The Ruling Passion: British Colonial Allegory and the Paradox of Homosexual Desire [Paperback]

Christopher Lane (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 1995

In The Ruling Passion, Christopher Lane examines the relationship between masculinity, homosexual desire, and empire in British colonialist and imperialist fictions at the turn of the twentieth century. Questioning the popular assumption that Britain’s empire functioned with symbolic efficiency on sublimated desire, this book presents a counterhistory of the empire’s many layers of conflict and ambivalence.
Through attentive readings of sexual and political allegory in the work of Kipling, Forster, James, Beerbohm, Firbank, and others—and deft use of psychoanalytic theory—The Ruling Passion interprets turbulent scenes of masculine identification and pleasure, power and mastery, intimacy and antagonism. By foregrounding the shattering effects of male homosexuality and interracial desire, and by insisting on the centrality of unconscious fantasy and the death drive, The Ruling Passion examines the startling recurrence of colonial failure in narratives of symbolic doubt and ontological crisis. Lane argues compellingly that Britain can progress culturally and politically only when it has relinquished its residual fantasies of global mastery.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Lane’s readings are carried out at a considerably higher level of intellectual sophistication than one finds in most recent work that has dealt with issues of masculinity in imperialist and colonialist fictions."—Michael Moon, Duke University

"Lane’s work displays a quite astonishing intellect. The Ruling Passion is expertly researched, demonstrates an authoritative command of theoretical knowledge, and advances our understanding of the complexities involved in representing cross-cultural and cross-class homosocial and homosexual desire. It is a highly original work of considerable academic stature in the rapidly developing field of gay male cultural criticism."—Joseph Bristow, University of York

About the Author

Christopher Lane is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: Duke University Press Books (October 10, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0822316897
• ISBN-13: 978-0822316893
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,442,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christopher Lane teaches literature at Northwestern University and is a recent Guggenheim fellow. A London-born literary critic and intellectual historian, his work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, Slate, Chronicle Review, and many other newspapers and periodicals. He is the author of, most recently, The Age of Doubt: Tracing the Roots of Our Religious Uncertainty (Yale, 2011). His other books include Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness (Yale, 2007), winner of the Prescrire Prize for Medical Writing (France) and highly commended by the British Medical Association, translated into French, Spanish, Danish, Japanese, and Korean.

He writes a popular blog for Psychology Today called "Side Effects" (recent posts appear to the right). He also writes regularly for the Huffington Post.