Criticism on Trial: Colonizing Affect in the Late-Victorian Empire

In the late nineteenth century, the British government in India attempted to quell anti-colonial critique by criminalizing negative affect. This essay explores the relationship between "disaffection" and critique in this period by comparing the trial of the Bangavasi in 1891 (the first attempt to prosecute a newspaper using the law against disaffection) and the trials of Oscar Wilde four years later; it demonstrates how and why both were centrally concerned with sexuality, excessive affect, and the insincerity of affectation, and shows how the key terms operating in each trial circulated between Britain and India in the Anglophone press.