By suppressing the structural elements of plot and characterisation, william Delisle Hay develops his narrative like a treatise on sociology, politics, and anthropology: 19th-century arguments on malthusianism and T.H. Huxley’s ethnological theories are skilfully validated by statistics and turned into axioms on race development and means of living. Since it is the blood power of the fair and white man which mainly determines the intermingling of nationalities, the selection of the species leads to the predominance of the Xanthacroi, the fair white, over the Xanthomelanoi, that is the Yellow Race, the Melanochroi, the Melanoi and the Ulotrichi, that is the Black. By envisioning «the steam plough at work on English farms bordering the river Jordan,» Hay connects Teuton-centrism with evolutionism: the Anglicisation of both South Europe and the East proceeds regardless of human relations, enhanced by Science and Reason, untroubled by religious beliefs. The absolute parliamentary power has dismantled the party-government but preserved the Imperial Maiden of Republicans, a purely ornamental icon: by promoting her worship the threatening “indulgence in aesthetic sensuality” is sublimated and neutralised. The progressive mastery of material civilisation through racial anthropocentrism is thus fixed within an inconsistent form of Republic too heavily moulded on the British model of class society, constitutional monarchy and empire.
Three Hundred Years Hence (1881)
SPINOZZI, Paola
2000
Abstract
By suppressing the structural elements of plot and characterisation, william Delisle Hay develops his narrative like a treatise on sociology, politics, and anthropology: 19th-century arguments on malthusianism and T.H. Huxley’s ethnological theories are skilfully validated by statistics and turned into axioms on race development and means of living. Since it is the blood power of the fair and white man which mainly determines the intermingling of nationalities, the selection of the species leads to the predominance of the Xanthacroi, the fair white, over the Xanthomelanoi, that is the Yellow Race, the Melanochroi, the Melanoi and the Ulotrichi, that is the Black. By envisioning «the steam plough at work on English farms bordering the river Jordan,» Hay connects Teuton-centrism with evolutionism: the Anglicisation of both South Europe and the East proceeds regardless of human relations, enhanced by Science and Reason, untroubled by religious beliefs. The absolute parliamentary power has dismantled the party-government but preserved the Imperial Maiden of Republicans, a purely ornamental icon: by promoting her worship the threatening “indulgence in aesthetic sensuality” is sublimated and neutralised. The progressive mastery of material civilisation through racial anthropocentrism is thus fixed within an inconsistent form of Republic too heavily moulded on the British model of class society, constitutional monarchy and empire.I documenti in SFERA sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
