“Cannibal London: Racial Discourses, Pornography and Male-Male Desire in Late-Victorian Britain”

In this article I discuss the influence exercised by the Anthropological Society of London and the Cannibal Club in shaping and establishing coexisting discourses around male homosocial bonding, male-male desire and male homosexuality in mid- and late-Victorian London. Moreover, I argue that the queer, competing models of sexuality discussed within them were profoundly influenced by nineteenth-century discourses of race and by late-Victorian society’s interest in the pornographic, especially in the informal gatherings of the ‘Cannibals’. So far, only a few works have emphasised the mutual construction of race and homosexuality. Even fewer works have outlined the connection between pornography and the development of new understandings of sexuality. I show how the mutual construction of race and gender carried out in the official space of the Society paved the way for more transgressive (homo)sexual readings of pornography in the Cannibal Club.