Enlightenment, Utopia and Encarnalization of Swift’s Houyhnhnms in Carter’s Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman

Year 2019, Volume: 13 Issue: 2, 141 - 154, 31.12.2019

Fırat Karadaş

Abstract

In Dialectic of Enlightenment Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno trace the roots of modern bourgeois thought in the Enlightenment ideology that is characterized by the effort of establishing order over nature and that dates back to Odyssey. They argue that the whole human history has been motivated by the fetishism of ‘truth’ and ‘facts,’ devaluation of nature, a fear of social deviation. Well-known utopian works such as Plato’s The Republic, Augustine’s The City of God, and Thomas More’s Utopia represent this ‘fear of social deviation’ and ‘devaluation of nature.’ The Fourth Part of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, entitled “A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms,” is a utopian work in which a horse-race called ‘Houyhnhnms’ creates such logocentric system based on the ‘fear of social deviation’ and on the control of nature and the carnal. In The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman Angela Carter parodies the logocentric world of Swift’s Houyhnhnms. In the chapter entitled “Lost in Nebulous Time,” which is an overt parody of Swift’s the “Country of Houyhnhnms,” centaurs which are half horse and half human creatures are depicted as extremely involved in carnal desires and as having an innate tendency for evil. The article handles the logocentric enlightenment discourse represented in Swift’s “A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms” and studies how in “Lost in Nebulous Time” of The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman Angela Carter parodies Swift’s utopia by carnalizing and carnivalizing it.

Keywords

Enlightenment, Utopia, Logocentricism, Carnal, Deconstruction

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