The Hauntologic Imagination of Lesley Blanch: The Exotic Other, Mission Civilisatrice and Lost Objects in The Sabres of Paradise [Lesley Blanch'in Hortolojik Hayalgücü: Cennetin Kılıçları'nda Egzotik Öteki, Medenileştirme Misyonu ve Kayıp Nesneler]

Abstract

The Sabres of Paradise, a book written by British historian Lesley Blanch is a novel that focuses particularly on the so-called “Murid Wars”, an important instance of Russia's conquest of the Caucasus and the subsequent genocide and deportation of its autochthonous peoples. Drawing from accounts of the descendants of figures such as Imam Shamil and Hadji Murat, the novel also uses Russian and British accounts to paint a picture of the resistance of the peoples of the Caucasus against the invading Russians. However, Blanch’s book, despite painting a seemingly favorable picture of the Caucasus and its peoples, suffers from a reproduction of the colonialist narrative that is pushed by Imperial Russia. The reasoning behind this unfortunate reproduction lies in the authorial unconscious of Lesley Blanch, which is analyzed through a comparison of The Sabres of Paradise and her another work Journey Into the Mind’s Eye: Fragments of an Autobiography. By adopting an approach that utilizes the work of Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan and a number of psychoanalytical critics, this study aims to trace and put into perspective Blanch’s reproduction of the Russian colonialist narrative towards the Caucasus by drawing from work of scholars such as Irvin Cemil Schick and Madina Tlostanova while at the same time analyzing the reviews of The Sabres of Paradise. The study argues that Blanch reproduces the colonial narrative due to a process of loss that is highlighted in Journey into the Mind’s Eye: Fragments of an Autobiography. This argument is supported by utilization of concept of Hauntology put forward by Derrida, an application of the theory of loss and mourning put forward by Freud, and a summary of Lacan’s approach towards desire. The postcolonial [or decolonial] framework of this study owes its debt chiefly to Madina Tlostanova’s Gender Epistemologies and Eurasian Borderlands as it is used as a framework for Blanch’s exoticizing and fetishizing perspective towards the Caucasus Male and the Caucasus Women in The Sabres of Paradise.