics of relationaliry,I and
Unwin: 1918),178-79. f1INI,trans. Walter Kaufmann (1970; New York: Simon and Schuster, ,996), 62,
·
1s Many of the obituaries of Andrews and commemoranons ofh' 1m rnv
· okethe
· a similar resistance to universalism and foundat:ionalismin the business of
languageof friendship, in these terms, to establish the "unofficial"and "unassuming"
unity: "The relation to You is unmediated. Nothing conceptual intervenes
nature of Andrews's politics.The following lines &om the Times oflndia, 12 February
l and You, no prior knowledge and no imagination; and memory itself is
1971,arc typical: "Andrewsdid not hold any officeor presi'd cover th e l ndian National dlangedas it plunges from particularity to wholeness. No purpose intervenes be-
Congress. He preferred to remain in the background as a friend , ph.ilosopher and tileen l andYou, no greed and no anticipation ... Every means is anobstacle. Only
constructive critic." Where all means have disintegrated encounters occur."
19 C. F. Andrews, Tht GoodShtpherd(London: Hodde.rand Stoughton, r94o),
• Ibid., 19. Buber also privilegesthe "between as sucht valoriud by Nancy as
94- '"alllarginal
oorbitance of the act of relation: the telationship itsclfin its vital unity is
20 Andrew,, Tht Sermon011tht Mount, 50. filtaovchemcntlythat its memberspale in the process:its life predominates so much
Andrews, What1 Owe lo Clmit, 119.
21
4'attheI and the Youbetween whom it ls established arc forgotten" (ibid., 135).But
Andrews, The GoodShtpherd,7.J. I l. Cousins and M. E. Cous1ns,
22
· ·in Wt 1'uJo
Buber's discoursediscloses irreducible "between-ness" as the space of fusion,
To11tthtr(Madras: Ganesh, 1950),339, arc among many contemporan·cs scruck by
0
d occa- vehemently elides the fusional aspects of communiry, insisting at every move
Andrews's bisexual natute; "College routine was enlivened by new events an .
a "sharing" that in some way exceeds the logic of fusion.
~ionalvisitors. A very d.,stmcttve . . WllS th e R everend C . F.• Andrews(Charlie to
. . vmtor
Notes Notes

31 Giorgio Agamben, The Ctm1ingCammunity, irans. Michael Hardt CMin- Antihumanism, irans. Mary H. S. Cattani (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
neapolis: University ofMinnesora Press, 2001), 85. Pn:ss,1990).An earlier study, Raymond Aron's TheElusiw Revolutitm: Anatomy ofa
32 Nancy, The Inopmiti'VaCommunity,25. Student Revolt, trans. Gordon Clough (New York: Praeger, 1969), attributes the
33 Sec Drucilla Cornell, The Philosophyofthe Limit (New Yo,k: Routledge, alleged nihilism of postmodern thought to the political style of the May1968revolu·
1992). tion. Both readings,needless to say, are contentious and debamble
:1<1 Alasdair Maclntyrc, in his llji« Virtue:A Study in Moral Theory,2d cdn 39 Chanral Mou.ffc, Tht luturn ofthbPolitic.al, 181. The languageof postmod•
(London: Duckworth, 1997),201,convincingly claims a Kantian patrimony for both ern nihilism is freely invoked, for example, by Judith Butler 1n Cdnd,r mu.oft.
modern liberals and Mu.xists: "The key intcllccrual opposition of our age ... is that Ftminism an.dthe Sub'IJmionofIdmtity (New York: Routledge, 1990), 14-15: "The
between modern liberal individualism and some version of Marxism or nco-Marx- insistence in advance on ... 'unity' as a goal assumes thii.t solidarity, whatever irs
ism. The mo.~ intellectually compelling exponents of this view are likdy to be those price, is a prerequisite for political action . . . Perhaps also part of what dialogic
who trace a genealogy of ideas from Kant and Hegd through Marx ... Marxists have understanding entails is the acceptance of ... breakage, splinter, and fragmentation."
always fallen back into relatively straightforwud versions ofKantianism or utilirari- Butler's worlds alwaysscrupulously attentive to the need to imagine new political
anism. Nor is this surprising. Secreted within Marxism from the outset is a cenain configurations out of the ruins of the old. But postmodern thought in general, as
radical individualism." Chantal Mouffe, in The &turn ofthe Political(London: Zizek complains in The Tidlish Subject:The Absent Cenlll of Polilica.lOniology
Verso, 1993), 13, likewiseasserts the continuities between liberalism and Marxism, (London: Verso, 2000), 171,frequently tends toward an absurdist reduction of the
arguing thar "neither liberalism with its idea of the individual who only pursues his or political: "'dispersionists' condemn politics as unifying, totalitarian, violent, and so
her own interest, nor Marxism, with its reduction of all subject positions to that of on, and assume the po.sition of ethical critics who reveal (or voice) the ethical Wrong
class can sanction, let alone imagine," the "entirely new perspectives for political or Evil committed by politics, without engaging in an alternative politicalproject."
action" ushered in by new social movements. ..o .Laclau and Moutfe, Hegemonyand Soda/islStrattgy, 189.
3S For a d1oughtful account of socialist feminism's stigmatii.ation of female ,it In Htgt!(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975),154,Charles Taylor
subjectivity as anarchic and regressive, see Cora Kaplan, "Pandora's Bo.x: Subjec- suggests th;it the relation of master and slave in Hegel's notes on 'Lordship and
tivity, Class and Sexuality in Socialist Feminist Criticism," Making a Differmu: Bondage' is in effectthat of consumer and producer: "The relation of the master to
FtministLimary Criticism,
ed. Gayle Greene :md Coppelia Kahn (London: Meth- whatsurrounds him is that of a pure consumer; the hard task of tr:rnsforming things
uen, 1985),146-76. andpreparing them for consumption is that of the slave."
36 Georges Bataille, Otuwts Completes(Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 8:353,cited in .Q Nancy, TheInoperatiw Community,32.
Nancy, The Inoperati~ Community,16. It is in sympathy with Bataille's critique of <13 Paul Gilroy, Thm Ain't No Blackin tht UnionJack: Tht CulturalPoliticsof
the existential costs of rhe sovereignty of "production" in onhodox Marxism that Raceand Nation (London: Hutchinson, 1987),227.
Nancy endeavors to dissociate affective community from the discourse of work and 44 Michel de Ceneau, The Pra(ticeofEveryday Lift, trans. Steven Rendall

production: ''This is why community cannot arise from the domain of work. One (Berkeley: University of CalifomiaPrcss, 1984),xix.
does not produce it, one experiences it or one is constituted by it as the experience of ◄S Against such objections to the ethical limits of consumerism, Baraille, as
fi.nirude ... Community necessarily takes place in what Blanchot has called 'unwork- Nancypoints out in Thelnoptratiw Community,37, valorizes erotic consumption as
ing,' referring to that which, beyond or before the work, withdraws from the work, appropriate countennand to the acquisitiveness of the State: "he ... represented
and which, no longer having to do either with production or with completion, them as a society, as another society, one that harbours the impossible and communal
encounters interruption, fragmentation, suspension ... Communication is the un· truth thar simple society despairs of anaining: 'Love unites lovers only in order ro
working of work that is social, economic, rechniCil and institutional" (31). expend,to go from pleasure to pleasure, from delight to delight: their society is one of
37 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, Htg~monyand SocialistStratrgy:TD· consumption, rhe inverse of the State's, which is one of acquisition.'" Yet despi1e this
wards a RadicalDtmocraticPolitits, trans. Winston Moore and Paul Cammack apparentendorsement, Nancy's writing consistently seems 10 postulate untram-
(London: Verso, 1985),177. meled "consumption" as the limit point of "communication,n as the juncture at
38 Arguments for the irremediable neonihilism of postmodern thought art which the thinking of community ts forestalled.
ofthe Sixties:An EssayDtl
provided in Luc Ferry and Alain Renault, FrenchPhilosophy -46 Hardt and Negri, Empire,156.Ziic:k, Th~ TicJtlishSubj«t, 220, among rnany
 Nous

other critics from the left, raises similar objections to hybridity and the hybrid whatphilosophy calls 'linirudc' ... Fini rude, or the lack of infinite identity, if we can
subject: "It is easy ro praise the hybridity of the postmodern migntnt subject, no riaksuch a formulation, is what makes community" (xxxviii).
longer amched to speanc ethnic roots, floating freely between different cultural SI Michael Sandel, "Liberalism and the Limits of Justice," WhatIsjus11ur,ed
circles.Unfortunately, two totally different sociopoliticallevelsarc condensed here: Robert
C. Solomon and Mark C. Murphy (Oxford: Oxford Unive~1tyP~. 19 90 ),

on the ooe hand the cosmopolitanupper· and upper·middle•cl;USacademic, alwavs "4·

with th"cproper visas enabling hrm to cross borders without any problem m order to SJ Taylor, Htgtl, 153.

carryout his (financial,academic... ) business,and th usable to 'enjoythe differen,c'; 53 For a fuller discussion of the dream of equality secreted within I legelian
on the other hand the poor (im)migrant worker driven from his home by povertyor ncognition!ICC Charles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognitiont Mi,/titultur""lum:
(ethnic, religious) violence, for whom the celebrated 'hybridity' designates a very .&uiminingthePol,llcsofRuogn,tion, ed. Amy Gutmann (Princeton. Princeton Uni-
CUJgibletraumatic experience."The particular relevance to my argument of the ,enity Press, 1994), is,+

critiques by Zizckand others is that the postmodern subject of desire draws even the 54 Blanchot, The U=wwahlt Community,3.
•rca1" traumas of hybridity into a principally libidinal vector as a form of defiant IS K. Anthony Appiah, "Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural So-
«enjoyment."This subject faces the world as one might a supermarket bearing an cietiesand Social Reproduction,"Multiculturalism,ed. Gutmann, 163.
excessof choices, homes, identities, opportunities. Yet if salutary, the objections to 56 For a compellingdefense of"choscn" or "voluntary" communities see Mar-

hybridity and the politics of desire prove ultimately unsatisfactory because of their ilyn Friedman, What Are Friendsfor: Feminist Pmpectrt>a tm Pmonal f&latiomhips
inevitable reversal ro the language of asceticism; reinstating the tired opposit1on Moral Theory(Ithaca: CornellUniversityPress, 1993).
111111
between politics and desire,ethics and affect, etc. In contrast, our project, via Der- 57 Edward Said's thoughts on "affiliarion"in The War/d,tht Tat, and tht Critic
rida, Nancy, and Blanchot among others, is to affirm the possibility of an anti- {Cllllhridgc: Harvard UniversityPress, 1983),12-23, arc apposite here: "The affilia-
renunciatory politie11of desire and ethics of affect that does not succumb to the self- tM order • • • surreptitiously duplicates the clo-i and tightly knit family structure
regarding hedonism or rcckleu consumerism- the "appetite," simply-of the hybnd tbataecureagenerational relationships ro one another. Affiliation rhen becomes in
subject. i6ct a litenl form of re-pr-ntat10n, by which what 1s ou~ I) good, and therefore
•1 Charles Taylor,Htgtl(1975;Cambridge: Cambridge UniversiryPress,1999), ~ incorporation and inclusionln our programsofhum.1niststudy, and what is
llafours in th1$ultimately provmcial<t!nsei, simply left out."
4 The phrase is borrowed out of context from Seamus Deane, Introduction, SI Agambcn, 1'ht ComingCommunity,85.

NationaliJm, Colon111liJm and Litn-ahnY (Minneapolis: Universiry of Minne50ta ff Emmanuel Levinas,"Peaceand Proximity"(1984),EmMllnutl~: B111ic
Press, 1990), 8. .,._,ophical Writings,cd, Adrianna T. Pepc,..,ak,Simon Critchley,and Robert Ber-
49 Maurice BJanchot, Tht Unawwahlt Community,trlUls.Pierre Joris (Barry- -.con.i (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), 165.
town: Station Hill Press, 1988),5. CompareJacques Derrida, OJ Hospitality:Ann, • Horst Hutter, Politicsas Fnmdship: The OriginsofClam,al Notionsof Polilics
Dufaurmantt& Inflitts]acquesDtrrida to &spond, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Theoryand Pra,tiu of Frimdsh,p{Waterloo,Ont .. Wilfnd LaunceUniversity
Stanford UniversityPress,2000), 3: "before being a question to be dealt with, before 1978),2,
designating a concept, a theme, a problem, a program, the question of the foreigneris Derrida, Po/ilia of Friendship,viii.
a question of the foreigner,addressed lo the foreigner.As though the foreignerwere Sec Said's discussionof"filiaoon~ in The World,the Ttxt, and the Critic,m-
first of all tht ont who puts the fun question or the tmt 10 whomyou address the first
question. As though the foreigner were being-in-question, the very quemon of U Aristotle, The Ethics of Aristotlt: Tht NtdJoma,hean Ethics, trans. J. A. K.
bcing-m-quesoon, the queition-bcing or bemg-m·qucstion of the qucscion Bur (Harmond&Worth:Penguin, 1955),258. All subsequent refcrenc~ arc to
1l1sothe one who, putting the lint question, puts me in question." edition.
so Blanchot's dc.,gnation of subjectivetn!<Uflioency as the canly,t for commu· .Aristotle'sEthiu wascomposed at a umc when, foUowmgfrom the cxpan-
nity is reiterated in Nancy's Thelnoptratiw Communityas the theme of"6mrudc": of Philip and Alexander, the small and culrurally self contained cicy-sr•rc
«semg in comll'IQn means . . no longerh.zwng, in anyfarm, in any onp,ricalor i,kal ~ compelled to join the ever-expandingcircle of a wider, more impcrsom1.l,
plact, sucha substantialidentity,and shanng thu (narcissistic)'lackof idrnhty.'Thi1>is community.
Notes Notes

65 Derrida, PolitiCJof Friendship,35. tanism as the decisive marker of European rationality and civility.In recent years
66 Cited in Benjamin Farrington, T~ Faith of Epicurus(London; Weidenfeld varioustheorists haveattempted productivelyto rehabilitarethe discourseof cosmo-
and Nicolson, 1967),31. politanism,wresting it from its neocolonialKantian ascriptionsto discloseinstead a
67 Giorgio Agamben,Homo Saur: SovertignPowerand Bare Lift, trans. Daniel project of radical democracy. Sec especiallyJacques Derrida, On Co1mupolitanism
Heller-Rouen (Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 1998),7, n. and Forgiveness,trans. Mark Dooley and Michael Hughes (London: Romledge,
68 This point is madeby Marios Constantinou, "SpectralPh/lia and the lmagi- and Sheldon Pollock, Homi K. Bhabha, Carol A. 8reckeor1dgc,and Dipe~h
2001),

nary Institution of Needs," S{Jfjth

Atlanhc Quarttrly97, no. r (winter 1998): z56-57: Chakrabarty, eds., "Cosmopolitanisms,"Publu Cultureu, no. 3 (2000).
"Epicurean ethics is ... confronted with a paradoxicaldifficulty:the altruistic bond 77 Derrida, OJHospitality,77.
of friendship entails vulnerabilityto dependency on external attachment. Does not 78 Vikram Seth, Mappings(Delhi: Viking Penguin, 1994),70.
altruistic friend$hipinterfere with, even disrupt, the self-sufficientstate of ataraxia,"
Phillip Mitsis raises similarconcernsin his Epicurus'sEthical Theury:Th6Pleasuresof
Invulnaability (Ithaca: Cornell University PreSs, 1988),124:''A ... difficultycon-
fronts Epicurus's account of friendship ... Epicurus daims, for instance, that for the 1 Edward Carpenter, TowardsDemocracy(1883;London: GMP, 1985),373.
sakeof friendshipwe should run risks, deide kaiparakinduneusaicharinphilias ... It is 2 Jbid., 3731 4.
unclea1,however,that he can justify any risk-taking given his model of pleasureand 3 H. M. Hyndman, "Shall We Fight for India,"Justice,March 1885,4.
rational agency." 4 Although not strictly interchangeable,anti-imperialism and rhe critique of

69 Constantinou, ~spcctralPhi/ia and the Imaginary Institution ofNoeds," 156. westerncivilizationare inextricablein Carpenter's thought,,asin tharofhis contem-
70 E. M. Forster,Tuo Chem far Democrary(London: Edward Arnold, 1951),66. poraries.
71 Derrida, Of Hospitality,u3. 5 Edward Carpenter, "Empire in India and Elsewheret Humane R.roiew1

72 See Blanchot, The U'nawwableCommunity,7: "a oommttnion... a fusion... (1900): 207.

a unity(a supra-individuality)would eJCposeitself to the same objectionsarisingfrom 6 Gilbert Beith, Edward Carpenter:In Appreriation(London: George Allen

the simple considerationof the single individual, locked in its immanence."In his andUnwin, 1931),no.
"The Other in Proust" (1947),in The Leuina1&oder, ed. Sean Hand (Oxford: Basil 7 Cited in Hugh David, On QueerStrut: A SocralHutory of Briti.shHomosex-

Blaclcwell,1989),164, Levinas makes a similar point, arguing that most projects of 1895-I995(London: Harper Collins, 1997),50-51.
116/ity
communication fail on account of their misguided aspiration for "fusion":"If com- I E. M. Forster,Maurice(1971;Harmondswortb: Penguin, 2000), 2x3.
munication bears the mark offailure ofinauthenticity ... it is becauseit is sought as a , Ibid., 208.
fusion." 10 Gayle Rubin, "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics of
73 Butler, GenderTrouble,!4. Sexuality,"The Lesbian and Gay Studies Ream, ed. Henry Abclove, Michele Aina
Simiam, Cyborgs,and Women:The Reinvention of NaMt
7,4 Donna J. Haza-way, Barak,
-andDavid M. Haleperin {New York:Routledge:,1993),35.
{NewYork: Routledge, 1991),I54. II Leo Bersani,Homos(Cambridge:Harvard UniversityPress, 1995),59, 6x,67.
75 E. M. Forster,A Passageto India (19~4; Penguin: Harmondsworth, 19]8), U Housman, untitled essay,Edward Carpenter:
An Appreciation, by Gilbert
289. Beith(London: George Allen and Unwin, 193x),m.
76 In his PerpetualPeau: A PhilosophicalSllet,h, ed. Lewis White Beck (q94; 13 Eve KosofskySedgwick, Eputemolugyof the Closet (Harmondsworth: Pen-
lncllanapolis:Bobbs-Merrill, 1957),Kant paradiginaticallydraws cosmopolitanism guin, 1994), t refers to the fundamental contradiction "between sceiQghomo/het-
within the rubric of his moral philosophy.Written to commemorate the Treaty of troecxualdefinition on the one hand as an issueof a.ctiveimportance primarily for a
Basel, this occasional tract endorses the new peace between Prussia and France, lmall,distinct, relativelyfuccdhomosexualminority (what l referto as a minoritising
while courageouslyhinting at the author's republicanismin its celebration of che view), and seeing it on the other hand as an issue of continuing, determinative
hard-won accord between che monarchialstates ofEurope and the French Republic. lmport.incein the livesof people acrossa spectrum of sexualities(whar I referto as a
This notwithstanding, Kant's ethico-political rubric is intenselysusceptible to c~c llluversalisingview)."Compare with Monique Wittig, The Straight Mind and Other
prescriptiveuniversalismof colonial thought, consistentlynominating cosmopab- &rays(Boston: Beacon, 199:i.),64: "A text by a minority writer is effectiveonly if it
Notes
Notes
succeeds in making the minority point of view universal, only if it is an imponant
literary text. Rememoranu ofThings PllStis a monument of French Literature even with the Foucauldianemphasis on rcimagining community either through or with-
though homosexuality is the theme of the book. Barnes's oeuvre is an important out the accompanyingperformance of sex. For example, Leo Bersani, in Homos, 7,
literary oeuvre even though her major theme is lesbianism ... tho work of these seeksin an enthusiastic explorationof"gay desire"a radical "redefinitionof scx;ia.lity."
writers has transformed, as should all important work, the textual tissue of our And on the other side, while ins.illting that "queers"do not wane"just sex,"Michad

times.'' Warner inaugurates the anthology &ar ofQuuT Nation: Quur Politia and Sotia/
1<1 Sedgwick,Eputtmology eftht Closet,i. Theory(Minneapolis:Universityof Minnesota PrtS$,1993),x.xi,with a declaration of
IS Ibid. resistanceagainst heterosexualculture'sprivilegingofitself"as the elemental form of
16 Michel Foucault, Tht 1-liJtoryof &xuality: An Introduction, trans. Robert association."In the end my proposed exploration of the sort of politics exemplified

Hurley (Hannondsworth: Penguin, 1984), f:49- by Carpenter gains its cue from queer theois generic turn toward issues of commu-
17 Ibid. 18.Emphasis in original.
nity, association, and kinship rather than its turn away from the pcrformance of
18 Ibid., 48.
homo-sex.
t9 Ibid,. 45. 34 In his interview in 1982Foucault refuses to answer this question on the
20 Slavoj Zizek, The Ticklish SulJject:The Absent Centre ofPolitical Ontology
grounds that "if the relationshipsto be created are as yet unfo.reseeabk,then we can't
reallysay that this feature or that feature will be denied." O'Higgins, "SexualChoice,
(London: Verso,1999), 256.
SexualAct," 22.
21 Foucault, T'heHistory ofSexuali,;y,IOL

22 Michel Foucault, "What ls Enlightenment," The FoucaultRead~: An Intro- See Edward Carpenter, The Int~ediat, Sex:A Study ofSome Transitional
35

duction to Foucaults Thought, ed. Paul Rabinow (I-farmondsworth:Penguin),.µ!. ~ of Mm and Women(Cambridge: MIT Press, 1993),48;Havdocl Ellis, Sex11al

u Ibid.,.µ. ofStx (New York: Random House, 19411),

lnwrsion (r897), Studies in the P1yrhology
24 Judith Butler, Gmtkr T~uhle: Fem in um and the Su!wmion ofIdentity (New 1:31-33;and John Addington Symonds, T~ Lift ofMichda11gtlo(r893;Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylwnia Press, 2002). References co Michelangelo's exemplary
York:Routledge, 1990),9.
25 James 0'1 liggins, "Sexual Choice, Sexual Ace An Interview with Michel homosexualitycontinued well into the twentieth century. A famous "citing" of Mi-
Foucaultt Salmagundi58.-59(faU1982-wintcr t983):11. chdangelo comes from a letter that Sigmund Freud wrote in 1935to an American
femalecorrespondent who was distraught at the discoverythat her son was boroo-
26 Ibid.
21 Ibid. ltXUal.ln his ch:uacteristicallyllumane replyFreud attempts to allay her anxieties by
28 Foucault, The History ofSexuality,108.
placingher erring son in distinguished company: "Many highly respectableindivid-
29 Ibid., ro6.
ualsof ancient and modem times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest
30 Ibid., ro8.
amongthem (Platq, Michelangelo, Leonardo da V mci etc.). Ir is a great injustice to
31 Foucault'sphilosophicalpreferencefor a politics of gay relarionalityover the pentcutchomose.x11.ality
as a crime and a cruelty too. If you do not believe me, read
politics of gay sex acts is comprehensivdy discussed in David M. Halperin, Saint diebooksof HavelockEllis." ~ALetter from Freud,"Americanjour1fal ofPsychiatry,
Foucault:TowardJa GayHagiography(New York:Oxford UniversityPress, 1995),15- Aprilr951,~6.
J6 Ellis, "SexualInversion," 33.
125.
32 Foucault, The HiJtory ofSexuality, 96. » Symonds, T~ Lift ofMichelangelo,540-41.
33 Edward Carpenter, LrNe'sComingofAge:A Sme.i ofPapen on tht Relation°[ JI David Finn and Frederick Hartt, Michelangelo'sThreePietm: A Photographi.
the Sexes (1896; London: George Allen and Unwin, 1948), 181.In my efforts to Shi(Jy(New York:Harry N. Abrams, 1975),108.
prepare the theorctiou ground for a rehabilitationof Edward Carpenter and his kind >9 John 19:39-40.
40 Luca Landucci, Flormtim Diary from 111soto 1516,trans. Alice de Rosen
I have set up a somewhat polemicalopposition between pro-sex and pro-relational·
ity gay and lesbian theorists. Needless to say the oppositions arc not alwaysso sta!k Jervis(London: J. M. Dent and Sons, 35).Also dred i.nFinn •.nd Hartt, Michelan-
(nor am I proposing a puritanical assault on SClCacts and their complexplcasures).ln plo} 'I'hrtt Pietils,19.
41
Judith Butler,A11tigones Claim:Kinshipbttwetn Lift mid Death (NcW York:
recent years, especially,queer theory in all its variants has generally come to concur
eo&umbia
University Press, 2000).
Notts Notes

-42 Ibid., 57, 21, 62. "primrtive"peoples,savagerysimultaneouslycovereda spectrum of attributes which

-0 Ibid., 55. could be identified among criminals, prostitutes, and the undcrclll$sgenerally. In
.. The profound inftuence of The Dmnit efMan upon Darwin's conrempo ICXOlogictl analyses each of thcsc subgroups was chargedwith inadequate sexual
raries it powerfullyasserted in Gillian Beer, Darwini Plots:Ewl11tionaryNarra1tVt differentiation,Thus Ellis points to symptoms of sexualambivalencein criminals
rn Darwin, G,orgeEliot, and Nintlttnth-Cmt1JryFiction (1983;Cambridge: Cam and "men oflowcr cluscs"(&x1J11I lnwrsion, 23),and the Italian criminologistLorn·
bndge UniversityPreu, 2000), xxiv. brosolikewiseattests to "the virility underlying the female crunmal rypc" (Ca.=r
•5 Ibid., B. Lombroso and William Ferrero, The FemaleOjfmdn- (New York 0. Appleton,
46 Darwin, The DescentefMan and Stltction in &lotion to Sa(1871; Princeton: 1898),uz.
PcinceronUniveriity Press, 1981),173. 62 Ellis,Suual lnwmon, 79-So.

-47 Ibid., 1;>11. 63 For moreon the discourseof degenerationsec Daniel Pick, Fam ofDegmtra-
411 Frank J. Sulloway,Frtud, Biologistefthe Mind: Beyqnd the Psychoanalytic tion:A EuropeanDisordtr(Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress,1989),J. Edward
ugmd(Ncw York:Basic,1979), 252. Chamberlin and Sander L. Gilman, eds., Degmnation: The Dorl Side efProgrm
-49 Darwin, Tht Desant efMan, 253. (New York:ColumbiaUniversity Press,1985),and Grcta)oncs, S«ial Darwinism and
.so Ibid., 324. Biologicaland SocialTheory(Sussex:Har-
English Thought:TheInteractionhetW<en
SI Ibid., µ3. vester and Humanities, 1980).
n Ibid., 343. 64 Forel, Tht SexualQ=tion, 146-47.
5l ]bid., 356. 65 Bloch, The SexualLift efOur Time, 13.
s. The impact of Darwin'sDtKtnt upon the constructionof Victorian woman- " Ibid.
hood 1scomprehens1vdyanalyicd in Cynthia Russett, Stxual &inut· The Virlonan 67 Ibid., 40.
Con1truttronefWomanhood(Cambridge: I larvard University Press, 1989). Sec also 68 David Hilliard, "Unenglish and Unmanly: Anglo-Catholicism and Homo-
Beer,Darwini Plots. 1CXUality,"VutorianStudits 15,no. a (1981):187.
ss Iwan Bloch, Tht Su1J11I l,fo ,f Our Time, rn Its Rtlatroruto ModernCiwl1J1J
• 69 Bland, wT rial by Sexo).ogy>
Maud Allan, Salomeand the 'Cult of the Clitoris'
tion, rrans.M. Eden Paul (London: Rebman,1908),534. Case,"Se,wlogyin Culturt,ed. Bland and Doane, 193.
s. The most comprehensiverecent surveyof nineteenth-century sexologycan 7G Sis Richard Burton, Plain and Literal Translationef tht Aml,ian Nights'
be foundin Lucy Bland and Laura Doane, eds., SexologyUn,msqred·The Documents E,rttrtainment, Now Entultd, Tht Booi eftht Thousand tmd a Night ([London:)
efStxualScience(Cambridge: Polity,1998),and Lucy Bland and Laura Doane, eds., Burton Club For Ptivatc SubscribersOnly, r886), 10:206-17.
SexrJIIJ!Y
in Cidtun: Loht/lingBod.itsandDesim (Cambridge:Polity,1998). 11 Ibid. Seczz6, 132,236, 237-
S7 R. von K.rafft-Ebing,AMTrllionsefSt:nmlL,fo •fltr the Pryd,opathiaSexualis 12 Ibid., 207, 65.
efIt ~. Krajft-Ebing,Brought Up to Date and Lsued byAltxandtr Hartwich, trans. 73 The complex subject of homosexual orienl2lism is addressed by, among
Arthur Vivian Burbury (London: Staples,1959),9. others,Christopher Lane, British ColonialAlltgory and the ParadoxefHomosexual
st August Forel, Tix Suual Question: A Scinztifa, f'1ycholt,gita/,
Hygimu and Daire (Durham: Durham UniversityPress, 1995),Panninder KausBalcshi,~Homo-
SociologicalStudy, trans. C. F.Marshall (New York:Medical Art Agency,1906), 45o, lCllUalityand Oricntalism: Edward C~nter'5 Journey to the East," ProseStudies13,
451 DO. 1 (1990): 151--r,[specialissue:Ed'WtlrdCarpenttrand Latt-Viclonan Radicalism,
St Bloch, Tht Suual lift efDllr Timt, 6. ed.Tony Brown),andJoseph A. Boone, "VacationCruiso; or, The Homocrotic:sof
60 Patrick Geddes and J. Arthur Thomson, The Ewlution efSt1e(London: <>riffltali~m,"l'MLA 110 (1995):89-107.
Walt« Scott, 1889),26;-70. 7◄ Bloch, Tht Stxual L,fo o/Our Timt, 547,5-49.
" I bvelock Ellis,Man and Woman.A StudyefH"""'n S®ndary StXJJalChar- 7S Quaflon, z«
Ford, Tht Stx1JJJI
actmJtrcs(London: Walter Scott, 1894),13 F'orother examplessec Bland and Doane, 76 William James, Tht PrincipltsefPsychology
(London· Henry Holt, 1890),
eds.,StxologyU11unsortd,201-30. [tis worth noting the geographicalindeterminacy 2=-438.
of the term "savage."While used more often than not to designate nonwestern n Magnus Hirschfeld, Racism,trans. Eden and Cedar P:iuJ(London: Victor
Notes Notes

Gollancz.,1938),150-51.A pioneer in the German movement for homosexual rights nothing, or only this: passage and leap into the other of what was never in itself.
in the late nineteenth century and the early twentieth, Hirschfeld came directly The leap is unsettling twice over: in the agitation of its movement, where there is
under attack in Nazi Germany. Between October 1920and February 19a3his lectures no continuity that would not alsobe the location of a burst of light, and in the
were disrupted by Naziyouth, leaving him seriously injured on one occasion. ln May nonknowing of the ocher that rhus makes up all of self-knowing.
1933his Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin was attacked by storm troopers, who
In another variation OtHhcsc themes, negativity alsoperforms its work on behalf
consigned some ten thousand booksfrom the instirute's library to a fire, along with a
of ethosand sociality in cbe use to which Heidegger puts it while mapping the
bust of Hirschftld. It is worth remembering, in context, that tens of thousands of
itinerary for Dasl!i11,
whose actualization as a subject is at once the moment of its
homosexuals from Germany and Nau-occupied countries were sent to concentra-
dissolution in death, and therefore best deferred in favor of the empirical and life-
tion camps in Germany and Austria.
givingdistractions of self-alienating rclationality.
78 Judith P.Butler, SubjectsuJDesire;·
HegelianRejiectioruin Twentieth-Century
83 Nancy, Hegel,S9·
Franu (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987),9.
114 Monique Wittig, The StraightMind and OtherEssays,5, 40. Wittig's thesis
79 Jean-Luc Nancy, The Inoperatiw Community, trans. Peter Connor, Lisa
hasbeen notably "updated" by, among others, Judith Butler in GenderTroubk
Garbus, Mich,iclHolland, and Simona Sawhncy (Minneapolis: University of Min- , ' 22-
23: "The institution of a compulsory and naturalised heterosexuality requires and
nesota Press,1991),19.
regulates gender as a binary relation in which the masculine term is differentiated
80 See Jean-Luc Nancy, HegeL·Tht RMt!esmessuf the Negatiw, trans. Jason
froma femlnine cerm, and this differcntiati~n is accomplished through the practice
Smith and Steven Miller (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 55.
of heterosexual desire. The act of differentiating the two oppositional moments of
81 See Giorgio Agamben, Languageand Death: Tht Plau ufNegativity, trans.
thebinary results in the consolidation of each term, the respective internal coherence
Karen E. Pinkus and Michael Hardt (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
of sex,gender,desire."
1991),xiii. Agamben'sdefinition of ethosas the place of sociality and communication
IS ln Wittig's words, "For the category of sex is a totalitarian one ... we must
is relevant here: "The ti hos,humanity's own, is not something unspeakable or saur
destroyit and start thinking beyond it if we wane co start thinking at all, as we must
that it must remain unsaid in all its praxisand human speech. Neither is it norhmg-
destroythe sexes as a sociological reality if we want to start co exist" (Thi! Straight
ness, whose nullity serves as the basis for the arbitrariness and violence of social
Mind and OtherEssays,8).
action. Rather it is social pr:ixis itself, human speech itself, which have become
16 Ibid., 30.
transparent to themselves"(Jo6).
87 Sec also Marjorie Garber's notion, in VestedlnttrtstJ: CrossDressingand
82 Nancy, TheInoperativeCommunity,xxxviii.Secalso Nancy,Hegel,36, 37,39,
Cidtuw Identity (Penguin: Harmondsworrh, 1993),of the third space of the trans-
on the experienceof ontological insufficiency as a bridge over into radical or other-
vestite,"which questions binary thinking and introduces crisis" (n).
directed community:
18 See Wittig, The StraightMind and OtherEssays,4S:"breaking off the hctero-
Philosophy is thus the self-knowing of negativityeven as it is the knowing for the sc:xualsocial contract is a necessity for those who do not consent to it. For if there is
negativity of the self ... The only presupposition 'of the self is that it cannot something real in the ideas of Rousseau, it is that we can form 'voluntary associations'
presuppose it.elf ... ~self" is nothing that preexists "for itself" and being "for
hereand now, and here and now reformulate the social contract as a new one
itself" is to befor this absolute non-preexistence. To let this ~for"stand on its own
although we are not princes or legislators.ls this a mere utopia?Then Twillstaywi~
as such is to liberate the self-which also means to liberate freedom it.self.Forthis
Socrates's view and alsoGlaucon's: lf ultimately we arc denied a new social order,
is to unbind the self from every determination to which it would be attached: chat
whichtherefore C',mexist only in words, I will 6nd it in myse1£"
of a substanceor that of a subjectin the sense of a given political identity, thatofan
individual or a people, that of some essence or of a symbol, of a signification,of a 89 Butler, GenderTrouble,r6.
form, orofa figure.But it is not to unbind the self from all attachment so~ coleeit 90 Wittig, The StraightMind and OtherEssayi,32.
float, abstract, in an indetermination that would still only be in the void of the 91 See Michel Foucault, Tht Uus uf Pleanm: The llutory of Sexuality, vol 1,

"l - l." It is to operate its unbinding and its liberation right at singularity and for trans.Robert l lurley (Penguin: l larmondsworth, 1987),p.17.
singularity. That I am unbound myself so as to be precisely this one, such ll one
5
•2
\1 . c·ltc d. in Saini. Foueault:Toward;a Goy Hagiography(New York: Oxford
exposed to others and surging up at my empty place ... Thus "1 = I" mellfl lllvcrsityPress, 1995),78.
Notes Notes

93 Karl Heinrich Ulrichs, The Riddle of "Man-Manly" Low: The Pittneering 1os Ibid., 145.
Workon Male Homosexuality,trans. Michael A. Lombardi-Nash (Buffalo: Prome- 109 Edward Carpenter, Io/aus, an Anthology of Frimdship (Manchester: S.
theus, 1994),r:36. Clarke, 1902),rr,78.
94 Ibid., 2:547. 110 Symonds,A Problemin Modem Ethics (1896),repr. in Malt lt,,ue, 99, 101.

9S Carpenter, LO'VtsComingofAgt, 54-55. 111 Edward Carpenter, P~m II.dam'sPeakto Eltphonta: Slutrht$in Cry/onQnd
% Ibid., 61. India (London: GeorgeAllen and Uowin, 19z1),174.
97 Butler, Gendtr Trouhlt, 16. 112 Edward Carpenter, Ci'llilis.otion;
Ju Caust and Curt (London: S. Sonnen-
98 Carpenter, The IntermediateSex, 114-15. schein, 1897),47.
99 Edward Carpenter, LO've~Coming--of--Age:A Seriesof Papm on the &lotiom 113 lbid., 49.
of the Sexes(1896;London: George Allen and Unwin, 1948),181.True to the ethical 114 M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swa,·aj and Other Writings(1910;Cambridge: Cam-
inducements ofhomosexualiryas he saw it, Carpenter's own sympathieswere consis- bridge University Press, 1997),34.
tently expansive and inclusive. lo addition to his vehement anti-imperialism, he 115 Carpenter, Ci'lli/isation,105.

endeavored-through a Whitmanic rhetoric of democratic comradeship-to draw 116 See Ashis Nandy, The Intimate Enemy: Loss and RecoveryofSeif under
the "worker" into the campaign against public school masculinity.Likewise, con- Colonialism(Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1983).
vinced of a natural affinity between women and homosexuals, he combi'ned forces 117 The anxious anticolonial recuperation of a lost native masculinity is at-
with the Women's Freedom League, formed in 1908,to further the cause of the tested, for instance, in Swami Vivekananda's claim that the salvation of Hindus
suffiugecampaign. Carpenter was -alsoactive with Henry Salt in the animal right$ depended on the three Bs-becf, biceps and Bhagvad-Gita (in a sharp departure
movement. The rejectionby Carpenter and others of sexual binarism asthe prereq- &omthe easyeclecticismand aspirationalandrogynyofhis guru Sri Ramakrishna)-
uisite for radic111,
inclusive,utopian communirywas taken up in rhe early years of the and Nathuram Godsc's assassination of Mahatma Gandhi in the name of a "re·
twentieth century by the editors of the pro-homosexualjournal Urania (1915-40). masculated" Hindu polity. A substantia1treatment of masculine anxieties in na-
Declaring their aim to abolish all distinctions of sex and gender, each issue an- tionalist India may be found, among others, in Mrimilini Sinha, ColonialMas•
nounced the followingutopian project: "Umnia denotes the company of those who culinity:Tht "MaTJ!yEnglishman"and the "EffeminateBmgali"in the LateNimtemth
ate firmly determined to ignore th.c dual organisation of humanity in all its man- Ctntury (Manchester: Manchester UniversityPress, 1995),Revathi Krishnaswamy,
ifestations. They are convincedthat this duality has resulted in the formation of rwo Effeminisrn:The EcanDmyofColonialDesire (Ann Arbor. University of Michigan
warped and imperfect rypes. They are further convinced that in order to get rid of Press, 1998),and Kate Tcltscher, u 'Maidenly and Well Nigh Effeminate': Con-
this state of things no measure of'emancipation' or 'equality' will suffice,which do structions of Hindu Masculinity and Religion in Seventeenth-Century English
not begin with~ compfete refusal to recognise or tolerate the duality itself." Texts," PostcolanialStudies3, no. a (2000): 159,0.
100 Edward Carpenter, lntermediaJeTypes among Primitive Folk:A Study in 118 M. K.. Gandhi, cited in Ved Mehta, Mahatma Gandhi and His .Apostla
SocialEvolution (London: George Allen and Unwin, 19~4),Sz, 711 2. (London; Deutsch, 1971),191,192.
101 Carpenter, Love'sComing-o/·Age,16, 17,19,2J. 119 M. K. Gandhi, Selj-&rtraint'!le7'sus
Se!J-Indulgmce(Ahruedalr.i.d:Navjivan,
102 J. A. Symonds, A Problem in GreekEthics (1883),repr. in Male Love: A 1928),105.
Proh}~min GreekEthic, and Other Wrihngs (New York; Pagan Books,52). uo Henry Salt to M. K. Gandhi, 2Decembcr1929, TheSawurefSalt:A Henry
103 Magnus Hirschfeld, The HomoseXUJ1!ity ofMen a11dWomen,trans. Michael St,Jt Anthology, ed. George Hendrick and Willene Hendrick (Fonrwell, Sussex:
A. Lombardi-Nash (19[4;New York: Prometheus, 2000), u4. Centaur, 1989),175.
HuSocia/Adjwtm~nt(Baltimore:Williams and
Ul-4 "Anomalyt Theln'llerl,a11d Ill Sigmund Freud, On Stxuolity, ed. Angela Ric.hards(Hannondsworth: Peli·
Wilkins, 1929),137. can,1971),56-57n. 1.
105 Clll'penter,Low} Coming-of-Ag~,SS,56. w Sigmund Freud, "Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of I !is Childhood"
106 lbid., 106. Cr9to),Fiw Le,tum on Psyrhonnolym:Leonardoda Vinciand Other Works,ed. James
101 Ibid., 95,122, 174,164. Strachey (London: 1Iogarth, 1910),IJI. For an excellent account of Freud's medical
 Notes
Notes
18 CWMC, 1:22.
bias against the homosexual repudiation of sex for the sake of "love" sec Suzanne 1<.1 Ibid., 1:37.
Rait, "Sex, Love and the Homosexual body in Early Sexology,"Sexologyin CMltur,, 20 Ibid., 1:49.
ed. Bland and Doane, 135-49. 21 Stephcm llay, "The Making of a Latc-Victonan Hindu: M. K. O;indh1 1n
1.23 Freud, On Stx11ali1y,
80. London, 1888-1891,~VirtorionStllliies,autumn 1889,97.
ll4 See Sigmund Freud, Th( Futun ofon illusion, Civilisationand Its DiJcon- 22 Rajmohan Gandhi, Tht GoodBoatman (Delhi: Viking, 1995),63.
tenl! and Oth~rWorks,ed. James Strache.y(London: Hogarth, 192,31), 15. 23 CWMG, 1:81.
us Sigmund Freud, Ci~isation and lls Di.scontmls,trans. James Stracbey 24 See Gandhi, An Autobiography,55.
(London: W.W. Norton, 1989),31. 25 CWMC, 1:81.

26 Rosina Visram provides an instructive account of Indian colonial traffic to

England inAyahs,Lascon ondPrinces:Ind.ionsin Britain,1700-r947(London: Pluto,
CHAPTER 4 Meat
1986).
t M. K. Gandhi, CollecttdWorksofMahatma Gandhi[hereinafter CWMG ], 1:9. 27 E. M. Forster, Two Cheers
for Democrary(London: Edward Arnold, 1951,66).
2 Ibid., 1:42. 28 CWMG, 1:125.

J Ibid., r:50-51. 29 Marios Constantinou, "Spectral Philio and the Imaginary lnsrirution of
• Ibid., 99. Needs,"SouthAtlantic Quarterly97, no. 1 (winter 1998): 156.
5 M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography,or the StoryofMy Experimentswith Truth, 30 Jacques Derrida, 0/Hospitality:A,me Duf~onte(le InwtesjacquesDerrida
trans. Mahadev Desai (Ahmedabad: N.ivjivan,191.7),36-37. lo &spond, trans. Rathel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, :tooo), 124-
6 Ibid., 39. 25.
1 lbid., 40. 31 Donna]. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs,and Womfn:Th, &tnVt!ntionofNature
B BhikuPuckh, ed., Bantham}Politico/Thought(London: Croom Tlelm, 1973), (New York: Routledge, 1991), 173.My exploration in this chapter of fin-de·sieclc
67-For a description of Gandhi's early and unfavorableencounter with Bentham and human-animal sociality,especiallyin its anricolonial manifcscaoon,alsotakes its cue
utilitarian philosophy see Gandhi, An Autobiography, 40. fromHaraway's detailed exploration of colonialism as anthropocentrism in Primatt
9 Jeremy Bentham, An Introductiontp the Principia of Morab and L1gi.slotion, Yi.sipns:Gender,Rau and Nature in the WorldofModi,n, Scttnce(New York: Rout-
ed. J.H. Burns and H. L.A. Hart (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996)17-18 ledge,1989).The anticolonial dimensions ofHaraway's thought have recently been
10 Gandhi,An Autobiography,38. explicated in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge: Harvard
11 Ibid.,.µ. UniversityPress, 2000), 91-92, 214-18.ln a maneuver re.latedto Haraway's chinking
1l CWMC, r:98. on these subjects, if different for its tone of harsh skepticism, John Gray in his book
13 Ibid. In a later reminiscenceGandhi recounts that he chose porridge for the StrO'WDogi: Thoughtson Humans and Othn-Animals (London: Granta, 2003) also
first course and a pie for the second: "I saw the 'Central' restaurant, and went there foregrounds human-animal socialityas a means of dismantling the rapacious impe-
and had some porridge for the first time. I did not at first enjoyit, but I liked the pie I rialsubject, homorapiens,unleashed by the forces of western humanism.
had for the second course." CWMG, 1:49. 32 The Vegetarian,13June r89r, 320.
J.f Stephen Wmsten, Solt and His Cirtk (London, 1951),n8. 33 Gandhi,An.Autobiogwphy, 47. The anarchist emphasis on "mutual aid" that
IS George Hendrick, Henry Salt:Ilumanitorian &farmer and Man ofLetters Gandhi gleaned fromthe:company of fin-dc-siecle vegetarians well anticipates the
(Urbana: Universityoflllinois Press, 1977),m-12. ideaofinterspecies relationality,and the politics thereof, that Donna Haraway rec-
t6 Gandhi,An Autobiography.41. Gandhi confinm this debt to Salt in a letter of ommendsin her recent Tht CompanionSpnits Manifesto:Dogs,People,and Signiji-
6 October 1931written roan E. Dolby Shelton, another English · "l wnsa
· vegcranan: tllnt Otherness(Chic.ago: Prickly Paradigm, 1003), 12: "There cannot be just one
l)orn vegetarian, but 1 had lapsed from myvegetarianismowing to foolish compan- ClOmpanjon species, there have ro be two to make one. It is in the syntax; it is in Lhc
ionship in youth. On coming to London 1 bcc:une a.convincedvegetarian, through lab. Dogsarc about the. inescapable, conrradictory story of fdatioo.ships-co-
having read Mr. Salt's essay.ls this quire dear?" CWMG, 48:n4. COnstiturivcrelationships in which none of the partners pre-exist the relating, and
17 Gandhi, An Autobiography,41.
Notes Notes

the relating is never done once and for all. Historical specificity and contingent 47 Ritvo, TheAnimal Estate,162.
mutability rule all the waydown, into nature and culture, into narurcculcures.There 48 Vegetarian,19January r898.
is no foundation; there are only elephants supporting elephants all the way down." ◄9 Almond! and Raisins, 1886,4: Animal's Friend, August 1895,238.
:w Sec Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World:A History ofthe Modern :SO Vegetarian,2 April 1898,215.
Smsibility (New York:Pantheon, 1983),295. 51 Behramji Malabari, The Indian Eye on English Lift (Wcsrminstcr: A. Con·
3S For a basic historic11J
background to the tradition of English vegetarianism stable, 1893),45.
sec Thomas, Man and the Nat11ralWorld,James Turner, Rtdwning with the Beau, 52 VegetarianMum,ger 1 (r887):3-4.
Animals, Pai11a11dHumanity in the ViaorianMind (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Uni- S3 T. B. Macaulay, Criticaland Historital Essays(London, r843),J:345·
versity Press, 1980),Harriet Ritvo, ThtAnimal Estate: The English and Other Crea- S-4 John Rosselli, "The Self-Image of Effeteness: Physical Education and Na-
tures in the V'utorian Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987},Christine tionalism in Nineteenth-Century Bengal,"Past and Prem1t 86 (l98o): 123-24
KenyonJones, KindredBrutes:Animals in &manti,-Period Writing (Aldershot: Ash- 5S Swami Vivekananda, Selectionsfrom the CompleteWorksofSwami Viwka-
gate, 2,001),and Timothy Molton, Shelleyand the Rewlution in Taste:The Body and nanda (Calcutta: AdvaitaAshram, 1986),530.
the Natural World(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). S6 Gandhi,AnAutobiography,17.
36 See KenyonJones, Kindred Brule,, uo n. 6. 57 Ibid., 18.
37 An important and sympathetic discussionof romantic oricntalism is offered .ss Ibid.
in John Drew, India and the RomanticImagin.a.titm(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 59 The case for the long associationofbeef and virility in English nationalism is
1987).Nigel Leask provides a rather more familiar postcolonial critique of this ten- made, variously, in Thomas, Man and the Natural World, and Ritvo, The Animal
dency in British &mantic Writm and the Ea.rt:Anxieties ofEmpin (Cambridge: Estate.
Cambridge University Press, 1992). 60 Almonds and Raisins, 1886, 4; Anna Kingsford, The Ptrfact Wayin Diet: A

38 Contemporary accounts of the Vegemian Society 11ndits affiliatesappear in Thati.rtAdW€11tinga R.tturn to the Natural and Andmt FoodofOur Race (London:
The VeguarianMmenger 6 (1856):89 and Howard Williams, Th, EthicsofDiet, rev. KeganPaul,Tfench, 1881),16-17.
edn (London: I lumanitarian League, 1896),42.4n. 61 Sec Henry Light, Common-Seme Vegetarianism(Manchester: Vegetarian

39 E.Mason,ed., OscarWilde on Vegetarianism: An Unpuhlishtcd

u/fer to Violet Society,19:i9),96-97.
Fane(Edinburgh: Tragara, 1991). 6l Emest Crosby and Elis~eRedus, The Metil Fetish:TwoEs,ayson lltgetarian-
40 Pyarclal,MahatmaGandbi.:TheEarlyPhau (Ahmedabad:Navjivan,1965),140. im, (London: A. C. Fifield, 1905),15.
41 Henry Salt, ed., The New Charter:A Discussionofthe Rights ofMen and the 63 Vegetarian,8 March 1902,94.

Rights ofAnimal.s(London: George Bell and Sons, 1896),9. This volume of essays 6" Vegetarian,18February 1899,j'S.

re.vealsthe ideologicaldiversity of contemporary vegetarian opinion, encompassing 6S The Brutalitarian:A]o11T11al ofthe Sane a11dStrong 1, no. 1 (r904): 4-
scientists, secularists, theosophists, socialists, and evolutionists. 66 Henry Salt, Killing/or Sport:Essayrhy VariousWriters(London: George Bell
42 H. S. Salt to Gandhi, 8 October 193:i,Gandhi National Museum and Li- and Soos, -r919),150.
brary, New Delhi. 67 CWMG, 68:265,
43 Humane Rwiew I (1901):1. 68 CWMG, 85:266-67.
44 Sec Richard French, Anti'Uivisectitmand Mtdfra/ Sciencein VictorianSociety 69 Henry Salt, Lift ofHenry Da'llid Thoreau,ed. George Hendrick, Willene
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975),and Coral Lansbury, The Old Browrr Hendrick and Fritz Oehlschlaeger (1890;Fontwell, Sussex:Centaur, 1993),130.
Dog:Womm, Worktn,and Vi11isectio11 in Edwardian England(Madison: University 70 Salt to Gandhi, 18September 1929,Gandhi National Museum and Library,
ofWisconsin Press,1985). NewDelhi.
45 Cobbe writes in detail about the l,qophilist and u Zoophilt in her /,ift of 7l Gandhi to Salt, a October 1929,Gandhi National Museum and Library,
Franw Powtr OJbbeas Told by llem(f (London: S. Sonnenschein, 1904),67o-71. New Delhi.
46 Sec James Hunt, Gandhi in undon (Delhi: Promilla, 1993),33,and Gandhi, 72 The Pqr/iammtaryDehalesfrom the Yearr803 to the Pre.rentTime [hereinafter
An Autobiography,
lJ4. ~hatts ], n.s. 7 (London: I lansard, !825):758.
Notes Notes

73
For a history of the RS J>CA see Arthur Moss, ValiantCrusade:
A Historyo/th, tion.sto SocialPhilosophy,ed. W. I. Ashley (New York:Augustus M. Kelley,1965),
asJ>cA (Cassell:London, t961). 958-59.
74 F. R. Leavis, Mill on Bentham and Coleridge(Cambridge: Cambridge Uni- 97 Cited in AsaBriggs, TheAge ofI mprtJfJemmt:
178r I867(London: Longman,
versity Press, 1950),IJ· 1959), 2.
75 Thomas, Man and the Natural World,175. 98 Jeremy Bcntham,A Fragment011 Gwernment, ed. J.H. Burns and H. L.A.

76
Peter Singer, PracticalEthics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres~, Hatt (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1988),40.

t979), 13· 99 J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism,On Liberty,Essayon Bmtham, ed. Mary Wunock

77 Peter Singer,.Anima/Libuation, 2d edn (London: Pimlico, 1975),204- (Glasgow:Collins, 1962), 135-36.

78 Bentham,An Introductionfo the PrinciplesofMoralsand Legislati·on,
282-83. 100 James Mill, The HistoryofBritishIndia.,ed. John Kenneth Galbraith (New
79 Immanuel Kant, Lectureon Ethics, trans. L. lnfidd (New York: Harper, York:Chelsea House, t968), 1:3371 124.
1963),239-40. 101 Rudyard Kipling, The]rmgleBoo/a(Harmond$Worth:Penguin, 1987), 146.
80 Debates,1+555· 102 Eric Stokes, TheEnglish UtilitariansandIndia (Oxford: Clarendon, 1959),
ofth• Rights ofBrutes,ed. Louise Shultz Boas
81 Thomas Taylor, Vindication_ 49, 80,320. The case for historical links between nineteenth-century utilitarianism
(Gainesville:Scholars Facsimilesand Reprints, 1960), vii. _ _ andcolonial government in India is also pursued in Lynn Zastoupil, j. S. Mill and
82 Bentham,.AnJntrodur.tion to the PrinciplesofMoralsand ugislahon, 2.82. India."VictorianStudies,autumn 1988, 31-54- For arguments about the structural
83 Elie Halevy, The Growth ofPhilosophical Radicalism(London: Faber and similaritiesbetween utilitarian thought and colonial governmemality see Ranajir
Faber, 1918),1,7. Guha,"Dominance without Hegemony and I ts Historiography,"SuhalternStudies6
84 Bentha.m,AnIntroductionto the PrinciplesofMaraisand ugislation, 285. (1989):210-309, and Timothy Mitchell, ColonfringEgypt (Cambridge: Cambridge
85 Halevy,The GrowthofPhilosophical
Radicalism,27. UniversityPress,1988).
86 The Birth ofthe Prison,trans. Alan
Michel Foucault, Disciplineand P11nis:h: 103 Pyarelnl,Mahatma Gandhi,133.
Sheridan (Penguin: Harmondsworth, 1987),209. ICM Foucault,Distiplineand P11nish, 1991 200.
87 Ibid., 221. tel5 Ibid., 219-20.
88 See for example Thomas, Man and the Natural World,186-88, and Rirvo, 106 Bentham, A Fragmenton Gowm=nt, -4-0.
The Animal Estate, 133- 36. AMther perspectiveon 'the intimate relation between 107 John Durham Peters, Spealr.inginto tht Air: A History of the Idea ofCom-
"imperialgovc:rnmem"and the "management"of nature is offeredjn RichardDray- ._ication (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, i999), 16.
ton's study of the rise of the botanical garden-and thereto, the growing compact lGI Bentham, An Introductionlo the PrinciplesofMoralsand Legislation,21.
berween Victorian naturalists and administrators-in Naron's GOVC71ment: Science, 1119 See ibid., 16.
ImperialBritain, and the '1mprowmmt" ofthe World(New Haven: YaleUniversity 110 John Stuan Mill,Autobiography(London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and
Press, woo). D,,er,r873),67.
89 Debates,35:204. lll Animal Liberation,x, opens with Singer'sexcoriatingcritique of"feding" as
90 Ibid., 35=202. IIDmethingirrdevantand deleterious to animal welfare.Recalling a student encoun-
91 SeeDebates,36:847, 36:8481 n.s. 16:560, n.s. 16:561. 11erthatbe and his wifehad with a hypocritical,ham-eating, English animal lover,he
92 Cited in Ritvo, TheAnimal Estate,135. launchesinto the following fulminations: "we were not especially 'interested in'
93 The theme of"vigilance" is ubiquitous in most RSPCA writings. See cspc· llllimals.Neither of us had been inordinatelyfond of dogs, cats, or horses in the way
dally Moss's ValiantCrusade. . • c Wells, diatmany people arc. We didn't 'love' animals.We simply wanted them treated as
94 S. S. Monro, Jiinu: To Workm in the Causeof/l11ma111ty
(Tunbndg dieindependent beings that they ate, and not asa means ro human ends-as the pig
1890),I, ~ Reshwasnow in our hostess'ssandwicheshad been treated ... The assump-
95 See Moss,ValiantCrusade,53· .a ~ that in order to be interested in such matters one must be an 'animal-lover' is
· h"ApP".1
96 John Sruarr Mill, PrindpltJ ofPoliticalE"momy with someoft eir an indic:ationof the absence of the slightest inkling that the moral standards
Notes Not-es
tharwe apply among human beings might extend to other animals." Singer offers~s 129 The discourseof contemporary utopian socialismwas alsocntirtly hospita-
most coherent defense of the "separation" between animals and humans, once again ble to the sentimental apologia of radfoal zoophilia on account of its own unique
in a startlingly utilitarian idiom, in hls fieto•critic3Ireflection upon J.M. Coetzee's privileging of sentiment and concomitant focus, as Sheila Rowbotham and Jefferey
Tht Uws ofAnima/J(Prin~-eton:Princeton University Press, 1999), 85.-9': Wee.kshave observed in Socialismand theNew Lift: ThePmona/ and Stxual Politirsof
IU Bentham, //n Introductionto /ht PrincipltsofMoralsand Legislallon,282. Edward Carpenterat1dHawlocl:Ellis(London: Pluto, 19n), 9, on ~the inrer•connec-
113 Drbatts,36:845. tions between the transformation of personal life and wider extern~) radic.i.1social
IU SecJohn Kipling ('1.391)Bear/and Man in [11dia(London: Macmillan, change." So, in his Low's Coming-if-Age:/I Seritsof Paperson the Rdution of tht St~s
1904). (1896; London: George Allen and Unwin, 1:948),we find Edward Carpenter cele-
Jl5 . ·
1Iaraway, Stmums, C,yw
Lro-s ,,. 3..R.
,.., and Wqmen, ,.,., ,~ Similar sentiments are brating socialism as the politics most appropriate to Mlovc'scoming of age,"and in a
repeated in Haraway's paen to human-dog relationality in The ~mP!"'ion Species similar vein, Henry Salt endorses socialism for its uniqut quality of"hcart." As he
Manifesto, 2 - 3: "We are training each other in acts of commurucatton we barely writes in Tht Heart of Socialism(London: Independent Labour Party Publication
understand. We are, constitutively,companion species. We make ea.ehother up, in Department, 1928),62: "We need ... in politics-and Socialism alone seems to be
the flesh. Significantly other to each other, in specific difference, we signifyin the able to bring it-'a change of heart' ... without this change ofhearr neither religion,
flesh a nasty developmental infection called love." nor science, nor statesmanship, will avail to liberate us from our bondage."
116
Henry Salt, Crwlties of Civiluation:A Programof Humane Reform (Lon- 130 Henry Light, Common-SenseVegetarianism,
96.
don: William Reeves, 1984),vi-vii. 131 Cobbe, Tiu Friend of Man, a11dHis Friends-the Poets(London: George
117 Humanitarian,n.s. 2, no. 44 (Oetober 1905):172. Belland Sons, 1889),33.
118 Animals' Frimd,June 18941 2, JJl Salt, ed., The New Charter,20.
119 Arthur Broderick Bullock, "The Btuis ofMorality''.·Schopenhauer's
Viewof 133 See Sak, Sewnty YtarsamongSawg,,s, I5J-SS·
Ethi<I(London: $. Sonnenschein, 1903),4, 2, S· JJ.4 Salt, KillingforSport,vi.
120 The Brutalitaritm:A]oumal ofthe Saneand Strong,1. 135 Tolstoy The First Sltp:An Essay011 the Moralsof Dw (1892),trans. Aylmer
12 1 Henry Salt, Scwnty YtarsamongSavagts(London: GeorgeAllen and Un• Maude (Manchester: VegetarianSociety, 1902),50, 31.
win, 1921),48. 136 Kingsford, The Perftrt Wayin Diet, 61.
112 Henry Salt, Shelleyas a Pionur ofHumanitarianism (London: ~~an-- 137 E. Nesbit, TheNew TreasurrSttliers(HarmondswOTth:Puffin,1 82), 209 .
9
writings on Shelleyinclude Shelleys Prin~-
itarian League, t9o1), 14. Salt's numl'.fOUS 138 Ibid., 217.
plll: Has Time Refuted or Q,njirmd Them:A Retmpect and Fortr4SI (London: W ii· 139 VegetarianMessengtr,1856,43-45.
liam Reeves,1892), A ShelleyPrimtr (London: Reeves and Turner, 1887),and Percy 140 Thomas Mansell, Vegetarianism
a11dMa=f Lal,O'llr(Manchester. Vege-
ByssheShelley:A Monograph(London: S. Sonnenschein, 1888). . tarian Society, 1897).
121 Frances Power Cobbe, Darwinism in Morals and OtherErrays(London; 141 Animal's Friend1 (June 1894):1.
Williams and Norgatc, 1872),6. 142 Kingsford, UnscientificSdenu: A Lertun {1883;Edinburgh: Andrew and
ll4 Cobbe, Fabe Beastsand Troe: Essayson Natural and Un711ltural
History Elliot, 1915),29.
(London: Ward, Lockand Tyler, 1900). . 143 Zoopbili.st,2 April 1888,56.
125 Cobbc, The Divine Law of Low and Its Applicationto the U'l.l}(I' Animals Charles Darwin, Voyageofthe
Btaglt:CharlesDurw,'n'sjournalof&s
144 6 ardJes,
ed.
(London: Pcwtres&,1895),3· andabridgedbyJanet Browneand Michael Necvc (Harmondsworth:Penguin,193 ), 2 •
9
126 Anna Kingsford, Dreamsand Dream Stories,ed. EdwardMaitland (Lon· us Ibid., 9.
don: GeorgeRedway,1888),24, 45• 1-46 Ibid., 376.
127 See Anna Kingsford, Pastl!ur:
His Meth<,dand Its Re;ults:A Lecture(Lon· 147 Jbid., 183-84.
don: North London Anti-Vivisection Society, 1886),11. 148 Charles Darwin, The Origin of Spcries,by Mtans of Natura/Se/~(ticnor tht
128 Edward Maitland, Anna Kingsford:Htr Life,Letters,Dtary and Work(Lon· ,,,._,.vation of Favourd Raw in the Strugglefor Lift (x859;New York:Modem
don: John M. Watkins, 1913),2:268. library,
,998), 5·
 Notes
Notes
popular imagination, as Joli observes in The SecondInternational, 56, socialism and
t49 Ibid., 610-11.
anarchism remained almost indistinguishable: "When ordinary people in Europe
1so Ibid., 578.
tSl Cited in James J.Sheehan and Morton Sosna, The Boundaries of Humanity: thought about international Socialists, it was not the disciplined mass panics, rhe
Humans,;fnimalsand Machines(Berkeley:University of California Press, c991),31. solid, bearded, self-improving working men of the German or Belgian Socialist
m Henry Salt, TheCrud of.Ki,iship(London: Constable, 1935),8. Parties or the British trade unions that came to mind. The figure that had captured
1s1 See J. I toward Moore, Tht Unif.lffsal Kinship(London: George Bell and the imagination was the Anarchist with the smoking bomb in his pocket, who,.,•
outrages could be regarded either as the gallant defiance of an opprcs~iveand mate·
Soos, 1906).
(ialist social system or as the senselessprotest of a deranged individu.tl."
154 Vtgetarian, t April 1899.
160 Edwasd Carpenter, Prisons,Poliu and PumshmmJ: An Inquiry into tlu
155 Darwin, TheOrigin of Sp~r:ies,
627.
156 Haraway, in Tiu Companion SpeciesManifuto, 9, draws attention to the Causesand Trealmmt of Crime and Criminals (London: A. C. Fifield, 1905),104, n3.

anarchism, or mistrust of sequestering categories,implicit in the web of affinitiespos- 161 Henry Salt, Animal RightsConsidered
in Relation to SocialProgrro, rev. cdo

tulated by Darwin:"And like the productions of a decadent-gardenerwho can't keep (London: G. Bell and Sons, r9u), 16-17.
good distinctions between natures and cultures straight, the shape of my kin net- 162 Henry Salt, Cum Grano {BerkeleyHeights, N.J.: Oriole, 1931),n9.
works looks more like a trellis or an esplanade than a tree. Youcan't tell up from down,
and everything seems to go sidewise. Suchsnake-like, sidewinding trafficis one of God
my themes. My garden is fullof snakes, fullof trellises, full of indirection. Instructed
by evolutionary population biologists and bioanthropologists, I know that multidi- 1 See Parama Roy,Indian Trafficldmtitiu in Qul!stiu,;,.
in Colonial and Postcolo-

recti.onalgene flow-multidircctional flows of bodies and values-is and has always nial India (Berkeley:University of California Pres~, 1998),123-2+ "She was neces-

been the name of the game of life on eanh. lt is certainly the wayinto the kennel." sary for the consolidation of his nationalism, his guruness, his ma$culiniry,his het-
157 Peter Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factur of Ewlulion (London: William erosexuality ... One might specuhtte that Nivedica's fervent defence of Hindu
gender orthodoxy is also a meditation on her own discipleship.''
Heinemann, 1910),57·
2 For Adorno, mystical, oecultist, and spiritualist practicei.arc inherently anti-
us Ibid., 226-27.
159 The peculiarities of fin-de-siccle English anarchism arc comprehensively thetical to the projectof socialjustice becauseof their affinity 10 authoritarianism. See
described in HenniaOliver, Thdinternational/lnarc/;ist Mowmmt i1ILatt-Victoria11 for example bis reading of astrology columns in The Starsl)q,wn to Earth and Other
London (London: Croom Helm, 1983).Generally speaking, anarchism's influence Essays,ed. Stephen Cook (London: Routledge, 1994),38, 43: "Under present condi-
upon and presence within the culture of fin-de-siecle English socialism was borh tions, the astrological system can function only as 'secondary superstition,' largely
tenuous and tenacious. As is well known, growing tensions between Marx and exempt from tbe individual's own critical control and offered authoritatively ...
Balcunincaused the First International to split in 1872,with the Bakunists"officially" Indulgence in ascrologymay provide those whp fall for it with a substitute for sexual
expelled. Despite the "formal" triumph of Marxism in this conflict, however, the pleasure of a passive nature. It means primarily submission to unbridled strength of
anarchi!;tscontinued to meet under cbe aegis of a Bakunist International between the absolute power."Compare Anthony Storr, Fut of Clay:A Studyof Gurus (Lon-
1872,and 1877,and in r88r some leading anarchists, among them Kropotkin and don: Harper Collins, 1997),:xiii:"Gurus rend to be elitist and anti-democratic, evenif
Redus, organized a "black international" with branches in France, Italy, and rhe they pay lip-serviceto democracy.How could it be ocberwise?Conviction of a special
United States. Taking root more strongly in France, Italy, and Spain-countries, that revelation must imply that the guru is a superior person who is not as other men arc ...
is, with wea~er industrialization and a smaller urban and working-class population- Once established,f;Urusmust exerciseauthority, which ... precludes making friends
anarchism never quite managed to become a. mass trans-European movement. on equal terms." While the guru-disciple relationship is ncccsmily bound by hier-
51 archical obligations, it is absurd to invoke dictatorship as the only model for the
Nonetheless, and through all of their vexed negotiations wirh the dominant Manci
onhodoxy in the first two internationals, anarchists maintained a hold on the inter· enactment of such obligations. Consider lhe relationship betweenthe inspirational
nd teacher and his students, the revolutionaryleader and her followers,etc.
national socialist movement at least until tbeywcrc officiallypurged from the Seco
3 Ashis Nandy, Th6 lntimau Enemy: Loss and &cowry efSt/f uruler Co/011ialism
International in 1896.So too, against expectation they managed to find severalhospi-
table pockets within the various sube.ulturcsof late Victorian radicalism. And in lhc (Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1983),95.lt is worth noting that Nandy reserveshis
fvotes Notes

suspicion for Mura Alfassawhile remainin~ deeply sympathetic to Sri Aurobindo's 13 See A. B. Purani, faH:ningTalkswith Sri Aurohi11do,
id edn (Pondicherry:
spirirualist politics. Sri Aurobindo Society,1995),52 -53. The meeting beiween Devdas Gandhi and Sri
◄ Kumari Jayawardcnc, The Whih' Woma.nsOtherBurdtn: Westt/111
Womenand Amobindo was not a success. In addition to their strong differencCllon the ad-
SouJhAsiaduringBritish Rule(New York: Routledge, 1995),i25. missibilityof violence in revolutionarystruggle, Devdas's Gandhian recoil fmm Sri
s EvelynRoy,"Mahat;maGandhi: RevolutionaryorCounrcr-Rcvolutionary?," Aurobindo's smoking h:1bitdid not raise him in rhe estimation of rhe di~rinctlyanti•
l,abqurMonthly, September 1993,158,also cited inJayawardenc, The Whitt Womoni puritanical yogi. An amusing account of the c.ncountcr is given by Nirodbaran in
OtherBurdm, u9. Twe/w Yean with SriAurohindo,id edn (Pondicbcrry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 19;n),
6 Throughout this bookl have been treating the terms "politics"and "ethics" as 13:"A cigar was almost alwaysbefWecnbis lips. Once D<!vdas
Gandhi, son of Ma-
intimate and contiguous. While this enterprise leavesitselfopen to the charge that it hatma Gandhi, visited him and saw the inevitable cigar. He ,;hot the question, 'Why
renders "politics" and "ethics" in some way indistinguishable or identical, my insis- are you so attached to smoking?' At once came the reton, 'Why am you so attached
tence upon the contiguity of these two terms does not in any way assume their to non-smoking?'"
synonymity. Such insistence is a strong-some might say characteristic-feature of 14 SriAurobindoArchivesand Research,December 1994,i37. For a fuller discus-
the postmodern philosophies to which this book is indebted, finding utterance vari- sion of the suspicion with which the British imperial administration regarded the
ously in the tradition linking Levinas, Lyotard, the late Foucault, and most compel- Richards, see Van Vrekhem, The Mother,16o-61.
lingly the late Derrida. So too, the transactive or symbiotic narurc of the "ethical" 15 SriAurobindoArchiwsand Research, December 1994,240. See also Van Vrek-
and the "polio.cal"was typicalof the historical figureswith whom I am concerned in hem, TheMother,169-91.
this stUdy:both on the western side (Carpenter, Salt, Mirra Alfassa, OscarWilde) 16 See Van Vrek:hcm,The Mother, 173.

and on the nonwestem, most notably in the case of Gandhi. 17 Nirodbar:tn, T'flMlwYearswith Sri Aurohindo,161.
7 Dipcsh Chaktabarry, /'ro,JindalizingEun,pe: Posttolonia/Thoughtandlfrstor- 18 See Logic Barrow,''Socialism in Eternity: Plebian Spiritualists, 185r1913,"
ital Dijferenu(Princeton: Princeton University Press, iooo), 16. History Worhhop:A Jovrnal of SocialistHistoroms9 (spring 1980): 63.
s See Georges Van Vrckbem, The Mother: The Story ofHer Lift (New Delhi: 19 Etienne Balibar, "lrrationalism and Marxism,'' New ufl Rroiew 9 (Janu-
Harper Collins, 1000 ), 125: "Aurobindo was named by some British authorities as 'ihc ary-February 1971!): 10, is instructive in his claim that the reaction against theology

most dangerous man in India,' and 'dangerous' is an epithet attached to his name (or irrationalism) frequently resolvesitself in a preference for empiricism rather than
againand again in the letters of the highest officebearers, including the ViceroyLord rationalism:"Certain variants are altogether paradoxical.Thus, rationalism may take
Minto." Although Sri Aurobindo had amnesty from British laws in Pondichcrry, on the shape of a 'rational theology'; while, at the same time, the struggle against
both he and his visitorswere closelywatched by locallyplacedspiesfor the Brio.shad- theology may assume another compromisefor, setting against Fruth not Reason, but
ministxation.In 19p:one of thesevisitors, AlexandraDavid-Neel, the fust European its 'opposite': Experience, Feelingand Llfe.° For the mid-Victorian turn to empirical
woman to enter Tibet and a closdiiend of the Richards through theosophical circles, methods and empirical investi.gation,and the enthusiastic reception of John Stuart
was officiallyreprimanded by British intelligence in Madrasfor her contact with Sri Mill's Logic(r843), see Alan Gauld, The Foundersof PsychicalResearch(New York:
Aurobindo. For an account of Sri Aurobindo's political extremism in the context of Schocken, 1968},46-65.
Indian anticolooial nationalism see Peter Heehs, The Bomb in Bmgol· The Rise ef 20 For a more detailed account of the. Linksbetween Theosophy and late Vic-

&wlutirmmy TerroriJmin India, r900-1910 (Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, 1993). torian radicalism see Diana Burfield, "Theosophy and Feminism: Some Expla-
9 Cited in Sujata NahllJ',Mother'sChronicles: Mirra Meets the Rewlutiunary nations in Ninereenth-Century Biography," Womms ReligwusExperieme: Crim-
(Paris: Jnstitut de RecherchC$Evolutives,1997),5:58o. CulturalPmprctifJt;S,
ed. Par Holden (London: Croom Helm, 1983),27-56.
10 Sri Aurobindo, Recordof Yoga-I (Pondicberry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 21 Cited in Darrow,"Socialism in Etemity,n 38, 49.

1001) I lO:I40.l. 22 Sec Annie Besant, Wbyl B«amea Thmophm(London: Frecthought, 1889).

u The Mother, Praym and Meditations(Pondichcrry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 23 Cited in Stephen Yeo, "A New Life: The Religion of Socialism in Britain,

1971!),1:191. 1883-18961" HiJtoryWorluhopfuurnal,autumn 1977,5-6.

12 See Peter Heehs, SriAurobindo:ABriefBiography(Delhi:Oxford University :z.t Cited in Stephen Winsten, Solt and /Jis Circle(London: I lutchlnson, r951),

Press, 1989),83-84-
 Notts

2s See Eugen Weber, France,Fin dt Sii<!t (Cambridge: Harvard Uruvcn;,ty Tragedyand Philosophy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986),5: "That 1
Press, 1986). am an agent, but also a plant; th:ir much that I did not makegoes towards making me
26 See The Mother, Wordsof I.AngAgo (Pondichcrry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram whatever I shall be praised or blamed for being; that I mu~tconstantly choose among
Trust, 1978),2:40-,p, z:98-99, ~errorlies in the bclieftha1:11hingin the umven,c ma> competing and app:ircntly incommensurable goods ,ind that cim1m~tanc« m,1y
be our own J)()bscssion.Everything belongs ro all, and to say or think, 'This 1,mine,' force me to a position in which I cannot help being falseto 110mcthingor doing ,nmc
is ro create a sep.u-ation,a dtvision which docs not exist in rcaliry ... 1t is true rha1 wrong; that an event that simply happens ro me may, withou1 my c<>n~ent,
alter my
50mc people command grca1materul possessions.But in order to be in accord wnl life; that it is equally problematic coentrust one's good to friend,, lovers, or country
the universal law, they should consider themselves as trustees, stewards of the,e and to try and have a good life without them-all tba('. I take not just co be the
possessions.They ought to know that these riches are administered to them so that material of tragedy, but everyday facts of lived practical reason."
they may administer them for the best interests of all." 38 Sandel, Libera/um and the Limits ofjustice, 63-C£ Ahsdatr Maclnryre,.After
21 Sec ibid., 2:12. The left leanings of the Richards wen: also Visiblewithin Virtue:A Study in Moral Tlxory,2d edn (London: Duckworth, 1997),133-34-:MIam
France on account of Richard's public membership in 1905in.the pro-Dreyfus group brother, cousin and grandson, member of this household, that village, this tribe.
Ligue des Droits de !'Homme et du Citoyen and his continuing support for it. These arc not characteristicsthat belong to human beings accidentally,to be stripped
28 J. H. Cousins and M. E. C?usins, Wt Two Togttber(Madras:Ganesh, 1950). away in order to discover 'the real me.' They arc part and parcel of my substance,
352 • defining partially at least and sometimes wholly my obligations and my duties.
29 The Mother, Mother'sAgenda: 1968
(Paris: lnsritut de Recherches Evolu- Individuals inherit a particular space within an interlocking set of social relation-
tives, 1981),9:146. ships: lacking that space, they arc nobody, or at best a stranger or an outcast."
30 The Mother, Prayen and Mulitations, -4, 5, 129. 39 Judith Buder, Gmdrr Trouhlr Feminum and the Suhwrs,on ofIdentity (New

JI The Mother, WordsofI.AngAgo, 91. York: Routledge, 1990), 15.

32 Sri Aurobindo, &cord of Yoga-I, 279. For experiments in thought sharing olCI Stuart Hall, Th, Hard Road to /unt'W{JI:Thatrhmsm and the Crisisoftlx Left

see uo, nr, 135,169, 171,195. (London: Verso,1988),28a.

J3 My dl.$CUSSion of Kannan ethics here draws upon my earlier Posuolomal 41 Paul Gilroy, T~ Ain't No Blad in tlu Un11,n],ult. Tbt Cultural Politicsof
Tluory: A Cntual lntrodm.tum(Sydney: Allen and Unwtn, 1(}98),139-140. Compare Rau and Nation (London: Hutchinson, 1987),227.
Michael Sandel's gloss on Kantian anti-empiricism in Libera/um and the L,mits of 42 Edward Said, Cultureand lmpmalum (London: Chuto and Windus, 1993),
Justiu (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982)1 r-"Were 1wholly an empiri- 403.
cal being, I would not be C21Yilile
of freedom, for every exercise of will would be 43 In Rushdie's writing the hybrid subject is also immune, once again as in
conditioned by the desire for some object. All my choice would be heteronomous Kant, from the ~extreme"passionsof nationalism.
choice governed by the pursuit of some end." 44 See Kant, Rehgion within the Limits of&ason Alont, 4 9.
l4 Kant entered into conflict with the Prussian St:itc after an edict in 1j>88 4S Ibid.,~.
threatened civil punishment and dismiss:ilfrom office to all those employees under 46 Jbid., 47.
the jurisdiction of the department of church and schools who publicly strayed from 47 Derrida, uFaith and Knowledge:The Two Sourcesof'Rcl.tgion'at the Limits
biblical doctrines. Obedient to, if critic:il of, government censorship, he was less of Reason Alone," Religion (Cambridge: Poliry, 1998), ed. in Jacques Derrida and
arcumspcct with regardto the jealous orthodoxy of aadcmicians and theologians. Giani Vattimo, n.
His Stmt dtr Fa,uitattti [ConAict of the Faculties] (1798), for mstancc, 1s an open 411 Ibid.,37.
denunciation of university biblic:iltheologians implicated in attempts to impede or 49 lb1d., 65.
proscribe heterodox inquiries into rcligfon and philosophy. so lbid., 64. C£ Derrida, Adieu to /mmamul 1.LVinas,trans. P:1$C:ilc-Annc
JS Immanuel Kant, RLltKJOn wiJhin tht Limits of&ason Alone, trans. Thcodon: Brault and Michael Naas (Stanford: Stanford Univemry Press, 1999), 8: wThe'un-
M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1960), 46, 47· known' 1snot the negative lnnit of a knowledge.This non-knowledge ii. the element
36 Ibid., 47• of friendship or hospitality for the transcendenceof the stranger, the infinite distance
37 Cf. Manha Nussbaum, Tiu Fragility of Goodnm: lm.li and Ethir.sin Gruk of the other."
Notes Notes

SI Derrida, MFaithand Knowledge," 18. 66 SceJames,.A Pluralistu Uniwne, JL

52 Jacques Derrida, Poltha ofFrit!ndship,trans. George Collins (London: 67 Ibid., JO.

Verso, 1997),306. 68 Ibid., 43.

SJ Gilroy, Tbn-tAin't No Blacl:in the UmonJacl:,231,233. 69 James, Pragma/um, 187.
™
s.. Colin MacCabe, Nt'IIJRepublic,1997. 70 James enthusiastically endoried the founding of the British IPR in 11!82
and
55 William James,Es1ny1m Radual Empiricism(Lincoln: University of Ne- played a leading role in the formation of an American branch of the I,ondon Society.
bnsb Press,1996),39. In the courseof his association with thc.,;csocictic~ he was involved in its variou,
S6 Ibid., 27. investigauons into communication with the deceasedBy 1885he him,df undertook
57 James,Es111ys
in RadicalEmpirici1m,37. research into the practices of a medium called Mrs. L. E. Piper. Sec GamerMurphy
ss lbid., 45. and Robert 0. Ballou, eds., WilliamJames on Psychita/&search(New York: Viking,
S9 Ibid., 180.James's conclusions here proceed from a reading of kTo You," a 1900). For more on the SPR sec Alan Gauld, The Fourukn ofPsychiral&uarch
poemby Walt Whitman. The most relevant lines, in conrcxt, asc the following: (London: Routledge,1968), and Renee Haynes, The Societyfor Psy.hual Research,
188~-1982:A lf'utory (London: MacDonald, 1982).There is a vast secondary litera-
There is no endowment in man or woman that is not tallied in you; ture on late-nineteenth-century spiritualism. For a discussion of the links between
ThCRis no vinuc, no beauty, in man or woman, but as is goodin you; British and American spiritualism sec Peter Washington, Madame Blaw11ky'sBa-
No pluck nor endurance in others, but as goodis in you;
boon:A History of the Mystia, Mediums ,md Misjiu Who Bruught Spiritualism to
No pleasure waiting for others, but an equal pleasure w:tits for you.
America(New York: Schocken, 1995).The most comprchc;nsive study of the field is
60 William James, A PluralisticUniwnt: Hihhtrt £«tuns al Manche1ltrColltgt Janet Oppenheim, The Other World:Spiritualismand PsychicalResearchin England,
on the Prnent Situa/lOnin Ph,losqphy(Lincoln: University of Ncbrasb Press, 1996), 18sa-r91,1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,1985).For a provocative femi-
104-5. nist reading see AJcxOwen, The Darl:mtd R()(Jm'Womm, Powerand Spiritualism,n
61 Ibid., 321-22. Latd VictorianEngland(London: Virago, 1989).

6l William James, Pragmatism and Four Es1aysfrom th, Meaning of Truth 71 Sec for example Murphy and Ballou, eds., WilliamJames on PsychicalRt·
(Cleveland: World, 1970),187. surd,, 15;"The evidence furnished by Mrs Piper did not establish for William Jam«
63 Nussbaum, Tbt!FragilityofG()(Jdntss,
7. any pnma fatie case for survival as such, but it indicated, as he said over and over
64 James, Pragmatism,192. ag.lin, a 'lightning stroke' of conviction that there were received by the medium's
65 Jacques Derrida, The Gift ofDeath, tram. David Wills (Chicago: Univcr.ity mind many items that she had never normally acquired."
of ChicagoPress, 1995),47. For a sensitive commentary on the adieu in Dcrridcan 72 For cross-gender, class,and race materializations see Ow.!n, The Darl:entd
thought sec Hent de Vries, Ph,Josophyand lht! Turn to Religion (Baltimore: Johns ~,,,. 216-21, 231-:i3.Frederic W. H. Mycrs's Human Personalityand Ju Suroiwl of
Hopkins University Press, 1999), 26: "the formula adieu accentuates the fact that BodilyDeath (New York: Longmans, Green, 1907) abounds with such examples.
everydiscoune, even the most seculas,prolinc, negative, or nihilistic of utterances, 73 Murphy and Ballou, eds., WilhamJa111t1on Psychual&starch, 17.
directs and rcdirecbitself ... unwitungly towasd the altcrity for which-historically, 7◄ Curney, "The Stages of Hypnotism," Protttdingi ofthe &cietyfor Psychual
systematically, conceptually, and figuratively spcaking-'God' is, perhaps and so far, Rtlearch2 (1884):69-70, cited in Oppenheim, Tht Other World, 251.
the most proper name." For a dufcrcnt approach 10 the ideas being reviewed here !>CC 75 Myers, "Multiplex Person:llity," Nintletntb Cmtury 20 (November 1886):

Ramachandra Gandhi, Tbt Aw,la/Jility of Rrhgious I<kas (London Macmillan, 6,48,cited in Oppenheim, The Othn-World,256.
1976).Gandhi arguesrhat self•consciousne$S, "itself ... an imaginative rccreauon of 76 Owen, Tht Darl:mcd~m, u6.

the communicative form of human life," i~ mfonncd and accompanied by "the n Myers, Human Pmonalityand Its Suroiwl of8oJily Death, 1, 15,50.
possibility of exploratory communication, the possibility of calling upon God with· 78 Ibid, 56.
out being under an obligation 10 fimestablish ha real.tty~(9). For Gandhi, a, for the 79 Sec Murphy and Ballou, ccu.,WilhamJameson PsychicalRtseartb,237.
other thinkers under discussion, prayer and interpersonal communication .i.re in IO Sec Hayne,,, Tht Socutyfar Psyc.h1C11I
Rmar,h, 21; Owen, Tht Darllmcd
effect the same activity or similar activities. &om, 230-31, and Vieda Skult2.ns, "Mediums, Controls and Eminent Men,"
Nota Nota

Wommi &ligious Expmmu: Cross-CulturalPersptctivts,ed. Pat Holden (London: 9S Sec Owen, TheDarl:tntd Room,23◄-35.
Croom Helm, r983),15-26. 96 Chakraba.rty,Prwincializing Europt, 13.
11 Edward Carpenter, My Days and Dnams, Bt1ng Aulohiop-aphual Notn
(London: George Allen and Unwin, 1916),240.
CHAPTER 6 Art
Ill Davidson urged Havelock Ellis in particulas to "free himself from the liM
rcmnanr of that terrible morusm from which hasdly any English thinktr cscape6." 1 OscarWilde, "De Profundis," Tht Soulof Man and PrisonWritings,ed. Isobel

SecW. H. G. Armytage, Hta1J1r11 Btlow: U1opwand SocialExpmmen/1 ,n England, Murray (New York:Oxford University Press, 1990),61 62.
1_¢o-196o(London: Routledge and Keg2n Paul, 1961),319.ln 1875,while in Boston, l Oscar Wilde, Reviewof Primavera,PallMall Gaulle, 24 Miy 1890,3.
Davidson was involved in a discussion group which included William James, who l Ibid.
made significantefforts to draw him into the facultyat Hasvasd.James has a fictional ◄ Sec Matthew Sturgis, POJJirmate
A1111uda:Tht EnglishDmuknu of tht t81JOS
portrait of Davidson in "The Knight Errant of the 1ntcllectualLife," Mtmorits and (London: Macmillan, 1995),116-17.
Shulies(New York:Longmans, Green,19n). s Sri AurobindoAshram Archives,Manmohan Chose Papers.
83 See WsJliamKnight, ed., Tht MemorialsofThomasDO'IJidron
(Boston: Ginn, 6 "Manmohan Ghose," CollatedPotms, ed. Lotika Ghose (Calcutta: Univcr-

1907). siryof Calcutta, 1970),1:225.

11-4 The prospectus for Davidson'seducatiorui.lcommunity in the Adirondack 7 OscarWilde, Collated Worksof OscarWildt: Tht Plays,tht Poems,tht Storm

Mountains, founded m 1888,defines culrurc itsclf as "Man's spinrual nature, his and tht Essay1IncludingDe Prufundu(Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1997),35.
intelligence, his affections and the modes in which they express themselves."Sec 8 John Addington Symonds, Tht Arademy,9 August 1890,103.

Armytage, Heawnr Below,333. 9 Wilde, Collmtd Worh, 5.

as Cill'})Cnter,My Days and Drtams, 215. 10 Terry Eagleton, Saint Osrarand 0/htr Play1(Oxford: Blackwell,1997),46.
86 l lumant Rroiew ◄ (r903):171. 11 Wilde, CollecttdWor.ts,91",
17 Caspenter, My Days and Dreams,115. 12 Ibid., 786.
II Edward Caspenter, Tht Ttaching of tht UpanisW, Bting lht Sulnlanu 13 Dipesh Chakra.barty,Prwin=lmng Eunpt PostcolonialThought and 1/u-
of Two LlCtum to PopularAuditnm (London· George Allen and Unwin, 1910), torual Differm,e (Princeton: Princeton UniversityPress, 1000), 150,153,149.
10. u Ibid., 149.
19 Edward Caspentcr, "A Nore on 'Towards Democracy,'" TowanisDnnomuy 15 Jane Routh and Janet Wollf, lntrOduction, Tht SociologyofL,uraJure:Thto-

(1883;London: GMP, 1985),4-10. SociologicalReviewMonograph 25 (Kcde: University of Keele,

ruical .Approaches,
90 Edward Caspentcr, Tht Art of Crtalion: Essayson tht Stlf and lts Powers 19n): J, arc among those who expressgr:uirude to the sociologyoflitcrature project
(London: GeorgeAllen, 1904), 98. for deliveringunto sociologythe gift of literature k as a J:,ndof sociology. .. as a sousce
91 SeeBuder, Gtnder Trou1Jlt, 16,and James, Pragmatism,97. of data, often data of a type which would nocotherwise be accessibleto a sociologist,
9l Sec Edward Carpenter, Low} Coming-of-4ge:A Strits of Papm on the Rtla- and as a carrier of crystallised values and attirudes, as well as information about
tion oftht Sexes(1896;London: George Allen and Unwin, 1948),y4 institutions."
9l Caspentcr's deep sympathies for the nonhuman world arc eloquently ex- 16 See Sruart Hall, "ACritical Surveyof the Theoretical and PoliticalAchieve-

pressedin the followingexcerpt fromhls TO'WOrds

Dtmocrary:"I saw deep in the eyes ments of the Last Ten Yeass,"literature, Sotitty and 1h, SociologyofLittraturt, ed.
of the arumals the human soul look out upon me. ] saw where 1t was bom under Fnnci Barktr ct al. (Colchester University of Essex, 1976),5: "every one of these
feathers and fur, or condemned for awhile to roam fourfooted among the bramble, I developmentsh~, 1nsome wayor another, been generated by Manusm. Since leav-
caught the clinging mute glance of the prisoner,and swore that I would be faithful" ing the unsu.UiedEnglish rcache~of The l.ong &wlution everysubsequent transfor-
(146). mation wicbm the field has been a product of, or has claimed 10 be a product of.
94 Sec MaxNordau, ~traflon (New York:D. Appleton, 1895)1 1, and Fried variousvas1ons of the Manust problematic."
rich Engels, Sotiali1m,.from Utopia to Srienu, trans. Edward Aveling (r891;New 17 Cited in Pierre Machcrcy, "Problem of Rcffccnon,"Ltttmlure, Socitty and

Yor~ New YorkLabor Press,1968),21. tht Soriologyof Literature,ed. Barkeret al., -41.
Notes Notes

18 Catherine Belsey,"The Politics of Meaning," Ctmfrontingthe Crisis:War, 38 ln this reading, which takes its cue from Bourdieu'scritique of Kant, Jam not
Politia, Culturein the Eighties,ed. Francis Barker et al. (Colchester: University of pursuing Jacques Derrida's persuasive argument in Tiu Tmth in Painting, trans.
Essex, 1984),31. GeoffBenington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1q87),30-
19 BoydTonk.in,"Right Approaches: Sourcesof the New Conservatism," Con• 931thar the discoursesof"disintercst" and "fiqality" arc rackedby self-contrad1ctions
fronting tht Crisis,ed. Barker ct al.,+ Stephen Greenblatt's epochalR.maissanuS~(f liberating the subject of judgment into cffccrswhich we have identified wich "the
Fashioningrepresents in many waysa chancteristic critique of the myth of human ethic of domicilium."What looks like autoaffecrion in the thematic of disintcre~L,
autonomy. Sec for instance tha.rea.dingof this book offered by Jonathan Dollimore Derrida argues, carries within itself the poisibility of hcteroaffecrion,or disposmon
and Alan Sinfield in PoliticalShakspean: New Essaysin Cu/1u.ral Matmalum (Man- toward pure alterity. For the extreme demands of pleasure without interest signal a
chester: Manchester UniversityPress,1985),4: "In an epilogue Greenblatt tells how bereaved relation to an object so radicallyabsent in its noneicistenceand nonposses-
he began with an intention to explore 'the role of human autonomy in the con- sability as to constitute the pure objectivity of the entirely other. So too, Derrida
struction of identity.' But as the work progressedthe emphasisfell more and more on claims, the project of finality disclosed in the third critique, far from turning the
culturalinstitutions-family, religion and the State-and 'the human subject' itself subject of judgment against the realm of the empirical (the order of difference},is
beganto seem remarkablyunfree, the ideologicalproduct of the relations of power in sufficientlyantipathetic to the tcleologyof"ending" as to separate-through a cogni-
a particular society."
tive cut or wounding-the object of beauty from any determining or capruring con-
20 Hall, "Title," 3.
cept, thus preserving irs unimpeachable singularity.If compelling, Derrida's reading
21 Jan H. Bircball, "In Defence of Reductionism," Europeand Its Others,ed. concedes so much to the self-critical action of the third critique as to render the
Francis Baker ct al. (Colchester: University of Essex, 1985),r.107. corrective action of materialism and historicism entirely irrelevant. While I wish 10
2l Belsey,"The Politics of Meaning," 29. point to the limits of a materialist critique of aesthetic autonomy, it is a distinctly
D EdwardSaid, Cu/JunandImperialism(London: Chatto and W .Indus,r993),59. historicist, even sociological,inte(vention that alcns us to the imperialist pitfalls of
24 Gauri Viswanathan's Maslu of Congutst:Lit,mrryStwiy and British R.11/e in the discourse of disinterest.
India (London: Faber and Faber,1989),10-21. 39 Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction:.A S«ial Critiqueof th, Jllllgmmt ofTastt, trans.
25 Said, Cultureand ImptrialiJm,69. Richard Nice (Cambridge: Harvard UniversityPress, 2000), J, 4.
26 Kai Hammermeistcr, Tht GermanAesthttit Tradition (Cambridge: Cam- -40 See ibid., 5,384, 179,376.
bridge University Press, 2001), 97. ◄I See especiallyBourdieu's critique of Derrida in Di•tinction, 493-500. See
27 CharlesTaylor,lhgei(1975;Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress,-1999), 33. also Pierre Bourdieu, The Rules of Art; Genrm and Struct11rtof the Literary Field,
28 Immanuel Kant, The Crititp« of Judgemmt, trans. James Creed Mc~th trans. Su$an Emanuel (Stanford: Stanford University Press,r996).
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1952),23. ◄2 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Philosophyof HisttJry,trans. J. Sibree
29 Ibid., 13--24,15. (New York:Dover, 1956),2.
30 Ibid., 15,27. ◄3 Ibid., r6t, 162.
31 Ibid., 12. "" See ibid., rn.
32 Sec ibid. ..s lbid.,63.
33 Ibid., 28. ◄6 Rohen Young, Whik Mythologies:Writing lfistory and tht West(London:
3" Ibid., 49. Routledge, 1990), 2.
35 See Friedrich Nierv.sche,"The Genealogy of Mol'als," The Birth of Tragedy ◄7 Sec Mary LouisePratt, ImperialE~s: Trawl Writingand Trrmscult11ratio11
and tht GenealogyofMora/1,tnms. Francis Coiffing (Garden City: Doubleday, 1956), 7, 210-27, and I Wene Cixous aod Catherine Clement,
(London: Routledge, 199:1.),
238-40, The Nrwly Bom Wom11n,trans. Betty Wing (Manchester: Manchester Univcrsiry
36 Giorgio Agambcn, The Man without Content,trans. Giorgia Albert (Stan- Press,1986),78.
<48 C. F. W. Hegel, IntroductiontaAmhetia, trans. T. M. Knox (Oxford: Clar-
ford: Stanford Univmity Press, 1999),43.
37 Terry Eagleton. Tht ldMlogyof tlM.Authttit (Oxford: BasilBlackwell,1990), endon, 1979),31.
87,80. -49 Ibid., 13.
Notes Notes
so Cixous and Clement, The Nndy Bi,m W11man,70. most respects than himself ... This has quite shaken my c.;th
,...
·n swm
1
· burnc." Scc
51 Hegel, Jntri,ductionto Aesthetics,ii. Chose, Collt<ttdPotms. 1:134.
u Sec Taylor, lftgtl, 471 72 Where Binyon remains true to Arnold, Chose finds it increasinglydifficuh
SJ Hegel, Intri,dumon toAesthttrcs,5, 47. t0 house him. '1 have rerumcd too," he wntcs in November10-- uto O ld d ·
"""' ur o a m1ra·
S4 Ibid., 89. tion to Keats, and Byron, and Shelley-the only gods, surt:ly,to wo~hip! It is these
'6S M mm Heidegger, Poetry, I ,Q,ng,,agt,Thought, tram. Alben Hofm.dcr wondtrfal bemgs of our century, wondtrfaJ, not merely culrured and gr:1ccfullike
(New York. Harptrand Row, 1915),130. Matthew Arnold ... it is the Pmonalitits that move, delight, and amaze me." Sec
56 Sec Theodor Adorno, Aesthetu Theory, trJns. Roben I lullot-Kcntor (Lon- Chose, Ci1/lutedPMms,1:248.
don: Athalone, 1997);Theodor Adorno, Minima Morrilia:Refltt1ions.from Damaged 73 Sec Hatcher, Laurmce B,nyon, 6, 22.
Lift, trans. E. F. N. Jcphcott (1978;London: Verso, 2000); and Heidegger, P«rry. 74 Chose, Colltdul POtfnS,
1:181.
Language, Thought. In "De Profundis," The Soul of Man and Pri.ronWrttings, ed. Isobel Murray
75
57 Cited in Peter Hcehs, Sr, Aurobindo:A Brief Biograpby (Oxford: Oxford (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth, 1997),10:z,, Wilde famouslydescribes Pater's &nai.r-
University Press, 1989),9. sance,which he discoveredduring hi-sfirst term at Oxford, as "th.at book which has
ss Ghosc, Colle.:ttdPotms, 1:vii. had such a strange influence over my life."
s, Ibid., 1:113-1,4. 76Cited in Hatcher, Laurtnu Binyofl, 28.
60 Between 1895and 1898Binyon oversawthe publication of Elk.inMatthcw~•s 77 Ghose, Ci1/ltc1ed Pomu, 1:165.
ShillingSeries, devoted to disseminating work by little-known contemporary poer,, 78 Ibid., 1:165
1 167,170-71.
to a general audience. Gh~'s [AW Sonp and Eltgia appeared as Garland no. 9 in 79 Sec Camille Paglia, &xual Personat:Art and D«adtnu .from Nif utih to
the series in April 18981 and some of his poems were ~howcascdalongside works by Emily Dultm.so" (London: Yale University Press, 1990), 511: "critics drift toward
Victor Plarr, Selwyn Image, Romney Green, and Reginald Balfour m the commem· apologia, tediously extolling Wilde's humanity or morality, things utterly nonexis·
orativc anthology Tht Garland ofNew Portry by VariousWritm. In 1914Bmyon alsu tent in his best work. The time is past when it was necessaryto defend a hornosexual
secured the posthumous publication of C hose's Song, oflAW a,,J Dr<1th. genius ... In him we see that briUiant fusion of the ag&Tt~sivc western eye with
61 Chose, Collt<ttdPotms, 1:vii,1:170-71. aristocratic hicrarchism, created by the Old Kingdom Ph.u.iolu. Wilde wa1 not a
61 For more on Binyon's view of ~philistinism"·sec John l latcher, L#urenr,· liberal, as his modern admirers think. He was a cold Late Romantic elitist, in the
Binyon: Pott, Scholarof East and Wnt (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995),7· Baudcla1rcanmanner."
63 G hose, Ci,1/rcudPotms, i:vii. 80 Regina Gagnier, Idylls ofthe Marltetplau: OscarWildt and iht Victoriafl Puolfr
64 Rhythm 4 (spring 1912): 1-2 1 Cited in Hatcher, Laurtnu Binyon, 155-56. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986), 98. Matthew Sturgis, Pa.uionau Ath-
65 Hatcher, UJMTt1ut Binyon, 156; ludes, u5-16, makes a similar point, claiming that the "elaborate demands of dress,
66 Chose, Coll«ttd POtmS,1:vii. the scrupulous frivolities of the toilet, were a considered rebuke to the Victorian
67 Ibid., 1:141. creeds of utility and seriousness.''
68 Jbid., 1:138,142. 11 Sri Aurobindo in A. B. Purani, Ew,ring Talh with Sri Aurobindo (1959;3d
69 Cited in Lotika Ghosc, Manmohan Ghost (Sahitya Akadcm1:New Delhi, edn Pondicherry: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust, 198i), 603.
1975),56. 12 W. B. Yeats,"The Tre,mblingof the Veil,"Autolnographus(London: Mac-
70 Lallrcnce Binyon ct al., Primawro: PoemJby Four Authors (Oxford: B. 11. millan, 1961),300. Chose'• association with the Rhymel'lt1sconfirmed by Ernest
Blackwell,1890), 7. Dowson in a lcner of 9 June 1891to Victor Plarr. Sec Desmond Flower and Henry
71 lndccd Chose all but loses faith in Swinburne after h.ispublic rcnunci:mon M.1as,eds., The l,tflm ofErntst DOWJon(Rutherford; Fairleigh Dickinson Univcr·
of Whitman, as he cxplam• in :mother m,.~,vc to Bmyon m 188;,:"By the way,havt' srty Pres~,1967), 203: "] write to you, an officialexponent of the scnomcnt, of the
you seen Swinburne'sbrutal attack on Walt Whitman in the Fortnightly. .. ? After 'Rhymer;' at their last meeting, and at thcir request, to ask, if we can count on you, as
behaving so badly, turning renegade and worshipper ofbloarcd bathos and fcmAk a contributor to 'The Book of the Rhymer~Club' which it is propo!ocdto issue,in an
aristocracy.•. I think he might have spared us his swinish anack on a man greater in mcxpcnsivcmanner in the autumn. The Rhymers to be represented in it Jn:, pretty
 No/ts
much as follows:Yeats, Greene, Johnson, Dowson, Radford, Le Calliennc, Elis, 101 Ibid., 903.
Chose, Symons, Rolleston,Todhunter, Rhys."OoWionadds that Chose, Symons, 108 Ibid., 917.
Rollcs1on,and Rhys arc among th<>llC
"who have nor yet d,jinittly promisedto jom 109 lbid.,318.
the scheme." Indeed, Chose wa1 not among the final list of contributors to the 110 Wilde, "De Profundis,"110.
volume published in 1892.by Elkin Matthews, also publisher of the poetry ,cries 111 Sri Aurobindo,"The 1larmonyof Virtue," The Complm Wo,Jsof Sri ,1uro•
overseenby LaurenceBinyoo. bindo,vol.,, F,arlyCulturlllWntings(Pondichcrry:SriAurobrndoA~hnm, 1003 ), lJ
83 See Hatcher, Laurmce-Bmyon,2.7. IU Sn Aurobindo, Tht Complttt Worh of Sn Aurohmdo, vol 16, Th• Futurt
114 Book 4 20 4 0, Rare BooksDepartment, Huntington Libruy, San M111ino, Poetry,with "On Quanlttali'lll!Mttrt" (Pondichcrry:Sri Aurobindo Ashram, 1997),
Cal.tf.,cited in Hatcher, Llll,nnu Bmyon, 31-33. 6.
85 Sec Hatcher, LaurmceBinyon, 48-49, and David Sweetman,E,cphsiwActs:
Toulouse-Lautm,OscarWilde,FelixFenlonand theArt andAnarchyof the Fin de Silclt
CHAPTER 7 An Immature Politics
(New York:Simon and Schuster,1999), zr6-17.
86 Sec Richard Ellmann, OscarWildL'(Harmondsworth:
Penguin,1987),506-7. t J. H. Cousins and ME. Cousins, Wt 1wo Togtthtr (Madras: Ganesh, 1950),
87 The Lettersof Ernest Dowson, 167,177.
118 Ibid., 16<}. 2 George Orwell, The Road to Wigan Ptrr (19Jr, I lannondsworth: Penguin,
11'1Chose, Co/lecttdPotms, 1:113. 1967),152.
90 Ibid., 138. 3 Friedrich Engels, Socialism,from Utopia to Sc,mu. trans. Edward Avcling
91 Ibid., 14l, 139. (1892; New York:New York Labor Press, 1968), 40; Robert Blantchford, Merrit
91 Ibid., 133- Englam/(1893;London:Joumcym,m,1977),44.
93 Ibid., l3J-34· • MIIXNordau, Degtntration(Lmcoln:Universityof Nebraska Press,1993),1.
~ Gene H. Bcll-Villada,Art/orArt's Salt and Littrary Lift: How Po/itia and S Stephen Winstcn, Salt and I/is Circle(London: I lutchin~n, 1951),64.
Maritts Htlpd Shapetht /tho/av and Culturt of Allthttttum, 1790-1')90(Lrncoln 6 Caredin Lenin, "Left-Wing" Communism:An lnfantilt Durmlcr An Alltmpt
Universityof Nebraska Press,1996), 10. Sec also John Wilcox,"The Beginning, of at a Popular Discussionon Marxut Stra1tgy and Tactics(1920; rev. edn London:
L'Art pour .L'Art," JournalofAtsthttia and Art Critiwm 11 (1952-53):36017. Martin Lawtencc,1934),«-
95 Sec Bcll-Villada,ArtforArts Sahand liJmzry Lift, 36-41. 7 Ibid., 9, 10, II, 11,61, 66.
9'I Sec Ellmann, OscarWilde,40. 8 Ibid., l2.

97 Sec Gerald Monsrnan, "Pater, Hopkins, and Fichte'sIdeal Student," South 9 Immanuel Kant, Foundalionoftht Mttaphysia ofMoralsand What b Enlight-
Atlllntic QUllrtrrly]O (1971):365,6. mmmt, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis:Liberal Arts,1959),85,90.
98 One of the best studiesof the closeconjunctionbetweenFrenchacsthctiosm 10 Martha Nussbaum,Tht Fragilityof Goodness: Lua and Ethu:s,n Gr?ek.Trag-
and anarchism remainsSwcctmao'sExplosiw Acts. tdy~nd Philosophy(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1986),5, 2.
99 Sec ibid., 11:i,10-15. 11 Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffc, Hegemonyartd SocwlrstStrategy:To·

100 Wilde, "De Profundis,"1i6. wards a &dual D~rnocraticPol,tu:,, trans. Winston Moore and Paul Cammack
101 Oscar Wilde, Pall Mall Gau/It, 15February1889,repr. in Stanley Wein (London: Verso,1985),21.
traub, /.1ttrary Crrllmrno/OscorWiltk (Lincoln:Universityof NebraskaPress, 1968), 12 Michel Foucault, "Socitty Must Bt Diftndd':· ltctum at tht Colltgt dr
109. Franct, 1975-70,ed. Mauro Bcrtan1and AJcssandroFont,ina, rran,. D~vid Macey
10l Cited in Ellmann, OrearWildt, 116. (London: Allen Lane, 1003), 9-10,
101 Wilde, ColltcttdWorh, 909. ll Ibid., 10.
ICM Wilde, Coll«ttd Worh, 39, ]Sr, "I)c Profundis,"]I, 39· u Ibid., u.
10s Wilde, ColltctedWorh, 56, 104. IS Foran exhaustiveaccountof the creativetheorizationto which the politicsof
106 Ibid., 92. the eventhavebeen subjectfromSartrethrough to Foucaultsec Robert Young,Whitt
Notes Notu
Mythowgitt: Wnlrng Historyand the Wes/(London: Routledge, 1995),10-11,34-37, dence postulated by the order of the Same. No less, conceived as the name for
56,80. relation, otherness is also the sign under which affect, that crucial component of rhc:
16 Alain Badiou, Manifistofor Philosophy,trans. Norman Madarasz (Albany: utopianism under survey in this book, can be imported into the rcillmof the poliucal
Stare University of New York Press, 1999),67 with a view to disrupting therein the austere regulations of luntian cthks and
11 Alain Badiou, Man,ftstofar Philos"phy,6, 1or,Alain Badiou, Saini Paul:The sc.ientificsocialism.
F"undati""efUmwrsa/ism, trans. RayBrassier (Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, n Giorgio Agamben, HomoSaur: SowreignPowtr and Burrl.ifi, rrans.1);1n1el
2003),42. Hcllcr·Roazen (St2nford: Stanford University Pres~,1998),109 10.
II Badiou, Manifestofar Philosophy,6. 2J Sec ibid., 126-34. Agamben's critique of predicating citiunmip upon the

19 Badiou, Saint Paul,14 eviction of the refugee to the desert of "bare life" dnws upon Hannah Arendt's
lO Michel Foucault, Language,Counter-Memory,Practiu: SelectedEssaysand earlier disclosureof this paradox in The Origim efTolalitarianism(New York:Har-
lnltrmro1s by Mi~/ FourllJIII,ed. Donald F. Bouchard (lthaca: Cornell University court, Brace:,L966),299, 300: "The conception of human rights, based upon the
Press, 19n), 1n. Rohen Young forcefullyargues for the event's disposition toward assumed existenceof a human being as such, broke down at the very moment when
altcrity in his WhiteMythologm,10: 'This quest for the singular,the contingent event those who professed to believe in it were for the first time confronted with people
which by definition refusesall conceptualization,can clearly be related to the project who had indeed lost all other qualities and spcctfic relationships-except that they
of constructing a form of knowledgethat respectsthe other without absorbingit into were still human. The world found nothing 5acrcdin the abstract nakedness ofbemg
the same." human ... le seems that a man who ,s nothing but a man h~ lost the very qualities
21 Sec the interview with Jacques Rancitre, "Democracy Mean& Equality," which make it possible for other people to treat him as a fellow-man."
RadicalPhilosophy82(March-April 1997):33,also cited in Kristen Ross,May '68and 2A Foucault, "SocirtyMu.stBr Dtftndtd, • 254,:155, 256.
Its Afltrliws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,2002), 25, 108. Further to the 2S Arendt, Thr Or,g,nsefToral,tananum, 474-
claim, above,that ~ntlll inclusivenessi, best m>pcdas Derridean philoxmia, 11 1s 16 Sec Diana Burfield, MTheosophyand Feminism: Some Explorations 10

important to note that Alain Badiou, whose theori7:ationof cvcntality I draw on Ninctcen1h-Ccntury Biography,"Womm'tRtligiousExpmtnrt: Crrm-Cultural Per-
most directly in my argument, is vehemently oppoi,cd to identifying an cvcntal ~rtiws, ed. Pat Holden (London: Croom Helm, 1983),31;Kcmh Nield, "Edward
politics with iln ethics of alu:nty. For Badiou cvcntlllinclwivenessannounces a form Carpenter. The Uses of Utopia," F,Jward Carpenterand Late Vi,tanan Rmiualum,
of universalism or consutuuve indiJference ro difference best identified as a tum ed. Tony Brown (London: Frank Cass, 1990), 24; Alain Tourame, The May Mow-
toward "the Same" rather than a "politicalopening toward the other." If compelling mmt: Rtv0l1and &farm: May 1968-Tht Student Rtbrll111n and Wor~ Strilw-Tht
in its critique of the sentimentality and rcificarionof victimhood that often accom- Birth of a SocialMowmmt, trans. Leonard F. X. Mayhew (New York: Random
panies furmulaic renditions of an ethics of alterity, however, Badiou's own nco- House, 1971),26, 45.
Kantian allergy to "otherness" cruciallycontravenes the constitutiveempiricism and 21 Tourainc, The May MO'IJmtenl, 352.
materialism of "the event," posrulating in the post-cvental universalism of "the 28 Jean-Paul Sartre and Daniel Cohn•Bendit, Untitled intervit-w,TheActivists

Same" a decisivemovementof tranScendenccawayfrom the contingenciesofhuman Sped, ed. Herve Bourgcs,trans. B. R Brewster(London: Jonathan Cape, c968),103
cx,stencc, the complicationsof"intercst," "affect,""attachment" So, for example,m 29 Daniel Cohn-Bendit and Gabriel Cohn-Bendit, Ob1oleltCommunum:The
his Ethrn: An Essay on the Undmtanding of E'llil, trans. Peter Hallward (London: 1..eft-WingAlternative,trans. Arnold Pomcrans(London: A. Deutsch, 1968),253-54.
Vc:rso,2002), 49, 1311 Badiou's defense of universalismand accompanyingcritique of 30 Naomi Klein, No Logo{London: Flamingo, 2000) 1 457-58.
the: ethics of altcricy arc typically posed as the need for flight from affective con- JI Sec Patnck Sc:alcand Maureen McConvtllc:,Fm,rh Rewlution 1()68(Har·
ungcncy, a desire to be "that excessbeyond myself mduced by the passing through mondsworth: Penguin, 1968)1 130-69.
me of a truth"; or, as an "effort ro distinguish an immortal truth from the corruption 3l See Ross,M"y '68and Its Afierl1w1,a5.

of the fle~h,of temptation, of desires and mtcrcsts that arc no more, no less worrhv n Bourges, ed., The Acti-vistsSpttd, 18-19.A comprchcns1vcaccount of the
than thO!iCof mole,;."Agam<t thlS view it 1s my contcnnon that cvcntal.aty,albeit profound anncolonial monvations of May 1968is offered in Ros,, May '68and Its
flawed, can only maintain its own defining radictl empiricism, in WiUiam James's Afterliws.
~nse, if 1t surrenders to the conjuncrure of altcrity, resisting the will•to-transcen· 34 Ross,May '68and Its Afi,r/ives, 69.
 JS Sec especiallyNaomi Klein, Fmw and Windows:Dispatchnfrom the Front
Lint1 of the GlohalisatwnDt/Jate(New York:Picador, 1001), and Arundhati Roy,The
OrdinaryPtrnm'sGuide lo Empire(London: Fbmmgo, 100,.).
J6 Klein, Fmcer011d Wir1dows, 30, 101.
37 Sec Daniel Singer, Prelude to &wluJ,on: Franu in May 1<)68
(New York: INDEX
Hill and Wang,1968),403. May 1968,it is wonh noting, alto fell prey to the charge of
"immaturity"leveledagainstfin~de•si~cleutopi1msocialism.After a brief and mate·
gic CX1le m Romania, General de Gaulle rctumcd to France on 18May c:vcnas the
Great Strike wascontinuing to spread unab-ated:millionsof workershad abandoned Adorno, Theodor, 161,173,219 n. t, and, 126;consumerism and, 23;
their tools; banks, postal services, and transport were all at a standstill. Advised to 230 n. 56 ethico-pohtical, 24, n7, 125-27,
maintain his silencein the surroundingsirocco,the indefangablegeneralnonetheless aesthetics, aestheticism, 62, 146, inclusiveness and, 141;individual-
let a singlejeering remarkleak into Paris: "Oui ala reforme, ,ion ala chim/itu(Reforrn, 153-55,157,t63, 231n. So; aes· ism and, 22; relationality and, 133
yes, bed-messing, no), attaching, once again, the tedious charge of infantilism to a thetic autonomy, 146, 148-62, ahimsa,63, 85-86, 97, 114
certainstyle of politics. 167,168, 171,173,22-9n. 38; anti- AIDS,39
JR Giorgio Agamben, Means without End: Notes on Politics, trans. Vincenzo imperialism and, 12, 144-45, 170; AJfassa, Mirra (the Mother}, n, 12,
Binetti and Cesare Casanno (Minneapolis: Universityof Minnesota Press, lOOO), (anti}colonialism and, 150-51, 220 n. 31 221n. 13,222 n. 26; anti-
57. 156,16x,168;difference and, 154, colonialism of, 120-:n, 182;so-
160, 173;homosexuality and, 168, cialism and, 124-25;spiritualism
169; ~interested autonomy" and, of, 118,119-21, 124,14r; Sri Auro·
161,171;Kantian, 151-52,15r55; bindo and, u9
materialism and, 157,politicsand, al1enat:1on,22
148-49, 167, 172,177,23i n. 94; AJthusscr, Louts, 148
sacrifice and, 174;spiritualism Almonds and R.auim, So, 83
and, 122 altcrity, 38, 134,156,234 n. 21;anti-
affect, 14, 17,29, 45, 60, 103,134,162, imperialism and, 7
235n. 21;affective affiliation, 251 American Civil War, 8
99, ITT,affective singularity, 20; Ammcan Sex Problems(Gadiali}, 15
animal welfare and, roo, 103,104, anarchism, 113,123,192 n. l8, 218n.
n3, 114;difference and, I74i gov- 159;aestheticism and, 169, 171,
ernmentality and, 100, 1u-13; 172,174;evolution and, 114,2r8 n.
homosexuality and, 59, 141; r56; as sociality, m. Su also
human experience and, 21, ur, radicali~m
self-denial and, 105;socialism Andrews, Charles Freer, 20, 194n.
and, 178 22:friendship and, 14, 15 18, 194
affiliation, 199 n. 57 n. 18;Indian anricolonialism and,
Agamben, Giorgio, 20, 26, 29, 54, 13;thcos()phy and, 195n. 24
155,159,189,206 n. 81;c1t1zenslup animal liberation: radical thought
and, 184,235n. 23 and, 74; utilitari,101smand, 89, 99
agency, 5, 21,31, 191n. 12;autonomy Animal Righu (H. Salt), n3
ln.dex Intkx

Animal's Friend, 1021 108 Arabian Nights (trans. Burton), 52 Baudelaire, Charles, 41, 42 Bourdieu, Pierre, 149, 151,152,153,
animal welfare, 8, 75, 88, 102, 107, Arendt, Hannah, 184, 235n. 23 BeaJIand Man in India (J. Kip 155,157,161,229 n. 38
1741 215n. m; ahimsa and, 86, 114,; Aristotle, 28, 29, 199 n. 64 ling), 100 Bourges, Herve, 187
anarchism and, 87, 113;anti- Armycage, W. H. G., 226 n. 82 beauty. Su aesthetics, aestheticism Breckenridge, Cami A., 201 n. 76
colonialism and, u, 35,85, 97, 192 Arnold, Matthew, 1661 23r n. 72 bee£ Su meat eating Briggs, Asa, 94
n. 21;class and, 92-94, 105 6, Aron, Raymond, 197n. 38 Btehiw,9 Britain, 1-2, 9, 60, 67
109; cranks and eccentrics<Qnd, art, 17fialterity and, 161;autonomy Beer,Gillian, 47 Browne,Janet, 109
87, 104; cruelty and, 84, 92-94, and, 146, 151,161,166, 173;history Beesley, E. S., 8, 9 Brutalitarian, 84, 102
105;eastern customs and, Bo; love and, 158,160; imperialism and, being-in-common, 19, 28, 32 Buber, Martin, 195nn. 29-30
and, 104,108; "majnstrearn," 87, 145,1731 176;"orientalism" and, Beith, Gilben, 37 Bullock, Arthur Broderick, 216 n.
poetry and, 103;publications, So, 14s;the real and, 146, 161,173.Su Bell-Villada, Gene l-t., 171 u9
83-85, 101, 102, n3; radical causes alsoaesthetics, aestheticism; liter- belonging, 7, IT, uniformity and, 25 Burfield, Diana, 186
and, 77-78, 101,104,n.,; utilitari- ature; poetry Belsey, Catherine, 148,149 Bunon, Sir Richard, 51-53
anism and, 74, 89-92, 96-97, Art ofCreation, The (Carpenter), benevolence: affinity and, 100; Butler, Josephine, 138
100; working poor and, 92-94, 139 rights and, 91 Butler, Judith, 31, 42, 46, 54, 56, 58,
97, 108. Su alsoGandhi, M. K. Arya, n9 Bentham,Jercmy, 68-69, 89-100. r28, 197n. J9, 207 n. 84
"Anomaly," 60 asceticism, 68-69. Ste alsoaskms Ste alsoutilitarianism
anthropocentrism, 76, 89-90, 101 asktsis,55,57, 60, 61, 125 Bersani, Leo, 38, 203 n. 33 Cannadine, David, 1

anthropology: evolutionary, 10, 36; asylum seekers. Seeoutcasts, Besant, Annie, Bo, 122 capitalism, 139
social, 47 oursiders Bhabha, l lomi, 3-4, 5-6, 149, 191 Carpenter, Edward, 11, 12, 44, 47, 55,
anticolonialism, 2, 9, 14,r6, 63, 64, Aurobindo, Sri, u, 121 1211 n5 1 162, n. 12 64, 107, HJ, 135,138,172,177,208
73,192n. 17,art and, i+4-46; (lit- 1761 220 n. 31 220 n. 8, 221n. 13; Bhagawd Gita, 139 n. 99; animal nghts and, 140, 226
erary) autonomy and, 146, 151, in England, 1631 175;Indian biculturalism, 71 n. 93; anti-imperialism of, 34-35,
156;love for animals and, 101; nationalism and, n8, 1191 220 n. 8 Binyon, Laurence, 142, 162-70, 43, 58, 62, 78,181.,185,101 n, 4i
rclationality and, 101; socialism Autobiography(J. S. Mill), 99 173,175,230 n. 60, 230 n. 61, 231 Fellowship of the New Life and,
and, 123;of South Asian,s, 10, 83, autonomy, 231 24, 126,141,228 n. 19; n. 72 138;homosexuality of, 35-36, 43,
85; theism and, 111 17,western, materialism and, 148;as separa- Birchall, Jan H., 228n. 21 58-61, 63, 65, us, 139;sexual eva-
9, 10, 13,79. Seealsoanti- tion, 1531 154-551 158-59. &e also bisexuality, 59, 63 siveness of, 37, 39, 40; socialism
imperialism self-sufficiency Blanchot, tv1aurice, 23, 24, 31,54, and, 138-39, 140, r78, 179, 217n.
anti-communitarianism, 26, 29, 32 198 n. 50 129;spititualism of, u5, 118,140
anticorporatism, 185,186, 188 Badiou, Alain, 1831 234 n. 21 Bland, Lucy, 51 Carr, E. H., 192n. 18
anti-imperialism, 101 71,121,176,177, Bakshi, Parminder Kaur, 205 n. 73 Blantchford, Rohen, r22-23, 17879 Chakrabarry, Dipesh, 1171 141,146,
community and, 8; cultural Bakunin, Mikhail, 218n. 159 Blavatsky, II. P., 124 147, 151,193n. 7
boundaries and, 2, 14;utopianism Bakunist International, 218n. 159 Blaythwayr, Raymond, Bo Chamberlin,). Edward, 205 n. 63
and, 7, 8; western, 1-2, 5-6, 7, 8, Baldick, Chris, 148 Bloch, Iwan, 49, 50, 51,53 Chants ofLabour(Carpcnter), 172
II, 34-35 1 62, 1891 192n. 21 Balibar, Etienne, 221 n. 19 Book ofthe Rhymm Club, 168, 232 Chartism, 8
anti-vivisection, 78-79 1 104, 106, 138, Ballou, Robert 0., 225n. 70 n.81 Christiaruty, 17,18,129, 135.Su also
139;class and, 108;spiritualism Barrow, Logic, u1 Boone.Joseph A., 205 n. 73 religion
and, 122.Su alsoanimal welfare Bataille, Georges, 21, SJ, 55,196 n. border crossing, 7 citr1,enship, 10, 184,235n. 23
Appiah, K. Anthony, 25 36,197 n. 45 Bose, Rasbchari, 121 Civili.1a1ion(Carpenter), 62, 63, 64
Index Index
civilization (western), "civilized" 62; human-animal, 74, m; "neg- Cultureand Imperialism{Said), 2, Dial, 169
community, 34 53,62, 63, 66, 94, ative," 53,54,55,66; ndicalism 150,152 dialecticism, 5
98, 165;evils of, 76; margins of, and, 9; sex and, 203 n. 33,207 n. "cyborg economy,"31,101
difference,Jo, 133,155,159;cultural,
36, 49, 50; "native" races and, 88; similitude and, 15,16, 31,54, 7, 32, 1'4S;de~ireand, 17,5~ ethics
109-10; obedience and, 95, 109; m; solipsistic, 151;utopian, 19, Darwin, Charles, 36, 4, 49, 50, 53, and, 25;nonwestern, 4; ~cxua(,
sexualityand, 49, 5r, 58. Su also 20, 208 n. 99. Ste alsoaffect; 5S,101,no-n, 131,204n. 44; 49, 5o, 55,58,59, 65
evolution sociahty colonialism and, ro9. Su also disciplin:lrity,97-98, 99, 100, 109;
Cixous, Hflcnc, 159,160 CompanionSpeciesMa11ijtsto,The evolution policiesand, 181
Clement, Catherine, 159-60 (Haraway), 211n. 33,216n. ns David-Neel, Alexandra, 124,220 disinterest, 155-57,159,161, 174, u 9
Cobbc, Frances Power, 78,9, 103, compearance, r9-20 n.8 n.38
104,105,212n. 45 conatus,18,24 Davidson, Thomas, 138,177,226 dissent, 1, 76, 97
Coetzee,J. M., 216n. m Constantinou,Marios, 200 n. 68 n.82 Distinction, La {Bourdieu), 149, 151,
Cohn-Bendit, Daniel, 185,186,187, consumerism, 22-13, 197n. 45 da Vinci, Leonardo, 65 153, 157

r88 contingency, 135 Deane, Seamus, r98 n. 48 Doane, Laura, zo4 n. 56

Cohn-Bendit, Gabriel, 185,186 contrapuntality, 3, 6 Debord, Guy, 187 DolJimore,Jonathan, 228n. 19
collaboration, 20, 177, anticolonial, cooperation..Seecollaboration decadence, 161,168 Douglas, Alfred, Lord, r42, 168,173
t14;crosscultural, 6, 10; divine- Cornell, Drucilla, 20 de Ccrteau, Michel, 23 Dowson, Entcst, 169, 231n. 82
human, 141; spiritual, u; transna- cosmopolitanism, 8, 10,31-31,193 de Gaulle, Charles, 136 n. 37 Drayton, Richard, 214n. 8S--
tional, 8 n. 7, 200 n. ]6 degeneration, 51,205n. 6J Drew, John, 2n n. 37
colonial encounter, 1, 2, 3, 4, 14;art Cousin, Victor, 171 Degtneraflon(Nordau), 18,179
and, 145 Cousins,]. H., 124,177 democracy, 130 Eagleton, Terry, 144,156,128n. 37
colonialism, 31,95; alienation and, Cousins, M. E., 177 deontology, 13,r58,159 East, 52-53, 61; ethics and, 79; rcH-
101;animal welfare and, 96-97, Cracow uprising, 8 De Profundis(Wilde), 172,174,231 gion and, 79 SeealsoIndia;
as anthropocentrism, 2u n. 31; CreedofKinship, The (H. Salt), m n. 75 orientalism
difference and, 159;division and, Cripps, Arthur, 142 Derrida,Jacques, 10, 17,28, u7, n8- Edtl)(lrdCarpenter(Beith), 37
2-3, 4, 5, 7, 14; homosexuality CritiqueofJudgement(Kant), 146, 29, l]4, 174,184,210 n. 6, 229 n. Ellis, Havelock, 44, 50, 226 n. 82
and, 53;literature and, 15r,vege- 151,153,158,171 38; friendship and, 19,30, r30; Ellmann, Richard, 169
tarianism and, 81 Cntiqut ofPracticalReason(Kant), hospitality and, 73,74, 130, 223n. Elwin, Verrier,6
Common-SenseVegetarianism 126 50; risk and, 32 emigres. Seeoutcasts, outsiders
(Light), 83-84, 105 Critiqueof PureRea;on(Kant), 126 Descartes, Rene, 90 empire, 1-2; the "citizen" and, ro;
communication, t8, 24 Crosby, Ernest, 84 Descentuf Man, The (Darwin), 47- colJusionand collaborat1onin,
communism, 179 CrueltiesofCivilisation (H. Salt), 49, 53,5S, 104 n. 44 5; hierarchies of, 14;India and,
communiwianism, 14, 25,30; anti-, ror desire, 13,46, 59, 62, r29, 135,r98 ns
16,29,32 CryofNature, The (Oswald), 75 n. •6; destruction and, 22;differ- Emp,rt (Hardt and Negri), 10
community, S, 18-19,24. 46, 73,195 culture, 3, 192n. 13,:116n. 84; cul- ence and, 17,5'4ihomosexw..l, empiricism, the empirical, 117,122,
nn. 18-29, 198n. 50, 199 n. 56, tural insularity,71;diet 11.nd,
82- 38,57;hybridity and, 21, 118, n6, 128,130,r32, 221n. 19;agency
123n. 38;affective,r96 n. 36; 84; history and, 158;1mperi:11ism 130 and, 127, radica.1,188,234 n. n
anticolonialtsm and, 8, 7-4;of and, 145,161,r75;myths of, 4; determinism, 5, 191n. 11 Engels, Friedrich, 12, r8, 140,178,
descent, m; difference and, 54, nonwestern, 52,59; the real and, deviancy,25;sexual,38 179,r81
156;exclusion and, 19,53,55,61- 148;western, 117,152 de Vries, Hem, 224 n. 65 Englandfar AIL(Hyndman), 139
Index

English srudies: (anri)colonialism Fane, Violet, 76 index

and, u, 151;empire and, 4, 162. feeling Su sentiment •tionalism and, 14;pht!ia and, Germanldrolozy, Thr (Marx), ,,.8
Su alsoliterature Fellowship of the New life, 138,1n do 29; as phtloxmia, 29, 31, 189; Ghosal, Sarala, Si
Epicurianism, 29, 30, 200 n 68 feminism, 6, 196n. 35 politics
and, 17, 28; risk and, 29-
Chose, Aurobindo. Srr Aurohindo,
equality, 25 Ffoeon, Fehx,172 JO,p, 200 n. 68; similarity and, Sri
Erskine, Thomas, Lord, 90, 93 Ferrero, William, 205 n. 61 ,a;singularityand, 26; utopic Chose, Benoyhhushan, 162
EsJaysin RadicalEmpiri,ism (W Ferry, Luc, 196 n 38 community and, 10. Su alsopoh-
Chose, Knsto Dhonc, 1t,3
Jame ..), 131 Fichte,J. G., 171 licl: of friendship
Gho,;e, M.1nmoh.1n,12,1~1,161;aes-
ethics, u7, 131,153,158,220 n. 6; ani- First International, 8-9, 218n. 159 ,,,_./lu,,,j Ptai toEltphanta
theticism of, 162,164- 65, 167··71,
mah and, 89-90, 102,103;of First Step,Tht(Tolstoy), 106 (Carpenter),62
173,175,230 n. 60, 230 n. 71,231n.
..beyond," 20; community and, "Florence Putil' (M1chcLingclo}, ~ Pnnriplesofthe Meta-
72, 231n 82; as poet, 142,143,144,
24; of dominlium, 154,156,157, 43, 44-46 1',sicsofMorals (Kant), 126 145,146,163;politie!l and, 166-67
161,219 n. 38; as hospitality, 30; Flower, Desmond, 231n. 82 "JI, 200 n. 7l
Gilman, Sander L., 205 n. 63
hybridity and, 127,legislation Ford, August, 50, 51 Pottry, Tix (Aurobindo), 176 Gilroy, Paul, 128,130
and, 9r, materialist, 132;multiple forgiveness, 10 God, 126,134-35,137
·, Dinshah, 15
personality and, tJT, the other for5ter, E. M ., 10, 30, 31,37-38, 51, Godse, Nathuram, 209 n. a7
and, 7, m, 234n. 21; rationality · , Regina,168
73 Goldmann, Lucien, 148
and, u6, 126;rclationality and, Hmter, Michael, 108 her,W., 179
GoodShepherd.Thr (Andrews), 17
Fo..ter, William Z., 192n. 17 ·• Devdas, uo, 221 n. IJ
133 3-4;religion anJ, m, 126-27. govcrnmentality, 86, 91, 92, 97, 98,
Stt alsoKant, Immanuel; politics Foucault, Michel, 40-41, 42, 49, SS, ·• Lcd.i, 222 n. 33
112,u3; animal welfare and, 97,
Eth,.-s(Bad.Jou),13,4n. n 183,103 nn 33-34, 220 n. 6; ·, M. K.. 14, 15,16, 18,64, ll7i 101,108;art and, 173•7-4;civili1a-
Ethi,s ofDiet, The (H Williams), homosexuality and, 56-57, 61; "'1illUII and, 63, 85-86, 114,120;
tion and, 95, 110;colorualism and,
70,106 knowledge and, 181-82;power aaimal welfare and, 86-87 1 97,
96, 215n. 102;"impro\'ement"
tthos, 2o6 n. 81 and, 18,86, 92, 97 ·98, 184 114;anticolonialism of, 63, 83, 96,
and, 9-4-95;sentiment and, 10-4,
Europeand Its Othus, 149 foundationalism, 19 If) a. s; in England, 61 73,]6,
UJ
evolution, 10, 47, nz, 131;animal Fragment011 G01Jernmtnf (Ben '11,79, 80, m; vegetarianism and, Gray.John, 211 n. 31
welfare and, 111;"civili:ution" tham), 98 '7,68, 6g-,6, 79, 82, 83, 210 n. 16, Greenblatt, Stephen, 228 n. 19
and, 47- 48; immutability of spe- Francis of Assisi, Saint, 192 n. 11 au n.33
"gucst-fiiend~lup," Jr, 32, m
cies and, uo; kinship and. 109, Fraternal Democrats and Interna· ·• Ra.jmohan, 72 Guha, Ramachandra,6
and, 51,58
lllj SClCUality tional Association, 8 ·, Ramachandra, 224 n. 65
Guha, Ran2iit, 215n. 102
exclusion, 29, 184 freedom. Su autonomy , Marjorie, 2.07n. 87
Gurney, Edmund, 136,138
exiles. Ser outcasrs, outsiders Freud, Sigmund, 64 66; homo~c:<- Kanha)'2 Lal, 15 gurus, 219n. 1
cxpenence, 117,126,131;rationality uality and, 203 n. 15,109 n. 122 . ~. l.r (D. and G Cohn-
Friedman, Marilyn, 1 5 lendit), 11!5,186
and, 132 Ha.levy,Elie, 91
&pmmmts with Truth, My(M. K. °'
Friedman, Susan StJn f'rd 191nll· · n, 221n. 19
Hall,John, 47
Gandhi), 70 Fnmd ofMan, Tht(Cobbc), ,03 . 1'hcophile, 149,166, 171 I !all, Stum, 128,148,127n. 16
ExplostwAr/J (Sweetman), 131n. 98 frienchhip, 6, 10, 19, 28' 51• 61·' .tnU· , Patrilk, 50
I lammcm1c~ter, Kai, 1s2
colorual thoug h tan d • 14' 16-17, 18,45, 48,49, 64; divi- Har:iway, Donn:i, 31,74, 100-101,
faith. Su religion 64, 73; art an d, 16i-67i • cross•
. d, 125;gender binariza- 1111 211 n. 33, 216n. 115

FaireBca1tsand Trw (Cobbc), 103 cultural, 161,163,164; Indian 9, 207 n. 84 I la.rdt, Michael, 10, 11, 12, 23
rou/,/e(Butler), 207 n. 84 1larcher,John, 230n. 62
lndtx

Hay, Stephen, 71 n. 13;anti-imperialism and anti- identity, 3, 17,128;homosexual, 38, internationalism, 9

Haynes, Renee, us n. 70 colonialism and, ,o- 11, 35, 49, 39;theother and, 55;privilege I ntemational Working Men's Asso-
I leehs, Peter, 210 n. 8, 110 n. 11 58-59, 62; crossculn1ralaffinity and,Jl ciation, 8-9, 218n. 159
l legcl, G. W. F., 11,22, 24, 15,31, and, 11, 35,36, 58-59, 140;as imperialism, 1-2, 58, 6o, 96, 163; Intimate Enemy, The (Nandy),
54, 132,135,159,171,196 n. 34; aes- friendship, 61;hybndity and, 140. Christianity and, 17,culture and, 6-7
thetics and, 152,15r58, 160, 161, lifestyle and,.µ, 57; M1chelan- ' 1SS;dissidence and, 34; division lnn-odurtion lo Aesthetus (Hegel),
in gelo and, 44; in Nazi Germany, and,6, T, hierarchies and, r, im 158,159
Hrgd(Nancy), 106 n. 81 53, 106 n. 77;orientalism and, SJ, pcrialb11lllfism,3, 5; imperial lntroduc-honlo the Prinr,pln of
Heidegger, Martin, 161,107 n. 81, 205 n. 73;"savagery"and, 51-52, manicheanism, 4, 5; imperial pe- Moraisand .ugJS!ation,An (Ben-
23o n. 55 55;scrutiny and, 60. Su a/Jo riphery, T, inequity and, 9; nature tham), 89-90, 99
heteronorrnativity, 49, 51,58 sexuality management and, 214n. 88;power inventiveness, 41;ofhomosexual-
heterosexuality, 49, 51,56, 107 n. 84. hospitality, 10, 30, 31;ancicolonial, and,86; relationaliry and, 184-85 ity, 41
107 n. 88; imperialism and, 60 72-73, TU, Il4 •improvement," 94-95 inversion. Seehomosexuality
heterosociality, 46 I lousman, Lawrence, 37,39 Jr,Anothu Country (Joshi), 151 Invert, The (Anomaly), 60
Hilliard, David, 51 I lughes, Langston, 6 ladepcndent Labour Party (1LP), invulnerability, 29, 32
Hills, Arnold, 75 Humane Rroiew, ;n! 179 lolaus (Carpenter), 61
Hind S'U)(lraj(M. K. Gandhi), 18, humanism, 100, 146 India,82;Artdrewsganj, 13;animal
63, 117 Humtmitanan, 102 rights and, 75-76; colonial gov- JallianwaJa Bagh tr2gcdy, 14-15,193
Hinduism, 75,109 n. nr, colonial humanitarianism, 101,106 ernment and, 95-96, 165;culture n.5
ism and, 81-82 Humanitarian League, JS, 77-78, andcustomsof, 95-96, roo, 158; James, Wil11am,53,118,132-38,
Hmts to Workm (Monro), 93-94 105-6 fffi:dom and, 86; independence 140, u6 n. 82, relationality and,
I lippolyte,Jcan, 11 human nature: the empirical and, of, m; mamagc in, 64; morality 141,188;Society for Psychical
1lirschfeld, Magnus, 53,60, 106 u7, 122,116,127,118,130;the and,15;Pondicherry, 118,119,120, Research and, 225o. 70; spiritual-
n. 77 metuphyi,1caland, u7, 127,u8, w, 220 n. 8; spirituality and, u5- ism and, 131,136,225n. 71
historicism, 152,1:58,160,161,1n 130 20; western anti-imperialism Jameson, Frednc, 158
history: colonialism and, 160; dif- Human Pmonality (Myers), 135, and,67, 13,LJ4.See also Jayawardene, Kumari, 6, 116
ference and, 157,159;freedom 136,137,125n. 72 nationalism Johnson, Liond, 142,168
and, 158,159 Hutter, Horst, 27, 28 I.&,,, Eye on Eng/uh Lift, Tht Joll,James, r92 n. 17
History ofBritish India (James Huysmans, J. K., 171 (Malabari),8r Jones, Greta, 205 n. 63
Mill), 95 hybridity, 6, 21,21-23, 62, 121,128, individualism, individuality, 25,16, Joshi, Priya, 151
History ofSexuality,Tht (Foucault), 130,131,137,affect and, 127; UJ, 196 n. 34 Journal ofResearches(Darwin), 109
40-.µ, 42, 49, 55 agency and, 191n. 11;ant1colo- '-'"oliw Community,Tht judgment, 153-s.s
homesickness, 6r68 nialism and, 118;ethm, and, nr, (Nancy), 19,198n. 50 Jungle Books,The (Kipling), 96
homophobia, 39 hybrid subject and, ll, 23, 139•iqS Institute for Sexual Science, 206 justice: conceptions of, 117;risk and,
Homos(Bersani), 38, 103 n. 33 n. 46, 223n. 43; religion and, 128- n.77 134,141
homosexual cxceptionali~m,39, 43, 29, 135;~ocialreconstrucnon •1nd• bllufficicncy, 24,31,54, 106 n. 82 jusli<t,34-35
59, 64-65, 139-40, l77i Spiritual- 22 , 140; utopian socialism Jnd, •77 l,u~diote Sex, Tht (Carpenter),
ism and, 121 Hyndman, H. M., 34,JS,12 3• 139' '44.58,63, 1.40 Kant, Immanuel, 21,23, 24, 15,31
homosexuality,Jr 41, 47, 51,55,56, 139,179 l~Jiate TypesamQngPrimitive 118,132,r34, 146,159,196 n. 34,
60-62, 65-66, 84, 143,168,201 hysteria, 137 Fo~ (Carpenter), 59 200 n. 76; aesthetics and, 151-55,
 Index

Kant (continued) Libm1/ismand the Limas o/]UJtrce materialism,131,152,158;aestheti- Mutual Aid (Kropotkin), m-13
1571 r58, 161,1711 173;animals and, (Sandel), 222 n. 33 cism and, 49, 155,161;autonomy Myers, Frederic, 135,136,1371 1401
90; ethics and, 117,12,5-27,128, libertarianism, 148 and, 148 Lp, 225n. 72
13t,222 n. 33, 235n. 21;rationality Ltft of Michelangtlo,Tht (Sy· Matthews,Elkin, 230 n. 60 mysticism, n6, 1181 138,175,as
and, 180-81; religion and, 126 27, monds), 44 MIUll'i<t
(Forster), 37-38 degeneration, 140; plumhsm and,
129-30, 1.41,222 n. 34 Light, Henry, 83-84, 105 May1968,18,185-87,197n. 38, 235 135;radicaL~mand, 137
Kensworthy,John, j'8 literature, 142;autonomy and, 148, n. 33, 236 n. 37 mythology,59
Killingfor Sport(JI. Salt), 85 151iimperialism and, 150;plural- Mayo,Katherine, 15
Kingsford, Anna, 701 79, 83, 104, ism and, 149;sociologyof, 147 meat eating, 68, 69, 75-76, 213n. 55; Nahar,Sujata, 220 n. 9
106,108 Lombroso, Cesare, 205 n. 61 cruelty and, 8,4; as exploitation, Nancy,Jean-Luc, 19, 201 221 .541
kinship, 43, 45, 46, 61, 104, 04, 184, love: animal welfure and, 104; as 1o6; imperialism and, 78, !4-85 195n. 28, r95 n. 30,196 o. 36,197
203 n. 33; the other and, 174-75 sacrifice, 105, 108 MMztFetish, The (Redus and n. 45, 198 n. 50, 206 n. 82
Kipling,John, 100 Low's ComingofAge (Carpenter), Crosby), n3 Nandy, Ash.is,6-7, 63, n6, 219
Kipling,Rudyard, 96 58,60-61, 63, 140 MerrieEngland (Blantchford), 178- 11.3
Klein, Naomi, I86, 236 n. 35 Low Songsand Elegies(M. Chose), 79 Naoroji, Dadabhai, 79-80
Knight, William, 226 n. 83 164,230 n. 60 nationalism, 2 anticolonial, ,, 4, 5,
1

knowledge(s), n7, 49, 150;desire Lukacs, Georg, 21-22, 148 127,128,130, 137,139,141 13,15,63; colonial, Si "derivative
and, 154;hierarchies of, 181-82; Lyotard,Jean-Franc;ois,220 n. 6 Michelangelo, 43, 44-46, 55; discourse" and, Si in India, r5, 35,
oriental, 164 homosexualityof, 44 1 203 n. JS 63, u5, 116,119 201 193n. 71 209
Kojeve,Alexandre, 21, 22 Macaulay,T. 8., 82, 94 Mill,James,95, 96 n. 117,"invention of tradition"
Krafft-Eb1ng, R. von, 49-50 McCabe, Colin, 130 Mill.John Stuart, 94, 99, 221n. 19; and,5
kreophagy. Ste meat e-ating McConville, Maureen, 135n. JI colonialismand, 95, 96 nation-states, 5, 41
Krishnaswamy,Revnthy1 209 n. Macherey, Pierre, 227 n. 17 minorities, 63 natural selection. Seeevolution
117 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 24, 196 n. 34, Mitchell, Timothy, 215 n. 102 negativity,53, 54 55,206 n. 82
Kropotkin, Peter, 111-13, 172,218 223 a. 38 Mitsis.Phillip, 200 n. 68 Negn, Antonio, 10, n, u, 23
n. 159 Mahabharata,105 modernity, 7, 41; the political and, neoliberalism, 25
Maitland, Edward, 79 146,147, sexuality and, 40, 43; Nesbit, E., m6-7
Labouchere Amendment, 60 Malabari, Behramji, 81 Western,S, 99 neurosis, 65
Labour Church movement, 122 "man": evolution and, 47, as pro- lbOnism,138 Neve, l\tichacl, 109
Laclau, Ernesto, 181 ducer, 21 Monro,S. S., 93-94 New TreasureSeekers(Nesbit),
Lane, Christopher, 205 n. 73 Mani, Lata, 149 Moonje,8. S., no 106-7
Leask, Nigel, 212 n. 37 Mansell, Thomas, 217n. 140 Moore, Arthur, 169 NichomadwznEthics(Aristotle), 28,
Leavis, F.R., 89 marriage, 6Ji violenceand, 64 Moore, Howard)., m '99 n. 64
"uft-Wing" CommuniJm{Lenin), Martin, Sir Richard, 88, 89 morality,47, 91, 134;Kantian, 126, Nield, Keith, 186
1j'II,179,181
1 r85
Marx, Karl, 4, 2,-2, 231 148;First 129,130 Niet1..schc,Friedrkh, 155,159
Lenin, Vladimir, 121 zj'II,179-80, International and, 9, 218n. 159 Morris, Wimam, 34, r23 nihilism, in, 153,197n. 38 39
181,r85 Marxism, 9, 21,139, 196 n. 34 Mo.a, Arthur, 214n. 73 Nirodbaran, 221n. 13
Levinas, Emmanuel, 27 1 129 1 200 n. masculinity,63, 84-85, 209 n. 11., Motherlnd,a (Mayo), 15 Nivcdita, Sister (Margaret Noble),
72,220 n. 6 Mask of Conquest(Viswanathan), Moutre,Chantal, 22 1 181,196o. 34 n5-16, 219 n. 1;anncolonialism
liberalism, 196 n. 34 150 Murphy, Garner, 225n. 70 of, n5
 Index
Index
Phenomenology of Mind (Hegel), n. 31;similarity and, 28-29; sin- provisionality,t86-87
No Logo(Klein), 186
22,54 gularity and, 147,181;spiritualism psychoanalysis,65
Nordau, Max,18,140, 179
Phillips, Stephen, 142 and, n5, 116,121,11,3;of transgies- psychology,36, 131,135;abnormal,
Nussbaum, Martha, 134,181,2:22,
philosophy, 29, 132,171;history and, sion, 15;transnational, 12. Seealso 137
n. 37
160;political, 27;western, 117 ethics; homosexuality; radical- PsyehopathiaStxualis (Krntft-
obedience, 92; civilization and, 95- PhilosophyofHistory(Hegel), 158 ism; utopianism F.bing), 49-50
philo:xenia,29, 31, 184,189,234n. :1.1 Politics(Aristotle), 28 Pultney, William, 92, 93
96; the paor and, 94
Pick, Daniel, 205 n. 63 Polil'itsas Friendship(Hutter), 27 Purani, A. B., ur n. 13
Okawa, Shumei, 121
Oldfield,Josiah, 70, 72 PictureofDorian Gray,The postcolonialism, 1,7,143,149;aes- Pyarelal,77
(Wilde), 144, 173 thetic autonomy and, 152;deter- Pythagoras, 76
Oliver, Hermia, :u8 n. 159
Plato, 57 minism and, 5; hybridity and, 128;
On the Basisof Morality
PleaFor Vegetarianism (H. Salt), 69 imperialism and, 4, 150,162;liter- queer theory, 128,202 n. 33
(Schopenhauer), 102
Oppenheim,Janet, 225n. 70 pluralism, 132,133 ature and, 146,147,r57,postcolo-
Podmore, Frank, 138 nial theory, 2, 3, 4, 145;realism race, racism, SS,125;politics of, r28
orientalism, u5, 149,150;homosex-
poetry, 142,143,16r64; anticolo- and, 147;spiritualism and, u5, u6 radicalism, 102,141,179,183,192n.
uality and, 53,205 n. 73;romantic,
nialism and, 145,146,164-65; Postcoltmial Theory(L. Gandhi), 222 18;anarchism and, 219n. 159;
76 212n. 37
1

askesisand, 103;imagination and, n. 33 anticolonialism and, 2, 7, 8, 76;

Orienta/ism(Said), 2, 3, 149
160; "prose" and, 164-65, 167,175 postmodernism, 20, 29-30, 196 n. art and, t66, 172;heterodoxy and,
OriginofSpecies,The (Darwin), 47,
polis, 30; exclusion and, 29 38. 197o. 39, 220 n. 6; community 121-22;heterogeneity of, n5, 123,
uo-n,n2
political thought: friendship and, and,26; csscntialism and, :u, 23 138;hybridity and, 118;as politics,
OriginsofTotalitnrianism,Tht
27, 28;humanism and, 1.46;secu· power,20, 41, 98, 184;governmen- 12; sexuality and, 63; socialism
(Arendt), 235n. 23
larism and, n7; western, 12, 30, tality and, 92; homosexuality and, 137;theism and, 125;trans-
Orwell, George, 178
t17 111d,40,42 narionalism and, 9, 10; vegetari-
Oswald, John, 75
politics, 31, :m n. 33,220 n. 6; pragmatism, 132 anism and, 77, 106
other, 3, 7, 141;othcr-dircctedncss,
"adulthood" and, 180-81;aes- Pratt, Mary Louise, 159 Rair, Suzanne, no n. 1:22
20; risk and, 31
thetics and, 157,161,175;anar- prayer, u7, 126,127,130,224n. 65; fuunakrisbna, Sri, 209 n. 117
outcasts, outsiders, 8, 26-27, 36, 55,
chist, 20; desire and, 198n. 46~of desire and, 129,135.Set also Ranciere,Jacques, 183
79, 184,235n. 23;homosexuality
the "eventt 183,186,233n. 15,234 religion ration1llism,103,127,politics and,
and,57, 61
n. 20; exclusion and, 29, 184; Prescott, Mary, 172 180;religion and, 129,221 n. 19
Owen, Alex, 137
fail11resof, 123;as friendship, 28; present, transformation of, zo Rawls, John, 127
Owen, Robert, u2
of friendship, 9-10, 12, 26- 27, of Primate Visions(Haraway), 2Jl n. 31 realism, 173
hybridiry, 131,132, 14o;identity Primavera{Bioyon, Cripps, Chose, Redus, Elisee, u3, 218n. 159
Paglia, Camille, 168,231n. 79
politics, J77iimagination and, and Phillips), 142-43,144,153, recognition, 54, 55,159,160, 199 n. 53
Panopticon, 9r98
1 6
Passageto India, A (Forster), 31 147; immature, 12,182-88, 3 n. 163,166, 169 Rcdesdale,Lord, 93
PassionateAttitudu(Sturgis), 143
37; imperialism and, 12,184-~5; Prill(ipltsofPoliticalEconomy(J. S. refugees. Seeoutcasts, outsiders
knowledge and, 150,J8J- 82• l1ter- Mill), 94 relationality,6, 32, 45, 55,99, 131,
Pater, Walter, 167,171,23rn. 75
ature and, 148-49, 153;th c orlter Promiu anti a WayofLift, A 174;anarchist, 20; difference and,
PerfectWay in Ditt, The (Kings-
and, , 1s3; parliamentary, i79; (Thompson), 6 54, 56, 125;ethics and, 133;homo-
ford), 70, 79, 83,106 7
poetry and, 176;real.ismand, t46- PrO'IJincialising
Europe (Chakra- sexuality and, 42, 43, 57, 61,202 n.
PerpetualPeace(Deck), 200 n. 76
, 1st,180;sexual, 37,38, 39• :z,o:i barty), 146 33;human-animal, 97, 100, 102,
Peters,John Durham, 99 47
 Index
lndtx
Seale, Patrick, 235n. 31 similitude, 28, 29,159
relationality (cominued) Roy,Arundhati, 236 n. 35 Second International, 192n. 17,218 Sinficld, Alan, 228n 19
m, :m n. 33,116n. 115;the other Roy,Evelyn, u6 n. 159 Singer, Daniel, 236 n. 37
and, 129;politics and, 184,185, Roy, Nirendranath, 165 Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky,39, 201 Singer, Peter, 89, :usn. 111
187,188;power and, 10, 97, sex Roy, Parama, 115 n. 13 singuluity, 26; dtvmon :\nd, 125
and,61 Royal Society for the Prevention of self,125,180,206 n. 82; affect and, Sinha, Mnnalini, 209 n. 117
religion, 116-27, 129,14-1, 160, l2l n. Cruelty 10 Animals (RSPCA}, 87, 17;conscience and, 91;division SisterIndia, 15
19;cooperation and, 134;ustern, 107;"vigilance" and, 93, 214n. 93; and, 153;others and, 125;sclf- Skultans, V1cda,u5 n. Bo
u, 122;ethics and justice and, u7, working poor and, 93-94 estrangement, 189;variegated, slavery,8
12r130; pluralism and, 141;reli- Rubin, Gayle, 38 u8, 136-37, 139.Seealsosubject socialism, 8, 97, 108, 114,135,137,181,
gious hetcmdoxy, 122,125;science Rudra. S. K., 16 self-sufficiency,23, 25,29 185-86, 218n. 159;affective, 101,
and, 122;socialism and, 123,140. Rules ofArt, The (Bourdicu), 157 sentient life: kinship of, n2; as web n3, 138;anticolonialism and, 1231
Seealsospiritualism, spirituality Rushdie, Salman, 128,223n. 43 of affinities, m 141;an and, r66, 171,1rz; scien-
Religionwithin tht Limits of R.LaJon Russett, Cynthia, 204 11. 54 sentiment, 99, 103;allirnal welfare tific, 12, 179-80, 181-82,185,235n.
Alone (Kant), 126-27, 129 and, n5 n. m; humanitarianism 21;spirirualism and, 118,122-23;
&mcnbtr Me to Harltm (Bernard), 6 Said, Edward, 2, 3, 28, u8, 149,150, and, 101-2 utopian, 11, 18,201 105,123,138,
Rmaissanu, Tht (Pater), 167,231 1.51,
1521 199 n. 57, art and, 161 Seth, Vikram, 32-33 140, rn, 178-80, 183,r85, 217n.
n. 75 Saint Oscar(Eagleton), 144 sex, 40, 41, 55,57,202 n. 33, 1.07n. 129.Su alsoutopianism
Renawanu &If-Fashioning {Green- Salt, Henry, n, 12, 64, 70, 71,85,87- 85;binarism and, 208 n. 99; c:ue- SOCUJ!um,from Ut<Jp1a to &imu
blatt), 118 n. 19 88,.101,102,106, :u6 n. 112;animal gories of, 56, 58, 59, 62, 65;com- (Engels), t8, t40, 178
Renault, Alain, 196n. 38 welfare and, 71, m, 140, 171,208 n. munity and, 4'.3ipower and, 43; sociality,.JJ,36, 42, 68, 73, 103 n. 33;
re~istance:to boundaries, u; homo- 99; anti-imperialism and, n3, 114, sexualrepression, 40; rransvcsti- human-a.nimal, 103,109, nr, n3,
sexual, 421 551 56; inventiveness 182;Fellowship of the New Life tism, 207 n. 87. Su alsogender m n. 31;as problem, 96, 97, 99
and, 43; to power, 40-41 and, 138,171;socialism and, 2t7 n. 1CXOlogy, 10, 39, 47, 49-51, 204 n. 56, socialjustice, 219n i; subjectivity
revolutions of 1848,8 u9; vegetarianism and, 69; work- 205 n. 61 and, 139
Revue de la GrandeSynthese,n9 ing poor-and, 107,n3 sexualdissidence, 8, ro; anti- SocialMissio11 oJEnglish Criticism,
Rhymers, 231n. 82 Salt, Kate, 138 imperialism and, n, 39 The (Baldick), 148
Richard, Paul, n8, n9, no, 222n. sameness, 30 Sall4I lnvmion {Ellis),44 society, disciplinary, 92, 96
27. Ste alsoAlfassa, Mirra Sandel, Michael, 24, u7, 127,13°, ICXUality, 36, Jii,40, 64-i"civiliza- Society for Prevention of Cruelty to
Rickett, Charles, 169 222n. 33 tion" and, 49-50; defined, 39; rac- Animals,89
risk, 29-30, 31,32 Sanre,Jean-Paul, 183 ism and, 53;reproduction and, 48; Society for Psychical Research
Risorgimento, 8 "savages,"49, 50, 62, 204 n. 61; civi- systems of alliance and, .µ-43, 61 (SPR),n8, 136,137-38,140
Ritvo, 1larrict, 79 lization and, 94-95, 98; homo- &aual selection, 48-49 sociology: aestheticism and, 151;lic-
Road to Wigan Pur, The (Orwell), sexuality linked to, 51-52,53,59, Shannon, Charles, 169 craturc and, 147-49, r50-51, 2.27
178 61, 66 Sheehan,James J.,218n. 151 n. 15;postcolonialism and, 149
Ross, Kristen, r87-88 .Savagingthe C1t11lised(Guha), 6 Shelley,Percy Bysshe, 76 solidarity, 9, 29, 3r; hu111an-ammal,
Rosselli,John, 82 Sayle, Charles, 169 Sidgwick,Henry, 138 74;transnational, 8, ro
Rou~~eau,Jean-Jacque~, 25, 207 Schneer,Jonathan, 1, 2 Sidney,Sir Phillip, 42 solipsism, 19, 30
n.88 Schopenhauer, Arthur, 101 Simians,Cyborgsand Women(Hara- SongsofLove and Dtalh (M.
Routh, Jane, 227n. 15 science, 109; anti-vivisection and, way),74 Ghose), 230 n. 60
Rowbotham, Sheila, 217n. 129 108
Index
Index
Sophocles, 46 subjectivity,133,136,180;ego and, '/'rueIndia, The (Andrews), 15-16 VegetarianMessenger,107
Sosna, Morton, 2r8 n. 151 156:female, 196 n. 35; inter-, 139; Two Cheo-sfarDemocracy(Forster), vegetarian societies: in London, 701
spcciesism,18,74, 125 transformation of, t25, 188-89 TO, JO, 51
?I, 72,75;in Manchester, 761 89,
spirir possession,r36 Sulloway,Frank, 48
107
spiritualism, spirituality, 8, 79, 219 Sweetman, David, 172,232n. 98 Ulrichs, Karl Heinrich, 57 Vera(Wilde), 172
n. 21 225n. 70; agency and, r25; Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 166, Unawwable Community, The VindicationofNatural Diet, A
anti-imperialism and, 111 rr6, 230 n. -,r. (Blanchot), 23 (Shelley), 76
120-21, 123-24,175;art and, 176; Symonds.John Addington, 44, 60, UncleSham (Gauba), rs Vindicationoft~ Rights ofBrutes,A
critiques of western civilization 61,65,142,144,166 UnivmaJ Kinship, The (H. Moore), (T. Taylor), 91
and, 122;decline of, 140;God Symposium(Plato), 57 m Visram, Rosina, 211n. 26
and, 135;hybridity and, 131,139; SystemofLogic,A (J. S. Mill), m Urania,208 n. 99 Visvanathan, Susan, 14
non-Christian, u5; plurality of n. 19 "urning," 57 Viswanatban, Gauri, 1451 150,151
the self and, n8; psychologyand, utilitarianism, 68-69; animal wel- Vivekananda, Swami, 82, n6, 209
136-37,radicalism and, 122; Tagore, Rabindranath, 16;desire fare and, 74, 89-91, 92, 96-97, n. u7
socialism and, 122,123,124,140, and, 194n. r7; nationalism of: r47 103-~ colonialism and, 94, 95-
ITT,western political thought Taylor, Charles, 231 24-25, 131,197 96, 215n. 102;govern.mentality Walzer, Michael, 24
and, n7. See alsoWest n. 41 and, 91,92; sentiment and, 99 Warner, Micqael, 203 n. 33
Spivak, Gayatri, 149 Taylor,J.,34 utopianism, 7, 12, 19,3r, 58, 66, 179, Washington, Peter, 215n. 70
Sri Aurobindo Ashram, u6, ur Taylor, Thomas, 91 235n. 2r; anarchism and, 9; anti- "web of affinities,"ru, 2,18 n. 156;
Stael, Anna Louise Germaine de, Teltscher, Kate, 209 n. n7 colonialism and, 178;culture and, human-animal relationality and,
l7' theism, 131,135;the other and, 141. 165;fin-de-si~clc,18,26, 182; Ill
state: friendship and, 28, 29-30; Su alsoreligion; spiritualism, immaturity and, 12, 178-79, r8o, Weber, Eugen, 222n. 25
power and, 20; racism and, 184. spirituality 182,183,185-86,236 n. 37; inclu- Weeks,Jefferey,217n. 129
Seea!SfJgovernmentality Theon, Max, 124 sivenessand, 130.Seealsopolitics; Weintraub, Stanley, 232 n. ro1
Steevens, G. W., 84 Theosophy, 79, 122, 138;in France, socialism West anthropocentrism and, 76;
Stendhal, 155 124;radicalism and, nr n. 20;
colonialism and, 5; search for
Stokes, Eric, 96 spiritualism and, 123 VanVechten, Carl, 6 spirituality and, u5-19, 121,124
Storr, Anthony; 219n. 2 Thomas, Keith, 75,89 Van Vrekhem, Georges, 220 n. 8 Westcott, Brooke Foss, 18
StraightMind, The (Wittig), 56 Thompson, Becky,6 Vegetarian,71,72,79,80,107 White Woman'sOtherBurden, The
Straw Dogs (Gray), mn. 31 Thomson,J. Arthur, 50 vegetarianism, 68, 69-71, 82-84, (Jayawardene), 6
Streit derFacultatm (Kant), 222 Thoreau, Henry David, 87 138,212n. 35, 212n. 41; anricolo- Whitman, Walt, 61,166, 224 n. 59,
n.34 Tolstoy, Leo, 106, 03 nialism and, n, 731 6, Bo,84-85; 230 n. 71
Sturgis, Matthew, 143 Tonkin, Boyd, 48 class and, 1or8; hospitality and, Wilberforce, William, 931 roo
Subaltern Studies collective,5 Toulousc-Lautrec, Henri de, 1'/2 72-74; meat eating and, 106;ori- Wilcox, John, 232 n. 94
subject: autonomy and, 153,159, Touraine, Alain, 186 entalist, 79; radicalism and, 76- Wilde, Oscar, r2, 76-77, 161,162,
r80-81; desire and, 2.2, 26; differ- TowardsDemocracy(Carpenter), 34• 77, 106,123,189;spiritualism and, r67, 173,174,13r n. 75,231n. 79;
ence and, 174;ethics and, 91; 139 121;subordination and, 83;vege- aestheticism of, 144-45, 146,r66,
judgment and, ISJ-54>156,157, transcendence, 19 tarian cuisine, 80-81, 1or, work- 168,169-75, ITT, anarchism and,
229 n. 38; privilege and, 23;self- Trt!mblingofthe Veil,The (Yeats), ing poor and, 107;xenophilia 172;anricolonialismof, 144-45,
sufficient, n7, 1.27,148 168 and, 73 146,151,153,175,176,182;philoso-
Index

Wilde (continued) 92-94, 97, ro8; legislative control

phy and, t7I; poetry and, 142-43; and, 91-94; vegetarianism and,
trials of, 60 107
Williams, I loward, 70 1 106 World Trade Organization (wTo ),
William~, Raymond, r48 185,188
Windham, William, 91, 94
Wittig, Monique, 39, 55,56.,201 n. xenophilia, 73,m; anti-imperialism
13, 207 n. 84, 207 n. 86 and, 144
Wolff, Janet, 227n. rs
Woman's Freedom League, 140, Yeats, W. B., 168
208 n. 99 Yeo, Stephen, 221 n. 23
women, 49, 138, 168, 104 n. 54; male Young, Robert, 158
homosexuals and, 140, 189, 208 n.
99; obedience and, 92; ordination ZastoupiJ, Lynn, 215n. 102
and, rr, spiritualism and, n5-16; Ziick, SJavoj, 40-41, 197 n. 39, 197
vivisectionand, 108; women's n.46
suffrage, r23, 140, 189 zoophilia, 86, 101, m, 114; colonial
Woomera detention center (South ism and, 177, as sacrifice,105,ro()
Aumalia), 26 Zooph,lt, Lt, 79
workingpoor: an,mal weJfarcand, Zoophilist,79, 108

LP.ELA C:ANDIII

te.iches in the school of En~lish

at La Trobe Univtr,iiy.