A Table in the Wilderness: Desire, Subjectivity, and Animal Husbandry in Robinson Crusoe

This article argues that Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) offers a surprising account of how the human subject is imagined and constructed. I read Defoe's novel as a deep—often opaque and contradictory—meditation on how human subjectivity is produced through the interrelations between human and non-human animals. The logic and practices of animal husbandry are central to the way Defoe frames the questions of "wildness," "desire," and "mastery." The novel's account of Crusoe's taming of the island's goats is not merely a semi-comic or picturesque touch. Rather, the process of taming a wild goat mirrors the way that Crusoe subjugates Friday, as well as the way that Crusoe masters and shapes his own mind and body. Crusoe's practices of self-mastery resonate with Michel Foucault's final thoughts on the history of sexuality, in which he theorizes the "practices of the self" that bring the "subject of desire" into being historically.