Peer Reviewed Title: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B.

Du Bois's Dark Princess and the Trans/Gendering of Kautilya Journal Issue: Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1) Author: Alston, Vermonja R, York University Publication Date: 2011 Publication Info: Journal of Transnational American Studies, American Cultures and Global Contexts Center, UC Santa Barbara Permalink: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/8r74n6wq Keywords: Cosmopolitan, Fantasy, Aesthetics, Bodily Value, W. E. B. Du Bois, Dark Princess, Transgender, Kautilya, Arthasastra Abstract: The recent turn to a transnational American literary cosmopolitanism, coupled with efforts to move beyond what Paul Gilroy calls ethnic absolutes, have generated a resurgence of interest in W. E. B. Du Boiss 1928 romance novel, Dark Princess. In addition, the last two decades have witnessed tentative movements to bridge the gap between American ethnic studies and postcolonial studies. This essay begins with the premise that there are compelling reasons to reread Dark Princess in light of twenty-first century debates about postcolonialism and cosmopolitanism, but it also points to some of the hazards of reading the novel outside of the social and aesthetic politics of the decades between the two world wars. The main part of this paper is an attempt to address the gendered and sexualized body politics of Du Boiss aesthetic practices through an analysis of his essay Criteria of Negro Art and his novel Dark Princess. Allusions in the novel to the fourth-century BCE Indian political philosopher Kautilya and his treatise Arthasstra suggests that Du Boiss naming of his princess, Kautilya, was neither accidental nor insignificant. This trans/ gendering of Kautilya speaks to a gender and sexual politics inherent to German theories of the aesthetic, to which Du Bois remained wedded. Scholarly fantasies of cosmopolitanism tend to ignore the extent to which such fantasies depend upon ideologies of family and the reproductive bodies of women.

eScholarship provides open access, scholarly publishing services to the University of California and delivers a dynamic research platform to scholars worldwide.

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

CosmopolitanFantasies, Aesthetics,andBodilyValue: W.E.B.DuBoissDarkPrincessandthe Trans/GenderingofKautilya

VERMONJAR.ALSTON

IndiaasaLandofDesireformsanessentialelementinGeneral History. From the most ancient time downwards, all nations have directed their wishes and longings to gaining access to the treasures of this land of marvels, the most costly which the Earth presents; treasures of Naturepearls, diamonds, perfumes, roseessences, elephants, lions, etc.as also treasuresofwisdom. G.W.F.Hegel,ThePhilosophyofHistory The Orient, seen as the embodiment of sensuality, is always understood in feminine terms and accordingly its place in Western imaginary has been constructed through the simultaneousgestureofracializationandfeminization. MeydaYegenoglu,ColonialFantasies: TowardsaFeministReadingofOrientalism Ihavecometofeelthatthemind,whichhasbeenmaturedin theatmosphereofaprofoundknowledgeofitsowncountry andoftheperfectthoughtsthathavebeenproducedinthat land,isreadytoacceptandassimilatetheculturesthatcome fromothercountries. RabindranathTagore,TheWaytoUnity

AseditorofTheCrisis,W.E.B.DuBoisheldagreatdealofcriticalandpoliticalpower increatingacanonofappropriatelyupliftingBlackliterature,therefore,reviewinghis literaryworkwasfraughtwithdangerforthecriticwithanydesiretoseeherorhis

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

own work favorably reviewed in the influential publishing arm of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). As Claudia Tate observes in her introduction to the 1995 University Press of Mississippi edition of Dark Princess, [Alain] Locke clearly struggled with balancing praise and censure in hisreview[ofDarkPrincess].Afterall,theeditorofTheCrisiswasamanwithwhom one still had to reckon.1 As editor and literary critic for The Crisis, Du Bois, for example,praisedNellaLarsensQuicksand,whilecondemningClaudeMcKaysHome toHarlemforitsfocusontheseamyandsexual.Thenovel,wroteDuBois,for themostpartnauseatesme,andafterthedirtierpartsofitsfilthIfeeldistinctlylike takingabath.2SinceNewNegrowritersfrequentlyaddressedissuesofsexuality,as TatenotesinPsychoanalysisandBlackNovels,DuBoissobjectionstoMcKaysnovel mustbereadassomethingotherthanaprudishnessaboutrepresentationsofsexual desireintheBlacknovelsoftheperiod.Rather,hisharshreviewofthenovelinvoked a normative aesthetic judgment of taste that highlights the difference between McKays use of bawdy humor, satire, and parodydrawn from a rich Jamaican traditionofdeployingculturalperformancesascritiquesofthepretensionsofthose who strive to mimic the colonial eliteand Du Boiss politics of racial uplift that tendedtoreproducethekeysocialstructuresandaestheticcategoriesofaristocratic colonial power. McKays elaboration of Bakhtinian carnivalesque obscene laughter pokedfunatthesensibilitiesoftheveryrulingclassestowhichDuBoisianaesthetics aspired.3Moreover,DuBoissunderstandingoftheconceptofculturedifferedfrom thatofMcKayandotherNewNegroRenaissancewriters.DuBoisremainedwedded to Kantian and Arnoldian understandings of culture as the aesthetic representation ofallthatisbestandbeautifulinacivilization,whileMcKayunderstoodtheconcept inanthropologicalterms,thatis,cultureasawholewayoflife.4Inanefforttorescue DuBoissnovelfromchargesofeliteaestheticism,literaryscholarArnoldRampersad contends that Dark Princess is much more than a statement about aesthetics.5 Indeed,butaestheticjudgmentismuchmorethanastatementaboutartandbeauty; itisaphilosophyofobjectrelations,bodilyvalue,andtherelationshipbetweenthe sensesandobjectsofdesireandsexualattachment. Claudia Tates psychoanalytic approach to the novel begins a valuable discussion of the relationship between desire and orientalism in the novel. Citing EdwardSaidsOrientalism,Tateargues,
InOrientalism,SaiddefinesOrientalismasastyleofthought based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between the Orient and (most of the time) the Occident in which the latter is implicitly and explicitly understood as superior (2). We latetwentiethcentury readersnodoubtrecognizeOrientalismasadiscourseabout thesovereigntyofWesternconsciousness,adiscourseabout its desires, repressions, investments, and projections

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

(Orientalism 8). This cultural discourse was/is intrinsic to the ideologyofwhitesupremacythatundergirdedUSslaveryand postReconstruction black disenfranchisement and racial segregation,aswellasWesternimperialism.6

What Tate does not acknowledge in her reading of US white supremacy through Saids theory is the ways in which Black Americans are incorporated into orientalist discourseonthesideofbourgeoismasculinityandaclassbasedideologyofmastery even as they oppose US racism and white supremacy. If race thinking constructs a particularsortofbody,whichinturnpromotesaparticularschemeofbodilyvalue, thensotoodoideologiesofgender,sexuality,andclass. Black feminist scholars acknowledge that while Du Bois publicly advocated equalityforwomen,hetendedtoignorethewritingsandteachingsofBlackwomen intellectuals,effectivelysilencingtheverywomenforwhomhesoughtequality.7In Race Men, Hazel Carby argues that, for Du Bois, the figure of the black woman, whetherprostituteormother,hasasurplusofsymbolicvalueuponwhichheliberally draws in his illustrations of the denigration of the black man.8 The status of Black mendependeduponthesymbolic,aswellasbodily,valueofBlackwomen.InDark Princess,DuBoissAdamicquestforneworiginsisachievedthroughtheerasureof Black women; protagonist Matthew Townss ancient Black mother, a symbolic ancestralfigure,istobeabsorbed,dissolvedintheambioticfluidoftheIndianwomb tocreateanewvolk.IfthewombsofBlackwomencannotbecomevesselsforthe American nation, in Du Boiss fantasy, the womb of the royal Indian woman does become the incubator for an imagined cosmopolitan body politic. Indias independence struggle and a fictional Indian princess provided fertile soil for Du Boissextendedmeditationonnational,spiritual,andsexualpassionanddesire. Scholars have long noted Du Boiss relationship to German and American socialpoliticalphilosophyandaesthetictheory.AsaGermanistwhocompletedtwo years of doctoral study (between 1892 and 1894) at Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin, including attendance at Max Webers lectures, Du Bois was an acute and brilliantreaderofKantandHegel,andwellversedinGermanOrientalStudies.Since both Kantian and Hegelian aesthetic theory work through a phenomenological engagement with the world, it is hardly surprising that the heroic elitism of Dark Princess foregrounds a sensuous worldliness frequently opposed to quotidian politicswhether local, national, or international. Consequently, any analysis of Du Boiss aesthetic ideology must take account of the German philosophical traditions that underwrote his literary and critical judgments of taste. My concern here is to highlightthemainfeaturesofDuBoissgenderedandsexualizedinterracialismand cosmopolitanism,andtoarguethathisfigurationofwomeninthenovel,particularly ofKautilyathedarkprincessisinflectedbyadoubleconsciousnesssymptomatic of his attempts to subject an embodied aesthetic sensibility to theories of rational judgment. If, as his contemporary George Santayana insists, aesthetic and moral

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

judgments are judgments of value, while intellectual judgments are judgments of fact,thenDuBoissattempttowedaestheticandmoraljudgmentswithintellectual judgments produces tensions between his social and economic politics and his aestheticandmoralvalues.9 Although the scholarship has made evident Du Boiss relationship to Kant, Hegel, Weber, and Santayana, those scholars tend to ignore the rising influence of Indian thinkers on Western philosophy and literature during thefirst three decades of the twentieth century. Recent scholars of postcolonial and South Asian Studies havebeguntodevoteseriousstudytoDuBoissfriendshipwithLajpatRai,aswellas the influence of Indian aesthetics on Du Boiss literary work.10 Lajpat Rai may have beenDuBoissonlyIndianconsultant,asDohraAhmadasserts,butRaimaynothave been the only Indian influence on a thinker as widely read as Du Bois (787). A transnational reading of Dark Princess should take account of the larger global contextofreadingandwritinginwhichDuBoiscomposedhis1928novel.Notably, RabindranathTagore,Indiasleadingpoetandthinker,hadbeenawardedtheNobel Prize for Literature in 1913. The Prize brought Tagores work to the attention of a larger German and Englishspeaking audience, as more translations of his writing began to circulate. More importantly, Tagore began lecturing on nationalism throughoutAsia,Europe,andtheAmericas(includingtheUnitedStates)in1916and continued to do so through 1932. Tagores essay Nationalism and the West was originally delivered as part of a series of lectures in the United States during the winterof19161917.11Hence,adecadebeforeDuBoiswroteDarkPrincess,Tagores ideasonnationalismandcosmopolitanhadcirculatedintheUnitedStates:Neither the colourless [sic] vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce selfidolatry of nationworshipisthegoalofhumanhistory....Ourhistoryisthatofoursociallife andattainmentofspiritualideals(1516). WiththepublicationofthenovelTheHomeandtheWorldserially(asAtHome and Outside) in the Modern Review in 19181919, and in book form by Macmillan in 1919, Tagore fictionalized and extended his meditations on nationalism and the human spirit.12 One cannot help but remark upon the thematic similarities between Tagores novel and that of Du Bois, particularly the emplotment of a romantic triangle embedded within a story of political intrigue in the larger context of a peoplesstruggleforliberation.However,thesimilaritiesendwiththebareoutlines of theme and plot. Whereas Tagores novel is narrated in three different voices, corresponding to the perspective of the three parties to the romantic triangle Bimala, Nikhil, and SandipDu Bois retains narrative authority through the deploymentofapowerfulomniscientthirdpersonnarrator.Moreover,TagoresThe HomeandtheWorldmanagestoavoidthefantasticalmodesocentraltoDuBoiss aestheticsensibilityinheritedfromhisGermanandAmericanintellectualforefathers. As fantasy, Dark Princess romanticizes and aestheticizes Indian resistance to British colonialism; in its socialrealist mode, the novel fictionalizes Black American radicalism and more conventional local machine politics. Du Boiss use of the

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

conventionsofsocialrealismindepictingBlackAmericanurbanpoliticsinNewYork and Chicago reaffirms the adage we all write from somewhere; Du Bois was far more familiar with the northern US political environment than that of Virginia or India.HisresorttoreligiousimageryandAdamicsymbolismofnewworldbeginnings whendepictingIndiaandVirginiasuggestsamoremythicrelationshipbetweenthe author and those two places. For example, Kautilya, the dark princess of the title, appearstoMatthewasifdescendingfromcelestialheights:Andshecamelikeasoft mist,unveiledanduncloakedbeforehim,relatesthethirdpersonnarrator.Always sheseemedtocomethussuddenlyintohislife(208).Inthismanner,theprincessas India incarnate is both unveiled and shrouded in mist, a fantasy that appears suddenly and mysteriously then disappears just as suddenly. She is both an enigma and Du Boiss alter ego. This mystification continues in the novels depiction of Virginia.ChannelingDuBois,theprincesswritestoMatthewfromhisnativeVirginia inlanguagemoregroundedbutnolessmythical:butlifehereseemssymbolic.Here is the earth yearning for seed. Here men make food and clothes. We are at the bottomandbeginningofthings.Theveryfirstchapterofthatgreatstoryofindustry, wage and wealth, government, life (278). Du Boiss princess imagines Virginia as Edenafterthefall,wheremenengageinproductivelaborforlifesnecessities.Itis Matthew, Du Boiss hero, who informs Kautilya of the reality of forced labor and racialterrorintheSouth.ButitisKautilyasvisionthatprevailswhensheinsistson thepossibilitiesofamythicalrisefromtheashesofracialhatred.InDarkPrincess,Du Boisresolvesthedialecticaltensionbetweenromanticmysticismandsocialrealismin favorofthemythic. It is difficult to discuss Du Boiss omniscient thirdperson narrator without considering the situatedness of knowledge, or the appropriation of voice in the authorsrenderingoftheheroMatthewTownssmotherssilences,orthethoughts, letters, and speeches of Princess Kautilya, the novels title character, or of Sara Andrews, with whom Matthew enters into a brief political marriage. Du Bois never reallydepartsfromtheauthorityofthethirdpersonnarrator.Asaconsequence,no characterisdevelopedfully;MatthewandKautilyaarevehiclesfortheelaborationof Du Boiss political and aesthetic views, and the other two women are drawn from archetypes rehearsed in his 1920 essay, The Damnation of Women, published in Darkwater.13 Unlike Rabindranath Tagore, whose The Home and theWorld attempts to convey a young womans voice and perspective as she struggles to choose between the duties to home and husband and her passion for the anticolonial nationalistmovementanditsBengalileader,inDarkPrincess,DuBoisnevermasters the art of relinquishing narrative authority. In form and style, Dark Princess is embedded in European (German) and American narrative structures of mastery; structurally,itisfarlesscosmopolitanandanticolonialthanitsplot. SetbetweenAugust1923andApril1927,thenovelisdividedintofourparts: TheExile,ThePullmanPorter,TheChicagoPolitician,andTheMaharajahof Bwodpur.DarkPrincesschartsacoursebetweenlocalpoliticalmachinationsinNew

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

York, Chicago, and the American South, and anticolonial radicals gathered in cosmopolitanBerlin.AsDohraAhmadpointsout,DuBoisconveyseachofthenovels locale[s] through a representative female figure: Chicago through the calculating and materialistic Sara Andrews; India, of course, through our eponymous revolutionary; and the American South through protagonist Matthew Townss namelessbuteternallywisemother.14Moreimportantly,womensbodiesarevalued in Dark Princess for their ability to symbolize places and aesthetic ideologies: the sterile urbanbuilt environment; the marvelous fecundity of the rural ancestral homelandoftheAmericanSouth,whichmustberedeemedandcultivated,notbya sterile and corrupt American North, but by a postcolonial India imagined as both sensuousmistressandnurturingmother. In the opening scene of W. E. B. Du Boiss melodramatic operatic novel, MatthewTowns,inacoldwhitefury,standsonthedeckoftheOrizababoundfor Europe after he is forced to leave medical school because he is prohibited from registering for obstetrics. Looking east to Europe as an avenue of escape from Americanracism,Matthewrecallshishumiliatingencounterwiththedean:Well whatdidyouexpect?Juniorsmusthaveobstetricalwork.Doyouthinkwhitewomen patientsaregoingtohaveaniggerdoctordeliveringtheirbabies?(34).Asvaluable producers of a nationimagined as whitewhite womens bodies, their wombs in particular,areforbiddenterritoryforBlackhands.Clearly,DuBoisrewritesmuchof D. W. Griffiths Birth of a Nation as a teleological movement from a birth of Black nationalism,withMatthewTownsssouthernmotherastheparadigmaticancestress, whoingivingbirthtoMatthewenablesthebirthofthedarkerracesoftheworldasa transnational family. The novels messianic ending erases the stain of Matthews humiliatingdismissalfrommedicalschoolbyraisinghimuptothestatusofthefather ofthemessiahwhowillleadhispeopleoutofEgyptland.TheherosrenditionofGo Down, Moses at his initial meeting with The Council of the Darker Races foreshadows this ending. After all, Matthew stands and belts out the song in responsetothecouncilmembersconversationabouttherelationshipamongtalent, art,civilization,andreadinessforfreedom.Afterthesongsconclusion,theprincess voices a major problematic of Du Boiss Criteria of Negro Art: the association of aestheticculturewiththeabilitytorule.Youassumethen,saidthePrincessatlast, that the mass of the workers of the world can rule as well as be ruled? (26). Of course,thenovelsconclusionsuggestsotherwise,thattheruledwouldrequirethe guidanceofamessianicleader,asubjecttowhichIreturnlaterinthisessay. Du Boiss novelistic unveiling of womens bodies provides a blueprint for readingculturethroughthebody.AsSusanBordoargues,thebody...isamedium of culture.15 Bodies are trained, shaped, and impressed with the stamp of prevailing historical forms of selfhood, desire, masculinity, femininity, continues Bordo(16566).ThenovelsmetonymicreductionofsouthernBlackworkerstothe laboringhandsofMatthewsmotherinVirginiaisconsistentwiththerescuefantasy inherentinDuBoisspoliticsofracialuplift.AgainitistheprincesswhochannelsDu

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

Boiss aesthetic valuation of the Black ancestress: Oh, Matthew, you have a wonderfulmother.Haveyouseenherhands?Haveyouseenthegnarledandknotty gloryofherhands?...YourmotherisKali,theBlackOne;wifeofSiva,Motherofthe World! (220). Those gnarled and knotty hands are metonymic of southern Black laborers, but those hands also are coterminous with the gnarled and knotty trees that surround the old Virginia farm. Matthews mother is, at once, cultivatorof the soil and a natural body born of the soil itself. Du Bois feminizes the archaic Black South as an ancient mother who is rescued from the stain of racial othering by PrincessKautilyasreligiousnarrativetransformingthatmotherandmotherlandinto theHindugoddessKali. SaraAndrews,thethirdBlackwomaninthenovel,standsinstarkcontrastto Kautilya and Matthews mother and is depicted as a sterile, castrating materialist, whomodelstheasceticismimposedon(andby)themulattobourgeoisie.AsBordo points out, in the late Victorian era . . . those who could afford to eat well began systematically to deny themselves food in pursuit of an aesthetic ideal (185). Kautilyaspolaropposite,Sara,theasceticpuritansubject,demandstherenunciation ofthesensuouseroticbody.ThisstereotypeofsuccessfulBlackAmericanwomenas sterile and castrating has had lasting effects on societal perceptions of powerful Blackwomenasunfeeling,manipulative,andangry.16DuBoissKautilya,incontrast, inhabits the sensuous aristocratic body unaffected by the demands of bourgeois subjectivity; for the novels hero, she is simultaneously the absent erotic object of sexual desire and the lost nurturing mother of the nation. Through this play of opposition in aesthetic ideals, Du Bois constructs and privileges a vigorously fertile nobilityagainstacorruptandsterilebourgeoisstate. CosmopolitanAestheticsandDesire Oneofthegrandprojectsofphilosophiesoftheaestheticistocometosomesortof dialecticalresolutionofthetensionbetweentheparticularsensuouspleasuresofthe aesthetic and universal reason. Du Bois works through those tensions in his emplotment of anticolonial and antiracist struggles through the mode of romantic fantasy. Kants critique of aesthetic judgment, Schillers aesthetic State, and Hegelsphilosophyofaesthetics17areatthecoreofDuBoiss1926speech,Criteria of Negro Art, published in The Crisis, and the symbolic structure and style of Dark Princess.18Ideasabouttheaesthetichaveacquiredasetofconnotativeassociations withbeauty,desire,andpleasure.Fromapsychoanalyticperspective,then,sensuous pleasure and desire underwrite the eighteenth and nineteenthcentury German theories of the aesthetic that inform Du Boiss essay. In a frequently cited passage fromCriteriaofNegroArt,DuBoisacknowledgesreadingallart,includinghisown creative writing, as propaganda: I stand in utter shamelessness and say that whateverartIhaveforwritinghasbeenusedalwaysforpropagandaforgainingthe rightofblackfolktoloveandenjoy.Idonotcareadamnforanyartthatisnotused

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

for propaganda. But I do care when propaganda is confined to one side while the otherisstrippedandsilent(288).Thisemphasisonpleasureandloveisconsistent with aesthetic theorys privileging of beauty as the most appropriate subject for artisticrepresentation.Ifbeautysignifiespleasureandlove,thenitalwaysexistsina tenseoppositionalrelationtofear,pain,andhorror,orthesublime. AlthoughDuBoissCriteriaofNegroArt,readasawhole,acknowledgesall art as propaganda, it is the general understanding of the term that informs his aesthetics. Coined during the seventeenth century to refer to the Churchs propagation of the faith, propaganda referred to art that delivered Christian teachingstoanilliteratepopulation.19Instructionisthegoalofallpropaganda.If,as Du Bois himself argues in Criteria of Negro Art, all art is propaganda and ever mustbe,whatarethelessonsofDarkPrincess?20Arguably,thenovelfunctionsasa primerontheaestheticeducationofNegroMen,toparaphraseSchiller,aswellas arevisionofHegeliannarrativesofthebirthofnations.ForDuBois,thisnotionofart aspropagandaechoestheteleologicalmystificationofGermanIdealism,particularly HegelsideaoftheAbsolute,ofTruthandtheDivine. Paradoxically, it is the absence of any coherence between Du Boiss social activism and his romantic fiction that continues to trouble many scholars. In her psychoanalyticreadingoftheessayandDarkPrincess,Tateremarks,DuBoisseems unconsciouslytoassociatepropagandaforsocialreformwitheroticdesire.21There arecertainlyinconsistenciesthatarisewithanyprogrammaticreadingofthenovel. But Dark Princess does emplot thedefining tension in Du Bois literary and scholarly endeavors:between, on the one hand, an empiricism that sought to documentthe painandsufferingofBlackfolkand,ontheotherhand,aneliteidealismindebtedto an early modern understanding of the emancipatory universality of an aesthetic education. On the face of it, this tension between pain and suffering, and pleasure andbeautyseemsirreconcilable,butitisthenatureofdialecticalargumenttowork throughsuchoppositions.ContrarytoTatesreadingofDuBoissunconsciouslinking ofsexualdesireandsocialreform,oneoftheunderlyingpremisesofthisessayisthat the unconscious relationship between sensuality, sexual desire, and the social is embedded in bourgeois theories of the aesthetic. As Terry Eagleton argues in The IdeologyoftheAesthetic,humanlifeisaestheticforFreudinsofarasitisallabout intense bodily sensations and baroque imaginings, inherently significatory and symbolic, inseparable from figure and fantasy. The unconscious works by a kind of aestheticlogic,condensinganddisplacingitsimageswiththecraftyopportunismof anartisticbricoleur.22Freudstheoryofdesire,arguesEagleton,seemstooperate in something of an anonymous, lawlike manner, [complicating . . .] the classical aestheticmodel,wheredesireisgenerallyconceivedofintermsofindividualneeds orwishes(279).If,asTateconcludes,thegoalofsocialreformandthepowerofthe erotic do not cohere in Dark Princess, the failure is a consequence of the duality betweenthepracticalandtheaestheticthatliesatthecoreofGermanIdealism,and of the aesthetic logic of the unconscious. Postcolonial theorists of colonial desire

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

appear to support Eagletons interpretation of Freuds theory of aesthetics and desire. Not surprisingly, postcolonial feminist theorists of the aesthetic stress the waysinwhichgender,race,andclassaretextuallyarticulatedthroughthevocabulary of aesthetics.23 Put differently, notions of aesthetic beauty in art tend to work throughthebodiesofwomen.AsMeydaYegenogluinsistsinthesecondepigraphof this essay, an aestheticized orient, as the embodiment of sensuality, is always understoodinstrictlyfeminineterms.Here,Iforegroundthebodilyvalueofwomen as aestheticized objects of both desire and repulsion in Du Boiss fictionalization of his national and international political ideologies, as well as his ideology of the aesthetic.NowhereisthefeminizationoftheorientmoreapparentthaninDuBoiss trans/gendering of the fourthcentury BCE male Indian philosopher Kautilya into a twentiethcenturyIndianprincess,which,accordingly,allowshimtotraverseborders between art and politics, and between individual desire and social unity. This fictionalization of Kautilya as an erotic lover for the African American character, MatthewTowns,aswellasmotherofthedarkerworld,isatranslationthrough Germanphilosophyofboththegendered,sexualizedbodyandbodypolitic. Intwonarrativesoforigin,DarkPrincessrevisesHegelsPhilosophyofHistory by replacing ancient Greece with ancient India: the birth of civilization and the evolution of the autonomous subject. I am not suggesting that Du Boiss novel is merelyderivativeofHegelianorGermanphilosophyingeneral;nevertheless,DuBois doesnotescapetheorientalisminwhichHegelsaesthetictheorywasentangled.For DuBois,Indiaremainsthelandofdesireontowhichheprojectslongingsforaccess toitstreasures,marvels,andwisdom.AsthebearerofthecrownjewelsofBhodpur, PrincessKautilyaissynecdocheforIndiaandthebirthofanewcivilization:Someof themalwaystravelwiththeheirtothethrone,theprincesstellsMatthew.Ihave carried these since fathers death. Some of the jewels are beautiful and priceless. Others,likethegreatruby,arefulloflegendsandsuperstitiousmemory.Thegreat rubyisbylegendadropofBuddhasblood.ItanointsthenewbornMaharajah.Itis worn on his turban. It closes his eyes in death (249). Kautilyas narrative of royal lineageforeshadowsthebirthofMadhu,thechildsheconceiveswithMatthew,who will be anointed the newborn Maharajah and Messiah to all the Darker Worlds (311). Du Boiss Kautilya embodies beauty as the locus of truth and right, which is dialecticallyopposedtoevil.Iamonewhotellsthetruthandexposesevilandseeks with Beauty and for Beauty to set the world right, writes Du Bois in Criteria of NegroArt.Thatsomehow,somewhereeternalandperfectBeautysitsaboveTruth andRightIcanconceive,buthereandnowandintheworldinwhichIworktheyare for me unseparated and inseparable.24 In a similar vein, Du Boiss hero of Dark Princess, Matthew, utters an analogous aesthetic sensibility to Kautilya after she returnstorescuehimfromthecorruptpoliticalcareermappedoutbyhiswifeSara Andrews: Your body is Beauty, and Beauty is your Soul, and Soul and Body spell

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

Freedomtomytorturedgropinglife!(210).Kautilyasnearlycelestialbodyperforms a symbolic detaching of Matthew from Chicago, the city of Fear and Death to which he has been attached through the cold ascetic body of Sara (210). Beauty willtransformMatthewsworldtoTruthandRight. In a similar vein, Du Boiss Envoy, the poetic coda to Dark Princess, with bows to Scheherazade and Shakespeares A Midsummer Nights Dream, echoes the dialecticaloppositionoutlinedthroughoutthenovelandinCriteriaofNegroArt:
The tale is done and night is come. Now may all the sprites who,withcurledwingandstarryeyes,haveclusteredaround my hands and helped me weave this story, lift with deft delicacy from out the crevice where itlines my heavyflesh of fact,thatrichandcoloredgossamerofdreamwhichtheQueen of Farie lent to me for a season. Pleat it to a shining bundle and return it, sweet elves, beneath the moon, to her Mauve Majesty with my low andfondobeisance. Begher, sometime, somewhere, of her abundant leisure, to tell us hard humans: WhichisreallyTruthFactorFancy?theDreamoftheSpiritor thePainoftheBone?(312,emphasisoriginal)

Oppositions between fact and fancy, spirit and body, dream and pain, reiteratethe novels dialectical movement between social realisms racism and counterracism, KlanterrorismandBlackradicalcounterterrorism,andaestheticfantasysembraceof the sensuous. Du Bois dissolves the dialectical tension through an imaginative synthesisoftheworldspirit. Passages like this one recall chapter 2 of Hegels Introduction to Aesthetics, LimitationsandDefenceofAesthetics:thebeautyofartishigherthannature.The beautyofartisbeautybornofthespiritandbornagain,andthehigherthespiritand itsproductionsstandabovenatureanditsphenomenon,thehighertooisthebeauty ofartabovethatofnature.25Puttingasideforthemomenttheelevationofartover naturecharacteristicofphilosophiesoftheaesthetic,Hegelfurtherconjoinsfreedom with fine art and beauty in chapter 3 of the Introduction: Now, in this its freedom aloneisfinearttrulyart,anditonlyfulfillsitssupremetaskwhenithasplaceditself in the same sphere as religion and philosophy, and when it is simply one way of bringingourmindsandexpressingtheDivine,thedeepestinterestsofmankind,and themostcomprehensivetruthsofthespirit(4).RevisingHegel,DuBoisurgesBlack Americanartiststoturntothistraditionwhencreatingart:itistheboundendutyof blackAmericatobeginthisgreatworkofthecreationofBeauty,ofthepreservation ofBeauty,oftherealizationofBeauty,andwemustuseinthisworkallthemethods thatmenhaveusedbefore.26 In his novel, the idea of the beautiful that dominates adumbrates the conclusion of Kants Analytic of the Beautiful, published in his The Critique of Judgment. In the beautiful views of objects, taste appears not so much in what

10

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

theImaginationapprehendsinthisfield,asintheimpulseitthusgetstofiction,i.e.in thepeculiarfancieswithwhichthemindentertainsitself,whilstitiscontinuallybeing aroused by the variety which strikes the eye. [Those objects] bring with them a charmfortheImagination,becausetheyentertainitinfreeplay.27Thebeautiful, in contrast, is that which pleases universally without [requiring] a concept (67, emphasisoriginal).Intheprocessofuniversalizingbeauty,therationalmalesubject must transform his perception of the thing as beautiful into an object of his knowledge: The beautiful is that which without any concept is cognized as the objectofanecessarysatisfaction(96,emphasisoriginal).Thus,itisthroughreason thatmanmovesfromtheaesthetic(andthereforesubjective)apprehensionofthe beautifultotheuniversalunderstandingofbeautifulobjects.Finally,Kantproposes asuniversal,theBeautiful[as]thesymbolofthemorallyGood,anditisonlyinthis respect(areferencewhichisnaturaltoeverymanandwhicheverymanpostulatesin othersasaduty)thatitgivespleasurewithaclaimfortheagreementofeveryone else. By this the mind is made conscious of a certain ennoblement and elevation above the mere sensibility to pleasure received through sense, and the worth of others is estimated in accordance with a like maxim of their Judgment (25051). Despitebeautyssymbolicrepresentationofmorality,Kant,asTerryEagletonargues, has no truck with the heady Romantic impulse to aestheticize morality: the moral lawisasupremecourtofappealelevatedaboveallmerebeauty.28Onemightargue thatDuBoissfictionalheroraisesthepossibilityofsublimationofsexualdesireinto higherspiritualchannels:Isupposethatallthisfeelingisbasedonthephysicalurge ofsexbetweenus,MatthewconfessestoKautilya.Isupposethatothercontacts, otherexperiences,mighthavealteredtheworldforustwo.Butthemagnificentfact of our love remains, whatever its basis or accident. It rises from the ecstasy of our bodies to the communion of the saints, the resurrection of the spirit, and the exquisitecrucifixionofGod(260).Attheveryleast,DuBoisianaestheticsattempts to reunite the sexualwith the sacred. However, this reunion alone isinsufficient to engagethepolitical. For Du Bois, it is Friedrich Schillers conjoining of political and aesthetic theoriesthatoffersamodelfortherelationshipbetweenartandpolitics.Criteriaof NegroArtandthesymbolicstructureofDarkPrincessechoSchillerstheoryofthe aestheticstateasasolutiontothechaosofpoliticalandsocialbarbarity.According toSchiller,ifmanisevertosolvethatproblemofpoliticsinpracticehewillhaveto approachitthroughtheproblemoftheaesthetic,becauseitisonlythroughBeauty thatmanmakeshiswaytoFreedom.29Allimprovementinthepoliticalsphere,as Schiller contends, is to proceed from the ennobling of the characterbut, how, undertheinfluenceofabarbarousconstitution,canthecharacterbecomeennobled? Weshouldneed,forthisend,toseekoutsomeinstrumentwhichthestatedoesnot affordus,andwithitopenupwellspringswhichwillkeeppureandclearthroughout every political corruption (50). In a different register than that of Kant and Hegel, Schillersartisfreefrombothpositivelawandhumanlawlessness;TruthandBeauty

11

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

will ennoble the character. In Schillers aesthetics, argues Eagleton, social unity must be generated in a sense from below from an aesthetically transformed or ideologically constituted civil society, not legislated arbitrarily from above.30 Du Boiss transformation of the fourthcentury BCE male Indian political philosopher Kautilyaintohistwentiethcenturybeautifuldarkprincess,Kautilya,reworksHegels andKantstheoriesofaestheticjudgment,aswellasSchillersaestheticstate;inthe process he aestheticizes morality and Indias imperial past. As fictionalized by Du Bois, empirical knowledge in the form of social realism must yield to the aesthetic; the senseswill eventually yield to Reason and Freedom. Du Bois, following Schiller, anthropologizes the aesthetic in the erotic figure of Kautilya, who serves his aestheticandpoliticalidealoftherelationshipbetweenBeauty,Freedom,andTruth; sheisthevehicleforhisaestheticideal,hardlyarealwoman.Leavingasideforthe momentDuBoissaestheticpractices,hereIbrieflysketchsomeoftheallusionsto KautilyasArthasstraintheplotofDarkPrincess. KautilyasArthasstra InabrilliantreadingofDuBoissnovel,DohraAhmadpointsoutinanendnotethat Kautilyaisamalename,specificallyofthefourthcenturyBCEauthorofArthasstra (circa 300 BCE).31 Ahmad argues that Du Boiss shifts between social realism and romanticismcoincidewiththenovelsgeographicalmovementsfromChicagotothe American South; boththe American South and India are mergedin the orientalized figureofKautilya.32AbetterunderstandingofKautilya,thepoliticalphilosopher,and Arthasstras publication history offers a key to Du Boiss strategic naming of his heroineandhisgenderedarticulationofaestheticsasBeauty.33KautilyasArthasstra was widely read from its initial publication through the twelfth century; it then disappeared until 1904 when it was given to R. Shamasastry, the librarian at the MysoreGovernmentOrientalLibrary.ShamasastrypublishedthetreatiseinSanskrit in 1909, followed by an English translation in 1915.34 Both Shamasastrys English translationandJ.J.MeyersGermantranslationwereavailablewhenDuBoispenned Dark Princess in 1927. Weber, an admirer of Kautilyas science of politics, compared him favorably to Machiavelli: Truly radical Macchiavellianism [sic], in the popular senseofthatword,isclassicallyexpressedinIndianliteratureintheArthashstraof Kautilya (written long before the birth of Christ, ostensibly in the time of Chandragupta): compared to it, Macchiavellis [sic] Prince is harmless.35 Kautilya concerned himselfwithacquiring andmaintainingmonarchalpower forthebenefit ofajustandorderlysociety,anaspirationDuBoisechoesinthemessianicconclusion toDarkPrincess. Knownasaworkofpracticalpoliticalphilosophyorpoliticalrealism,Kautilyas Arthasstra reads as a detailed textbook on government administration, covering everything from war to economics and accounting practices to the treatment of slavesandservants.Asaguideforwisekings,Arthasstraisintendedtosustainthe

12

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

monarchy,understoodasthebestwaytomaintainorderandpreventadescentinto chaoticnature.KautilyasreadingofnatureaschaospredatesmodernitysHobbesian view of civilizational progress. However, Kautilyas treatise never contemplates anythingclosetoademocraticorrepublicanformofgovernment,nordoesitcallfor theeliminationofvarna(classesorcastes),howeversympatheticKautilyamayhave been to the plight of servants and slaves.36 In an intertextual allusion to the philosopher, Du BoissPrincess Kautilya learns to empathize with the working class byworkingalongsideBlacklaborersinthesouthernUnitedStates. As a foreign policy advisor, Kautilya, the philosopher, wrote extensively on what might be referred to as the waging of just wars, and the use of torture and assassinationagainstenemies.WhereasKingChandragupta(ca.317293BCE),under Kautilyas guidance, united the Indian nation through warfare, Du Boiss Princess Kautilya,bygivingbirthtoMatthewschild,Madhu,bodiesforthanewworlduniting descendants of royalty and slavery in body and spirit. In contradistinction to Kautilyasphilosophicalwritings,DuBoissnovelisticconclusionrejectsArthasstras practicalpoliticsinfavorofaphysicalandmetaphysicalsolutiontosocialandracial injustice.Throughoutthenovel,everyattemptataviolentsolutiontotheproblemof racial violence is thwarted. The novels radical Black leader fails in his attempt to defeatKuKluxKlanracialterrorismbyblowingupthetraincarryingKlanleaderstoa Chicagoconvention.Instead,thereproductivebodyofawoman,Kautilya,becomes essentialtotheadvancementofDuBoissidealistphilosophyofunityofthedarker racesoftheworld. KautilyasArthasstraisbestrememberedinthewestasadetailedguidefor recognizing and employing spies at all levels of government and society. As Roger Boesche and other political scientists have pointed out, Kautilya believed in a spy state. Much of book one of the treatise, titled Concerning the Topic of Training, consistsofinstructionsonhowtoselectandemploysecretagentsasspies,fromthe highestministerstotravelersandrovingmonksandnunstoforestdwellers.Hereis justoneexampleofKautilyasadviceontheimportanceofespionagetogovernance: With the body of ministers proved upright by means of secret tests, the (king) shouldappointpersonsinsecretservice,(viz.),thesharppupil,theapostatemonk, theseeminghouseholder,theseemingtraderandtheseemingascetic,aswellasthe secret agent, the bravo, the poisongiver and the begging nun.37 There are some obvious parallels between Du Boiss use of espionage in his novel and Kautilyas instructionstoawiseking.ThenovelsplotunfoldsintheshadowoftheBolshevik Revolution, and Indias resistance to British colonialism. In Berlin, the novels hero, MatthewTowns,meetsthePrincessKautilyaofBwodpur,India,whodeclares,after much debate among her Chinese, Japanese, Arab, and Egyptian male committee members, If the [Moscow] report is true, they [the Negroes of America] are a nationtoday,amodernnationworthytostandbesideanynationhere(22).Against theprotestsofothercommitteemembers,KautilyaenlistsMatthewinaschemeto spyonManuelPerigua,theleaderofaradicalgroupofAmericanBlackswhoplanto

13

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

overthrowwhitesupremacyandtheKuKluxKlansmonopolizationofviolenceand terrorism through counterterrorism. It is the Japanese member of the council who attemptstoconvinceMatthewoftherecklessnessofKautilyasespionagescheme:
Inherinterviewwithyoushetoldyouastoryshehadheard inMoscow,ofawidespreadandcarefullyplanneduprisingof theAmericanblacks.Shehasintrusted[sic]youwithaletter to the alleged leader of this organization and asked you to report to her your impressions and recommendations; and eventodelivertheletter,ifyoudeemitwise. Now,mydearMr.Towns,considerthesituation:First of all, our beloved Princess introduces you, a total stranger, into our counsels and tells you some of our general plans. Fortunately,youprovetobeagentlemanwhocanbetrusted; and yet you yourself must admit this procedure was not exactly wise. Further that, through this letter, our reputations, our very lives, are put in danger by this well meaningbutyoungandundisciplinedlady.(29)

Immediately,Matthewsurmisesthat,justasKautilyahasenlistedhimtospy onradicalAmericanBlacks,sheisevidentlywellspiedupon,bytheothermembers of the Council of the Darker Races (29). In order to travel to meet Perigua, Matthew becomes a Pullman porter, which permits him to travel between the northern cities of NewYork and Chicago and the cities of the American South. The novelisshotthroughwithallusionstoKautilyasinstructionsontheuseofspiesatall levels of society. When his reports to Kautilya are intercepted by agents of the Japanese and Indian delegates to the Council of the Darker Races, Matthew discoversthathe,himself,iswellspieduponbytheCouncil(72).Theespionageplot, Du Boiss naming of the princess, and the invocation of the name Chandragupta at the end of the novel, a subject to which I return later in this essay, all suggest the authorsawarenessofKautilyasArthasstraanditssignificancetoIndiashistory. As military advisor to Chandragupta, Kautilya played a central role in the unificationofIndiaasanempire.ChandraguptaiscreditedwithdefeatingtheNanda kings, who, according to historical accounts, were cruel and incompetent, and descended from a lower caste. Chandraguptas defeat of Alexander the Greats successors stopped the advance of the Greeks on the subcontinent. Historians of ancient India argue that the extreme measures advocated by Kautilya and implementedbyChandraguptawerenecessarytobringorderandtheruleoflawto India.M.V.KrishnaRaoasserts,Asaresultoftheprogressivesecularisation[sic]of societyduetotheinnovationscontemplatedby[Kautilya]andtheadministrationof Chandragupta, the country was prepared for the reception of the great moral transformation ushered in by Asoka [Chandraguptas grandson] and his administration.38 So interpreted, Chandraguptas imperial consolidation of India,

14

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

under the guidance of Kautilya, was necessary to bringing about a civilizational transformationtwogenerationslater. The historical Kautilya provides Du Bois with an entry into an ancient Indian tradition of nationbuilding and statecraft through military conquest. But Du Boiss DarkPrincessworksthroughArthasstraspracticalpoliticsonlytorejectthepractical infavoroftheromantic.HisdecisiontorenderKautilyaasafemaleloveinterestina transnational romantic triangle, however, acts as a screen with which to veil the internationalviolenceandsuppressionofindigenouspopulationsinherenttonation building and statecraft. As Arun Mukherjee remarks, classical Indian texts were written by Brahmins for the royals: Dalits today condemn the entire corpus as upholdingclassandcastehegemony.39InDarkPrincess,DuBoisveilsclassandcaste antagonism in a fantasy of desire that transcends the subjectobject divide. The noveloffersautopianimageofethnic,class,andgenderreconciliationthatmystifies activistmovementstoovercomerealpoliticalandeconomicdivisions.Nevertheless, the critical reception of Dark Princess suggests that cosmopolitan structures of feelingdependuponthiscosmopolitanfantasy,onethatreliesontheinscriptionof womens bodies into romances of communalism, social cohesion across class lines, andcrossculturalsolidarity.Putdifferently,theoriesofcosmopolitanismmightmore usefullybereadthroughthelensoffantasyanddesire. CosmopolitanFantasiesoftheReal DespitetheallusionstothefourthcenturyBCEKautilya,thecriticalreceptionofDu Boissoperaticnovelrevealsafascinationwiththerealwomanwhomighthavebeen the model for the Dark Princess Kautilya of Bwodpur. In her frequently cited 1928 ChicagoBeereview,MaryWhiteOvingtonofferswhatscholarshavesincereadasan eyewitnessaccountofthewoman:IthinkIsawthedarkPrincessin1911asshecame down the steps of the ballroom at the last meeting of the First Universal Race CongressinLondon.BythePrincessssidewasoneofthemostdistinguishedmenat theConference,BurghardtDuBois.Theyweretalkingearnestlyoftheraceproblem. Did this Indian Princess remain in the American Negros memory to become the Titiana of his midsummer nights dream?40 More recently Paul Gilroy, in his 1993 book, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, gestures toward Ovingtonsspeculativeaccount.41 Since the 1994 University Press of Mississippi publication of the novel, Dark PrincesshasbeenenlistedtothecauseofMarxistinternationalism,transnationalism, South Asian Diaspora Studies, andcosmopolitanism. In achapter hedubs W. E. B. Du Boiss AfroAsian Fantasia in his AfroOrientalism (2004), Bill Mullen reads the novelthroughaMarxistLeninistinternationalistframework,arguingthatthenovelis DuBoissmostpronounced,ifveiled,statementofhisinterestinwhathecalledin 1933theRussianexperiment.42Mullenreadsthedomesticromanceasincidentalto Du Boiss larger political agenda: Du Boiss rendering of nationalist struggle as

15

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

domestic(orfamilial)disputeandhisdeepaspirationforeasyethnicaffiliationacross PanAsia bespoke remnants of the romantic realism lingering from Afrocentric influences(23).Tothecontrary,feministshavelongarguedthatthefamilyromance is central to modern nationalisms, even oppositional nationalist discourses. Moreover, Mullens domestication of the sensuous ignores the centrality of the trans/genderedKautilyaandherpolaropposite,SaraAndrews,toDuBoissdialectic of aesthetic judgment. A more nuanced Marxism informed by corporeal feminism would note that capitalism expels sensuous pleasure from the laboring body, producing an ascetic body as represented by Sara Andrews, thus, bifurcating the rationalfromthesensuousaestheticbodyrepresentedbythefigureofKautilya.43Du BoissomniscientnarratorinformsusthatthewelltodoSaraAndrews,whoparlayed hersecretarialskillsandpuritanthriftandefficiencyintoapoliticalcareer,wasthin, small, well tailored. . . . She was not beautiful, but she gave the impression of cleanliness, order, cold clean hardness, and unusual efficiency. She wore a black crpe dress, with crisp white organdie collar and cuffs, chiffon hose, and short trimmedhair.Altogethershewaspleasingbutatrifledisconcertingtolookat(109). As a model of lean capitalist efficiency, Sara Andrewss disciplined, ascetic, puritan body appears in stark contrast to Kautilyas more exotic appearance. Societies aristocraciestraditionally exempt from bourgeois codes of morality imposed on upwardlymobilewomenlikeSaraAndrewshavebeenfreetoexperiencesensuous pleasuresassociatedwiththeaesthetic.Forthearistocracy,moralityisaestheticized asBeauty.Exemptfromthediscipliningpowerofcapitalproduction,thearistocratic KautilyaentersDuBoissnovelintheformofafigurationofMatthewTownserotic fantasyatpreciselythemomenthe(selfexiledinBerlin)longsfortheintimaciesof home:
Oh, he was lonesome; lonesome and homesick with a dreadfulhomesickness.Afterall,inleavingwhite,hehadalso leftblackAmericaallthathelovedandknew.God!henever dreamedhowmuchhelovedthatsoft,brownworldwhichhe hadsocarelessly,sounregretfullycastaway.Whatwouldhe notgivetoclaspadarkhandnow,tohearasoftSouthernroll ofspeech,tokissabrowncheek?Toseewarm,brown,crinkly hair and laughing eyes. Godhe was lonesome. So utterly, terriblylonesome.AndthenhesawthePrincess.(78)

Trans/genderedasthedarkprincess,Kautilyaenterstheframeoftheherosfantasy andlongingforsexualintimacy,therebybecominganaestheticizedobjectofdesire. The novels description of the princess is akin to a formal analysis of a colorfullyexoticunseeingpainting,anobjectofthemalegaze:
Firstandaboveallcamethatsenseofcolor;intothisworldof pale yellowish and pinkish parchment, that absence of

16

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

negation of color, came, suddenly, a glow of golden brown skin. It was darker than sunlight and gold; it was lighter and livelier than brown. It was a living, glowing crimson, veiled beneath brown flesh. It called for no light and suffered no shadow,butglowedsoftlyofitsowninnerradiance....She wasslimandlithe,gracefullycurved.Unseeing,pasthimand into the struggling, noisy street, she was looking with eyes that were pools of nightliquid, translucent, haunting depthswhose brilliance made her face a glory and a glory andadream.(8)

In his transhistorical crossdressing of Kautilya, Du Bois conceals actual social, religious, and economic differences within India. As Simon Shepherd points out, each body implies atype of society.44 Tricked out as abeautiful woman, Kautilya representsasocietywheretheaesthetichasnotbeenalienatedfromKantspractical reason. The aristocratic Kautilya, transformed by her visit to revolutionary Russia, embodies both beauty and wisdom. Her body signifies a society of sensuous pleasuresthathavenotbeencompletelyexpelledbyBritishcolonialism.However,by training hiseye on thearistocraticbody, Du Boiss hero occludes those lowercaste Indianbodiesthataresubjecttothediscipliningpowerofcolonialcapitalism. Moreover, Dark Princess concludes on a mythicaesthetic note, not with materialistsolutionstoproblemsofsocialandracialinjustice,suggestingadialectical synthesis that absorbs the material and political within the spiritual. Kautilyas frequently cited ceremonial endingboth a wedding and an anointment of a new messiahcapturesthesynthesisoftheworldspirit:
Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva! Lords of Sky and Light and Love! Receive from me, daughter of my fathers back to the hundredthname,hisMajesty,MadhuChandraguptaSingh,by the will of God, Maharajah of Bwodpur and Maharajah dhirajahofSindrabad. Then from the forest, with faint and silver applause of trumpets: KingoftheSnowsofGaurisankar! ProtectorofGangatheHoly! IncarnateSonoftheBuddha! GrandMughalofUtterIndia! MessengerandMessiahtoalltheDarkerWorlds!(311)

In this penultimate speech, delivered just before the narrators Envoy, it is BeautytheDarkPrincessthatdissolvessocialandethnicdifference.Significantly, KautilyainvokesthenameofChandraguptainherritualconfirmationofthebirthof the new messiah to all the Darker Worlds.Madhus birth enacts the physical and metaphysical evolution to Hegels Absolute. In the Hegelian dialectical system, the

17

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

aestheticmovesuptheevolutionarystagetoreligion,which,inturn,reachestoward the Absolute.45 But the text of Kautilyas sermon suggests that classical India, not Greece, provides the narrative of civilizations origin. Du Boiss Dark Princess translates the metaphysical movement of the particular into this Hegelian universal by appeal to the corporeal process of sexual reproduction. Difference is dissolved intoaspiritualandembodiedunityoridentity;inthiscouplingofconceptandbody, Madhubecomestheinstantiationofuniversalessence. IntheprocessofnarratingAfricanAmericansrisefromthearchaicSouthin the blood and soil imagery of Matthews nameless mother, and Indias anticolonial struggles for national independence as acts of giving birth, Dark Princess emplots nationalist and antiracist struggles as strategies for containing womens sexuality. ThroughtheemplotmentandembodimentofIndianpoliticalphilosopherKautilyaas thefictionalPrincessKautilya,DuBoisexoticizesandfeminizesIndiaasMotherIndia, who,inconceivingandgivingbirthtoMatthewssonMadhu,becomesmothertoa futuredivinekingandtothedarkerracesoftheworld.Hegelstheoryofcivilization, likethatofFreud,distruststheabilitiesoftheworkingclasses,supporting,instead, the need for a strong charismatic leader. Similarly, Du Boiss messianic reading of freedom as a teleological progression to transcendent humanism reflects a loss of faithinsecularredemption. In a similar ideological frame to that taken by Mullen, but in an unabashed tributetoDuBoissTheSoulsofBlackFolk,VijayPrashadsTheKarmaofBrownFolk (2000)readsDuBoisscreationofDarkPrincessinthecontextofhisassociationwith the community of Indian radicals (under the leadership of Virendranath Chattopadhyay, who founded the League Against Imperialism in 1928) and he [Du Bois] certainly knew Lala Lajpat Rai.46 Although he disagrees with Du Boiss representation of the group as aristocrats, Prashad argues that this community providedthesocialandhistoricalbasisforthecharacterKautilya.IfDuBoiswasable to grasp the significance of these radical Indians, Prashad contends, perhaps he felt the need to exoticize them and to gender Asia female (17475). Prashads materialistapproach,likethatofMullen,ignoresDuBoissaestheticpoliticsandthe novelsindebtednesstoHegelsreadingofIndiaasanexoticjewel,amarveltowhich allnationsmustjourney.DarkPrincessreveals(contrarytocurrentreadingsofBlack radicalism) that Du Bois was far more ambivalent about Marxisms promise of freedomforthedarkerraces. MorerecentlyHomiBhabhahassuggestedthatDuBoismusthaveheardof MadameBhikajiCamain1907whilevacationinginEnglandandEurope:
Hadheperchance,heardtellthatverysummerofadiasporic Indian revolutionary daughter of a welltodo Parsi family fromBombay,MadameBhikajiCama,whohadlivedinexilein Europesince1902,finallysettlinginasmallpensioninParis.... InAugust1907,whileDuBoiswasin Europe, MadameCama

18

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

attended the International Socialist Congress in Stuttgart, whereshefamouslyunfurledtheIndiannationalflagwithits middle band bearing emblems to represent the Hindus, Mohammedans, Budhists [sic] and Parsisemblems that echothepassageinwhichDuBoissPrincessKautilyagathers the many peoples of India, Africa, and the Americas around thericedish.47

Inaseriesofinterrogatories,Bhabhaseemstowanttokeepalivethecosmopolitan fantasy of a romance between likeminded revolutionaries across divides of nation, ethnicity, class, and gendereven if mediated by the virtual world of print technology: Was this figure of romance and revolution the inspiration for Dark Princess? Had Du Bois read of Madame Cama as he was traveling in Europe in the summerof1907,turningfrequentlytoGermannewspapersaswashiswontwhenin Europe? Or was Madame Cama mentioned to him by her comrade and compatriot, Du Boiss faithful friend, Lala Lajpat Rai, to whom he sent the manuscript of Dark Princessforcommentandadvice?(187).Bhabhasaccountisnolessspeculativethan that of Ovington, but what I find intriguing is the tendency of critics across interpretativecommunitiesfromsocialrealisttopoststructuralisttoreadKautilya asamimeticrepresentationofanactualwoman. Efforts to turn fantasy into fact attest to the continuing tendency to read AfricanAmericanliteraturethroughanarrowsocialrealistlens.Perhapsthecuriosity generated by Du Boiss novel of romantic fantasy and political intrigue answers Prashads question, at least in part. The exoticized romantic encounter between a feminine India and a masculine African American masks some of the more problematic aspects of what Du Bois claimed as his favorite novel. Madame Cama may very well have been the woman who inspired Kautilyas politics, but it ismore likely that Du Boiss Kautilya is a composite character, cobbled together out of bits and pieces of classical literature (Indian and Greek), German aesthetic philosophy, and contemporary Indian agents residing in the United States and Europe. If no woman could fulfill Du Boiss aesthetic requirements for Beauty, Truth, and Right,hewouldhavetomanufactureone.Iamlessconcernedwiththeidentityof the real woman who inspired Princess Kautilya than with Du Boiss propaganda andhowafeminizedKautilyaadvancesaparticularideologyoftheaestheticastruth. This question raises larger issues about the gendering and sexing of cosmopolitan theories of the aesthetic, in general, and the political practice of imagining the postimperialnationasanurturingmother. Du Boiss cosmopolitan aesthetics may be understood as an ideological fantasy,asarticulatedbySlavojiek:Thefundamentallevelofideology...isnot an illusion masking a real state of things but that of an (unconscious) fantasy structuringoursocialrealityitself.48Withrespecttocosmopolitanism,socialreality, in this formulation, is guided by an illusion, by a fetishistic inversion; the self

19

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

proclaimedcosmopolitanmisrecognizestheillusionofuniversality,whichstructures his or her local social actions (32). iek maintains, the stake of socialideological fantasyistoconstructavisionofsocietywhichdoesexist,asocietywhichisnotsplit by an antagonistic division, a society in which the relation between its parts is organic, complementary (126). For example, Marxist feminist scholars of nationalismarguethattheexchangevalueofwomensreproductivebodiesbecomes central to the socialideological fantasy of the nation as an organic, homogenous whole.49 In his Lacanian salvation of Hegels dialectic, iek concludes that the notion of social fantasy is therefore a necessary counterpart to the concept of antagonism:fantasyispreciselythewaytheantagonisticfissureismasked.Inother words, fantasy is a means for an ideology to take its own failure into account in advance (126, emphasis original). Likewise, the failure of Hegels dialectical synthesisabsolutespiritismaskedthroughfantasy. DarkPrincessreadsasafancifulrealizationofHegelsabsolutespirit,theself consciousness of the whole of humanity (read as the darker races) through the reproductivebodyofawoman,Kautilya.ButitisaKautilyatrans/genderedthrough Du Boiss German Idealism and classical imagination. For it is the authors engagementwithKantianaestheticsandHegelsPhilosophyofHistorythatsetsthe novelsoveralltone,style,andplot.DespitehisreadingofhisIndiancontemporaries, Du Boiss fantasy of India cannot seem to escape the exoticism imported from his Germanphilosophicalforebears.HegelfamouslyreadIndiaasanobjectofdesire.In theHegelianthesis,ifDuBoisistofoundanAfricanAmericannation,hemusttravel through India, an exoticized and feminized land of desire. This reading of Dark Princessasaconstellationofcosmopolitanfantasiesconcludeswiththeobservation that Du Bois navigates the distance between colonial India and racially oppressed BlackAmericathroughthewombofanimaginedwoman,thetrans/genderedfigure ofhisorientalizedheroine,Kautilya. Notes 1 ClaudiaTate,introductiontoDarkPrincess:ARomance,byW.E.B.DuBois(Jackson: UniversityofMississippiPress,1995),xxiv.HereafterquotationsfromDarkPrincessare citedintext.
QuotedinClaudiaTate,PsychoanalysisandBlackNovels:DesireandtheProtocolsofRace (NewYork:OxfordUniversityPress,1998),54.
3 2

SeeMikhailBakhtin,RabelaisandHisWorld,trans.HlneIswolsky(Bloomington: IndianaUniversityPress,1984),1112,275. SeeMatthewArnold,CultureandAnarchy,ed.J.DoverWilson(Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress,1963).Forotherliteraryexamplesoftheanthropologicalnotionof culture,seeZoraNealeHurston,TheirEyesWereWatchingGod(Philadelphia:J.B.

20

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

Lippincott,1937),aswellasherethnographiesMulesandMen(Philadelphia:J.B. Lippincott,1935)andTellMyHorse(Philadelphia:J.B.Lippincott,1938);EricWalrond, TropicDeath(NewYork:CollierBooks,1972);andClaudeMcKay,BananaBottom(New York:Harper&Row,1933),inadditiontohisHometoHarlem(NewYork:Harper&Bros., 1928).ThisoftenheatedconversationbetweenDuBoisandNewNegroRenaissance writerscontinuedinthepagesofTheCrisisuntilJessieFausetwasinstalledasliterary editorandmediatorbetweenDuBoisandthecreativewriterswhodependedonthe journalsreaders.

5

ArnoldRampersad,TheArtandImaginationofW.E.B.DuBois(Cambridge,MA:Harvard UniversityPress,1976),162. Tate,Psychoanalysis,205n33.

6 7

SeeHazelV.Carby,RaceMen(Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress,1998);Farah JasmineGriffin,BlackFeministsandDuBois:Respectability,Protection,andBeyond, AnnalsoftheAmericanAcademyofPoliticalandSocialScience568(2000):2840;Joy James,TranscendingtheTalentedTenth:BlackLeadersandAmericanIntellectuals(New York:Routledge,1997);EvelynBrooksHigginbotham,RighteousDiscontent:TheWomens MovementintheBlackBaptistChurch,18801920(Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversity Press,1993);andLawrieBalfour,RepresentativeWomen:Slavery,Citizenship,and FeministTheoryinDuBoissDamnationofWomen,Hypatia20,no.3(2005):12748.

8 9

Carby,RaceMen,33.

GeorgeSantayana,TheSenseofBeauty:BeingtheOutlineofAestheticTheory(New York:Dover,1955),3,16.
10

SeeDohraAhmad,MorethanRomance:GenreandGeographyinDarkPrincess,ELH 69,no.3(2002):775803. NationalismandtheWestwasfirstpublishedbyMacmillanin1917,isnowinthe publicdomain,andhasbeenreprintedinRabindranathTagore,Nationalism(Charleston, SC:BiblioBazaar,2009). RabindranathTagore,TheHomeandtheWorld(London:Penguin,2005),vii.

11

12

W.E.B.DuBois,Darkwater:VoicesfromWithintheVeil(NewYork:WashingtonSquare Press,2004),12744.
14 15

13

Ahmad,MorethanRomance,776.

SusanBordo,UnbearableWeight:Feminism,WesternCulture,andtheBody(Berkeley: UniversityofCaliforniaPress,1993),165.
16

SeeHortenseJ.Spillers,MamasBaby,PapasMaybe:AnAmericanGrammarBook, inCultureandCountermemory:TheAmericanConnection,ed.S.P.Mohanty,special issue,Diacritics17,no.2(1987):6581;andKaraKeeling,TheWitchsFlight:TheCinematic,

21

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

theBlackFemme,andtheImageofCommonSense(Durham,NC:DukeUniversityPress, 2007). SeeImmanuelKant,TheCritiqueofJudgment,trans.J.H.Bernard(Amherst,NY: PrometheusBooks,2000);FriedrichSchiller,OntheAestheticEducationofMan:InaSeries ofLetters,trans.ReginaldSnell(London:Routledge&KeganPaul,1954),13738;and GeorgWilhelmFriedrichHegel,HegelsIntroductiontoAesthetics:BeingtheIntroduction totheBerlinAestheticsLecturesofthe1820s,trans.T.M.Knox(Oxford:ClarendonPress, 1979).

18 19 17

W.E.B.DuBois,CriteriaofNegroArt,Crisis32(1926):29097. OxfordEnglishDictionaryOnline,2nded.,s.v.Propaganda. DuBois,CriteriaofNegroArt,288.

20 21

Tate,Psychoanalysis,50. TerryEagleton,TheIdeologyoftheAesthetic(Oxford:Blackwell,1990),262.

22

SeeElizabethA.Bohls,WomenTravelWritersandtheLanguageofAesthetics,17161818 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1995);andAishaKhan,PortraitsintheMirror: Nature,Culture,andWomensTravelWritingintheCaribbean,WomensWriting10,no. 1(2003):93118.

24 25

23

DuBois,CriteriaofNegroArt,292.

Hegel,IntroductiontoAesthetics,2,emphasisoriginal. DuBois,CriteriaofNegroArt,296.

26 27

Kant,CritiqueofJudgment,100,emphasisoriginal. Eagleton,IdeologyoftheAesthetic,81. Schiller,OntheAestheticEducation,137. Eagleton,IdeologyoftheAesthetic,116.

28 29

30 31

Ahmad,MorethanRomance,776n6.ArnoldRampersadmadethesame observationinDuBoissPassagetoIndia:DarkPrincessbutdidnottakethe observationanyfurther.ArnoldRampersad,DuBoissPassagetoIndia:DarkPrincess, inW.E.B.DuBoisonRaceandCulture,ed.BernardW.Bell,EmilyR.Grosholz,andJames B.Stewart(NewYork:Routledge,1996),161. Ahmad,MorethanRomance,776.

32

ForinterpretationsofKautilyasArthasstra,seeRogerBoesche,Kautilyas ArthasstraonWarandDiplomacyinAncientIndia,JournalofMilitaryHistory67,no.1 (2003):937;RogerBoesche,TheFirstGreatPoliticalRealist:KautilyaandHisArthashastra

33

22

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

(Lanham,MD:LexingtonBooks,2002);M.V.KrishnaRao,StudiesinKautilya,2nded. (NewDelhi:MunshiRamManoharLal,1958);andRadhaKumudMookerji,Chandragupta MauryaandHisTimes,4thed.(Delhi:MotilalBanarsidass,1988[1966]).

34 35

Boesche,FirstGreatPoliticalRealist,8.

MaxWeber,PoliticsasaVocation,inMaxWeber:SelectionsinTranslation,ed.W.G. Runciman(Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1978),220.

36

SeeR.P.Kangle,trans.,TheKautiliyaArthasstra,PartII,anEnglishTranslationwith CriticalandExplanatoryNotes(Delhi:MotilalBanarsidass,1972). Kangle,KautilyaArthasstra,1.11.7:21. Rao,StudiesinKautilya,232. ArunMukherjee,emailmessagetoauthor,March1,2008.

37

38 39

40

MaryWhiteOvington,reviewofDarkPrincess,byW.E.B.DuBois,ChicagoBee,August 4,1928;quotedinRampersad,DuBoissPassage,165.

PaulGilroy,TheBlackAtlantic:ModernityandDoubleConsciousness(Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversityPress,1993),14445.
42

41

BillV.Mullen,AfroOrientalism(Minneapolis:UniversityofMinnesotaPress,2004),22. NotwithstandingDuBoisslaterinterestintheRussianexperiment,aslateasJuly1921, ClaudeMcKay,aseditorofTheLiberator,wrotetoDuBois,aseditorofTheCrisis, complainingofthelatterseditorialTheDriveanditssneerattheRussian Revolution.ClaudeMcKay,lettertotheeditor,Crisis22(1921):102.

ForareadingofMarxistaesthetics,seeEagletonsTheMarxistSublimeinEagleton, IdeologyoftheAesthetic,196233.
44 45

43

SimonShepherd,Theatre,BodyandPleasure(London:Routledge,2006),32.

SeeGeorgWilhelmFriedrichHegel,ThePhenomenologyofSpirit(Oxford:Clarendon Press,1977).

46

VijayPrashad,TheKarmaofBrownFolk(Minneapolis:UniversityofMinnesotaPress, 2000),174.

HomiK.Bhabha,GlobalMinoritarianCulture,inShadesofthePlanet:American LiteratureasWorldLiterature,ed.WaiCheeDimockandLawrenceBuell(Princeton,NJ: PrincetonUniversityPress,2007),18687.SeealsoBhabha,TheBlackSavantandthe DarkPrincess,ESQ:AJournaloftheAmericanRenaissance50,nos.13(2004):13755.

48 49

47

Slavojiek,TheSublimeObjectofIdeology(London:Verso,1989),33.

SeeGayleRubin,TheTrafficinWomen:NotesonthePoliticalEconomyofSex,in TowardanAnthropologyofWomen,ed.RaynaR.Reiter(NewYork:MonthlyReview

23

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

Press,1975);JuneNash,WhenIsmsBecomeWasms:StructuralFunctionalism,Marxism, FeminismandPostmodernism,CritiqueofAnthropology17,no.1(1997):1132;andMary P.Ryan,CradleoftheMiddleClass:TheFamilyinOneidaCounty,NewYork,17901865 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1981).

SelectedBibliography
Ahmad,Dohra.MorethanRomance:GenreandGeographyinDarkPrincess.ELH69, no.3(2002):775803. Arnold,Matthew.CultureandAnarchy.Ed.J.DoverWilson.Cambridge:Cambridge UniversityPress,1963. Bakhtin,Mikhail.RabelaisandHisWorld.Trans.HlneIswolsky.Bloomington:Indiana UniversityPress,1984. Balfour,Lawrie.RepresentativeWomen:Slavery,Citizenship,andFeministTheoryinDu BoissDamnationofWomen.Hypatia20,no.3(2005):12748. Bhabha,HomiK.TheBlackSavantandtheDarkPrincess.ESQ:AJournalofthe AmericanRenaissance50,nos.13(2004):13755. .GlobalMinoritarianCulture.InShadesofthePlanet:AmericanLiteratureas WorldLiterature,ed.WaiCheeDimockandLawrenceBuell,18495.Princeton, NJ:PrincetonUniversityPress,2007. Boesche,Roger.TheFirstGreatPoliticalRealist:KautilyaandHisArthashastra.Lanham, MD:LexingtonBooks,2002. .KautilyasArthasstraonWarandDiplomacyinAncientIndia.Journalof MilitaryHistory67,no.1(2003):937. Bohls,ElizabethA.WomenTravelWritersandtheLanguageofAesthetics,17161818. Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1995. Bordo,Susan.UnbearableWeight:Feminism,WesternCulture,andtheBody.Berkeley: UniversityofCaliforniaPress,1993. Carby,HazelV.RaceMen.Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress,1998. DuBois,W.E.B.CriteriaofNegroArt.Crisis32(1926):29097. .DarkPrincess:ARomance.Jackson:UniversityofMississippiPress,1995. .Darkwater:VoicesfromWithintheVeil.NewYork:WashingtonSquarePress, 2004. Eagleton,Terry.TheIdeologyoftheAesthetic.Oxford:Blackwell,1990.

24

Alston: Cosmopolitan Fantasies, Aesthetics, and Bodily Value: W. E. B. Du Bois's Dark Prin...

Gilroy,Paul.TheBlackAtlantic:ModernityandDoubleConsciousness.Cambridge,MA: HarvardUniversityPress,1993. Griffin,FarahJasmine.BlackFeministsandDuBois:Respectability,Protection,and Beyond.AnnalsoftheAmericanAcademyofPoliticalandSocialScience568 (2000):2840. Hegel,GeorgWilhelmFriedrich.HegelsIntroductiontoAesthetics:BeingtheIntroduction totheBerlinAestheticsLecturesofthe1820s.Trans.T.M.Knox.Oxford:Clarendon Press,1979. .ThePhenomenologyofSpirit.Oxford:ClarendonPress,1977. Higginbotham,EvelynBrooks.RighteousDiscontent:TheWomensMovementintheBlack BaptistChurch,18801920.Cambridge,MA:HarvardUniversityPress,1993. Hurston,ZoraNeale.MulesandMen.Philadelphia:J.B.Lippincott,1935. .TellMyHorse.Philadelphia:J.B.Lippincott,1938. .TheirEyesWereWatchingGod.Philadelphia:J.B.Lippincott,1937. James,Joy.TranscendingtheTalentedTenth:BlackLeadersandAmericanIntellectuals. NewYork:Routledge,1997. Kangle,R.P.,trans.TheKautiliyaArthasstra,PartII,anEnglishTranslationwithCritical andExplanatoryNotes.Delhi:MotilalBanarsidass,1972. Kant,Immanuel.TheCritiqueofJudgment.Trans.J.H.Bernard.Amherst,NY:Prometheus Books,2000. Keeling,Kara.TheWitchsFlight:TheCinematic,theBlackFemme,andtheImageof CommonSense.Durham,NC:DukeUniversityPress,2007. Khan,Aisha.PortraitsintheMirror:Nature,Culture,andWomensTravelWritinginthe Caribbean.WomensWriting10,no.1(2003):93118. McKay,Claude.BananaBottom.NewYork:Harper&Row,1933. .HometoHarlem.NewYork:Harper&Bros.,1928. Mookerji,RadhaKumud.ChandraguptaMauryaandHisTimes,4thed.Delhi:Motilal Banarsidass,1988. Mullen,BillV.AfroOrientalism.Minneapolis:UniversityofMinnesotaPress,2004. Nash,June.WhenIsmsBecomeWasms:StructuralFunctionalism,Marxism,Feminism andPostmodernism.CritiqueofAnthropology17,no.1(1997):1132 Prashad,Vijay.TheKarmaofBrownFolk.Minneapolis:UniversityofMinnesotaPress, 2000.

25

Journal of Transnational American Studies, 3(1), Article 11 (2011)

Rampersad,Arnold.TheArtandImaginationofW.E.B.DuBois.Cambridge,MA:Harvard UniversityPress,1976. .DuBoissPassagetoIndia:DarkPrincess.InW.E.B.DuBoisonRaceand Culture,ed.BernardW.Bell,EmilyR.Grosholz,andJamesB.Stewart,16176. NewYork:Routledge,1996. Rao,M.V.Krishna.StudiesinKautilya,2nded.NewDelhi:MunshiRamManoharLal,1958. Rubin,Gayle.TheTrafficinWomen:NotesonthePoliticalEconomyofSex.InToward anAnthropologyofWomen,ed.RaynaR.Reiter,157210.NewYork:Monthly ReviewPress,1975. Ryan,MaryP.CradleoftheMiddleClass:TheFamilyinOneidaCounty,NewYork,1790 1865.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1981. Santayana,George.TheSenseofBeauty:BeingtheOutlineofAestheticTheory.NewYork: Dover,1955. Schiller,Friedrich.OntheAestheticEducationofMan:InaSeriesofLetters.Trans.Reginald Snell.London:Routledge&KeganPaul,1954. Shepherd,Simon.Theatre,BodyandPleasure.London:Routledge,2006. Spillers,HortenseJ.MamasBaby,PapasMaybe:AnAmericanGrammarBook. Diacritics17,no.2(1987):6581. Tagore,Rabindranath.TheHomeandtheWorld.London:Penguin,2005. .Nationalism.Charleston,SC:BiblioBazaar,2009. Tate,Claudia.PsychoanalysisandBlackNovels:DesireandtheProtocolsofRace.NewYork: OxfordUniversityPress,1998. Walrond,Eric.TropicDeath.NewYork:CollierBooks,1972. Weber,Max.PoliticsasaVocation.InMaxWeber:SelectionsinTranslation,ed.W.G. Runciman,21225.Cambridge:CambridgeUniversityPress,1978. iek,Slavoj.TheSublimeObjectofIdeology.London:Verso,1989.

26