Lettres de l’Inde

: Fictional Histories as Colonial Discourse

OCTAVE MIRBEAU’S

LETTRES DE L’INDE

:FICTIONAL HISTORIES AS COLONIAL DISCOURSE

Robert Young defines the imperialist and colonial projects as distinct practices of expansionism: “Colonialism functioned as an activity on the periphery…[I]mperialism on theother hand, operated from the center as a policy of state, driven by the grandiose projects of power” (16-17). Although Mirbeau’s

Lettres de l’Inde

, a series of 11 letters supposedly written inIndia but, in truth, composed in France and published in

Le Gaulois

and the

Journal des Débats

in 1885 are inspired by what Young calls “grandiose projects of power,”

they equally aspire to ananalysis of colonial affairs as, supposedly, researched at the periphery. In other words, Mirbeauuses colonial discourse in the hopes of furthering a radically imperialist agenda. Instead of opting for a tract, he seemingly de-politicizes his text by restricting the level of its involvement tothat of a sophisticated

journal de bord

, his political message veiled by the beauty of the landscapeand the scandalous suffering of the British-ruled Hindus. Mirbeau’s conflation of the colonialand the imperial as defined by Young allows for the creation of a most powerful discourse,anchored in the authority of spectatorship and suffused by the didacticism of political theory. Thetwo are by no means mutually exclusive; they are, in fact, mutually reinforcing. In Mirbeau’scase, however, it is crucial not to lose sight of the fact that the eyewitness/colonial portion of his project is in its intellectual intent entirely fictitious. Although it is based on a number of historically legitimate textual sources

and corresponds to historical facts fairly accurately, it useslanguage not at the moment of its intersection with the material world but rather in view of thelatter’s production. Mirbeau’s discourse is not an act of language as historical event, interactingand interrelating with material circumstance (Young 398); it is, on the contrary, what, accordingto Young, Foucault’s discourse never meant to signify : “Foucault’s very radical notion of discourse is primarily directed away from any form of textualism, textual idealism, texts asdisembodied artefacts, or intertextuality, toward a concept of the materiality of language in everydimension” (398). The

Lettres de l’Inde

series, however, is not “disembodied.” Mirbeau’s text ishosted in a valid discursive body, namely that of newspaper journalism. It is thus reinserted intothe larger frame of colonial discourse and as such becomes a locus for generating political power.In other words, a fictional text with a real agenda is manipulated by political power structures in place — Deloncle and his Jules Ferry connection in Mirbeau’s case — into discourse which bydefinition intersects with material reality generating what is now an excess of power, while the political program is to be cloaked by literature.1

Lettres de l’Inde

: Fictional Histories as Colonial Discourse

Who, then, assumes the excess of power generated in the fault line of text and materialreality ? Young describes imperialism as a dynamic system predicated on the model of capitalistrivalry : “Imperialism was a dynamic, never a static system, and reflected in its international basisthe expansive process of production and consumption that mature capitalism had introduced intothe world economic structure” (31). Although these capitalist processes of production andconsumption are antagonistic in nature, they are all successfully inscribed within the frame of thedynamic system that is imperialism. Antagonism, in other words, does not consume existing power, it, in fact, increases it. Imperialist discourse is, to a certain extent, sustained by political,social, and economic clashes. Young’s discussion of British association as opposed to Frenchassimilation (31-32) as political practice underlines the Foucauldian premise that discoursesoperate in “unstable environments of change and transformation” (Young 403). In fact, Foucaulthimself suggests that unstable discursive practices produce power : “ . . . il faut concevoir lediscours comme une série de segments discontinus dont la fonction tactique n’est ni uniforme nistable . . . Le discours véhicule et produit du pouvoir ; il le renforce, mais aussi le mine,l’expose, le rend fragile et permet de le barrer” (

Histoire de la sexualité I : La volonté de savoir

133). This argument allows for the assertion that overt colonial antagonism, at times involvingwarfare, as practiced by colonizing states at the end of the nineteenth century in Africa as well asin the Indian subcontinent and the Far East, was, in fact, not an elimination game but rather anaffirmation of imperialist projects. Foucault has argued that knowing and unveiling sexualityempowers societal structures meant to control and subject : “ . . . la sexualité s’est définie commeétant ‘par nature’ : un domaine pénétrable à des processus pathologiques, et appelant donc desinterventions de thérapeutiques ou de normalisation ; . . . un foyer de relations causalesindéfinies, une parole obscure qu’il faut à la fois débusquer et écouter” (92). The same can besaid of knowing, describing and assuming the power of the colonized within the larger frame of colonial antagonism. Penetrability of the other’s space and normalization of his ontological and political status are at the core of colonial discourse. Although practices may differ greatly and attimes clash, power is redistributed among the agents of colonization, in part because, as Foucaultsuggests, cause-effect relations are rationalized in ways that encourage a persistently horizontalexpansion — a hierarchically vertical relationship to the racial other could open the door for whatBhabha has defined as colonial mimicry, in other words, “an immanent threat to both‘normalized’ knowledges and disciplinary powers” (86). This active colonial negotiation thenempowers the more abstract, more theoretical imperialist discourse inviting it in turn to inform itsown discursive practices creating in truth a closed circuit of signification capable of producingthe real : “Il faut cesser de toujours décrier les effets du pouvoir en termes négatifs : il ‘exclut’, il‘réprime’, il ‘refoule’, il ‘censure’, il ‘abstrait’, il ‘masque’, il ‘cache’. En fait le pouvoir produit; il produit du réel ; il produit des domaines d’objets et des rituels de vérité. L’individu et la2

Lettres de l’Inde

: Fictional Histories as Colonial Discourse

connaissance qu’on peut en prendre relèvent de cette production” (

Surveiller et punir

196). If oscillation-as-conflict and the ensuing gains and losses is what allows discourses to inhabit givensocietal and political structures without ever exhausting themselves, then the French distrust of and opposition to British colonial policies as “witnessed” by Mirbeau in India should beinterpreted as yet another discourse aimed at solidifying colonial rule. As long as power isnegotiated in discursive modes that exclude the racial other by revealing him, the discovery of the“pauvre petit hindou,” victim of the British, empowers both colonial rulers’ imperialist project bymeans of discursive and linguistic subjection. As Foucault suggests, there is nothing discursivelynegative about the victimization of the colonized. It is, in fact, a fairly productive practice insofar as it covertly advocates colonial confrontation which will subsequently yield power. In thesubject’s discontent and resistance the Frenchman does not discern a desire to assume the excessof colonial power but rather a cry for help. Mirbeau’s letters fabricate a historical moment’sauthenticity under the false pretence of knowledge proving that colonial discourses, althoughnever “disembodied imaginative representation[s],” (Young 400) may develop languages capableof producing History. Once reinserted into the real by means of valid discursive media — serious journalism in Mirbeau’s case — they are as effective in their exercise of power as any other discursive manifestation of the material world.Mirbeau’s

Lettres de l’Inde

textually stage the dynamic oscillation Foucault and Youngdiscuss by both opposing and praising the British colonial model. The first letter which issupposedly written on board the

Saghalien

as it approaches Egypt is a good example of whatappears to be vehement anti-British criticism and naïve pro-French propaganda : “[l’Egypte]s’attriste par la dureté du spectacle d’une population affamée, rongée par la vermine anglaise,sans espoir et sans lendemain” (27). The author concludes : “Et nous nous disons que les Anglaisont beau occuper Port Saïd, Ismaïlia, Suez lui-même, depuis que nous avons Rass-Sejan, depuisqu’ils sont impuissants à tenir la mer Rouge, leur occupation du canal n’est qu’un leurre” (28).Although both quotes seem to detect and castigate British weaknesses in colonizing practices andaccept a

de facto

superiority of the French, they, in fact, suggest a rift not between France and itsrival, but rather between the two colonizers and the indigenous population. The sublime,symbolical Egypt rising over its own people and lamenting their fate is a very effective colonialdiscursive strategy insofar as it multiplies the distance between the colonized people and theFrench onlooker. We are left to assume that if the French were in charge of Egypt, that samedisembodied entity, a relic of its past and a projection of exoticism at the same time, would havemediated the narrator’s discourse. In other words, the nationality of the colonizer is irrelevant tothe subjection of the Egyptian people as colonial practice. This is further substantiated by thecomplete effacement of the land and the people in the narrator’s appraisal of power distribution inthe area, a prediction that assumes two players and the impossibility of local involvement. The3