Transnational Neo‐Victorian Studies: Notes on the Possibilities and Limitations of a Discipline

Abstract

This essay explores the field of transnational neo‐Victorian studies, arguing that “transnational” does not so much signal a subcategory of the discipline of Victorian or neo‐Victorian studies as it does a recalibration of one's instruments of analysis and of one's position within a vast constellation of cultural producers and consumers, both within and without the academy. Transnational neo‐Victorian studies requires recognizing the value of what literary critic Juliet John has called “undisciplined knowledge.” It requires, moreover, a collaborative and tentative ethos that is often at odds with the structural realities of the academy. This essay first glosses some of the salient discussions around the terms “Victorian,” “neo‐Victorian,” and “transnational” before turning to an example of a transnational neo‐Victorian text, Japanese manga Kuroshitsuji (黒執事; 2007–) by Toboso Yana (枢やな), and its representation of a Chinese opium den in London's East End, in order to interrogate the possibilities and limitations of the discipline.

Black Butler: A Neo-Victorian Jack the Ripper and the Child Detective

“…41 Such moral complexity also explains Anna Maria Jones' characterization of Ciel as an "anti-hero." 42 In a later OVA episode, audiences even see Grell as a trainee at the Grim Reaper Association, which is interesting because humans who commit suicide become grim reapers as punishment. Thus, audiences might also consider how Grell, who is one member of the Ripper duo, was once victimized too.…”

Neo-Victorian

“…The same holds true for the neo-Victorian, despite its achievements in addressing lasting effects of colonialism and deprovincializing the field's historical emphasis on Britain-for example, with work on global neo-Victorianisms, 3 neo-Victorian Asia, 4 or the methodological transnationalization of neo-Victorian studies. 5 In particular, Global Majority scholars have pointed out hostility in academic spaces to their anticolonial interventions, 6 the "erasure of the perspectives and subject positions of those who experienced the era without the…”