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273 Pages·2016·1.87 MB·English

UC Irvine
UC Irvine Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Title
Anarchistic Hermeneutics of Utopian Desires in the Late Nineteenth Century: Defining,
Narrating, and Reading Anarchism
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5hk0r4wg
Author
Oda, Toru
Publication Date
2016

Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation
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UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,
IRVINE

Anarchistic Hermeneutics of Utopian Desires in the Late Nineteenth Century: Defining,
Narrating, and Reading Anarchism

DISSERTATION

submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

in Comparative Literature

by

Toru Oda

Dissertation Committee:
Associate Professor Adriana M. Johnson, Chair
Associate Professor Eyal Amiran
Professor Rei Terada

2016
© 2016 Toru Oda
DEDICATION

To

my parents, my brother, and my grandmother

"Ich hätte Ihnen so viel zu erzählen, daß Ich nicht [weiß] wo anfangen. Auch weiß ich nicht, was
ich Ihnen tatsächlich schon geschrieben habe, und was nur im Gedanken erzählt."

Berg an Wiesengrund-Adorno. Wien, 2. 5. 1927

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN CITATIONS iv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v

CURRICULUM VITAE vi

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION vii

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER 1:
Anarchist Anxieties:
Defining Anarchism, Reading Anarchistically 27

CHAPTER 2:
Anarchistic Disciplines:
Revisiting Past Anarchism after Post-Anarchism 70

CHAPTER 3:
Émile Zola’s Ends of Naturalist Historical Representation:
Wishful Narrative Conclusions in Le Docteur Pascal and Les Rougon-Macquart 110

CHAPTER 4:
Peter Kropotkin’s Naturalist Ethics:
Anarchist Hermeneutics of Already Existing Communist Feelings and Practices 167

AFTERWORD
Anarchist Trouble: For Anarchistic Hermeneutics and Historiography 220

Works Cited 237

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS USED IN CITATIONS

CB Kropotkin, The Conquest of Bread and Other Writings.
Cor Zola, Correspondance. 10 vols.
CWWM Morris, The Collected Works of William Morris. 24 vols.
EE Kropotkin, Evolution and Environment.
“EN” Kropotkin, “The Ethical Need of the Present Day.”
FW Kropotkin, Fugitive Writings.
KRP Kropotkin, Kropotkin’s Revolutionary Pamphlets.
MA Kropotkin, Mutual Aid.
OC Zola, Œuvres complètes. 12 vols.
RM Zola, Les Rougon-Macquart. 5 vols.
WR Kropotkin, Words of a Rebel.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I would like to express the deepest appreciation to my committee chair, Professor Adriana M.
Johnson, who has shown an unwavering support for my dissertation project, encouraging me
both emotionally and intellectually when I was sinking into self-doubt and nearly drowned there.
Her critical feedback on earlier drafts always salvaged me from drifting away into a dark torrent
of infinite digressions and endless footnotes to which I was constantly seduced. Without her
unerring navigation this dissertation would have stranded and broken into pieces at any stage of
planning, researching, writing, revising, and editing. I would also like to thank my committee
members, Professor Eyal Amiran and Professor Rei Terada, for their intellectual generosity and
hospitality which greatly assuaged my anxieties on writing a dissertation about anarchism,
because such an inauthentic topic could have suffered from chilling indifference, even stern
disapproval, from less sympathetic souls. No words can fully communicate the depth of my
gratefulness for their warm, most welcoming atmosphere. I sincerely regret that I did not take
advantage of chances they would have so willingly offered me if only I had asked them.

I would like to express the profoundest appreciation to Japan-United States Educational
Commission (JUSEC), which offered me a prestigious Fulbright Grant. I also would like to thank
my past advisors at the University of Tokyo, Professor Yasunari Takada and Professor Tadashi
Uchino, who never tired of pushing me to study abroad. Without their strong encouragements, I
would have never imagined applying to graduate school in the US. In addition, I am grateful to
my senior colleagues and friends, Motonori Sato and Hiromasa Wakita, for those unforgettable
hours of reading modernist literature together, which prepared me for graduate study in the US.
A special thanks goes to Kohki and Tsugumi Watabe, who patiently listened to my still inchoate
ideas and commented on them in a productive manner.

I wish I could mention all the people I came across at UCI. However, some names would
inevitably go unmentioned. I therefore give up comprehensiveness to talk about only a handful.
In early years of my graduate study, I had many great late night conversations and email
correspondences with Brandon Granier. I also want to thank three adorable couples, Ben and Liz
Aaron, Eddy Troy and Jamie Rogers, and Tamara Beauchamp and Ben Garceau, who welcomed
me to their tables. I greatly enjoyed their hospitality, which made my isolated existence more
bearable. I am also grateful of the UCI Travel Grant which allowed me to give a presentation far
away from the campus. Lastly, I heartily appreciate Bindya Baliga for various kinds of
paperwork, which literally helped me survive graduate study up to this very last moment.

I would like to thank my parents for their financial support, but my debt to them is heavier. No
doubt my dissertation project began more than a decade ago, on that fatal date when my father
asked my help to translate Emma Goldman’s autobiography, Living My Life. A few years later,
another critical call came from him, suggesting I translate Le Docteur Pascal by Émile Zola. The
very next day I found a paperback copy of the novel in a second-hand bookstore, purchased it,
and immediately began to translate. I shudder retrospectively at my brave ignorance and admire
my reckless bravery, because I knew almost nothing about anarchism or naturalism at that time.
But perhaps only with such a blind engagement one could begin something truly unexpected,
unpredictable, and ennobling. This dissertation, then, is perhaps a return gift to my father.
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CURRICULUM VITAE

Toru Oda

2003 B.A. in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, University of Tokyo

2006 M.A. in Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies, University of Tokyo

2011 M.A. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine

2016 Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine

FIELD OF STUDY

Critical Theory, Nineteenth-Century Fiction, Fictionalism, Naturalism, Utopian Literature,
Historiography, Hermeneutics, Marxism, Anarchism

GRANTS

2008-10 Fulbright Grant, Japan-United States Educational Commission (JUSEC)

2015 Travel Grant, University of California, Irvine

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ABSTRACT OF DISSERTATION

Anarchistic Hermeneutics of Utopian Desires in the Late Nineteenth Century: Defining,
Narrating, and Reading Anarchism

By

Toru Oda

Doctor of Philosophy in Comparative Literature

University of California, Irvine, 2016

Associate Professor Adriana M. Johnson, Chair

My dissertation articulates late-nineteenth-century anarchism as effective and discursive
events that problematize certain modern tendencies that are, from the anarchist perspective,
coercive, oppressive, and self-destructive. In order to go beyond what is traditionally understood
by the term “anarchism,” this dissertation questions this name itself which has been almost
coerced to incorporate nearly contradictory meanings and almost incommensurable positions,
while embodying utopian reveries. Chapter One examines various forms and expressions of
anarchist anxieties that creep into discussions of defining and giving an historical account of
anarchism, but it also takes such anxieties as creative moments, foregrounding their troubling
nature in discursive sites. By drawing on the method of problematization, developed by Michel
Foucault, Chapter Two addresses the problem of articulating anarchism as a discipline,
especially recent attempts by several post-anarchists who reconsider traditional anarchist
thematics in postmodern terms. Calling into question their philosophizing orientations, it
displaces the post-anarchist critique of past anarchism as essentialist and revisits both anew with
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the concepts of fiction and as if, elaborated by Hans Vaihinger. It proposes to read classical
anarchism as explanatory fiction, where the reliance on essentialist constructs should not be seen
as a sign of theoretical laziness but as narrative justifications with historically available givens
and means. Chapters Three and Four offer close readings of the leading nineteenth-century
authors, Émile Zola and Peter Kropotkin, respectively. Foregrounding oft-overlooked affective
intersections with anarchist aspirations for betterment and justice, Chapter Three takes Le
Doctuer Pascal, the last volume of Les Rougon-Macquart, as Zola’s narrative response to the
destabilizing anarchist wishes. It also uses the novel to develop an anarchistic hermeneutics that
defies the pre-existing disciplinary expectations and authorial intensions, revealing Zola’s
wishful fiction of the fraternal primary being that could still appear within the naturalist logic of
the historical novel. Chapter Four takes Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid as exemplifying anarchistic
hermeneutics of reading the here and now reality almost against the grain and underscoring
already existing communist feelings and practices. By reconsidering the question of anarchist
trouble and examining Walter Benjamin’s philosophy of history, the Afterword concludes by
making a case for anarchist historiography and hermeneutics.

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