94 Materiality and the Modern Cosmopolitan Novel
that is highly deleterious to his ostensibly cosmopolitan priorities of
cross-cultural conciliation and egalitarianism, there are nonetheless
moments when the character rigorously attempts to resist such influ-
ence. Indeed, although it is difficult to view his relationship with
the “barbarian girl” as anything other than a sordid corruption of
otherwise positive impulses, it indirectly produces results that bring
the character closer to a form of redemption, if not cosmopolitan
empowerment. After returning from his risky mission to deliver
the woman back to her own people, Joll accuses the Magistrate of
“treasonously consorting with the enemy” and imprisons him in the
town dungeon (p. 85). The descent he makes from privileged town
magistrate to miserable prisoner is crucial to the character’s success-
ful repudiation of the imperial logic that has hitherto plagued his
conscience. Again, such a change is not without complications and is
rather ambiguously conveyed as the story draws to an end. However,
I contend that the novel’s great achievement is not that it displays an
image of a heroic inner transformation in the face of an oppressive
disciplinary regime; rather, it offers a compelling insight into both
the material nature of disciplinary power and the degree to which its
influences are often concealed or overlooked.
Perhaps the most significant moment that portends the
Magistrate’s inner transition comes during the hunting scene,
which occurs shortly after he meets the “barbarian girl.” Rendered
in evocatively rich prose, with an arresting present-continuous
voice, the Magistrate describes an epiphanic moment in which he
comes across a large ram in the woods but is suddenly overcome
with an “obscure sentiment” that dissuades him from killing the
animal (p. 42). The epiphany he describes reaches ontological pro-
portions, with the physical processes that hunting involves (partic-
ularly when undertaken as a pursuit of pleasure) being questioned
and subsequently detached from their regular associations of
meaning. Momentarily immobilized, as he fixes the ram in his
sights, he develops an overwhelming “sense that this has become
no longer a morning’s hunting but an occasion on which either the
proud ram bleeds to death on the ice or the old hunter misses his
aim” (p. 42). Importantly, this “ontological dislocation,” as Maria
Boletsi calls it, is attended with an overbearing sense of epistemic