Cultural Critique

Seshagiri, Urmila.
Modernity's (Yellow) Perils: Dr. Fu-Manchu and English Race Paranoia
Cultural Critique - 62, Winter 2006, pp. 162-194

University of Minnesota Press

Urmila Seshagiri - Modernity's (Yellow) Perils: Dr. Fu-Manchu and English Race Paranoia - Cultural Critique 62 Cultural Critique 62 (2006) 162-194 Modernity's (Yellow) Perils Dr. Fu-Manchu and English Race Paranoia Urmila Seshagiri The modern mind has become more and more a calculating one. --Georg Simmel, "The Metropolis and Mental Life" (1903) Imagine a person tall, lean and feline, high-shouldered, with a brow like Shakespeare and a face like Satan, a close-shaven skull, and long, magnetic eyesof the true cat-green. Invest him with all the cruel cunning of an entire Eastern race, accumulated in one giant intellect, with all the resources of science past and present, with all the resources, if you will, of a wealthy government -- which, however, already has denied all knowledge of his existence. Imagine that awful being, and you have a mental picture of Dr. Fu-Manchu, the yellow peril incarnate in one man. --Sax Rohmer, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu (1913) When The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu was published in London in 1913, Sax Rohmer (1883-1959) catapulted from literary obscurity into astonishing fame that lasted for almost fifty years. Over the decades that witnessed two World Wars, the emerging Cold War, and rapid scientific and technological change, Rohmer's thirteen novels about a Chinese "devil doctor" captivated massive readerships in England and America. The central, recurring conflict of these thrillers -- Dr. Fu-Manchu's schemes for global...