Undoing Colonialism from the Inside: Performative Turns in the Short Stories of Leonard Woolf and E. M. Forster

This paper begins from reading seemingly colonial quest narratives in the short stories of Leonard Woolf and E. M. Forster side by side. Focusing on the erotic encounter between the colonizer and the colonized in the travel narratives of Leonard Woolf and E. M. Forster, we take a glimpse of the imperial gaze and colonial violence inflicted on the colonized. The capitalist economics of the British Empire exclude the body of the colonized and its specificity, while reproducing the stereotyped images of the colonized. However, Jessop’s narrative that focuses on Reynolds’ quest for a ‘real life’ while trivializing Celestinahami’s victimization in “A Tale Told by Moonlight” unveils a narrative lacuna. Similarly, Paul Pinmay’s pursuit of ‘the life to come’ that is performed with his desire for power over Vithobai in Forster’s “The Life to Come” ultimately reveals a colonial porosity that ironizes the colonizer’s desire. The spectre of death that persists in both stories discloses the possibility of the subversion of the power relationship seated in the colonial quest. The ambivalent mimicry of the colonial paradigm by Celestinahami and Vithobai destabilizes Reynolds’s and Jessop’s as well as Pinmay’s racist and capitalist economy, revealing the Western characters’ complicity with the imperial project. Woolf and Forster undo colonialism, adopting literary devices such as double narratives, irony, satire, and mimicry. They explore the dynamics of colonialism from the inside and disclose the violence of colonial desire and, at the same time, open up a possibility of subversive resistance from the colonized.