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Globalism, Humanitarianism, and the Body in Postcolonial Literature

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Globalism, Humanitarianism, and the Body in Postcolonial Literature Globalism, Humanitarianism, and the Body in Postcolonial Literature By Derek M. Ettensohn M.A., Brown University, 2012 B.A., Haverford College, 2006 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English at Brown University PROVIDENCE, RHODE ISLAND MAY 2014 © Copyright 2014 by Derek M. Ettensohn This dissertation by Derek M. Ettensohn is accepted in its present form by the Department of English as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Date ___________________ _________________________ Olakunle George, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date ___________________ _________________________ Timothy Bewes, Reader Date ___________________ _________________________ Ravit Reichman, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date ___________________ __________________________________ Peter Weber, Dean of the Graduate School iii Abstract of “Globalism, Humanitarianism, and the Body in Postcolonial Literature” by Derek M. Ettensohn, Ph.D., Brown University, May 2014. This project evaluates the twinned discourses of globalism and humanitarianism through an analysis of the body in the postcolonial novel. In offering celebratory accounts of the promises of globalization, recent movements in critical theory have privileged the cosmopolitan, transnational, and global over the postcolonial. Recognizing the potential pitfalls of globalism, these theorists have often turned to transnational fiction as supplying a corrective dose of humanitarian sentiment that guards a global affective community against the potential exploitations and excesses of neoliberalism. While authors such as Amitav Ghosh, Nuruddin Farah, and Rohinton Mistry have been read in a transnational, cosmopolitan framework––which they have often courted and constructed––I argue that their theorizations of the body contain a critical, postcolonial rejoinder to the liberal humanist tradition that they seek to critique from within. The project attempts not only to trace the changing relationship between corporeality, technology, environment, and the state, but also to interrogate the foundational myths and inherent limits of a transnational humanitarianism that unwittingly masks deeper structural inequalities. Many theorizations of the body continue to frame it within the familiar dualism of embodiment and dehumanization. While building on work in feminist theory and trauma studies, this dissertation analyzes theorizations of the body within postcolonial literary texts that negotiate the promises and perils of an emergent globalism. In doing so, it hopes to recover the contributions that the literary can offer as a supplement to legal and political discourse. By actively theorizing the relationship between bodily experience and social structures, transnational, postcolonial authors challenge forms of global governance that, while couched in narratives of progress, have controlled and harnessed bodies in new ways. iv CURRICULUM VITAE Derek Ettensohn was born on August 27, 1984 in Providence, Rhode Island. He studied English and German at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania, graduating magna cum laude in 2006. Awarded a Fulbright Teaching Fellowship, he taught English at Gymnasium Heißen in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany during the 2006-2007 academic year. In 2007 he returned to Providence to begin his graduate studies in the English Department of Brown University. v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS My first thanks must be to the Brown University’s Graduate School for giving me the opportunity to study and work for the past seven years. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the Department of English and all the professors and peers that made my time at Brown so academically and personally rewarding. I would like to give special thanks to Lorraine Mazza and Ellen Viola for helping me negotiate the past seven years of graduate school; I can still remember your warm welcomes on the first day that set the tone for the rest of my time in the department. I would like to express my profound gratitude to the members of my committee that have supported me throughout the work on this dissertation. Guiding me through independent studies, field exams, and the dissertation I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to Olakunle George for his years of support, encouragement, and advice. To Tim Bewes, whose insightful comments and suggestions helped steer the direction of the project at its formative stage. I’ve been extremely fortunate to work with Ravit Reichman, who took me on board when I struggling and who has productively reframed my work, repeatedly modeling an interdisciplinary approach to literature to which I am increasingly drawn. I would also like to acknowledge those professors who have inspired me throughout my undergraduate and graduate career. My interest in literature began at Haverford College and I am grateful for the scholarship and mentorship that I received from Raji Mohan, Kim Benston, and Azade Seyhan. At Brown, Jim Egan and Jean Feerick have continued to shape the image of the teacher and researcher that I aspire to be. It was a great privilege to do my graduate work close to family, childhood, and college friends. My first years back in Providence would have been far less entertaining without the companionship of Jamie Farrell, Liz Wiseman, John O’Leary, Natasha Dravid, Anna Mancusi, and Laura Wolflein. At Brown, I have been fortunate enough to have had the company of Jennifer Schnepf, Maria Pizzaro, David Liao, Katherine Miller, and Lucy Barnes. I would like to give a special thanks to Stephanie Tilden for being a model of generosity, empathy, and humor and Jeff Covington for providing necessary distractions. I can’t imagine graduate school without you both. I would like to thank my grandparents, Rosarina and Fred Hassan, for their patience, understanding, and occasional home cooked meals. To the extended Hassan and Ettensohn families: thank you for putting up with me and occasionally putting me up. I am particularly grateful for the camaraderie of Carmen Granda, whose giggles have gotten me through many long days. To Arturo Marquez, whose spontaneity and humor have taken me around the world and whose advice has kept me grounded when my head was in the clouds. Of course, I have been blessed to have my parents, Dave and Linda, nearby and they have shown remarkable faith in both me and my project over the years. I can’t begin to list all the things you both have made me thankful for, but I’m most grateful that we have had each other through all we’ve been through since I started graduate school, of which the dissertation was the least of our concerns. I would like to dedicate this dissertation to the memory of my sister, Kristen, who passed away as I began work on the project and whose spirit, grit, and vi intelligence I try to channel daily. Many years ago we started very on different paths––you in Worcester studying medicine, me in Providence studying literature–– but we both cherished the short rides between campuses that took us out of our respective bubbles. We were each other’s biggest cheerleader and, when I have thought to take up the path you were forced to abandon, I always remember how proud you were that I was trying something different; how insistent you were that I saw it through to the end. You saw something in me that to this day, even though I don’t know if I can be that, I’ll keep trying. I know I would never have completed this dissertation without your voice in my head and your determination as a model; I wish we could celebrate this small victory together. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 I: “The Rainbow Bridge”: Vulnerability and Literary Form 1 II: The Body and Form of the Postcolonial Novel 11 III: Globalism, Humanitarianism and Literature 16 IV: Chapter Overviews 26 CHAPTER 1–Reason and the Body: Amitav Ghosh’s The Circle of Reason 29 I. Introduction: Bodies of Reception 29 II. The Universal Body: Translating Scientific Reason 40 III. “The Ghost in the Machine”: Revising the Mind-Body Debate 65 IV. Going West: Narrating the Body Under Global Capital 81 V. “The Whole Machine”: Administering to a Corpse, Recovering the Body 88 CHAPTER 2–“The Body of Human Truths”: Nuruddin Farah’s Humanitarianism 101 I. Introduction: The Body and Form of Farah’s Fiction 101 II. The Body of Humanitarian Myth 111 III. The Trafficking of Corpses and the Logic of State Failure 137 IV: Blood, Body, and the State 151 CHAPTER 3–“No Longer at Ease”: The Dis-Eased Body in Rohinton Mistry’s Fiction 170 I. Introduction: The Present Journey 170 II. Globalism, Humanitarianism, and Postcolonial Realism 181 III: Balancing Bodies and Antibodies 196 IV: Analgesic Art and the Body in Such a Long Journey 212 V: Marked Bodies: Disease, Disability and Narrative 222 CONCLUSION 247 WORKS CITED 253 viii ix INTRODUCTION I: “The Rainbow Bridge”: Vulnerability and Literary Form Passage to India! Lo, soul! seest thou not God’s purpose from the first? The earth to be spanned, connected by net-work, The people to become brothers and sisters, The races, neighbors, to marry and be given inmarriage, The oceans to be cross’d, the distant brought near, The lands to be welded together. - Walt Whitman, “Passage to India” (1871) As it has entered the popular imagination E.M. Forster’s famous aphorism in Howards End to “only connect” appears to capture the sentiment behind transnational literary movements that view literature as an important means of crossing the figurative and literal borders of class, race, gender, and nation that divide the globe. The well- circulated epigraph of Howards End, however, originally appears in a much more local, particular episode that sees Margaret Schlegel trying to link Henry Wilcox’s ascetic mind with his corporeal desires or, as Forster puts it, to build “the rainbow bridge that should connect the prose in us with the passion” (Forster 194). Wilcox’s “white-hot hatred of the carnal”condemns him to live as “meaningless fragments, half monks, half beasts, unconnected arches that have never joined into a man” (194).
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