"There is no better place for friendships than Canton": Painting Canton as a Queer Space in Amitav Ghosh's River of Smoke (2011)

Abstract

Our essay explores the representation of Canton as a queer space in Amitav Ghosh’s River of Smoke, primarily through the character of Anglo-Indian artist Robin Chinnery. Robin Chinnery, a gay man in his 20s and the fictional illegitimate son of famous painter George Chinnery, first appears in the second novel of Ghosh’s Ibis Trilogy as a minor character. However, through Robin’s epistolary interjections in the novel, the readers enter the city of Canton (present-day Guangzhou), an enclave of foreigners attempting to do business with the Chinese on the precipice of the First Opium War (1839 – 1842). In letters to his childhood friend Paulette, a major character in the Ibis trilogy, Robin describes the ongoings of the ‘men-only’ territory and his blooming relationship with his Chinese love interest Jacqua. Moreover, Robin’s many double entendre in the letters about his lessons in brushwork with Jacqua, and the friendship amongst men materialises as a ‘comedy of manners’ in this otherwise epic novel. Though doubly marginalised because of his Anglo-Indian heritage and closeted homosexuality, Robin finds solace within the borders of Canton and fulfils his desires. Our first reading focuses specifically on the novel’s portrayal of 19th-century Canton as a queer utopian space that invites readers to rediscover queer joy in the past, seek comfort in the present, and experience hope for the future, deriving specifically from José Esteban Muñoz’s Cruising Utopia, where the author writes that “queer relationality promises a future” (6). In our second reading, Canton emerges as a Foucauldian heterotopic world, existing as a liminal space offering avenues for Robin to explore his desire for companionship beyond conventional restrictions, which given his circumstances, otherwise seemed impossible. These readings together show how Ghosh’s novel reimagines Canton as a space of queer potentiality and transnational cooperation.