Late Victorian Literature and the Biopolitics of Empire

Life Expectancies: Late Victorian Literature and the Biopolitics of Empire by Jessica Leigh Davies A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Barbara Spackman, Co-chair Professor Charis Thompson, Co-chair Associate Professor David Bates Assistant Professor Donna Jones Associate Professor Ramona Naddaff Associate Professor Michael Wintroub Spring 2010 © Jessica Leigh Davies, 2010 Abstract Life Expectancies: Late Victorian Literature and the Biopolitics of Empire by Jessica Leigh Davies Doctor of Philosophy in Rhetoric University of California, Berkeley Professor Barbara Spackman, Co-chair Professor Charis Thompson, Co-chair By the end of the nineteenth century, the rise of evolutionary thinking had produced a radical new understanding of life as the underlying connectedness of all living beings. If only the fittest would survive, the problem was no longer about how to differentiate between species, as it had been for the philosophical tradition since Aristotle, but how to articulate differences within a species. This dissertation analyzes the complex relationship between biology, politics and power that emerged in late Victorian literature. I examine the ways in which biological thinking was never limited to biology itself, nor was it a metaphorical technique used to describe social relations or simply a way to transcribe a political discourse into biological terms. I argue that the difference between biology and politics completely collapsed, and that this indistinguishability functioned to expand and justify British colonialism. Inspired by Michel Foucault’s work on biopower, I demonstrate and expand his theory of nineteenth century biopolitics as a form of power that takes biological life as both its subject and object through a series of regulatory controls leveraged at entire populations. It is a power characterized not by the threat of death, but its ability to optimize and foster biological life. Reproduction, mortality, life expectancy, and the management of health and disease are just some of the biological processes that fall under the dominion of this disciplinary power, with sexuality emerging as a particularly dense transfer point in the investment of the life of the population. I trace this notion of biopolitics through late Victorian literature – through the novels of Oscar Wilde, Richard Marsh and H. Rider Haggard - in which the investment in thinking biologically about sexuality is clear. Yet my central argument is that biopower cannot operate without empire. The reality of empire and all of the technologies and categories of difference that were central to its expansion and justification – such as gender, race and class – were inextricable with the biopower that took sexuality as its subject and object. Colonialism is not a marginalized technology of nineteenth century biopower; biopower is colonial. My dissertation expands the critical conversation about late Victorian literature beyond the psychoanalytic, postcolonial and new historicist methodologies that have characterized the debates to ask a different set of questions. It was not my methodology that determined the 1 questions, but a set of questions in the texts that suggested the most useful methodology for reading them. I pull insights from multiple fields of knowledge production beyond literature itself – including philosophy, post-colonial theory, anthropology, history, feminist theory, queer theory, and critical science and race studies. Beginning with Wilde, I trace sexuality as a discursive node of biopower that produces the homosexual “as a species.” I then link this project of “species-making” to the rise of biological racism that imagined colonial populations quite literally as insects, functioning as a justification for war and “extermination.” The final chapter analyzes the ways in which these “new species” provided the material for an imperial bioeconomy. I argue that this bioeconomy operated by imagining life in the colonies as expendable in relation to life in Britain, in order to produce wealth at home and regenerate the nation. These arguments trace a transnational itinerary through the discourses of decadence, degeneration, colonialism and imperialism, moving from and between Europe, Egypt, South America and southern Africa, to look several of the most aggressive components of the nineteenth century science of life: vivisection, mimicry and vaccination. I demonstrate that speaking about biological life simultaneously demands that we speak about the most profound set of differences – between nature and technology, humans and animals, and the differences we make real within our own species world. If categories such as race, sexuality, gender, class and empire mattered so much to the Victorians, they continue to matter now because biological thinking threatens to carry with it the trace of the violence of difference itself. 2 In memory of my mother and father i Contents Preface Acknowledgements 1. Beyond the Closet: How the Homosexual Became a Species 2. Between Beetles and Britain: The Biology of Colonial Mimicry 3. From Illness to Wealth: The Imperial Economy of Life Works Cited ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Dissertations are often discussed as if they are an individual accomplishment, but like most efforts that require sustained focus and energy, there were many people who made this project possible. I thank my dissertation committee: my co-chairs Charis Thompson and Barbara Spackman, along with David Bates, Donna Jones, Ramona Naddaff and Michael Wintroub. I appreciate their collective willingness to let me explore such an eccentric path through my field and their careful guidance in making this project intelligible. I would also like to acknowledge the valuable mentorship of Anne Cheng and the expertise of Judith Butler on how to manage the complexities of institutional bureaucracy. My enduring appreciation also goes out to Martin Meeker, for his ability to create intellectual community and Jennifer Terry, whose friendship and support continues to be nothing short of remarkable. I would also like to thank everyone involved with the Science, Technology and Society Center (STSC) at UC Berkeley, where I worked as the Project Coordinator for several years. It provided me with a job and a network of engaged STS scholars, whose ideas contributed to my own in exciting cross-disciplinary ways. I especially enjoyed working with the four co-directors: Cori Hayden, Charis Thompson, Alastair Iles and David Winickoff. It was truly my pleasure to be a part of their incredible effort. Before my employment at STSC, I was a recipient of their Summer Research Grant, which paid for my trip to the Herrick Archive at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library at UCLA. I thank STSC for financing this research and my sincere gratitude goes out to the amazing staff at the Herrick. I will always be very grateful to them for their willingness to trust a newly acquired, unpublished Wilde notebook in my hands. In the spring of 2007, I spearheaded an interdisciplinary conference called What’s Life of Life? provoking a serious cross-disciplinary dialogue to investigate the ongoing problems raised by technologies of life and death. I will forever be grateful to my co-organizers who volunteered their time, energy, skills and ideas: Nima Bassiri, Scott Ferguson, Gabriela Jauregui, Ben Lempert, Jennifer Lum, Kelly Rafferty, Marques Redd, Chris Roebuck and Josh Weiner. It was a collaborative experiment and a monumental effort. I also appreciate the faculty who so generously agreed to participate in what must have felt like a risky proposition: David Bates, Judith Butler, Adele Clarke, Lawrence Cohen, Cori Hayden, Donna Jones, Sharon Kaufman, Catherine Malabou, Paola Marrati, Paul Rabinow, Joan Roughgarden, Nancy Scheper-Hughes, Susan Stryker, Jennifer Terry and Charis Thompson. I thank as well the many graduate students from UC Berkeley and beyond who shared their intellect and friendship with me for all of these years: Diana Anders, Rachel Bowser, James Harker, Nguyen Tan Hoang, Gabriela Jauregui, Mike Lee, Franklin iii Melendez, Rani Neutill, Kris Paulsen, Jane Rago, Marques Redd, Chris Roebuck and Damon Young. My overwhelming appreciation goes to the many other people who have shaped my work by connecting me to the rich world of ideas that live outside the walls of the university: Antonio Aguilera, Steven Chen, Michael Forray, Carol Lee, Zachary Lipez, Katie McKay, Matthew O’Connor, Saskia Pouw, Pablo Rojas, Hiromi Vardy, Lindsey Way and to the fantastic cast of characters that populated my life in New York City. I am especially grateful to Mark Jacobs for being my creative enabler, Igor Siddiqui for always appearing at the moment I needed him most, and to Travis Harvey for redefining what it means to be family. Work on this dissertation was interrupted by an illness, and I offer heartfelt thanks to all of the people who offered concern and care, especially the nurses who work at the Ida B. Friend Infusion Center at UCSF Medical Center, Dr. Amy Wertheimer and Cisco Systems for extending corporate health care benefits to domestic partners. I also thank my sister Sara Wolff, my aunt Marge Hoene and my grandmothers, Marge Davies and Clara Lipp, for all of their generous love and support. I must also acknowledge my parents, Carolyn Davies and David Davies, to whom this dissertation is dedicated. I deeply

Load more