COLONIAL ANXIETY AND PRIMITIVISM IN MODERNIST FICTION: WOOLF, FREUD, FORSTER, STEIN by Marieke Kalkhove A thesis submitted to the Department of English In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (March, 2013) Copyright ©Marieke Kalkhove, 2013 Abstract From W.H. Auden’s The Age of Anxiety to Sigmund Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents, modernists have frequently attested to the anxiety permeating members of modern civilisation. While critics have treated anxiety as a consequence of the historical circumstances of the modernist period—two World Wars and the disintegration of European empires—my aim is to view anxiety in both a psychoanalytical and political light and investigate modernist anxiety as a narrative ploy that diagnoses the modern condition. Defining modernist anxiety as feelings of fear and alienation that reveal the uncanny relation between self and ideological state apparatuses which themselves suffer from trauma, perversion, and neurosis—I focus on the works of four key modernist writers—Sigmund Freud, Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and Gertrude Stein. These authors have repeatedly constructed the mind as an open system, making the psyche one of the sites most vulnerable to the power of colonial ideology but also the modernist space par excellence to narrate the building and falling of empire. While the first part of my dissertation investigates the neurosis of post-war London in Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, the second part of my thesis discusses the perverse demands of the colonial system in Forster’s A Passage to India and Woolf’s The Waves, arguing that Woolf and Forster extend Freud’s understanding of repetition compulsion by demonstrating that the colonial system derives a “perverse” pleasure from repeating its own impossible demands. The concluding section of my dissertation discusses Woolf and Stein’s queer primitivism as the antidote to anxiety and the transcendence of perversity. My dissertation revives Freud’s role in the modernist project: Freud not only provides avant-garde writers with a ii theory of consciousness, but his construction of the fragmented psyche—a construction which had come to dominate modernist renditions of internality by the early-twentieth century—functions as a political stratagem for an imperial critique. iii Acknowledgements Although writing a dissertation seems a solitary project, it cannot be accomplished without a strong support network. First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor Dr. Gabrielle McIntire and my second reader Dr. Asha Varadharajan for their expertise. Their guidance and insightful criticism have influenced every aspect of my research and writing. I am especially grateful for their unwavering encouragement. I would also like to thank my teachers at Queen’s University, Carleton University, and the University of Winnipeg that have supported me throughout my years of study, including Patricia Rae, Chris Bongie, Jill Scott, Jodie Medd, Keith Fulton, and Deborah Schnitzer. I would like to thank my parents, Roy and Irene Kalkhove for their emotional and financial support, my sister and my sweetest friend Pauline Kalkhove for always believing in me, my brother-in-law René Scheenaard for his encouragement, and my nieces and nephew, Isha, Levi, Lotte, and Julie (Bay) Scheenaard. I would also like to thank my uncle Hans Kalkhove and aunt Ingrid Veenenberg, who are always there for me, my cousin or, more appropriately, “second sister” Madelon Muns, and my aunt Willy Peters. In Canada, I am grateful for my “Canadian” family—Donna, Amber, and Brian Sale, who have made Canada feel like home—and my “yoga” family, particularly my teacher David Robson, who has taught me to be strong and never give up. Most of all, I would like to thank my partner Troy Sale, who has experienced every high and low that is involved in dissertation writing in the past few years and has supported me with love and patience. iv Finally, I would like to dedicate this dissertation to my mother, who passed away during my studies at Queen’s University. I think that she would have been proud. Lieve mama, voor jou. v Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements ..............................................................................................................................iv Table of Contents..................................................................................................................................vi List of Figures ......................................................................................................................................vii Chapter 1 Introduction...........................................................................................................................1 Chapter 2 The Madness of Empire and Colonial Horror: Woolf, Eliot, Conrad, Freud.................30 2.1 The Madness of Civilisation .....................................................................................................33 2.2 Woolf’s Knowledge of Psychoanalysis: 1908-1940................................................................48 2.3 “Curing” Britain and the “Make-Believe” of Empire ...........................................................55 2.4 Trauma and History..................................................................................................................65 2.5 The Impossible Witness of the Past..........................................................................................70 Chapter 3 Cultural Neurosis and Repetition Compulsion: Freud, Woolf, Forster ..........................76 3.1 Neurosis and Civilisation: The Alienating Effect of Repetition Compulsion........................81 3.2 Forster’s A Passage to India: The Fantasy of Interracial Violence ......................................86 The Colonial Encounter as a Scene of Masochism.................................................................101 3.3 The Stamping Beast of Empire in The Waves .......................................................................108 The Inhuman Quality of Colonial Mimicry.............................................................................119 The Oceanic Feeling and Narcissistic Desire..........................................................................128 3.4 Beyond Narcissistic Identification: Connecting to the Other ..............................................136 Chapter 4 Forgetting Freud, Toward a Queer Primitivism: Freud, Stein, Woolf..........................141 4.1 Freud’s Signifying System: Dora ...........................................................................................150 4.2 Reclaiming the Unconscious ..................................................................................................167 4.3 Woolf and Stein’s Primitivism: “To Make it New” ..............................................................179 Stein: “Lifting Belly names it”.................................................................................................181 Woolf: forget castration anxiety! .............................................................................................190 4.4 Where is the primitive? ...........................................................................................................197 4.5 Stein: The African Mask .........................................................................................................202 4.6 Woolf: The Veiled City and Turkish Clothing.......................................................................209 Chapter 5 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................220 Works Cited .......................................................................................................................................228 vi List of Figures Figure 3.1: Image from the British Empire Exhibition 1924 folder 117 Figure 4.1: Pablo Picasso: Portrait of Gertrude Stein (1906). 144 Figure 4.2: “Orlando as Ambassador” 216 Figure 4.3: “Orlando on her return to England” 217 Figure 4.4: “Orlando at the present time” 218 Error! No table of figures entries found. vii Chapter 1 Introduction Anxiety is always present somewhere or other behind every symptom; but at one time it takes noisy possession of the whole of consciousness, while at another it conceals itself so completely that we are obliged to speak of unconscious anxiety or, if we want to have a clearer psychological conscience, since anxiety is in the first instance simply a feeling, of possibilities of anxiety. Consequently it is very conceivable that the sense of guilt produced by civilisation is not perceived as such either, and remains to a large extent unconscious, or appears as a sort of malaise, a dissatisfaction, for which people seek other motivations. Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents In war-time, when everybody is reduced to the anxious status of a shady character or a displaced person, when even the most prudent become worshippers of chance, and when, in comparison to the universal disorder of the world outside, his Bohemia seems as cosy and respectable as a suburban villa, he can count on making his fortune. W.H. Auden, “Prologue,” The Age of Anxiety As long as colonialism remains in a state of anxiety, the national cause advances and becomes the cause of each