ABSTRACT
In chapter two, we saw how the ideological figure of the ‘boy’ is invested with unconscious desire. The privileging of boyhood functions in Haggard’s adventure narratives as a mythic-text of Empire by enabling an easy transition from the innocence and youth of the boyish adventurer to an inheritance of the newly discovered world. Representing a world unsullied by the decadent corruption of age and civilisation, the boy-child is necessarily the only figure capable of returning to or founding a brave new (colonial/pastoral) world. At the end of the last chapter, we located another figure invested with desire, that of the policeman/spy whose crossing of cultural boundaries promises a colonial identity without lack-a subject of knowledge in the face of difference and alienation. In this chapter, I shall end my exploration of Kipling with yet another such figure, the loafer.
