Kipling
So everyone has probably noticed that my fan-identity bears some relation to Kipling - I picked my nick when I was about 16 or 17, and back then named myself after one of my cats, who is named, in turn, after Bagheera from the Jungle Books. My first contact with the Jungle Books was via the Disney Movie and the vaguely related spin-off about Baloo the Bear in which he was a pilot (what WAS up with that? And does anyone remember the little kid bear with the air-surfboard thing?) but pretty soon I got my little hands on a Kipling edition and devoured both Jungle Books. I'll never know where the Kipling came from: it may have belonged to my Dad, but he's dead and I can't ask him if he read and liked Kipling. I have asked my mother, because for a long time I assumed it belonged to her, since she studied a few semesters of Indology and the other India-related books (the Mahabharata, books on Indian history and mythology, a Sanskrit textbook etc.) we own belong to her, but she claims to never even have read any Kipling. That first Kipling edition I read is long gone, lost in a move or something, but at some point during my teens I aquired another Kipling edition, this time including other things, among them "Kim". Again, I don't know where I got it from, but I still have it, and about a million stains attest to the fact that I loved it.
Anyway, so when we had to pick the topics for our oral exams, one of which is "an English/American author", I picked Kipling, despite never having dealt with him in an academic context. Kipling isn't widely read or taught at university, at least not in Germany, because obviously he is massively out of fashion due to being a giant imperialist. I picked him for three reasons: 1) I know his main works pretty much by heart, 2) he has written copious poetry and I needed to tick that box, 3) I know my examiner likes Kipling (yes, I AM a massive opportunist sometimes).
It's difficult of course to deal with an author whose writing you love and at the same time recognize as something you can't and shouldn't entirely sympathize with, someone whose political views (not just on Empire, but also on nationalism, education and gender) are often completely opposed to your own and who would probably be horribly offensive if met in real life. It's made even more difficult by a (late) and strange understanding as to why (probably) I like Kipling so much, brought about by a combination of dealing with my own childhood and parents in therapy and reading critical writing on Kipling.
Some of the things that form the psychological backbone of Kipling's writing are the fact that he was sent to England at age six to be raised by strangers in an unhappy environment - separation and deprivation - resulting in an idealisation of the place where he was with his parents and where they still remained (India) and fantasies of surrogate families/parents (as seen in Kim, the Jungle Books and Stalky&Co). Then Kipling grew up in a Victorian homosocial environment, and as a result (mommy issues, general atmosphere of misogyny and lack of contact with women) Kipling seems to have had a very strange relationship to women. In some of his writings they hardly appear at all, in others, they are surprisingly fully-fleshed characters with their own flaws and desires (say what you want about Kipling, but I still find his portrayals of women - and men - far less annoying and offensive than, say, those in "Dracula", to pick something contemporary) but usually confined to their socially acceptable role as "help-meet", and in some rare cases, they are seen as causing massive issues for the male protagonists by refusing that role. Kipling idealized masculinity and male friendship - his school environment encouraged this - but he himself was the nerdy kid who was bullied and loved books more than sports. Kipling's children's fiction (Kim, the Jungle Books, Stalky, the Pook Books) can be read as Imperialist ideology, as coming of age tales or how-to manuals for the perfect servants of the Empire Kipling envisioned (basically lots of little Lawrences of Arabia), but they can also be read as the escapist fantasies of a boy trying to deal with a fairly traumatic childhood.
It's easy to see why the fantasies about child-heroes in an Eden-like place filled with potential surrogate parents appealed to me as a child and still do now. My parents were divorced as long as I can remember, and neither of them were as available as I needed them to be for various reasons, plus the situation got worse because of my father's drinking problem, so that my early childhood, compared to my preteens and teens, was still much better. Kipling's vision of India as seen in "Kim" is a construct (I've read an article by an Indian academic on the many inaccuracies of Kim, and how Kipling clearly imagined himself far more expert on Indian life and language than he actually was) the same way we all re-construct our childhoods, especially when we're idealizing them. And by moving in with my Mom when I was eleven, I also moved from a childhood where I spent a lot of time playing outside, spending time with animals, and playing either with boys or other tomboy girls, to a life in the inner city where I spent most of my time inside, quickly became a couch potato and tried, but failed, to become part of a girl-only clique. I always wanted to be one of the cool kids even though most things the cool kids liked were completely different from what I liked. I also felt that I was stuck between worlds - working class and middle class, male and female, mother and father - so this part of the colonial narrative resonated for me as well. Plus I associate India with my mother, in particular, with the path in life I've always secretly wished my mother could have taken, i.e. become an academic, which is unhelpful in regards to the pernicious east=female equation embraced by Imperialism.
In conclusion, I probably should have kept my hands off Kipling in an academic context, because for all its exoticism some of it is too close to home, but it's still interesting to see WHY I like it so much, and how entirely different circumstances can still lead to similar psychological patterns. Of course they can, otherwise we wouldn't still enjoy literature written centuries ago or in different countries, but in this case I find this kinship especially odd and uncomfortable but at the same time fascinating.
Anyway, so when we had to pick the topics for our oral exams, one of which is "an English/American author", I picked Kipling, despite never having dealt with him in an academic context. Kipling isn't widely read or taught at university, at least not in Germany, because obviously he is massively out of fashion due to being a giant imperialist. I picked him for three reasons: 1) I know his main works pretty much by heart, 2) he has written copious poetry and I needed to tick that box, 3) I know my examiner likes Kipling (yes, I AM a massive opportunist sometimes).
It's difficult of course to deal with an author whose writing you love and at the same time recognize as something you can't and shouldn't entirely sympathize with, someone whose political views (not just on Empire, but also on nationalism, education and gender) are often completely opposed to your own and who would probably be horribly offensive if met in real life. It's made even more difficult by a (late) and strange understanding as to why (probably) I like Kipling so much, brought about by a combination of dealing with my own childhood and parents in therapy and reading critical writing on Kipling.
Some of the things that form the psychological backbone of Kipling's writing are the fact that he was sent to England at age six to be raised by strangers in an unhappy environment - separation and deprivation - resulting in an idealisation of the place where he was with his parents and where they still remained (India) and fantasies of surrogate families/parents (as seen in Kim, the Jungle Books and Stalky&Co). Then Kipling grew up in a Victorian homosocial environment, and as a result (mommy issues, general atmosphere of misogyny and lack of contact with women) Kipling seems to have had a very strange relationship to women. In some of his writings they hardly appear at all, in others, they are surprisingly fully-fleshed characters with their own flaws and desires (say what you want about Kipling, but I still find his portrayals of women - and men - far less annoying and offensive than, say, those in "Dracula", to pick something contemporary) but usually confined to their socially acceptable role as "help-meet", and in some rare cases, they are seen as causing massive issues for the male protagonists by refusing that role. Kipling idealized masculinity and male friendship - his school environment encouraged this - but he himself was the nerdy kid who was bullied and loved books more than sports. Kipling's children's fiction (Kim, the Jungle Books, Stalky, the Pook Books) can be read as Imperialist ideology, as coming of age tales or how-to manuals for the perfect servants of the Empire Kipling envisioned (basically lots of little Lawrences of Arabia), but they can also be read as the escapist fantasies of a boy trying to deal with a fairly traumatic childhood.
It's easy to see why the fantasies about child-heroes in an Eden-like place filled with potential surrogate parents appealed to me as a child and still do now. My parents were divorced as long as I can remember, and neither of them were as available as I needed them to be for various reasons, plus the situation got worse because of my father's drinking problem, so that my early childhood, compared to my preteens and teens, was still much better. Kipling's vision of India as seen in "Kim" is a construct (I've read an article by an Indian academic on the many inaccuracies of Kim, and how Kipling clearly imagined himself far more expert on Indian life and language than he actually was) the same way we all re-construct our childhoods, especially when we're idealizing them. And by moving in with my Mom when I was eleven, I also moved from a childhood where I spent a lot of time playing outside, spending time with animals, and playing either with boys or other tomboy girls, to a life in the inner city where I spent most of my time inside, quickly became a couch potato and tried, but failed, to become part of a girl-only clique. I always wanted to be one of the cool kids even though most things the cool kids liked were completely different from what I liked. I also felt that I was stuck between worlds - working class and middle class, male and female, mother and father - so this part of the colonial narrative resonated for me as well. Plus I associate India with my mother, in particular, with the path in life I've always secretly wished my mother could have taken, i.e. become an academic, which is unhelpful in regards to the pernicious east=female equation embraced by Imperialism.
In conclusion, I probably should have kept my hands off Kipling in an academic context, because for all its exoticism some of it is too close to home, but it's still interesting to see WHY I like it so much, and how entirely different circumstances can still lead to similar psychological patterns. Of course they can, otherwise we wouldn't still enjoy literature written centuries ago or in different countries, but in this case I find this kinship especially odd and uncomfortable but at the same time fascinating.