The ant as metaphor: Orientalism, imperialism and myrmecology [W. T. Stearn Student Essay]

Abstract

Myrmecological texts that circulated in Britain in the nineteenth and early twentieth century can be interpreted, from the perspective of the post-colonial theory of Orientalism, as belonging to a wider body of colonial-era European literature that has historically portrayed New World peoples and animals as the “Other”. In implicit ways, colonial-era literature on ant behaviour reproduces the Orientalist dichotomy of civilization and savagery. At different times, the ant colony has been portrayed, somewhat paradoxically, as both a civilized society in miniature and a foreign savage order. On the one hand, some British myrmecological texts rendered the ant as a symbol of Britishness and civilization: the elevated image of the ant reflected the imperialist trope that non-white people were inferior, savage Others. On the other hand, the ant colony was portrayed elsewhere in British myrmecological literature – and in other European texts that were translated into English and circulated in Britain – as a dangerous, merciless and aggressive Otherness itself. Accordingly, in these texts, the ant and the “native” are depicted as accomplices who share an antagonism toward the colonial project. Both these positive and negative representations of the ant reflect and reproduce Orientalist tropes, which have historically been used to emphasize the perceived inferior status of non-white colonial subjects.