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Introduction – Liberal, Humanist, Modernist, Queer? Reclaiming Forster’S Legacies

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Introduction – Liberal, Humanist, Modernist, Queer? Reclaiming Forster’S Legacies Notes Introduction – Liberal, Humanist, Modernist, Queer? Reclaiming Forster’s Legacies 1. For another comprehensive monograph on different models of intertextual- ity, see Graham Allen, Intertextuality (2000). 2. See Bloom (1973). Bloom’s self-consciously idiosyncratic study has received mixed responses; its drive against formalist depersonalization has been appreciated by prominent thinkers such as Jonathan Culler, who affirms that ‘[t]urning from texts to persons, Bloom can proclaim intertextuality with a fervor less circumspect than Barthes’s, for Barthes’s tautologous naming of the intertextual as “déjà lu” [“already read”] is so anticlimactic as to preclude excited anticipations, while Bloom, who will go on to name precursors and describe the titanic struggles which take place on the battlefield of poetic tra- dition, has grounds for enthusiasm’ (1976, p. 1386; my translation). Other critics, such as Peter de Bolla, have attempted to find points of compromise between intertextuality and influence. He offers that ‘the anxiety that a poet feels in the face of his precursor poet is not something within him, it is not part of the psychic economy of a particular person, in this case a poet, rather it is the text’ (1988, p. 20). He goes on to add that ‘influence describes the relations between texts, it is an intertextual phenomenon’ (p. 28). De Bolla’s attempt at finding a crossroads between formalist intertextuality and Bloomian influence leans perhaps too strategically towards Kristeva’s more fashionable vocabulary and methodology, but it also points productively to the text as the material expression of literary influence. 3. For useful discussions and definitions of Forster’s liberal humanism, including its indebtedness to fin de siècle Cambridge, see Nicola Beauman, 1993; Peter Childs, 2007; Michael Levenson, 1991; Peter Morey, 2000; Parry, 1979; David Sidorsky, 2007. 4. Crews discusses the case of Forster’s childhood home in Stevenage, which became the site of the post-war satellite town (1962, p. 21). 5. Aziz’s trial in A Passage to India is perhaps Forster’s most explicit political critique of British rule in India. In this episode, the institutions of the Raj are taken to task with no uncertainty, and British racial and political upper- handedness is denounced within the official spaces of the Anglo-Indian courtroom. The fragile illusion of social equality is broken when Aziz’s friend Mahmoud Ali passionately denounces Mrs Moore’s absence from the proceedings, whose hospitability to Aziz might have helped his case. Aziz’s friend Mahmoud Ali states to the Indian Magistrate Mr Das in no uncertain terms: ‘I am not defending a case, nor are you trying one. We are both of us slaves. […] This trial is a farce, I am going’ (Chapter 24, p. 227). Mahmoud Ali’s passionate and somewhat histrionic speech does not spare any sym- pathy for the judicial power of the British and denounces racial ‘slavery’ in unequivocal terms. Said, in fact, appreciates Forster’s anti-colonial gesture in 207 208 Notes this particular episode and states that ‘[p]art of the extraordinary novelty of Aziz’s trial […] is that Forster admits that “the flimsy framework of the court” cannot be sustained because it is a “fantasy” that compromises British power (real) with the impartial justice for Indians (unreal)’ (1994, p. 95). Here we have a perspective to contrast with the Magistrate’s more moderate position: whereas Mr Das tries to conduct the trial in a British fashion, Mahmoud Ali states his disagreement with prevailing power structures. Forster’s text is unafraid of pointing out in explicit ways the master/slave dynamic of the colonial relationship in order to critique India’s state of complete subjuga- tion to the British. In the riot which ensues Aziz’s discharge, after Adela Quested has confessed to his innocence, Mahmoud Ali states that ‘[the British] hope to destroy us one by one; they shall fail’ (Chapter 25, p. 237). This example of anti-British fervour may not be explicitly connected to the Congress Party or the Muslim League, whose global prominence would not reach its zenith till a few decades after the publication of Forster’s novel, but the lack of real political figures in the text – a fact that applies to both Indian and British factions – should not presuppose cowardice regarding a political stance or ultimate conflation with imperial power. 6. Henceforth referred to as Passage. 7. For Forster’s troubled perception of the Hindu festival of Gokul Ashtami, see The Hill of Devi (1965b, pp. 99–117). 8. For instance, G. K. Das has studied the textual symbolism inherent to the Marabar and has pointed out their Hindu characteristics. Their relationship with several Indian religions – for more than one interpretation is possible on account of their textual ambivalence – is what renders them a useful tool to represent the clash between British and Indian metaphysics (1982, pp. 244–56). 9. For a lengthy and detailed account of Forster’s relationships with men and the deterrent which his homosexuality was to his writing, see Wendy Moffat (2011). Although Moffat makes quite clear from the very beginning that her focus will be on the life, hence lacking innovative readings of Forster’s work, the use of previously unavailable sources makes this an important volume for readers wanting to delve into Forster’s life after he stopped publishing fiction. 10. Critical commentaries on what ‘postcolonialism’ and ‘postcolonial’ mean have been numerous over the years. This is a selection of some of the most prominent debates: Kwame Anthony Appiah, 1991, 336–57; Arif Dirlik, 1994, 328–56; Simon Gikandi, 2006, 69–84; Stuart Hall, 1996, pp. 242–60; Hallward, 2001; Anne McClintock, 1992, 84–98; Parry, 1997, pp. 3–21; Stephen Slemon, 2004, pp. 15–32. 1 ‘He is one of your hollow men’: Homosexuality and Sublimation in Paul Scott’s The Raj Quartet and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala’s Heat and Dust 1. Withstanding essentialist definitions of the postcolonial according to nation- ality, it is also because of the persistent focus on the trauma of the colonizers and the comparatively understated trauma of the colonized that Scott’s work cannot be considered to be postcolonial, although critics who are quick to Notes 209 dismiss Forster, such as Sara Suleri, also argue that ‘the stories of colonialism – in which heterogeneous cultures are yoked by violence – offer nuances of trauma that cannot be neatly partitioned between colonizer and colonized’ (1992, p. 5). Suleri’s measured statement underlines the existence of personal crisis on both sides of the colonial divide, and enables an approach to British characters in Scott’s fiction which signifies such trauma without legitimizing only the British or the Indian factions. 2. Henceforth referred to as Jewel, Day, Towers and Division. 3. Unlike any of The Raj Quartet novels, Staying On is set in an India contem- porary with Scott’s writing, and it deals with the agents of the former Raj, Mr and Mrs Smalley, who decided to ‘stay on’ after Independence and the Partition of India and Pakistan. It is hard not to suspect that this simple and unassuming novel peopled by some of the characters of Scott’s previous fic- tion was awarded the Booker Prize as recognition of Scott’s general literary career. 4. The naming of the former event has been the object of controversy for dec- ades. Gyan Prakash (1990) offers a useful discussion of the different names given to the Sepoy War, including its most frequently used form, ‘the Indian Mutiny’. Prakash argues that the British labelled it a mutiny because ‘calling it anything other than a mutiny meant conceding that it had some legitimacy’ (pp. 389–90). Prakash also charts some of the first instances in which Indian nationalists challenged the naming of the event by calling it a ‘national revolt’. 5. Weinbaum has argued there are many types of metaphorical imprisonment in the novel (1992, p. 101). 6. Judith Scherer Herz observes that although Marcella Sherwood was ‘badly beaten’, ‘after the attack she refused government compensation and wrote to the Times to point out that she had been saved by the parents of her Indian students.’ See Judith Scherer Herz (1993), p. 19. 7. D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke has recently paid attention to other literary ref- erences in Scott’s creation of Daphne. He argued that ‘Scott’s choice of a rape as his central event and motif is validated further by his formal indebtedness to the epic tradition.’ According to Goonetilleke, ‘the stories of ancient epics are woven round acts of sexual violence, though not neces- sarily rape: in The Iliad, an abduction (of Helen by Paris) and the “rape” is with consent; in The Ramayana, an abduction (of Sita by Ravana) but no rape; less importantly, in The Mahabharatha a woman is dishonoured’. See D. C. R. A. Goonetilleke (2007), p. 800. Goonetilleke’s essay frames Scott’s tetralogy more generally within the epic tradition and takes it away from the more recognizable tradition of Forster and Kipling; it also considers Scott’s investment in a vision of British military power in India, which Forster avoids, focusing more keenly on personal relationships and on selected cases of political commentary, such as the trial scene in Chapter 24 of Passage. 8. Jenny Sharpe has observed that ‘the appearance of the Jallianwala Bagh mas- sacre in A Passage to India [is] a ghostly presence that guides its plot’. See Jenny Sharpe (1993), p. 118. If a ghost in Forster’s text, because of its lack of a name, Jallianwallah and its main personage, General Dyer, feature promi- nently in Scott’s works. 210 Notes 9. Repetition is of particular importance, for Scott’s tetralogy places a lot of emphasis on recurring situations and behavioural patterns.
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