1. English Identity:
modernism, race and sexuality
Francis Gilbert Goldsmiths

2. Learning objectives
• To revisit/revise some of the key
issues/theories/texts brought up so far
• To consolidate our ideas about post-c0lonialism
and post-modernism
• To explore some of the issues connected with
race and sexuality within the context of
modernist and postmodernist thinkers and
writers;

3. Recap
• What are some of things you‟ve learnt on this
course so far?
• What has interested you the most? Why?
• What have you found challenging and why?

4. What do you know?
• What do you know about modernism and post-
modernism?

5. Modernism – the guitar player

6. Modernist architecture

7. Modernist representations of “reality”

8. Modernist representations of the city
• Unreal City,
• Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
• A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
• I had not thought death had undone so many.
• Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
• And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.
• Flowed up the hill and down King William Street,
• To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours
• With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine.
• There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying “Stetson!
• You who were with me in the ships at Mylae!
• That corpse you planted last year in your garden,
• Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year?”

9. Key ideas
• A concentration upon new forms of
representation
• An obsession with “form”:
poetic, architectural, artistic, musical
• A rejection of “realist” depictions of the world
• An exploration of multiple forms of alienation
• A terrible sense of alienation from the industrial
modern world
• A tendency to romanticise the past; to seek
spiritual salvation there, eg Forster

10. Your thoughts…
• Do you have any particular thoughts or views on
race and racism? Have you read any writers that
are striking in this regard?

11. Modernism: Truth, race and elitism
• A fascination and belief that art can unearth
fundamental truths about the world
• A distinct hierarchy in culture
• High art is very distinct from popular culture
• A belief that there is an elite that can have access to
the truth
• This elite is always alienated from the mainstream
society
• A profound interest in “race”; that there are
“essential” racial identities, eg Forster, Yeats, Eliot

12. Your thoughts
• Do you have any views about sexuality? How
important is sexuality in defining oneself? What
role does it play in shaping one‟s identity?

13. Sexuality and modernism
• There is a growing frankness about human
sexuality; an exploration of Freud‟s ideas in the
writings of DH Lawrence; James Joyce; even
Eliot.
• But there is much that is still “taboo”:
homosexuality
• A fear of female sexuality permeates much of the
literature

14. Activity
• What do you think modernism is?
• How would you define it?
• Have you experienced it in your own life/reading
etc?
• Why do you think so many modernist were both
sexist and possibly racist in their views?
• Why did many flirt with or explicitly support
fascism?

15. Forster: the modernist?
• Pg 172: “she would double her kingdom by
opening the door that concealed the stairs.
• Not she thought of the map of Africa; of empires;
of her father; of the two supreme
nations, streams of whose life warmed her
blood, but, mingling, had cooled her brain. She
paced back into the hall, and as she did so the
house reverberated.”
• What does this passage tell us about the context
of the time?

16. Realizing England at Howards End
• Pg 174: “She recaptured her sense of space, which is
the basis of all earthly beauty, and, starting from
Howards End she attempted to realize England. She
failed…But an unexpected love of the island awoke
in her, connecting on this side with the joys of the
flesh, on that with the inconceivable. Helen and her
father had known this love, poor Leonard Bast was
groping after it, but it had been hidden from
Margaret until this afternoon.”
• What does Howards End awaken in Margaret? Why
does Forster focus upon this moment?

17. Contextual factors
• Len Platt, „Germanism, the Modern and
“England” – 1880–1930: a literary overview‟
in Modernism and Race (2011).
• Pg 32, Platt: “HE…worries away about defining
culture in an age of degeneration.”

18. Literary and cultural background
• “Aryanised Celticism”
• 1853, Grammatica Celtica, Johann Caspar
Zeuss, trying to prove the Celtic language was
Indo-European and therefore “Aryan”.

19. The Wilcox family
• Pg 32: “For all its authority, the mercantile
Wilcox identity is obviously limited and
compromised – even fragile.”
• The New Woman identity counters the Wilcox
identity; the feminised world of England is its
new identity?
• Modern, feminised and German…

20. Anglo-Saxon England
• Revisionist and Celtic?
• The true England is represented by Mrs Wilcox
and her country house with its path that the
Kings of Mercia travelled down and its “wych-
elm”?
• Invoking an ancient “Anglo-Saxon” identity for
England, linking it with its antique German past.
• Devoted to spiritualised vision of England‟s past;
belief in the ancient feudal order of England…

21. The attack on the suburbs
• Withering attack on Leonard Bast
• Mythologised feudalism
• Mysterious belief in the powers of a pseudo-
mystical landlordism…
• Vision of a revised past; not a new future…

22. Forster’s ideal English identity
• Pg 33: “For all the attempted assimilation of
commercial individualism to tradition and authentic
culture, it is clear that Forster‟s ideal social
organisation, and national identity, remain
essentially rooted in the past and firmly linked to
ideas about social obligation and distinction…Here a
contented neo-peasantry, the hybrid he despises as
„England‟s hope…half-clod hopper, half boardschool
prig‟, serves under those who have the „wisdom‟ to
worship the past, „that wisdom‟ Forster says, „that
we give the clumsy name of aristocracy.‟”

23. Activity
• What do you think of the attitudes implicit in
Forster‟s novel?
• Revisit your notes that you made on what
England means to you; do you have anything to
add to them? Any more thoughts?

24. Forster and sexuality
• Forster has a vision of a better “feminised”
England; a spiritual place which is “mothered”
by a Mrs Wilcox…
• He suppressed a major novel Maurice because it
explored the topic of homosexuality; it was
published after his death…

25. Sexuality and English identity
• Wide Sargasso Sea: Rochester is disgusted but
attracted by Antoinette‟s sexuality
• Small Island: Bernard disgusted by Queenie‟s
sexual desire
• Howards End: sexual attraction threatens the
very fabric of the society

26. Activity
• Is there a sexual component to English identity?
• What are these novels saying about sexuality do
you think?
• Race and sexuality: do these novels explore the
ways in which these two factors inter-sect?

27. Postmodernism

28. Writers: Wide Sargasso Sea

29. The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living by Damien
Hurst

30. Postmodernism
• Playful in its exploration of “form”
• Full of quotations from popular culture
• Rejecting distinction between “high” and “low” art
• Inter-textual
• A delight in “hybrid” identities: rejection of
“essentialism”
• Multiple voices
• Often political: postcolonial; feminist; queer
• Crossing boundaries/genres: the YouTube poem;
the novel that responds to another…

31. Questioning “essentialism”
• Is there any such thing as “literature”? What is
it?
Is there any subject thing as the “true self”? Are
we all social constructs?
• Are all our attitudes and beliefs “socially
constructed”?
• We are all “mediums” for a shared social
language

32. Important “postmodern” thinkers have
worked in the “postcolonial” field
• Lamming: the myth of English
supremacy, predicated upon certain cultural
assumptions that have subjugated colonial
subjects…
• Spivak – the impossibility of the subaltern
“speaking”, making their views known from a
position of equality; always the “Other”, the invisible
one…
• Said – the discourses of colonialism have filtered
into every sphere: science, anthropology, art

33. Trainspotting
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1tJJO_pV
vQ&feature=related
• What do you think this clip tells us about
Scottish identity, and the issue of national
identity in general?

34. This is England
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8uAtsaPO-
E&feature=related
• What do you think makes this a post-modern
film?

35. Postmodern and sexuality
• Foucalt an important thinker
• A much greater openness and honesty about
sexuality
• An acknowledgement that sexuality is a key
component of an individual‟s and nation‟s
identity but that there are no easy definitions, eg
questioning the labels we give different sexual
groups…

36. Queer theory
• Foucault noted that a vague grouping of actions
were replaced by a group of sexual categories and
questioned whether this was justified or meaningful;
is it enough to speak of heterosexual and
homosexual or is this binary either/or not enough to
account for the varieties of human behaviour? Even
if we add other designations, the same question
remains: are we describing divisions that actually
exist or instead forcing individuals into moulds that
they do not fit? What are the consequences of the
latter, especially for those questioning their
sexuality? Queer theory studies these and other
similar questions.

37. Tying things together
• What are your views on modernism and
postmodernism?
• What do you think you have learnt about
race, sexuality and English identity from this
session?