Violence and the limits of modern liberalism: the political novels of Joseph Conrad Jay Thomas Parker Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of English May, 2016 ii The candidate confirms that the work submitted is his own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. © 2016 The University of Leeds and Jay Thomas Parker The right of Jay Thomas Parker to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. iii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I would like to thank Graham Huggan for his mentorship throughout the process of writing this thesis. Thanks are also due to The Joseph Conrad Society (UK), both for financial support in attending conferences and for numerous suggestions that have improved this work; I am particularly grateful to Keith Carabine for his advice and encouragement. I would also like to acknowledge my gratitude to Matei Candea, who helped plant the seed for this work many years ago. Also I have greatly appreciated the friendship and advice of Amaleena Damlé, Alys Mostyn, and Kasia Mika. Likewise, for the love and support of numerous other friends and family––particularly Doug, Margaret, Deb, and Leigh––and above all my father and mother, David and Sook Su, thank you. Lastly, to Donna––you made this possible. For that and everything else, my deepest love and gratitude. iv v Abstract Conrad wrote in his political essay, ‘Autocracy and War,’ of the inevitable degradation of political ideals in the cut and thrust of actual politics. This thesis proposes that Conrad’s political novels are fundamentally engaged with modern liberalism. It places Conrad’s political novels in conversation with modern liberal political theory, arguing that close attention to aesthetic concerns is illuminating of the latter’s limits. Violence is abhorred by modern liberalism as a fundamental limit on liberty, yet Conrad’s writing posits violence as ubiquitous in modern liberal politics. Freedom itself is presented in his work as a form of violence; additionally, core liberal concerns––conversation, the public/private split, autonomy, the individual self––are implicated in different forms of violence that tend to perpetuate an unequal status quo. In Conrad’s writing, these all appear as limits on freedom, thus modern liberalism is represented as a negotiation of competing forms of violence. However, Conrad’s self-contradictory writing both undermines and unexpectedly affirms modern liberalism, at least in part. These critiques emerge not from conceptual analysis, but rather from close attention to issues of literary form: in particular, Conrad’s modernist aesthetic, dialogic narrative, and complex use of genre. In terms of the latter, both romance and burlesque infiltrate realist fiction, bringing with them a range of contradictory politics. Via these generic interactions, Conrad finds the origins of modern liberalism in an archaic politics based in elite feudal values that were historically involved in the regulation of violence. This archaic value system is degraded by the democratic impulse of burlesque. Conrad is unable to commit wholeheartedly to either archaic feudalism or modern liberalism, and elitism and democracy appear as two further limits to the latter. Against the grain, perhaps, it is the very debasement of feudal mores by populism that enables modern liberalism’s partial recuperation in Conrad’s work. vi vii Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...................................................................... III ABSTRACT ............................................................................................. V TABLE OF CONTENTS ........................................................................ VII ABBREVIATIONS ................................................................................. IX INTRODUCTION ................................................................................... 1 READING CONRAD, READING LIBERALISM ................................................................................ 1 LIBERALISM: A POLITICS OF COMPETING VISIONS ................................................................... 10 COMPETING VISIONS OF IDEOLOGY: LIBERAL VERSUS MARXIST THEORIES .............................. 16 REFLECTIONS ON THE POLITICAL NOVEL ............................................................................... 18 LIBERALISM AND MYTHIC VIOLENCE ...................................................................................... 28 1. DOUBLING AND CONVERSATION: UNDER WESTERN EYES .......... 35 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 35 UNDER WESTERN EYES AND POLITICAL DOUBLING ............................................................. 36 FRUIT FROM THE TREE OF LIBERTY: ETHNOS AND CONVERSATION ......................................... 62 CONCLUSION: LIBERTY AND SILENCE ..................................................................................... 75 2. POLICING, READING, AND TERROR: THE SECRET AGENT ............. 79 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 79 LIBERALISM AS ABSENT PRESENCE .......................................................................................... 80 SOCIAL TYRANNY: THE SECRET AGENCY OF CLASS .................................................................. 84 FREEDOM, REVOLUTION, AND THE POLICE ............................................................................ 91 LIBERAL PATRIARCHY .......................................................................................................... 103 HOLY TERROR ..................................................................................................................... 109 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 120 3. AUTONOMY, CHIVALRY, AND IMPERIALISM: LORD JIM ................ 123 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 123 HE WAS ONE OF US: GENTLEMAN BROWN ........................................................................... 127 LIBERAL IMPERIALISTS AND THE PARTY OF ROMANCE ........................................................... 130 CHIVALRY AND THE LIBERAL INHERITANCE OF FRANCHISE .................................................. 148 A DEGRADATION OF FUNNY GRIMACES: IRONY AND BURLESQUE .......................................... 163 viii CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 170 4. LIBERTY AND SELF-ACTUALISATION: NOSTROMO ........................ 173 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................. 173 VIOLA AND VIOLENCE: FANATICISM, WORSHIP, AND THE SEA .............................................. 176 COUNTERFEIT GOULD: CREOLISATION AND MONSTROUS HYBRIDITY .................................. 187 DECOUD, INDIVIDUALISM, SUICIDE .................................................................................... 204 CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................... 210 CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................. 213 BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................. 217 APPENDIX .......................................................................................... 233 ix Abbreviations Where there is ambiguity, references to my primary texts as well as to Conrad’s letters throughout this dissertation will take the following abbreviations. Otherwise they take the form of a page reference. NotN The Nigger of the Narcissus HoD Heart of Darkness LJ Lord Jim, A Tale N Nostromo SA The Secret Agent UWE Under Western Eyes NoLL Notes on Life and Letters CL The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad References are to the following editions (in order of original publication): Conrad, J. 1921. The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus.’ London: William Heinemann. Conrad, J. 1990. Heart of Darkness and other tales. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Conrad, J. 2012. Lord Jim, A Tale. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conrad, J. 1947. Nostromo. London: J. M. Dent & Son. Conrad, J. 2004. The Secret Agent. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Conrad, J. 2013. Under Western Eyes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Conrad, J. 1925. Notes on Life and Letters. Edinburgh: John Grant. Davies, L., et al. eds. 1983–2008. The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad. 9 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Finally, references to the Oxford English Dictionary will be prefaced with the initials, OED. x 1 Introduction [I]t is the bitter fate of any idea to lose its royal form and power, to lose its ‘virtue’ the moment it descends from its solitary throne to work its will among the people. It is a king whose destiny is never to know the obedience of his subjects except at the cost of degradation. ‘Autocracy and War’––Joseph Conrad Reading