Cosmopolitanism and Material Ethics 85and where the local populace reaps the harvest of crops grown on
“communal land” (p. 6).
The Magistrate’s priorities contrast sharply with the myopic
views of the other agents of the Empire, particularly those of Joll
and his men, who are contemptuous of the local cultures and eth-
nic groups. When Joll holds some local fishermen on suspicion of
taking part in raids against the Empire, the Magistrate addresses an
elderly prisoner as “father” (p. 3). Indeed, the Magistrate’s care for
cross-cultural conciliation prompts him to take increasingly greater
risks to curtail the damage done by Joll; and when the Colonel
unjustly arrests a group of local “fisher people,” taking them for
“barbarians,” the Magistrate refuses to hide his outrage: ‘“The man
is ridiculous!’ I shout. I storm about the room. One should never
disparage officers in front of men [... ] but towards this man I
discover no loyalty in my heart” (p. 18). However, as the narrative
develops, both the reader and the Magistrate come to understand
the degree to which (as in the case of Barton in Foe ) these laudable
interests and the apparently benign impulses that drive them are
inevitably filtered through the disciplinary epistemological and lin-
guistic structures that inhere in the social context. This generates a
significant tension in the protagonist between his conciliatory ide-
als and the incompatible modes of behavior he has hitherto used to
channel them.
Perhaps the most obvious impediment to the realization of the
Magistrate’s conciliatory ideals stems from his complicity in the
imperial power nexus he rails against. Adhering to such ideals
becomes all the more difficult with the arrival of Colonel Joll, whose
sadistic practices profoundly test the Magistrate’s liberal resolve.
The struggle to distance himself from the Colonel provides one
of the core dramatic features of the novel, particularly as it traces
such a long and tortuous trajectory, fluctuating in intensity and
tone from sober earnestness and self-abasement, to almost absurd
self-deprecation. From the novel’s opening, the character agonizes
over the question of how he can ethically distinguish himself from
the Colonel: “Who am I to assert my distance from [... Colonel
Joll?... ] I afford him every assistance as his letter of commission
requests, and more” (p. 6). In attempting to answer this question,