Taming Cannibals

Race and the Victorians

By: Patrick Brantlinger

Write A Review

eBook | 16 September 2011 | Edition Number 1

At a Glance

ePUB
288 Pages

Age
18+

Grade
17+

Dimensions(cm)
22.86 x 15.24

eBook

RRP $37.15

$33.99

or 4 interest-free payments of $8.50 with

or

Instant Digital Delivery to your Kobo Reader App

In Taming Cannibals**, Patrick Brantlinger unravels contradictions embedded in the racist and imperialist ideology of the British Empire**. For many Victorians, the idea of taming cannibals or civilizing savages was oxymoronic: civilization was a goal that the nonwhite peoples of the world could not attain or, at best, could only approximate, yet the "civilizing mission" was viewed as the ultimate justification for imperialism. Similarly, the supposedly unshakeable certainty of Anglo-Saxon racial superiority was routinely undercut by widespread fears about racial degeneration through contact with "lesser" races or concerns that Anglo-Saxons might be superseded by something superior—an even "fitter" or "higher" race or species.

Brantlinger traces the development of those fears through close readings of a wide range of texts—including Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe, Fiji and the Fijians by Thomas Williams, Daily Life and Origin of the Tasmanians by James Bonwick, The Descent of Man by Charles Darwin, Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, Culture and Anarchy by Matthew Arnold, She by H. Rider Haggard, and The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells. Throughout the wide-ranging, capacious, and rich Taming Cannibals, Brantlinger combines the study of literature with sociopolitical history and postcolonial theory in novel ways.

Industry Reviews

"Taming Cannibals itself provides a nuanced, powerfully told, and richly detailed story of the ways in which the paradox of racial and imperial thought and writing has been, and continues to be, constitutive of the West's often agonistic but no less humanly costly self-understanding."