World Literature and the Anthropological Imagination Ethnographic Encounters in European and South Asian Writing, 1885-2016
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Corso di Dottorato di ricerca in Lingue, culture e società moderne e Scienze del linguaggio ciclo xxxi Tesi di Ricerca World Literature and the Anthropological Imagination Ethnographic Encounters in European and South Asian Writing, 1885-2016 SSD: L-LIN/10 Coordinatore del Dottorato Prof. Enric Bou Supervisore Prof. Shaul Bassi Dottorando Lucio De Capitani Matricola 956216 A Teo e Mimi JULIE: You know me, Danton. DANTON: Yes, whatever “knowing” means. You have dark eyes and curly hair and a nice complexion and you always say to me: dear George. But [He points to her forehead and eyes] there – there: what’s behind that? No, our senses are coarse. Know each other? We’d have to break open our skulls and pull each other’s thoughts out of the brain fibers. – Georg Büchner, Dantons Tod, 1835 trans. Henry J. Schmidt, 1986 JEAN-PAUL MARAT: If I am extreme I am not extreme in the same way as you. Against Nature’s silence I use action. In the vast indifference I invent a meaning. I don’t watch unmoved, I intervene and say that this and this are wrong, and I work to alter them and improve them. The important thing is to pull yourself up by your own hair, to turn yourself inside out and see the whole world with fresh eyes. – Peter Weiss, Marat/Sade, 1963 trans. Geoffrey Skelton, 1965 Table of Contents Acknowledgements....................................................................................................................................7 Introduction................................................................................................................................................8 1. World literature and the Anthropological Imagination........................................................................15 1.1. World Literature...........................................................................................................................15 1.1.1. Early Articulations of World Literature: from Goethe to Auerbach.....................................15 1.1.2. Resurgence of World Literature: Damrosch, Moretti, Casanova..........................................24 1.1.3. The Current Debate on World Literature: Translation, Systems, Institutions.......................31 1.2. Anthropology................................................................................................................................38 1.2.1. Connecting World Literature and Anthropology..................................................................38 1.2.2. Juxtaposing Debates: the Comparative Method...................................................................41 1.2.3. Blurring Boundaries: from the Textual Turn in Anthropology to the Present Day...............46 1.2.4. The Anthropological Imagination and the Ethnographic Encounter....................................50 1.2.5. Methodological Aspects........................................................................................................56 2. The Colonial Anthropological Imagination: Governance, Exoticism and Conflicted Desires in Robert Louis Stevenson and Rudyard Kipling....................................................................................................60 2.1 Introduction...................................................................................................................................60 2.2. Robert Louis Stevenson................................................................................................................66 2.2.1. A Scottish “Romancer” in Polynesia....................................................................................66 2.2.2. From Romance to Ethnography: In the South Seas..............................................................69 2.2.3. “The Bottle Imp”: Translation, Exoticism and Colonial Allegory.......................................86 2.2.4. Confessions of a Conflicted Racist: “The Beach of Falesá”................................................98 2.3. Rudyard Kipling.........................................................................................................................113 2.3.1. Indian intimacies of an Anglo-Punjabi...............................................................................113 2.3.2. (Un)knowable India and Gothic Aesthetics: “The Phantom ‘Rickshaw” and Letters of Marque..........................................................................................................................................118 2.3.3. Counterinsurgency and the Law: “The Head of The District” and “Kaa’s Hunting”.........126 2.3.4. Love, Deception and Puzzlement: Kim..............................................................................144 4 2.4. Conclusion..................................................................................................................................155 3. The Militant Anthropological Imagination: Internal Colonialism and Strategies of Solidarity in Carlo Levi and Mahasweta Devi......................................................................................................................158 3.1. Introduction................................................................................................................................158 3.2. Carlo Levi...................................................................................................................................163 3.2.1. A Turinese in the South between Antifascism and Secular Jewishness..............................163 3.2.2. Christ Stopped at Eboli. Towards an Anthropology of Antifascism..................................168 3.2.3. Words are Stones and All the Honey is Finished: Peasant Political Consciousness and Coexistence of the Times..............................................................................................................193 3.2.4. Passage to India: Levi’s Third-Worldism and its Discontents............................................202 3.3. Mahasweta Devi.........................................................................................................................208 3.3.1. Bhadraloks, Adivasis and Naxalites...................................................................................208 3.3.2. The Legacy of the Colonial Anthropological Imagination: Counterinsurgency and “Draupadi”....................................................................................................................................213 3.3.3. A Picaresque Epic: Chotti Munda and his Arrow...............................................................219 3.3.4. The Activist’s Dilemma: “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay and Pirtha”.......................................235 3.4. Conclusion..................................................................................................................................251 4. The Multidirectional Anthropological Imagination: Forgotten Lives, Environments and Epistemological Pluralism in Amitav Ghosh and Frank Westerman.....................................................254 4.1. Introduction................................................................................................................................254 4.2. Amitav Ghosh.............................................................................................................................258 4.2.1. Syncretic Humanism...........................................................................................................258 4.2.2. In an Antique Land: Culture of Compromise in the Mirror of History..............................265 4.2.3. The Hungry Tide: Translated Worlds..................................................................................277 4.3. Frank Westerman........................................................................................................................296 4.3.1. The Dutch Approach of a Sceptic Unbeliever....................................................................296 4.3.2. El Negro en ik: the Mirror at the End of the Journey.........................................................300 4.3.3. Stikvallei: Homo Narrans...................................................................................................320 4.4. Conclusion..................................................................................................................................333 Conclusion: from the Anthropological Imagination to World Literature (and back again)...................335 5 Bibliography...........................................................................................................................................338 6 Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank my Ph.D. supervisor, Shaul Bassi (the most glocal person I’ve ever met) for his encouragement, guidance and support. He constantly led me to experiment in new directions, and the heterogeneous form of this work owes much to the multifarious ideas he exposed me to during my time at Ca’ Foscari. In Venice I also met a host of wonderful people and colleagues. Alice, Cristina and Angelo – my oldest partners in crime – have been the bedrock of my life and work in this city, and there is no way I can thank them enough. A heartfelt thanks goes also to my other colleagues from Ca’ Foscari: Giulia, Luca, Serena, Francesca and Laura. In particular, I had the privilege to work alongside these people during the organisation of several graduate conferences, and I had the chance to witness their generosity and creativity. Pablo Mukherjee and Neelam Srivastava, who supervised my work at the University of Warwick