The Performativity Of Euro-centrism In Robinson Crusoe

Daniel Defoe (1660-1731), a founder of the realistic fiction in British Enlightenment, isknown as “the father of British and European novels”. His masterpiece Robinson Crusoe(1719) is regarded as the starting point of the British realistic novel, as well as an early workto reflect European colonialism to expand overseas and perform the colonial practice. With itsenchantment and great research value, Robinson Crusoe has received great interest andpopularity in literary criticism. However, not due attention has been given to the performativeeffect of this novel in its construction and maintenance of the prevailing Euro-centrism.Euro-centrism is a thinking mode to view the world from a European perspective, andassume Europe’s superiority over other countries of the whole world. The eighteenth centurywitnessed the establishment and development of the Industrial Revolution and the BritishEmpire, which enabled its people to entitle the time they lived in “The Era of Augustus” withutmost pride, akin to the heyday of Rome. They set their culture as the yardstick ofcivilization against others’, and the novels of this time were created intentionally orunintentionally to help construct their cultural identity. Robinson Crusoe creates such a mythto perform European civilization’s superiority. Performativity, deriving from J. L. Austin’sspeech-act theory, advocates both the attention to literature as an act that constructs a textualworld and the notice of literature as a material practice and social action. This thesis tries toanalyze Crusoe’s narration of his island experience with the theory of performativity, andexplore how the view of Euro-centrism in eighteenth century Britain affects Defoe and hischaracter Crusoe’s solitary life, as well as how the fictional world Defoe constructs inRobinson Crusoe helps strengthen Euro-centrism and imposes it on the audience to affecttheir social attitudes.This thesis is divided into three chapters besides Introduction and Conclusion. ChapterOne analyzes the performativity of Europe’s racial superiority. The eighteenth century Britishsociety imprints the sense of European superiority into Defoe’s and Crusoe’s mind whichgradually forms a thinking habitus of Euro-centrism, and Crusoe accordingly performsassertive act to prove his high ability, and distinctive expressive act to establish and verifyEuropeans’ supreme authority. It is worthy of noticing that the vision of Euro-centrism constructed in this way is just a habitus, a performativity and a process in need ofoft-repeating and constant practice. Chapter Two discusses the primitivization of the alienland and dissects that Crusoe’s subjective and one-sided cognition is actually theperformativity of Euro-centrism. With the declarative act, the audience receives theinformation that the alien island is desolate, disordered and backward, and the Caribsinhabiting there are barbarous, ignorant and degenerate savages. By marginalizing the alienland and demonizing the Caribs, it evokes the audience’s cognition to the non-Europeans’inferiority, thus performs Euro-centrism successfully. Chapter Three further analyzesEuropeanization of the alien land. With the directive act, Crusoe intends to invite theaudience to inflict European language and religion on the whole island. Stripped of all itsown culture, and taught with a lot of European culture, the island becomes a carbon copy ofEurope. The transformation of alien language to English and the conversion of alien religionto Christianity are positive claims and practices of Euro-centrism. Notwithstanding, the claimthat Europeanizing the alien land is beneficial to the alien land can not cover up the reality ofits cultural colonization.By the analysis of Crusoe’s narration on his island experience with the performativitytheory, this thesis comes to a conclusion that it is the habitus of European society in theeighteenth century that created and strengthened Crusoe’s European superiority, and thefictional world in Robinson Crusoe in turn helped the construction and reinforcement ofEuro-centrism. Therefore, the performativity of Euro-centrism in the eighteenth century, bybeautifying and imposing European culture and demonizing non-European culture constantly,is a process, in need of oft-repeating and constant practice.