The Ruling Passion: British Colonial Allegory and the Paradox of Homosexual DesireIn The Ruling Passion, Christopher Lane examines the relationship between masculinity, homosexual desire, and empire in British colonialist and imperialist fictions at the turn of the twentieth century. Questioning the popular assumption that Britain's empire functioned with symbolic efficiency on sublimated desire, this book presents a counterhistory of the empire's many layers of conflict and ambivalence. Through attentive readings of sexual and political allegory in the work of Kipling, Forster, James, Beerbohm, Firbank, and others--and deft use of psychoanalytic theory--The Ruling Passion interprets turbulent scenes of masculine identification and pleasure, power and mastery, intimacy and antagonism. By foregrounding the shattering effects of male homosexuality and interracial desire, and by insisting on the centrality of unconscious fantasy and the death drive, The Ruling Passion examines the startling recurrence of colonial failure in narratives of symbolic doubt and ontological crisis. Lane argues compellingly that Britain can progress culturally and politically only when it has relinquished its residual fantasies of global mastery. |
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Page xii
... tion , many drafts ago , providing insight , encouragement , and much needed caution with warmth , subtlety , and brilliance ; my intellectual and personal debt to her is inestimable . In their diverse ways , Geoffrey Bennington , Homi ...
... tion , many drafts ago , providing insight , encouragement , and much needed caution with warmth , subtlety , and brilliance ; my intellectual and personal debt to her is inestimable . In their diverse ways , Geoffrey Bennington , Homi ...
Page 2
... tion . For instance , Ronald Hyam has argued that " the driving force behind empire building was ... the export of surplus emotional or sexual energy , " not the export of surplus capital . However , if we uncouple sexuality from ...
... tion . For instance , Ronald Hyam has argued that " the driving force behind empire building was ... the export of surplus emotional or sexual energy , " not the export of surplus capital . However , if we uncouple sexuality from ...
Page 3
... tion , but the representative , " which is to say , the signifier ( 217 ) . The difficulty of turning this distinction into a critical procedure emerges from the fact that the first ( conscious ) register tries to displace and supersede ...
... tion , but the representative , " which is to say , the signifier ( 217 ) . The difficulty of turning this distinction into a critical procedure emerges from the fact that the first ( conscious ) register tries to displace and supersede ...
Page 6
... tion - as contrary , wayward , and unnatural . Instead , we must emphasize the turbulent incongruencies between homosexual desires and masculine identi- ties precisely because no single signifier is adequate to their representation ...
... tion - as contrary , wayward , and unnatural . Instead , we must emphasize the turbulent incongruencies between homosexual desires and masculine identi- ties precisely because no single signifier is adequate to their representation ...
Page 17
... tion relies on an analogous injunction to expel all of its detrimental elements . Kipling termed this radical excision " Higher Editing " ; he sought to leave only a text's essential elements : " A tale from which pieces have been raked ...
... tion relies on an analogous injunction to expel all of its detrimental elements . Kipling termed this radical excision " Higher Editing " ; he sought to leave only a text's essential elements : " A tale from which pieces have been raked ...
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Common terms and phrases
A. E. W. Mason ambivalence anxiety argued Beerbohm Britain's British Cambridge Carey Carey's character colonel colonial conflict Conrad's Victory consider critics cultural D. H. Lawrence death difference displacement Dorian Gray E. M. Forster Empire English fantasy father Feversham Fiction Four Feathers Freud friendship Galazi Haggard Harmondsworth Heldar heterosexuality Heyst Hollinghurst homosexual desire Human Bondage identification identity imaginary Imperialism impulse India interpret intimacy Joseph Conrad King Solomon's Mines Kipling's Lacan Lena literary Literature London main text male masculine Mason Maugham meaning military Morrison Munro narrative narrator novel object Oxford pagination in main Passage to India passion Paul Penguin political protagonists psychic Psychoanalysis race racial reading references give pagination relation represents Ronald Firbank Routledge Rudyard Kipling Saki Sassoon Schomberg sexual Siegfried Sassoon significance social Standard Edition Subsequent references give suggest symbolic T. S. Eliot tion trans violence Vithobai Wilde Wilde's woman women writing York
Popular passages
Page 193 - And what there is to conquer By strength and submission, has already been discovered Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot hope To emulate -but there is no competition There is only the fight to recover what has been lost And found and lost again and again : and now, under conditions That seem unpropitious.
Page 176 - I am black, as if bereaved of light. My mother taught me underneath a tree, And, sitting down before the heat of day, She took me on her lap and kissed me, And, pointing to the East, began to say: 'Look on the rising sun: there God...
Page 75 - The only reason for the existence of a novel is that it does attempt to represent life.
Page 155 - It's what I want. It's what you want." But the horses didn't want it — they swerved apart; the earth didn't want it, sending up rocks through which riders must pass single file; the temples, the tank, the jail, the palace, the birds, the carrion, the Guest House, that came into view as they issued from the gap and saw Mau beneath: they didn't want it, they said in their hundred voices, "No, not yet," and the sky said, "No, not there.
Page 139 - Thus from the point of view of psychoanalysis the exclusive sexual interest felt by men for women is also a problem that needs elucidating and is not a self-evident fact based upon an attraction that is ultimately of a chemical nature.
Page vii - But the contact with pure unmitigated savagery, with primitive nature and primitive man, brings sudden and profound trouble into the heart.
Page 99 - When once the truth is grasped that one's own personality is only a ridiculous and aimless masquerade of something hopelessly unknown the attainment of serenity is not very far off. Then there remains nothing but the surrender to one's impulses, the fidelity to 1 A wedding present.
Page 17 - ... a tale from which pieces have been raked out is like a fire that has been poked. One does not know that the operation has been performed, but everyone feels the effect.
Page 30 - Not a man of them under six feet. I was next to Dravot, and behind me was twenty men of the regular Army. Up comes the girl, and a strapping wench she was, covered with silver and turquoises but white as death, and looking back every minute at the priests. " 'She'll do,' said Dan, looking her over. 'What's to be afraid of, lass? Come and kiss me.
Page 91 - When they entered, they found hanging upon the wall a splendid portrait of their master as they had last seen him, in all the wonder of his exquisite youth and beauty. Lying on the floor was a dead man, in evening dress, with a knife in his heart. He was withered, wrinkled, and loathsome of visage. It was not till they had examined the rings that they recognized who it was.