Thug Life: Confession, Subjectivity, Sovereignty

This essay examines the multiplex uses of confession--religious, legal, generic--in Philip Meadows Taylor's 1839 novel Confessions of a Thug. Although Meadows Taylor claimed his novel was merely a recasting of actual criminal confessions, the novel's narratization develops the subjectivity of its criminal protagonist in a way that conflicts with the legal depersonalization of the thug in Anglo-Indian law. Thus the novel works against itself, instantiating the reductive identity of the thug while simultaneously allowing for the development of an autonomous and deeply compelling subject. The essay also considers how the novel's representation of the confessing yet unrepentant thug offers a crucial insight into the colony as a space of exception.