CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Apollo !1 Naturalism Against Nature: Kinship and Degeneracy in Fin-de-siècle Portugal and Brazil David James Bailey" Trinity Hall 1/9/17 This dissertation is submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy !2 DECLARATION This dissertation is the result of my own work and includes nothing which is the outcome of work done in collaboration except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It is not substantially the same as any that I have submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for a degree or diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. I further state that no substantial part of my dissertation has already been submitted, or, is being concurrently submitted for any such degree, diploma or other qualification at the University of Cambridge or any other University or similar institution except as declared in the Preface and specified in the text. It does not exceed the prescribed word limit. !3 Abstract The present thesis analyses the work of four Lusophone Naturalist writers, two from Portugal (Abel Botelho and Eça de Queirós) and two from Brazil (Aluísio Azevedo and Adolfo Caminha) to argue that the pseudoscientific discourses of Naturalism, positivism and degeneration theory were adapted on the periphery of the Western world to critique the socio-economic order that produced that periphery. A central claim is that the authors in question disrupt the structure of the patriarchal family — characterised by exogamy and normative heterosexuality — to foster alternative notions of kinship that problematise the hegemonic mode of transmitting name, capital, bloodline and authority from father to son. It was this rapidly globalising form of patriarchal capitalism that saw Portugal and Brazil slip into positions of economic disadvantage and dependency, events that were then naturalised in centres of dominance as incidences of national, racial and sexual “degeneracy”. The thesis thus draws links between contemporaneous disquiet about the nation’s race and bloodline; the various “homosexual scandals” that rocked the period; the considerable prevalence of incest and non-normative desire in the literature concerned, and the supposed “inconsistencies” in the style of Lusophone Naturalism that have often been regarded as imperfections in the face of Zola’s model. I propose instead that such adaptations to the Naturalist model can be read as attempts to reassess its potentially marginalising discourse from the margins themselves, exposing something “queer” at the textual, discursive level. This is the process that I call writing “against nature”, relating non-normative kinship to the disruption of the Naturalist aesthetic more generally. Drawing on postcolonial theory, psychoanalysis and queer theory, I argue that the Lusophone Naturalist perspective presents the divided world of the period as anything but a “natural” state of affairs. In this sense, a second line of reasoning is developed: that its authors formed a tentative transatlantic movement that criticised Naturalism as conceived in centres of dominance, calling for a revision of the role that the “scientists” played in shaping and understanding the fin-de-siècle world. !4 Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my supervisors, Maria Manuel Lisboa (Manucha) and Brad Epps, without whose generous support and expertise this work would not have been possible. I am particularly grateful to Manucha who has taught me since my final year of undergraduate study, rescuing me from the clutches of linguistics after introducing me to O Primo Basílio. Her teaching, guidance and friendship have been second to none. Prof Epps, meanwhile, has considerably influenced and refined my work as a graduate student, including the present thesis, encouraging me to read Naturalist literature from Brazil and introducing me to queer theory with characteristic flair and enthusiasm. I have learned a great deal from both my supervisors and feel very privileged to have worked with such inspirational academics. I am sincerely grateful to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, for its unwavering support over the past eight years. I have cherished the time I have spent here and the college has extended its generosity on countless occasions. I would like to thank Martin Ruehl in particular for his kindness and attention. I am also indebted to several other academics in Cambridge and elsewhere who have helped along the way: Vivien Kogut Lessa de Sá, who amongst other things suggested I read O Mulato; Sérgio Nazar, who kindly helped to orientate me in Rio de Janeiro; and Leonardo Mendes and Helena Buescu, both of whom leant their time and provided illuminative suggestions for research. I would also like to thank the Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal and Biblioteca Nacional do Brasil for granting me access to their archives. As ever, I owe much to my friends in the UK and Lisbon who have supported me in numerous ways, and particularly to those in Cambridge who have entertained my enthusiasm for Portuguese culture, even reading, to my manifest delight, the novels of Eça de Queirós. I am also deeply grateful to my family for their unshakable love and support over the years. Finally, I would like to thank the Wolfson Foundation, who generously funded this research, including several formative trips to Portugal and Brazil. !5 Contents Introduction 6 Nature, culture, and Naturalism: an age-old problem 6 Portugal and Brazil at the fin de siècle: Naturalism on the margins 14 Que diabo de trapalhada de parentesco é esta? Portugal and Brazil: an uneasy kinship 18 Chapter I: Abel Botelho 28 Introduction 28 O Barão de Lavos and the pathological novel 30 Freedom in madness? The limits of literary pathology 33 O Barão de Lavos and social context: whose pathology? 36 Para fora do sórdido armário: opening the urban closet 47 Allegories against nature: Dom Sebastião, kinship trouble and the end of empire 55 Conclusions 57 Chapter II: Eça de Queirós 60 Introduction 60 A cidade e as serras: queering Oedipus 66 Amigos coloridos 70 Oedipal trouble in O primo Basílio and O crime do Padre Amaro 77 Dom Sebastião’s “mistake” revisited 79 Desire, kinship and exchange value: a discussion of (homo)erotic triangles 83 Penso eu e pensa meu cunhado Crispim: slaying God, man and the canon in A relíquia 90 Chapter III: Aluísio Azevedo 102 Introduction: um naturalismo nos trópicos 102 Oedipus in Brasil: Aluísio Azevedo’s O Mulato 113 Race, incest and Bumba-meu-boi: rethinking the Oedipal model 119 Conclusions on O Mulato: narrative dialectics and the triumph of Maranhão 126 The dis-solution of the family: kinship and allegory in Casa de Pensão 131 Concluding remarks: Azevedo and the canon 142 Chapter IV: Adolfo Caminha 146 Introduction 146 The creolisation of degenerescence 152 Bom Crioulo as (anti-)foundational novel 157 The dialogue with O Barão de Lavos 159 Concluding remarks 168 Bibliography 174 !6 Introduction Nature, culture and Naturalism: an age-old problem Across a range of disciplines in recent years, growing recognition has emerged of a new epoch in Earth’s history. The Anthropocene, as this “age of man” has been termed,1 designates the period in which humans have been the dominant influence on the climate and environment, and thus reflects a significant shift in the natural and social sciences, collapsing any binary distinction between humanity’s collective activities, or “culture”, and the fate of our “natural” surroundings.2 While the effects of human activity on the planet are now impossible to pass over, the distinction has structured western thought for centuries,3 its symptoms eminently visible in the contemporary world. Mountains of human waste, for example, lie hidden from general view; the social mechanisms that appear to make such waste simply “disappear” are complex and numerous. As Slavoj #i$ek puts it, “to guarantee the symbolic consistency of our “sphere” of life […], something — some excremental waste — has to disappear”.4 By disavowing its impact on the environment in this manner, humanity has been able to position itself, symbolically of course, as an observer, consumer, protector, even destroyer of “nature”, but rarely as an integral, reciprocating part of its system, with increasingly perilous consequences.5 1 See https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/anthropocene (accessed 24/12/2016). 2 As Hamilton et. al. argue, the Anthropocene represents a “threshold marking a change in the relationship of humans to the natural world” since “we are no longer talking about the spread of human influence […] but of a shift in the total system.” See Hamilton, Gemenne and Bonneuil, The Anthropocene and the Global Environmental Crisis: Rethinking modernity in a new epoch (New York: Routledge, 2015), chapter 1, ¶ 7, Google ebook. 3 See Jacques Derrida, “…That Dangerous Supplement…” in Of Grammatology, translated by Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 141-65, for the now-classic deconstruction of the nature-culture binary. 4 Slavoj #i$ek, Less Than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso, 2012), p. 372. 5 It is estimated that 140,000 species face extinction on Earth each year. See Pimm, Stuart L. et. al., "The Future of Biodiversity”, Science, Vol. 269 (5222), pp 347–350. !7 The declaration of the Anthropocene surely disrupts the related notion of an intact, abundant “natural world” that civilisation has supposedly degraded and damaged, an Edenic paradise now forever lost in a modern-day reenactment of the original Fall. One recalls the bucolic fantasies of the Romantics who, writing and painting at the dawn of the industrial age, sought to recreate this “pristine” garden,6 threatened by the encroaching influence of the city. It is interesting that contemporaneous discourses of environmental “conservation” reproduce the notion of “nature” as operating in a fragile state of degeneracy, its presumed bountifulness at risk of withering and vanishing forever, a mindset that paradoxically reinstates a role for mankind as its custodian.