Unlimited Questioning: The Literary Anarchism of William Godwin

Abstract

In his classic 1962 study, George Woodcock writes that anarchism a creed inspired and ridden by paradox, and thus, while its advocates theoretically reject tradition, they are nevertheless very much concerned with ancestry of their doctrine (35). Although Woodcock is here referring to earlier anarchist historians like Peter Kropotkin, his remark discloses broader anxieties about historical and conceptual ancestry that can be directly related to what is now called theory. Such anxieties inevitably haunt any form of thought that calls itself post-, which at once designates something after that is yet end of what it supersedes, a beyond that remains uneasily tied to archive of classical nineteenth-century anarchism. Thus, Saul Newman argues that the prefix 'post' in post-anarchism should so much designate an 'after' or 'beyond' of anarchism, rather a working at conceptual limits of anarchism with aim of revising, renewing, and even radicalizing its implications (Post-anarchism 62). Post-anarchism is therefore not so much a distinct model of ... politics, but rather a certain held of inquiry and ongoing problematization in which conceptual categories of anarchism are rethought (Post-anarchism 62-63). This essay seeks to expand post-anarchism's field of enquiry by reconsidering its origins in philosophical and literary texts of William Godwin. Despite Newman's desire to see post-anarchism as a discourse capable of revising and renewing its own historical concepts, much post-anarchist theory remains curiously silent about Godwin, whose Enquiry Concerning Political Justice, which was published in 1793 and revised in 1796 and 1798, is nevertheless often cited as a founding philosophical text for modern anarchism. (1) Where discussion of Godwin does appear in contemporary anarchist theory, as in Andrew W. Koch's Poststructuralism and Epistemological Basis of Anarchism, his views are largely dismissed as essentialist (24-25). (2) At same time, if anarchist theory today pays little heed to Godwin's political philosophy, there has also been a near-total forgetting of his literary texts, to say nothing of his work beyond 1790s: between 1784 and 1833 Godwin published eight novels, along with collections of essays, histories, and biographies. (3) The diversity of Godwin's corpus attests to fact that his writing is at once deeply entrenched within political and steps outside of political. This relationship to political in turn provides an essential commentary upon potentials for anarchist theory in our own time, in which a too-narrow definition of political often ties us to fantasy of politics as sole engine of social change, thus blinding us to possibilities of thinking of political otherwise. Given this almost complete forgetting of Godwin, what conceptual displacements of anarchism emerge within Godwin's texts? How might these displacements call for their own interpretation at an archaeological or unconscious level? (4) What developments in anarchist theory have made it possible to read Godwin now, and how might these developments provide means to read Godwin otherwise within history of anarchism itself? This essay moves toward answering such questions by addressing largely unexplored relationship between Godwin's anarchism and his literary texts. Specifically, my argument proceeds from a sense that post-anarchist critique of essentialism often imputed to earlier, classical anarchist theory can already be found in Godwin himself. Moreover, it is Godwin's distinctive use of literature that allows him to revise and question utopian rhetoric of his anarchism. The latter claim is especially groundbreaking, as literary critics have increasingly emphasized ways in which Godwin's novels expose gaps within his political theory. (5) The following discussion nonetheless aims to bring together aspects of these more nuanced interpretations of Godwin's literary texts with his canonical role as one of founding thinkers of modern anarchism. …