The Contradictions of Colonial Dependency: Jack London, Leprosy, and Hawaiian Annexation

Abstract

In Jack London's 1908-1909 writings on the impacts of Hansen's disease in Hawai'i, representations of dependency are central to his contradicting statements on the necessity of enforced quarantine in the colonial setting. Drawing upon Albert Memmi's theorization of dependency at the scales of the body and the nation, the essay identifies opposed vertical and horizontal forms of dependency within London's writing as central to a gendered and sexualized primitive/modern binary that structures his representations of race and empire in Asia and the Pacific.

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