UC Irvine UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Anarchistic Hermeneutics of Utopian Desires in the Late Nineteenth Century: Defining, Narrating, and Reading Anarchism Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5hk0r4wg Author Oda, Toru Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE Anarchistic Hermeneutics of Utopian Desires in the Late Nineteenth Century: Defining, Narrating, and Reading Anarchism DISSERTATION submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Comparative Literature by Toru Oda Dissertation Committee: Associate Professor Adriana M. Johnson, Chair Associate Professor Eyal Amiran Professor Rei Terada 2016 © 2016 Toru Oda DEDICATION To my parents, my brother, and my grandmother "Ich hätte Ihnen so viel zu erzählen, daß Ich nicht [weiß] wo anfangen. Auch weiß ich nicht, was ich Ihnen tatsächlich schon geschrieben habe, und was nur im Gedanken erzählt." Berg an Wiesengrund-Adorno. Wien, 2. 5. 1927 ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN CITATIONS iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v CURRICULUM VITAE vi ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION vii INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Anarchist Anxieties: Defining Anarchism, Reading Anarchistically 27 CHAPTER 2: Anarchistic Disciplines: Revisiting Past Anarchism after Post-Anarchism 70 CHAPTER 3: Émile Zola’s Ends of Naturalist Historical Representation: Wishful Narrative Conclusions in Le Docteur Pascal and Les Rougon-Macquart 110 CHAPTER 4: Peter Kropotkin’s Naturalist Ethics: Anarchist Hermeneutics of Already Existing Communist Feelings and Practices 167 AFTERWORD Anarchist Trouble: For Anarchistic Hermeneutics and Historiography 220 Works Cited 237 iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN CITATIONS CB Kropotkin , The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings. Cor Zola , Correspondance . 10 vols. CWWM Morris , The Collected Works of William Morris. 24 vols. EE Kropotkin , Evolution and Environment. “EN” Kropotkin, “The Ethical Need of the Present Day.” FW Kropotkin, Fugitive Writings. KRP Kropotkin, Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets. MA Kropotkin , Mutual Aid. OC Zola, Œuvres complètes. 12 vols . RM Zola , Les Rougon-Macquart . 5 vols. WR Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my committee chair, Professor Adriana M. Johnson, who has shown an unwavering support for my dissertation proJect, encouraging me both emotionally and intellectually when I was sinking into self-doubt and nearly drowned there. Her critical feedback on earlier drafts always salvaged me from drifting away into a dark torrent of infinite digressions and endless footnotes to which I was constantly seduced. Without her unerring navigation this dissertation would have stranded and broken into pieces at any stage of planning, researching, writing, revising, and editing. I would also like to thank my committee members, Professor Eyal Amiran and Professor Rei Terada, for their intellectual generosity and hospitality which greatly assuaged my anxieties on writing a dissertation about anarchism, because such an inauthentic topic could have suffered from chilling indifference, even stern disapproval, from less sympathetic souls. No words can fully communicate the depth of my gratefulness for their warm, most welcoming atmosphere. I sincerely regret that I did not take advantage of chances they would have so willingly offered me if only I had asked them. I would like to express the profoundest appreciation to Japan-United States Educational Commission (JUSEC), which offered me a prestigious Fulbright Grant. I also would like to thank my past advisors at the University of Tokyo, Professor Yasunari Takada and Professor Tadashi Uchino, who never tired of pushing me to study abroad. Without their strong encouragements, I would have never imagined applying to graduate school in the US. In addition, I am grateful to my senior colleagues and friends, Motonori Sato and Hiromasa Wakita, for those unforgettable hours of reading modernist literature together, which prepared me for graduate study in the US. A special thanks goes to Kohki and Tsugumi Watabe, who patiently listened to my still inchoate ideas and commented on them in a productive manner. I wish I could mention all the people I came across at UCI. However, some names would inevitably go unmentioned. I therefore give up comprehensiveness to talk about only a handful. In early years of my graduate study, I had many great late night conversations and email correspondences with Brandon Granier. I also want to thank three adorable couples, Ben and Liz Aaron, Eddy Troy and Jamie Rogers, and Tamara Beauchamp and Ben Garceau, who welcomed me to their tables. I greatly enJoyed their hospitality, which made my isolated existence more bearable. I am also grateful of the UCI Travel Grant which allowed me to give a presentation far away from the campus. Lastly, I heartily appreciate Bindya Baliga for various kinds of paperwork, which literally helped me survive graduate study up to this very last moment. I would like to thank my parents for their financial support, but my debt to them is heavier. No doubt my dissertation proJect began more than a decade ago, on that fatal date when my father asked my help to translate Emma Goldman’s autobiography, Living My Life . A few years later, another critical call came from him, suggesting I translate Le Docteur Pasca l by Émile Zola. The very next day I found a paperback copy of the novel in a second-hand bookstore, purchased it, and immediately began to translate. I shudder retrospectively at my brave ignorance and admire my reckless bravery, because I knew almost nothing about anarchism or naturalism at that time. But perhaps only with such a blind engagement one could begin something truly unexpected, unpredictable, and ennobling. This dissertation, then, is perhaps a return gift to my father. v CURRICULUM VITAE Toru Oda 2003 B.A. in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, University of Tokyo 2006 M.A. in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, University of Tokyo 2011 M.A. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine 2016 Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine FIELD OF STUDY Critical Theory, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Fictionalism, Naturalism, Utopian Literature, Historiography, Hermeneutics, Marxism, Anarchism GRANTS 2008-10 Fulbright Grant, Japan-United States Educational Commission (JUSEC) 2015 Travel Grant, University of California, Irvine vi ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION Anarchistic Hermeneutics of Utopian Desires in the Late Nineteenth Century: Defining, Narrating, and Reading Anarchism By Toru Oda Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature University of California, Irvine, 2016 Associate Professor Adriana M. Johnson, Chair My dissertation articulates late-nineteenth-century anarchism as effective and discursive events that problematize certain modern tendencies that are, from the anarchist perspective, coercive, oppressive, and self-destructive. In order to go beyond what is traditionally understood by the term “anarchism,” this dissertation questions this name itself which has been almost coerced to incorporate nearly contradictory meanings and almost incommensurable positions, while embodying utopian reveries. Chapter One examines various forms and expressions of anarchist anxieties that creep into discussions of defining and giving an historical account of anarchism, but it also takes such anxieties as creative moments, foregrounding their troubling nature in discursive sites. By drawing on the method of problematization, developed by Michel Foucault, Chapter Two addresses the problem of articulating anarchism as a discipline, especially recent attempts by several post-anarchists who reconsider traditional anarchist thematics in postmodern terms. Calling into question their philosophizing orientations, it displaces the post-anarchist critique of past anarchism as essentialist and revisits both anew with vii the concepts of fiction and as if , elaborated by Hans Vaihinger. It proposes to read classical anarchism as explanatory fiction, where the reliance on essentialist constructs should not be seen as a sign of theoretical laziness but as narrative Justifications with historically available givens and means. Chapters Three and Four offer close readings of the leading nineteenth-century authors, Émile Zola and Peter Kropotkin, respectively. Foregrounding oft-overlooked affective intersections with anarchist aspirations for betterment and Justice, Chapter Three takes Le Doctuer Pascal , the last volume of Les Rougon-Macquart , as Zola’s narrative response to the destabilizing anarchist wishes. It also uses the novel to develop an anarchistic hermeneutics that defies the pre-existing disciplinary expectations and authorial intensions, revealing Zola’s wishful fiction of the fraternal primary being that could still appear within the naturalist logic of the historical novel. Chapter Four takes Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid as exemplifying anarchistic hermeneutics of reading the here and now reality almost against the grain and underscoring already existing communist feelings and practices. By reconsidering the question of anarchist trouble and examining Walter BenJamin’s philosophy of history, the Afterword concludes by making a case for anarchist historiography and hermeneutics. viii Introduction Anarchistic Reading of Late-Nineteenth-Century Anarchism In Idée générale