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Utilitarianism and the Painful Orient

Birkbeck, University of London, UK

The impact of Utilitarian thought on legal and quasi-legal institutions is immense. Its language pervades at the level of agendas, goals, invectives and proscriptions. Yet, little attention is paid to the manner in which Utilitarianism addresses the question of fidelity. The history of Western institutional statecraft is simultaneously a history of the profound fidelity of subjects to institutions. Does Utilitarianism have a discernible theory of subjectivity? This article takes the case of the introduction of Utilitarian reforms in British India in order to illustrate that the question of subjective attachment most useful to modern rational thinking arises in the modes of thought that such progressive thinking sought to exclude. In the case of British India, Utilitarian reforms (driven by temperate pleasures) were forced to rely upon Oriental tropes of politics that were considered illicit, despotic, and excessive. Such a case study alerts us to the manner in which all forms of Utilitarianism remain linked to arcane modes of address.

Key Words: Bentham • British India • Durbar • excess • Fitzjames Stephens • Mill • Orientalism • pleasure • Utilitarianism

Social & Legal Studies, Vol. 16, No. 4, 573-590 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0964663907082736


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