Critical Perspectives on Resistance in 21st-Century British Literature 9781036402983, 1036402983

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Critical Perspectives on Resistance in 21st-Century British Literature

Critical Perspectives on Resistance in 21st-Century British Literature Edited by

Nilay Erdem Ayyıldız

Critical Perspectives on Resistance in 21st-Century British Literature Edited by Nilay Erdem Ayyıldız This book first published 2024 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2024 by Nilay Erdem Ayyıldız and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-0364-0297-5 ISBN (13): 978-1-0364-0297-6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface ....................................................................................................... vii Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Choices in Winterson’s Weight: Personal Retelling as a Strategy of Resistance Amy Lee Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 15 From Mud to Air: Eco-Memories as Environmental Resistance in Graham Swift’s Out of This World Anastasia Logotheti Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 30 Resilient Toxic Masculinity: Boys and The Gift by Ella Hickson Belgin Ba÷rlar Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 48 Negotiating the Feminine Space in a Multiracial Society: Sites of Resistance in Andrea Levy’s Small Island Farah Ali Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 64 Embodied Resistance through Psychogeographical Literary Moments in Contemporary British City Fiction Kai Qing Tan Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 92 Resistance and Identity Formation in British Diasporic Fiction: Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other Leman Demirbaú Chapter Seven.......................................................................................... 113 No Big Conspiracy: Poetic Humanity and the Fiction of Resistance in Never Let Me Go and Klara and The Sun Malek Hardan Mohammad

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Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 137 Theatrical Rendition of Trauma and Resistance in Martin Crimp’s The Country Muhammed Metin Cameli Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 156 Holes and the Whole: Which is Which Witch? Nikolina Nedeljkov Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 172 Resistance and Social Change in The Ickabog of Joanne Kathleen Rowling Selin Turan Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 187 Scattered Subalternities: Ecological Resistance in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People Sezgi Öztop Haner Contributors ............................................................................................. 201

PREFACE

The 21st-century British literature presents a powerful lens reflecting resistance to social transformation, evolving cultural perspectives and environmental instability that characterise the century. In this context, Critical Perspectives on Resistance in 21st-Century British Literature, composed of eleven chapters, explores complex expressions of this transformation, defiance and resiliency, displaying the intricate landscapes of 21st-century British literary works. The collection sets out on an intellectual journey, with each chapter acting as a unique compass to lead the reader through the complex manifestations of resistance waiting to be discovered in contemporary British literature. It appeals to general readers, including academicians, students and researchers who are interested in literary studies, cultural studies, sociology, humanities and particularly resistance and discourse analysis. The book provides an easily accessible approach resource about resistance in 21st-century British literature through its novelistic chapters. Chapter One, titled “Choices in Winterson’s Weight: Personal Retelling as a Strategy of Resistance” by Amy Lee, focuses on Jeanette Winterson’s novel, Weight (2005), as a force of resistance opening the new century. It concludes that Winterson’s re-telling of the myth in a personal voice, putting her authentic self inside the myth, is not only bringing the myth to the new century but also provoking the readers to reread and re-engage with the myth in a fresh context. Chapter Two, titled “From Mud to Air: Eco-Memories as Environmental Resistance in Graham Swift’s Out of This World” by Anastasia Logotheti highlights Out of This World (1988), one of Graham Swift’s lesser-known works. The chapter displays that Swift’s depiction of the transition from captivity to freedom, from technology to nature, serves as a canvas for illustrating the importance of environmental resistance and delving into the “spirit of place” and how it affects freedom. Chapter Three, titled “Resilient Toxic Masculinity: Boys and The Gift by Ella Hickson” by Belgin Ba÷rlar, discusses resilient toxic masculinity in Ella Hickson’s plays, Boys (2012) and The Gift (2018). The chapter investigates the harmful impact of toxic masculinity at both personal and interpersonal levels. Through Raewyn Connell’s theory of masculinity, it

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also discusses how toxic masculinity is both reinforced and challenged throughout the selected works. Another critical perspective on resistance in relation to gender issues is observed in Chapter Four, titled “Negotiating the Feminine Space in a Multiracial Society: Sites of Resistance in Andrea Levy’s Small Island” by Farah Ali. The chapter handles the representation of nontraditional female characters in Andrea Levy’s novel Small Island (2004) through Luce Irigaray’s mimesis theory. The chapter examines the characters’ rejecting society’s expectations, analysing their battles against the limitations imposed by gender roles and cultural conventions in Britain in the 1940s. The book presents another outstanding aspect of resistance through Chapter Five, titled “Embodied Resistance through Psychogeographical Literary Moments in Contemporary British City Fiction” by Kai Qing Tan. The chapter explores the emotive enactment of psychogeographical literary moments in modern British city fiction. This chapter highlights the transformational effect of reading, providing evidence to support assertions regarding the socially perceptible implications of ethical realism found in urban fiction. Chapter Six, titled “Resistance and Identity Formation in British Diasporic Fiction: Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, by Leman Demirbaú, situates Evaristo’s novel Girl, Woman, Other within the context of black British diaspora fiction and discusses how the novel explores the themes of resistance and identity formation among British diasporic communities. The chapter reveals different forms of resistance employed by the characters in the novel in relation to race, gender and class, with reference to the critical arguments of Hall, Brah and Quayson. Chapter Seven, titled “No Big Conspiracy: Poetic Humanity and the Fiction of Resistance in Never Let Me Go and Klara and The Sun” by Malek Hardan Mohammad, delves into Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Klara and the Sun (2021), revealing the contradictory character of resistance in settings of anxiety around science. The chapter examines Ishiguro’s fiction, in these two novels and in his screenplay for Living (2022), as a portrayal of humanity at the crossroads of interminable lines of motion: paranoia, resistance and literature. Another chapter presenting a critical perspective on resistance in relation to gender issues with a different aspect is Chapter Eight. Titled “Theatrical Rendition of Trauma and Resistance in Martin Crimp’s The Country” by Muhammed Metin Cameli, the chapter scrunitises how women are portrayed on stage as resisting both physical and psychological abuse through Crimp’s play, The Country (2000). This chapter examines

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the playwright’s dramatic devices and challenges readers to reflect on their instances of defying social norms and capitalism. Chapter Nine, titled “Holes and the Whole: Which is Which Witch?” by Nikolina Nedeljkov, provides insights into the shadow of Stewart Home’s novels Tainted Love (2005) and Memphis Underground (2007). The chapter examines Home’s rebellious language, illuminating the possibility of disadvantaged voices emerging and resisting injustice. Within the subversive narrative of Home, this chapter examines identity, continuity and borders, as well as oppressive mechanisms of political supremacy based on dominance and subordination toward the potential of the polyphony of pluralist discourse in the key of grassroots resistance. Chapter Ten, titled “Resistance and Social Change in The Ickabog of Joanne Kathleen Rowling” by Selin Turan, examines the story of resistance to inequity and injustice in Rowling’s children’s novel The Ickabog (2020). The chapter demonstrates how social change is sparked by female solidarity and results in political and economic advancement. Lastly, Chapter Eleven, titled “Scattered Subalternities: Ecological Resistance in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People” by Sezgi Öztop Haner, explores how the novel Animal’s People (2007) by the British author of English and Indian descent draws attention to the evolution and toxification of postcolonial ecologies, which extend even to the bodies of subaltern inhabitants. Specifically, it examines how unyielding colonial and capitalist intrusions influence the inseparable and symbiotic coexistence between human and nonhuman agents as ecological units. The theoretical framework of this study then brings together frameworks from postcolonial ecocriticism and postcolonial literary studies’ engagement with disaster under neoliberal globalisation. With the elaborative findings and discussion presented in each chapter, the book provides an insight into the complex interactions between identity, resistance and social norms in the context of modern British literature, thus contributing to the literature. Therefore, I would like to express my gratitude to the insightful contributors of the book and the editorial team at Cambridge Scholars Publishing for their guidance during the publishing process. Nilay Erdem Ayyldz

CHAPTER ONE CHOICES IN JEANETTE WINTERSON’S WEIGHT: PERSONAL RE-TELLING AS A STRATEGY OF RESISTANCE AMY LEE

Introduction: Sedimentary Rock Strata as Pages of a Book The 21st century was welcomed with a lot of different sentiments across the globe: excitement, anticipation, joy, but also a certain degree of anxiety as all faced the unknown future. Advancements in the various aspects of science and technology on the whole have a positive impact on human living conditions, but the different speeds of development across the globe and even across different aspects of life have resulted in inconsistencies that sometimes make life awkward and difficult. While the external material world is changing with every scientific and technological advancement, the inner world of human thoughts and feelings does not always evolve at the same speed, giving rise to frustration, isolation, and loneliness. At the same time that the material world is moving forward and welcoming the new, our internal emotional world is struggling with the loss of orientation. To many, during such times when we are to take a step to enter into the new, a review of and reflection on what has always been the core of the previous times can serve as an important anchor to steady the step and to resist the anxiety while continuing onward. The Canongate Myth Series may be considered one of such projects on the cusp of the new century. The project is based on the view that “[m]yths are universal and timeless stories that reflect and shape our lives – they explore our desires, our fears, our longings, and provide narratives that remind us what it means to be human.”1 In 1999, prominent writers from

 1

Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), iii.

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different parts of the world were invited to choose and re-tell a myth “in a contemporary and memorable way,”2 which together form a collection of personal, cultural, and historical responses to and interpretations of these common treasures of humankind. In these re-tellings, a range of 21stcentury understandings of the age-old stories from these writers’ individual positions and conditions are seen. Jeanette Winterson’s Weight (2005), which is a re-telling of the myth of Atlas bearing the weight of the world and his encounter with Heracles, is a unique voice bearing the tint of resistance, which is very much the spirit of the Myth Series itself. This voice of resistance is evident right at the beginning of the act of retelling. Before the introductory chapter, the paratext provides an interesting and symbolic link between the formation of sedimentary rock and the pages of a book. While the layers of sediment pile on top of each other over long periods of time, the formation of sedimentary rock is not simply a process of continuous accumulation, as erosions happen simultaneously. When the narrative voice makes the comparison that the “strata of sedimentary rock are like the pages of a book, each with a record of contemporary life written on it. Unfortunately, the record is far from complete.”3 It is alerting readers to the on-going process of both erasure and addition of materials when stories are being told. Readers are thus given a taste of the nature and value of the re-telling of the Atlas myth that follows, which will be a resistance to the usual “complete” story with a clear boundary and closure. Winterson’s re-telling of the myth, involving not only Atlas and Heracles but additional characters from across different genres of narratives, has attracted much critical attention and discussion. Its content, as well as the way it is being told, illustrate in multiple dimensions its resistant nature against conventional storytelling strategies and meanings. Sev Ates employs “palimpsest” as the basis to examine the way the text functions, defining palimpsest as that which “explicates [the] pluralistic, multi-layered nature of the text”4 and identifying it as a “device [Winterson] uses as a strategy to comment on the nature of storytelling.” 5 This description highlights Winterson’s transgression of one of the most important features of the telling of mythical stories: the third-person “objective” narrator. Here, readers are made aware of the act/art of the storytelling designed by a distinct personality and that “the palimpsest, an oxymoronic structure of

 2

Ibid. 3 Ibid., ix-x. 4 Ansi Sev Ateú, “ “I want to tell the story again:” The Palimpsests of Jeanette Winterson's Weight.” RumeliDE Journal of Language and Literature Studies, no. 31 (2022): 1359. 5 Ibid.

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fragmentation and wholeness” 6 being the story structure is the intended result of the decisions of an author behind the scene, unlike the objectivity in the usual myths. This feature of the hand of a distinct storyteller made visible is also the focus in a critical discussion of Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad (2005) side by side with Winterson’s Weight, both works being the early members of the Canongate Myth Series. Atwood and Winterson are both referred to as trickster-artists, who keep some of the original materials of the stories they have chosen to retell, and add new contents from across different genres and times to create new stories that are recognisable but much enriched in personal and cultural meaning, as well as in values for contemporary readers. Winterson’s rendition of storytelling as a geological process, for example, is not only an apt allusion to the lengthy process of re-creating the story of Atlas and Heracles from a Greek myth to a 21st century story, but also shows how far the content has travelled from being a straight-forward heroic story of the gods to an intimate personal pondering of “loneliness, isolation, responsibility, burden, and freedom too.”7 As boldly claimed by the narrator, the “cunning transformer storyteller,”8 this version “has a very particular end not found elsewhere.”9 Winterson’s Weight is a literary sedimentary rock that involves complex processes of layering and erosion, trapping many different lifeforms in between the layers and resulting in unusual shapes and forms because of on-going erosion. The following is an examination of this literary sedimentary rock, which is the opposite of a natural formation, and takes the expression “I want to tell the story again,” which has appeared in different parts of the narrative, as the central idea around which Weight is built. I propose that the key components of this refrain, which include the narrative voice(s) (i.e., “I”), the multiple possibilities (i.e., “story”), and the eternal repetition (i.e., “again”), are distinct and critical manifestations of the authorial decision in this contemporary version of the myth. In her choice to re-write this 21stcentury version of the Atlas and Heracles myth, Winterson is reclaiming the various possibilities of this cultural treasure of mankind by asking questions about the personal voice, its role in making meaning during the construction of stories, and the limitless freedom that the future promises if one decides

 6

Ibid. 7 Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), xiv. 8 Leyla AdigĦzel and Ku÷u Tekin, "Jeannette Winterson as the Trickster-Artist in Weight," The Journal of Social Sciences Institute 52 (2021): 256. 9 Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), xiv.

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to take up the task of telling stories. Making choices, highlighted in different aspects of this re-telling, is the strongest action of resistance to/of the times, as it enables one to continuously re-create new stories and new meanings from the accumulated materials of our ancestors.

Resistance in the Narrative Voice: “I want to tell the story again” The strong presence of a first-person narrator in this contemporary version of the myth is felt even before the story itself. On the page for dedication, the author has written “For Deborah Warner, who lifted the weight.”10 The direct reference to the title of the novella, the weight of the world that has fallen onto Atlas’ shoulders, is unmistakable, and so is the juxtaposition of the author/the narrator and the titular hero. The ostensive presence of an individual narrator’s voice is a deviation from the conventions of myth telling: “[t]he first thing Winterson does is to set her work free from the third-person narrative constraint of the myth tradition.” 11 Free from the constraint, contemporary myth becomes a very different storytelling experience for the readers: the “concrete” presence of a first-person narrator and the decisions made by this narrator to allocate the telling of the story to other characters in the tale at different times. The presence of the “I” in Weight is transgressive not only because it ushers in a knowable narrator, but also because this narrator involves other characters in the story to make their own presentations from their own perspectives, making the myth a polyphonic one. In the paratext, the narrator was explicit about the autobiographical nature of this re-telling, saying that she wrote it “directly out of [her] own situation. There is no other way.”12 The ancient story of Atlas, who was penalised to bear the weight of the world due to his own fault, and his encounter with Heracles, who similarly has to perform the twelve labours as a punishment, is re-presented in the personal voice of a narrator who reflects on the weight that she is bearing and dedicates the book to someone who lifted the weight for her in her 21st-century literary pondering. The narrator told us that she was given away by her mother and later rejected by her adopted mother. Because these two women had made such a decision,

 10

Ibid., vii. 11 Leyla AdigĦzel and Ku÷u Tekin, “Jeannette Winterson as the Trickster-Artist in Weight,” The Journal of Social Sciences Institute 52 (2021): 257. 12 Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), xiv.

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the narrator was left to say, “Having no one to carry me, I learned to carry myself. My girlfriend says I have an Atlas complex.”13 Her story is told as a story of punishment, the penalty being the burden of herself, an intolerable and incomprehensible burden. In narrating this part of her story, the narrator ponders the conditions of human life, the work of fate on how our lives turn out, and how our present is crushed by the weight of our past. She writes, “[w]e lie helpless in the force of patterns inherited and patterns re-enacted by our own behaviour.”14 Despite the fact that she was “good at walking away”15 due to her long experience of being rejected, she was still burdened by the weight that was on her back, like Atlas. At the end of this section, which is entitled “Leaning on the Limits of Myself,” the narrator repeats “I can lift my own weight” three times before closing the chapter with “I will tell the story again.”16 Here we have a glimpse of the meaning of the re-telling: having found in Atlas a similar fate as herself (i.e. who shoulders a burden which is almost too great to carry), the narrator uses this story to explore possibilities to get out of the situation and ways to move beyond those patterns of behaviour that humankind has inherited. The development of Atlas’ story is also a mental exploration for an outlet in the narrator’s life. Winterson’s response to the question of autobiography in this re-written myth is that “[a]utobiography is not important. Authenticity is important.”17 It does not matter whether the “biographical” information she presents about herself is factual, and in fact, it is generally felt that “[a]longside the revisioned myth of Atlas and Heracles, Winterson fictionalises herself in a new cover version.”18 What matters is that she is using this “authentic” self to “be the molten stuff that welds together disparate elements” 19 of the narrative, which, as she describes, is the incomplete record of life. Side by side with Atlas and Heracles, the first-person narrator becomes part of the story and is in a position to use Atlas and Heracles’ encounter as a tool to experiment with the thoughts and feelings of someone trying to get out of

 13

Ibid., 97. 14 Ibid., 99. 15 Ibid., 98. 16 Ibid., 100. 17 Ibid., xv. 18 Fiona Hobden, “From philosophy to psychotherapy: retelling the story in Jeanette Winterson’s Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (2005),” New Voices in Classical Reception Studies 11 (2016): 21. 19 Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), xv.

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an immense burden and to give a chance to different responses and outcomes to present themselves. The opportunity to get into the minds of Atlas and Heracles is another transgression that Weight has made through the introduction of a firstperson narrator. The presence of this individual voice (in this case, a feminine persona who is accepted as a representative of Winterson, the author) symbolises a breakthrough in the way the story is told. It is not just the appearance of an extra person who tells the story, but a new concept in the rendition of a myth: that the mythic heroes are all individuals who have their own desires, fears, and a range of other emotions, besides being performers of the feats they are famous for. “Weight displays such playful crossing of ontological borders between different story worlds. The latter are narrated alternately by Winterson’s alter ego, Atlas, Heracles, and an omniscient third-person narrator.” 20 Due to the active participation of Winterson’s alter ego in the story, Atlas and Heracles are both given a chance to share their thoughts and show themselves to be heroic but human. This re-presentation of the mythic heroes is not simply a new way of telling their stories. In the traditional context of the third-person omniscient narrator, readers are given the details of the deeds performed by these heroes and are led to admire, sympathize, fear, or pity what fate has prepared for them, mainly based on their behaviour and the consequences. Allowing the heroes to speak for themselves does not change their heroic deeds, but it opens the readers’ eyes to the reason why they perform these tasks and how they view the choices they have made—if they are indeed choices. In other words, when the narrator of an event is different, the meaning and value of that event also change. The stories of Atlas and Heracles become something different from a collection of heroic deeds which exhibit their superhuman strength and stamina when told from their own perspectives.

Resistance in the New Contents: “I want to tell the story again” “My father was Poseidon. My mother was the Earth”21 is the beginning of Atlas’ own version of the story. Although the “facts” are correct, this narrative reads very differently from the conventional, straightforward tale of the hero that is handed down to us from previous millennia. What follows

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Hilde Steals, “The Penelopiad" and "Weight". Contemporary Parodic and Burlesque Transformations of Classical Myths,” College Literature 36, no. 4 (2009): 111. 21 Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), 11.

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from this factual introduction is Atlas’s reflection on himself. When he says, “I am as turbulent as my father. I am as brooding as my mother,”22 he is not referring to lineage but to the intimate characteristics of his parents from his observations and to his understanding of himself. To further describe his personality, he makes references to his brother Prometheus, who stole fire, and juxtaposes himself as the one who “fought for freedom.” 23 He was punished because he made a choice against Zeus, and his choice put him on the side of the losers. From this perspective, his story is a story of suffering for a personal choice. Atlas tells us that his name means “the long suffering one,”24 as if he was destined to suffer when he was born. Before the decision to fight against Zeus, his life story was simple: “I had a farm. I had cattle. I had a vineyard. I had daughters.” 25 This list of material possessions however does not present a complete picture of the hero, for it does not show how he feels about these possessions, both before he lost them and after. In Weight, however, readers are invited into the personal world of Atlas during those intimate moments of suffering and to make meaning out of the suffering. When the Kosmos was brought to him, Atlas mentally prepared for the penalty: “I could hardly breathe. I could not raise my head. I tried to shift slightly or to speak. I was dumb and still as a mountain,”26 but the burden was too great and he crouched silently through time. Atlas’ version of the story successfully renders him to be a poetic, reflective, and introverted character who is eager to observe the world and its beings and experience life in a careful and considerate manner. During his long penalty, he discovered that he could hear everything from the world and began to decode these sounds and conversations, for his love of the world and the beings in it was great. After a long time, he had merged with his burden: “There is no longer Atlas and the world, there is only the World Atlas. Travel me and I am continents. I am the journey you must make.”27 At this point, the voice of Atlas is almost indistinguishable from the voice of the first-person narrator, for both of them are self-consciously referring to the act of storytelling—readers are travelling with them as the reading progresses. Together with Atlas and the first-person narrator, readers are participating in a journey of resistance, one that has many possibilities as the journey proceeds.

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Ibid., 14. 23 Ibid. 24 Ibid., 22. 25 Ibid., 15. 26 Ibid., 23. 27 Ibid., 25.

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Atlas’ story also contains Heracles’ story, as readers progress to see their encounter. Against the poetic Atlas, Heracles is presented as a very different kind of person. “Heracles similarly narrates the myth of his own origin and affirms his archetypal identity as the athletic champion who wins glory by performing twelve labours under compulsion, in penance for the murder of his children.”28 While Atlas demonstrates his strength in his silent tolerance of the burden on his back, Heracles’ strength is much more of the extrovert kind, as seen in his numerous physical and amorous conquests. His picture of happiness is having “[a] wife, a mistress, plenty of children, plenty of wine, a reputation, and at last some peace.”29 When he saw Atlas, he tried to show companionship through a comparison of their fates, and he said to Atlas, “Your punishment is to hold up the universe. My punishment is to work for a wanker.”30 The more than casual tone and playful language is a very unusual way to describe the twelve heroic labours he performs, as they are handed down from the ancient myth. The transgressiveness of Heracles in this contemporary myth is not only due to the fact that he speaks for himself, thus showing a very earthly and almost primitive personality. The encounter and the conversation with Atlas add an inner life to the two heroes as they reflect on their own situations. “The mythological drama thus becomes a psychological drama, in which their encounter causes the central characters to confront issues of freedom, fate and personal responsibility.”31 The truly remarkable feature of having the first-person narrator as well as the heroes speak their own thoughts and feelings is that they become three-dimensional characters and have mental and emotional developments through their experiences. Seeing Atlas’ fate and during his various interactions with Atlas, Heracles acquires some depth in his thinking; “he inwardly starts to question out why he is doing gods’ bidding and falls into a dilemma for the first time.” 32 In the duration of Weight, even before his death, Heracles undergoes a transformation, from

 28

Hilde Steals, “”The Penelopiad" and "Weight”. Contemporary Parodic and Burlesque Transformations of Classical Myths,” College Literature 36, no. 4 (2009): 113. 29 Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), 116. 30 Ibid., 29. 31 Fiona Hobden, "From philosophy to psychotherapy: retelling the story in Jeanette Winterson's Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (2005)," New Voices in Classical Reception Studies 11 (2016): 18. 32 Leyla AdigĦzel and Kuu Tekin, “Jeannette Winterson as the Trickster-Artist in Weight,” The Journal of Social Sciences Institute 52 (2021): 261.

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someone whose only goal in life is to satisfy his desires to someone who seeks understanding. Thus Heracles’ story becomes a journey of discovery, which at first was scary and incomprehensible for him. When he went to the Garden of the Hesperides to get Hera’s apples, “for the first time in his life, he thought about what he was doing. He thought about who he was.”33 Although he killed Ladon the serpent with his usual bravado, inwardly “some part of him was riven—not by doubt—he did not doubt what he must do, but by a question. He knew what, he no longer knew why.”34 That is the beginning of his transformation, which gets more pronounced as he gets deeper into the interaction with Atlas. When he successfully tricked Atlas into shouldering the Kosmos again after having obtained Hera’s apples for him, he was ashamed to see that Atlas accepted the burden again “with such grace and ease, such gentleness, love almost.”35 Despite his grinning face, inside, Heracles felt respect for Atlas. Unwilling to take over the burden of the Kosmos, Heracles went to help Prometheus as a kind of payback to Atlas. The transformation of Atlas and Heracles into full-blown fictional characters with the capacity to develop can be seen as a result of the presence of the first-person narrator. When commenting on Boating for Beginners, Costa wrote, “Winterson uses quantum theories to subvert history as a patriarchal masquerade,”36 and went on to say that “she tries to delimit the role of the observer and its influence on the observed, and the narrator states that there is no such thing as ‘objective experiment’.”37 The observer always has an effect on whatever is observed; the first-person narrator’s chosen observation of Atlas and Heracles presents to readers of the myth a substantially unconventional pair of heroes. If the first-person narrator is Winterson’s alter ego, then “Atlas and Heracles do not simply reveal the problems and issues attendant upon abstract philosophical ideas like fate and freedom through their adventures. They represent Winterson’s individual psychoses.” 38 The nature and meaning of the story change

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Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), 43. 34 Ibid., 45. 35 Ibid., 83. 36 Veronica Pacheco Costa, "Science and Time in Jeanette Winterson," Interactions 25, nos.1-2 (2016): 25. 37 Ibid., 26. 38 Fiona Hobden, "From philosophy to psychotherapy: retelling the story in Jeanette Winterson's Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (2005)," New Voices in Classical Reception Studies 11 (2016): 21.

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according to the identity of the storyteller—Winterson the trickster has transformed these heroes into aspects of her own personal drama.

Resistance in the Eternal Continuity: “I want to tell the story again” The nature of the Canongate Myth Series is continuity. Each writer is asked to choose a story from the myth and tell it again in a way that is deemed relevant to the 21st century. Winterson has highlighted this notion in the novella very clearly: “I could not allow my parents to be the facts of my life. Their version of the story was one I could read but not write. I had to tell the story again.”39 “I want to tell the story again” is the title of the first and final chapter of the book, besides appearing here as a personal reason for writing what she is writing. The story in Weight is a story weaving together the stories of Atlas and Heracles, told in the context of a 21st-century female writer’s quest to understand her life. She has made the choice to write herself into the story and to give the heroes agency to tell their own stories; Weight “illustrates how a dialogue between multiple narratives becomes a productive medium for the meaning-making process.”40 In this case, the meaning of the myth in our times is choices. When Atlas was in the Garden of the Hesperides picking the apples for Heracles, Hera appeared and her words to Atlas marked one of the most important ideas in the story: choices. Hera referred to Atlas’ decision to fight against Zeus: “You could not see the changefulness of the world. All these pasts are yours, all these futures, all these presents. You could have chosen differently. You did not”,41 and this in fact applies to all characters in the story. Atlas, Heracles and the first-person narrator all have a burden to bear, and they all feel that they are destined to bear that burden and that they have no choice. Hera, however, is reminding them all of their own roles in how their lives turn out and that the past, future and present are in fact in the characters’ own hands. The chapter entitled “Desire” opens with the firstperson narrator saying, “[w]hat can I tell you about the choices we make?”42

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Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), 139. 40 Ansi Sev Ateú, “I want to tell the story again:" The Palimpsests of Jeanette Winterson’s Weight.” RumeliDE Journal of Language and Literature Studies 31 (2022): 1361. 41 Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), 75. 42 Ibid., 137.

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and she goes on to say that telling the story again is the way to seek resolutions. With each re-telling, there is a new ending. In the same chapter, the first-person narrator claims that “I am not a Freudian.”43 in the sense that she does not believe one’s present and future are determined by the past. Instead, one’s story is open-ended because at every moment one can make a different choice about the way this story proceeds. As long as one continues to tell the story, there is hope; “[j]ust as telling the story in psychotherapy generates new possibilities for the client, closure for her characters creates new openings for the author to move beyond her personal mythology.”44 True to her intention of creating her own world out of writing stories, “Winterson undermines the implications of power structures intrinsic to myth and adopts a polyphonic, non-hierarchical narrative strategy in Weight” 45 and seeks resolutions for herself as the narrator follows Atlas and Heracles in their psychological journey towards their own destinies. After Heracles completed the task of getting the three apples from Hera, he looked forward to settling down to lead what he considered a good life. As he was preparing for the sacrifice which would in a way bring him to this new stage, “[h]e suddenly thought of Atlas, star-silent. For a second, the buzzing started again, in the usual place, by his temple. He hit his heard. The buzzing stopped.”46 This brief moment of disturbance harks back to the equally brief moment of shame that he felt when he successfully tricked Atlas into taking up the burden of the Kosmos again. His encounters with Atlas are moments when unbidden thoughts and feelings surface, in fact opportunities for him to take his story into his own hands, but he chooses to ignore these stirrings and continues in much the same way he has lived before. When his dying shouts were heard far away, Hera, who was wise and saw through Heracles’ weaknesses “smiled her ironical smile” 47 because she knew he would miss the chance to find a new ending to his own story.

 43

Ibid., 139. 44 Fiona Hobden, “From philosophy to psychotherapy: retelling the story in Jeanette Winterson’s Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (2005),” New Voices in Classical Reception Studies 11 (2016): 22. 45 Ansi Sev Ateú, “ “I want to tell the story again:" The Palimpsests of Jeanette Winterson's Weight.” RumeliDE Journal of Language and Literature Studies 31 (2022): 1362. 46 Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), 116. 47 Ibid., 119.

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For Atlas, the critical moment of growth was the moment he discovered Laika, the dog that was sent to space in Sputnik. He freed her from the capsule, and Laika nested against his shoulder, immediately feeling a bond with this giant. At this point, Atlas was “carrying something he wanted to keep, and that changed everything.” 48 The change includes a “strange thought” that Atlas suddenly had: “Why not put it down.” 49 which he hesitantly put into practice. After he crawled out from under the Kosmos, “Atlas looked back at his burden. There was no burden. There was only the diamond-blue earth gardened in a wilderness of space.”50 Atlas is free, just as Laika is free. The “new material” Laika, who comes from 20th-century history, opens up a new development of Atlas’ story, and it leads to a possible new ending, just as the first-person narrator describes.

Conclusion: The Ending that does not Close the Story Jeanette Winterson has chosen to re-tell the myth of Atlas and Heracles in the Canongate Myth Series because, in her words, “it’s a story I’m struggling to end.”51 She has the bits and pieces in hand but cannot find a resolution, and that pushes her to write fiction, which allows her to keep on telling the story in writing. With each re-telling, there is a different end. In this re-telling, she writes herself into the story and finds a personal connection with the two heroes in the burden that they are all carrying. Once again thinking about her own burden, she looks to Atlas and Heracles and gives them a chance to write a new story of their own, with possible new endings. As the first-person narrator reflected, “[s]cience is a story. History is a story. These are the stories we tell ourselves to make ourselves come true.”52 Weight merges various kinds of storytelling into a metafiction that discusses the human condition. With the recurrent “I will tell the story again,” it is implied that “the story may be told limitless times using different genre conventions and forms of discourse”53 to create new possibilities. From a story of heroes being trapped in their destiny, Winterson has transformed the story into a journey that opens up new forward movements. The past is over and done with; ancient stories have served their purposes,

 48

Ibid., 127. 49 Ibid., 134. 50 Ibid., 150. 51 Ibid., 137. 52 Ibid., 145. 53 Ansi Sev Ateú, “ “I want to tell the story again:” The Palimpsests of Jeanette Winterson's Weight.” RumeliDE Journal of Language and Literature Studies 31 (2022): 1363.

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but with each new moment, there is a chance to make a choice about how the story will continue from this moment onwards. Thus, the re-telling of this myth is the way “Winterson renegotiates what it means for myth to be ‘universal’ and ‘timeless’, and claims value for her own mythic truths”54 by writing her autobiographical story into the myth and letting the characters regain their rightful awareness of their own authority. Heracles developed an awareness but did not manage to set himself free before death caught up with him, while Atlas grasped the opportunity of the encounter with Laika and walked out of the previous version of the story into freedom. Like Atlas, at the end of the novella, the first-person narrator “crawl[s] out from under this world [she has] made”55 and realises that this version of the world does not need her, and she has no need for it either. Interestingly, it is not because she has found the perfect closure, but despite the “reservations and regrets”56 she has decided to let it go so that she can “tell the story again”. The value and meaning of the re-telling are exactly that she can start telling the story again once a version is finished, leaving a space for a new one. At the very end of the book, musing on the various possibilities of the dark matter, the first-person narrator ends the narrative, suggesting that perhaps the dark matter is “Atlas and Laika walking away,”57 a new beginning is in sight.

References AdigĦzel, Leyla, and Ku÷u Tekin. “Jeanette Winterson as the TricksterArtist in Weight.” The Journal of Social Sciences Institute, vol. 52 (2021): 253-268. Armstrong, Karen. A Short History of Myth. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2005. Costa, Veronica Pacheco. “Science and Time in Jeanette Winterson.” Interactions, vol. 25, nos. 1-2 (2016): 25-33. Dillon, Sarah. The Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory. London and New York: Continuum, 2007.

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Fiona Hobden, “From philosophy to psychotherapy: retelling the story in Jeanette Winterson's Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (2005),” New Voices in Classical Reception Studies 11 (2016): 24. 55 Jeanette Winterson, Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005), 146. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 151.

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Genette, Gérard. Palimpsests: Literature in the Second Degree. Trans. by Channa Newman and Claude Doubinsky. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 1997. Hobden, Fiona. “From philosophy to psychotherapy: retelling the story in Jeanette Winterson's Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles (2005).” New Voices in Classical Reception Studies, vol. 11 (2016): 16-31. Hutcheon, Linda. A Theory of Parody. The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. London and New York: Methuen, 1985. Jørgensen, Marie Herholdt. Empty Space and Points of Light: The Self, Time, Sex, and Gender in Selected Works by Jeanette Winterson. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005. Jeffries, Stuart. “Jeanette Winterson: ‘I thought of suicide’.” The Guardian, 22 February 2010. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/feb/22/jeanette-wintersonthought-of-suicide. (accessed 2 January 2024) Plate, Liedeke. Transforming Memories in Contemporary Women's Rewriting. London: Palgrave, 2011. Sev Ateú, Ansi. ““I want to tell the story again:” The Palimpsests of Jeanette Winterson’s Weight.” RumeliDE Journal of Language and Literature Studies (2022): 1359-1368. doi:10.29000/rumelide.1222268. Steals, Hilde. ““The Penelopiad” and “Weight”. Contemporary Parodic and Burlesque Transformations of Classical Myths.” College Literature, vol. 36, no. 4 (2009): 100-118. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20642058?seq1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents. Winterson, Jeanette. Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2005.

CHAPTER TWO FROM MUD TO AIR: ECO-MEMORIES AS ENVIRONMENTAL RESISTANCE IN GRAHAM SWIFT’S OUT OF THIS WORLD ANASTASIA LOGOTHETI

Introduction The significance of exploring the environmental consciousness of the literary text has been the focus of “ecocritics”1 who have paid much critical attention to the uses of place as a construct that suggests the potential for the resistance of norms and conventions typical of anthropocentrism. As Andrew McMurry clarifies, the texts “ecocritics tend to study” exemplify “resistance against anthropocentrism” and “nature’s degradation or its destruction.”2 Foregrounding the environmental concerns inherent in the relationship between the Earth and its inhabitants, the “modern novel, with its emphasis on private feeling as the source of public action” can be, in the words of Dominic Head, “an appropriate vehicle for a Green agenda.”3 While in The Environmental Imagination Lawrence Buell notes the “anti-environmental” tendencies of

 1

Greg Garrard defines “ecocritics” as “literary critics with an environmental orientation.” Greg Garrard, “Solar: Apocalypse Not,” in Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, 2nd edition, edited by Sebastian Groes (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013), 93. 2 Andrew McMurry, “Ecocriticism and Discourse,” in The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication, edited by Scott Slovic, et al., (London: Routledge, 2019), 18. 3 Dominic Head, “Ecocriticism and the Novel,” in The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism, edited by Lawrence Coupe (London: Routledge, 2000), 240.

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traditional practitioners of literary criticism,4 Greg Garrard explains that ecocritics follow “ecophilosophers in identifying anthropocentrism as the core conceptual problem with Western civilization in its relations with more-thanhuman nature.”5 In an essay provocatively entitled “Ecocriticism: What Is It Good For?” Robert Kern suggests that ecocriticism “becomes most interesting” when it helps us “recover the environmental character” of the literary text.6 In seminal ecocritical studies by Lawrence Buell, Greg Garrard, and Lawrence Coupe, the environmentally sensitive side of the contemporary British novel has already been highlighted.7 The profound implications that the local bears on the global as well as the connection between human actions and the environment are also issues of concern in the work of contemporary British author Graham Swift (b. 1949). Swift, the recipient of prestigious literary awards, is viewed as a craftsman rooted in the tradition of the English novel. An established literary heavyweight who became known as a member of the group of authors Granta termed the “Best of Young British Novelists” in 1983, Swift is best known for Waterland (1983), one of the most critically acclaimed British novels of the late 20th century, and for the Booker Prize winner, Last Orders (1996). In his work, Swift experiments with first-person narratives and polyphony, exploring the human need for storytelling and the interrelatedness between individual stories and the grand narratives of history. His works incorporate elements of modernist experimentation into realist narratives that explore, in their preoccupation with loss and trauma, themes related to history, identity, and the state of the nation. Most

 4

Lawrence Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 85. 5 Greg Garrard, “Reading as an Animal: Ecocriticism and Darwinism in Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan,” in Local Natures, Global Responsibilities: Ecocritical Perspectives on the New English Literatures, edited by Laurenz Volkmann, Nancy Grimm, Ines Detmers, and Katrin Thomson (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010), 224. 6 Robert Kern, “Ecocriticism: What Is It Good For?” In The ISLE Reader: Ecocriticism 1993-2003, edited by Michael P. Branch and Scott Slovic (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003), 260. 7 See Buell, The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), and The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005); also see Greg Gerrard, Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2004) and Lawrence Coupe, ed., The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2000).

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significantly, this author’s works demonstrate resistance to normative hierarchies and highlight an ecological awareness of nature’s significance.8 In various studies, ecocritics have already considered the connection between time and place in Waterland.9 The “almost mythic spirit of place” in Waterland, as Brian Shaffer remarks,10 has resulted in drawing the attention of ecocritics to Swift’s work. Despite the absence in Waterland of an “overtly ecological message,” as Dominic Head argues, “the motif of siltation—as both structure and theme—insists on certain connections in the construction of human identity: the necessary coexistence of private feelings and public events, but also the interdependence of time, place and politics.”11 Noting that “Waterland was one of the first British novels that ecocritics read as an example of postmodern fiction that can also yield a productive ecocritical reading,” Astrid Bracke examines Waterland through a “narratology-inflected ecocriticism,” which reveals how “narratives and narrativity” shape “our perceptions of the nonhuman natural world.”12 The significance of the natural world is a staple in Swift’s fiction,13 highlighting the need to safeguard the environment and increase resistance towards normative views of nature.

 8

In the Anthropocene, as Baysal suggests, “writers increasingly began to voice their concerns regarding the jeopardized future of humankind along with the destruction of the nonhuman world, and its devastation through common catastrophes, illnesses, human strife, and savagery.” (Kübra Baysal, “Introduction,” Apocalyptic Visions in the Anthropocene and the Rise of Climate Fiction (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021), vi. 9 See discussions of Waterland by Karla Armbruster (“Ecocriticism and the Postmodern Novel: The Case of Waterland,” Green Letters 10.1 (2009), 19-38), Ronald McKinney (“The Greening of Postmodernism: Graham Swift’s Waterland,” New Literary History 28 (1997), 822-32), and Hanne Tange (“Regional Redemption: Graham Swift’s Waterland and the End of History,” Orbis Litterarum 59 (2004), 75-89). 10 Brian Shaffer, “Graham Swift’s Last Orders (1996),” in Reading the Novel in English 1950-2000 (London: Blackwell, 2006), 197. 11 Dominic Head, “Ecocriticism and the Novel,” in The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism, edited by Lawrence Coupe (London: Routledge, 2000), 239. 12 Astrid Bracke, “’Man is the Story-Telling Animal:’ Graham Swift’s Waterland, Ecocriticism and Narratology,” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 25.2 (Spring 2018), 220–237. 13 Some of Swift’s more recent works, such as the novel Wish You Were Here (2011), have also attracted the attention of ecocritics. For instance, Astrid Bracke reads this novel as a “pastoral narrative” concerned with the climate crisis. (Astrid Bracke, "Pastoral," in Climate Crisis and the 21st-Century British Novel (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 49–78.

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This chapter will consider the “spirit of place” and its significance for environmental resistance in one of Swift’s lesser-known works, a novel appropriately entitled Out of This World (1988), which Swift published after Waterland.14 Although less critically acclaimed,15 this “unjustly underrated” novel16 fully demonstrates an environmental consciousness that constitutes a form of resistance to traditional views of nature. An unmistakable sense of place provides Out of This World with deep roots into the physical world outside the text but also foregrounds the contemporary novel’s environmental concerns inherent in the relationship between the Earth and its inhabitants. This discussion of environmental resistance aims at revealing Swift’s “ecological conscience,” a term which refers to the “ethics of community, that is, the ethics of living in accord with the welfare of the ecological community.”17 Out of This World juxtaposes our current ability to remove ourselves from this planet through aerial and space travel and our continuing inability

 14

When Out of This World was published, reviews on both sides of the Atlantic were mixed. Few critics lauded the novel as unequivocally as Philip Howard, who characterised it as “a powerful and exciting book that raises uncomfortable political questions” (Times, 10 Mar 1988, 19). Peter Kemp found the novel “disappointingly mundane” despite a “tough meditativeness” and a “spectacularly wide field of vision” (Sunday Times, 13 Mar 1988, G7) while Jonathan Coe notes that “you can’t but applaud the scope and ambition” of the novel (Guardian, 11 Mar 1988). For Hermione Lee this is “a book to respect, but not to fall in love with” (Observer, 13 Mar 1988, 43) while for Adrian Poole the novel constitutes a “self-conscious sequel to Waterland” (Cambridge Review 109.2302 (1988), 111-115). 15 As David Malcom notes in the chapter “Witnesses” in Understanding Graham Swift (Columbia, SC: U South Caroline P, 2003, 111), critics have found Out of This World to be “overschematic in story material, too interested in ideas, and not sufficiently concerned to give his characters substantial life.” Nevertheless, Swift’s experimentation in Out of This World drew the attention of a few scholars, such as Heinz Antor, who considers it a “postmodern jigsaw puzzle” (in “Graham Swift, the Novelist,” Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 8.2 (1997), 154. As Malcolm Bradbury notes in The Modern British Novel, “layers of long, dark, twentieth-century history are set into a postmodern collage” in this novel (London: Penguin, 1994), 434. 16 David Malcom, “Witnesses,” 132. Overall, the novel has received limited critical attention: it has been considered in scholarship which places this novel in the context of various Swift works (see discussions by David Leon Higdon, Del Ivan Janik, and Wendy Wheeler) or discussed in book-length studies of Swift’s work (see Stef Craps, Daniel Lea, David Malcolm, and Peter Widdowson). 17 I am borrowing the term “ecological conscience” from Leopold Aldo who coined it (according to the “Glossary of Selected Terms” in Lawrence Buell, The Future of Environmental Criticism, 140).

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to make sense of our world, no matter how high above it we can soar or whether we have photographed the Earth from space. Technology prolongs stasis in trauma, as Harry, the protagonist and principal narrator, who is a professional photographer, realizes. The novel documents Harry’s disillusionment with technology: “[T]imes have changed…. The camera first, then the event.”18 In the novel, the characters seek to escape time and place in order to forget the traumas of the past; they travel, indulge themselves in visual entertainment through television, film, and photography, or even seek out the technology of self-destruction as a means of physical escape. Escaping the burden of history through geography and moving from mud to air, Out of This World reconciles technology and ecology. Through a symbolic envisioning of nature’s ability to assist in the healing of trauma, personal and global, the characters engage in the making of eco-memories as a form of individual and collective resistance to numbing convention.

Natural Memory Set in April 1982, at the beginning of the ten-week Falklands War, Out of This World focuses on the troubled relationships of the principal narrator, aerial photographer Harry Beech, with his father, Robert, and his estranged daughter, Sophie. The novel uses a historically resonant present to render all major military campaigns of the twentieth century symbolic of meaningless sacrifice and unquenchable bloodthirst which scar not only humans but also landscapes. Between the founding of the family business, the Beech Munitions Company, in 1875 and the fictional present of April 1982, a century of colonial and global warfare is encapsulated in the novel. References to most keynote events of the greater part of the twentieth century are included in Out of This World, creating geographically an immense canvas: these references include the Great War as well as World War II; the moon landing as well as various scientific advances in medicine, aviation, and photography; Nazi concentration camps as well as the Nuremberg Trials; glimpses of warfare in Vietnam, Cyprus, and Korea; the military dictatorship in Greece (1967 –1974) as well as IRA terrorism; culminating in the Falklands crisis of April 1982, the event which underscores the novel’s fictional present. The implication that individual lives are driven as much by personal choices as by other forces is central to Out of This World: coincidence and global crises mark the lives of the

 18

Graham Swift, Out of This World, 13. All subsequent references to this novel are to the 1993 Vintage edition.

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characters as well as of the planet indelibly. The ashes of destruction accumulate into a tangible record of natural memory: the earth’s remembrance of a scarred environment. The mud of Flanders, the bombedout streets of Nuremberg, the rocks from the Moon: twentieth-century history is recorded in the mud and ashes that constitute, along with air, a dominant element of this novel. The novel begins with an eco-memory: Harry remembers watching the 1969 moonwalk on television. The narrator and his father “sat up together all night watching those first moon-men.” 19 A self-proclaimed “visual reporter,”20 Harry is aware that the view of “the earth from the moon” is the “ultimate photo” as it captures “all of it, the whole of it, everything.”21 For media analyst John Hannigan, the photo of “fragile, finite” Earth as viewed from the moon is “the single most effective environmental message of the century.”22 In his youth, Harry rejects paternal authority by refusing to join the family business, Beech Munitions Company, which was founded by his grandfather in 1875 and taken over by his father, Robert, in 1918. Resolved not to produce weapons—turning his confrontation with his father into an ideological stance—Harry decides to be a witness: “[A] photographer is neither there nor not there, neither in nor out of the thing…. Someone has to be in it and step back too.”23 Eventually, he turns his military experience in photography into a career in photojournalism. As a result of refusing in 1945 to work alongside his father or to take over the family arms business, Harry is disinherited. Harry is caught in a perennial tug-of-war with his father; even as a grown man, he continues to antagonise Robert. When he marries Anna, a Greek translator he meets at Nuremberg during the Trials in 1946, and has his own child, Sophie, Harry’s hope is that his new family will fill the gap in his heart and allow him to overcome his past. His wife and daughter, however, develop a loving relationship with Robert; rather than compete with his father for his family’s affection, Harry takes himself out of this world. Harry envies and resents the love his father seems ready to bestow on everyone except his own son. Harry’s best friend, Frank Irving, becomes his filial substitute in the family business; eventually, Frank replaces Harry in his father’s home, his wife’s bed, and his young daughter’s heart. Harry prefers to travel the world’s war zones, photographing other people’s misery and forgetting his own. After

 19

Swift, Out of This World, 14. 20 Swift, Out of This World, 114. 21 Swift, Out of This World, 14-15. 22 John Hannigan quoted by Greg Garrard, in Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2004), 182. 23 Swift, Out of This World, 49.

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Anna’s death in an airplane accident, Harry allows the five-year-old Sophie to be brought up by her grandfather. When an IRA-planted car bomb succeeds in assassinating the head of Beech Munitions Company on 23 April 1972, Harry has spent almost twenty years travelling the globe’s hotspots and has created an international reputation as a celebrated and fearless photographer. Ultimately, Harry accepts that through photography he has been defending himself against reality by opting for observation over intervention, pretending to be “invisible, invulnerable, incorporeal.”24 The definitive moment in his career, when a news story explodes right in his front yard, becomes an awakening to the reality of vision’s inability to offer meaning or protection. By seeking to immortalise the carnage that was left of his father, Harry experiences directly the morbid voyeurism inherent in photography since he literally shoots a “memento mori.”25 Thereafter, Harry stops taking photographs of people because he knows that visual recording is a “simulacrum” of something “you have already partly decided you will lose.”26 He photographs aerial landscapes, waiting for the “ghosts” the camera sees,27 discovering that unlike his own haunted past, nature’s ghosts constitute a healing balm. Photographing the eternal in nature, not the ephemera of wars and political crises, allows Harry to reconcile with technology as well as his own preference for being a witness. In Out of This World, the land tells its own story; the camera can assist in disclosing the secrets of the soil. In a world waiting to be “claimed and possessed by the camera,” Swift’s characters long to be transported away from the “all-seeing, unfeeling, inhuman eye”28 to a world where they are not watched, where soothing consolation comes through nature. Having become exiles by chance or choice, these characters portray themselves as outsiders in a fast-changing world. Eventually, all of the novel’s exiled orphans acknowledge the need to reaffirm their sense of belonging through bonds of blood and geography in order to counter, as Paul Smethurst suggests in The Postmodern Chronotope, “a progressively fading sense of the real.”29 Harry discovers that, from the air, “civilisation as we know it

 24

Swift, Out of This World, 121. 25 Memento mori, a Latin phrase which suggests the awareness of mortality, is the term Susan Sontag, in her 1977 collection of essays entitled On Photography (London: Penguin, 1979, 15), applies to all photographs. 26 Swift, Out of This World, 55. 27 Swift, Out of This World, 193. 28 Swift, Out of This World, 189. 29 Paul Smethurst, The Postmodern Chronotope: Reading Space and Time in Contemporary Fiction (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), 272.

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disappears.”30 In the service of archaeology, photography becomes a “magic lamp” that may reveal “spectral field systems” dating from the Bronze Age.31 Like a palimpsest indelibly carved upon the face of the earth, nature emerges: “these vistas…virgin, naked countryside, the bare bosoms of hills and little pubic clumps of woodland.”32 Through the identification of the land with the body, Harry implies the storytelling ability of the earth, revealing a romantic faith in natural restitution. Only if technology comes to the aid of man’s geo-historical concerns and only when the one-eyed god is humbled into the service of the natural, the camera may assist in recuperating trauma.

Creating Eco-memories In 1982, Harry resides in a Wiltshire cottage while across the Atlantic Sophie is an isolated Brooklyn housewife and mother who seeks to forget her British past and embrace the new world of America. Whether in New York or the English countryside, both father and daughter have spent the ten years since the explosion at the Surrey family home out of this world geographically and emotionally away from each other and their common past. They have not spoken or written to each other since Robert’s funeral. Such estrangement has been made inevitable by Harry’s instinctive reaction to the car bomb. Trained to shield his emotions behind his camera, Harry begins to take pictures of the wreckage as soon as the explosion occurs. In one instant, Sophie witnesses not only her beloved grandfather’s physical dismemberment, but, more importantly, the psychological violation brought about by her father as the recorder. By fragmenting the personal into stills, Harry objectifies family tragedy. Instead of assisting in the initiation of the mourning process, which would lead the family to bonding and catharsis, Harry acts as a media man, becoming, by his own confession, “the true, unflinching, the ultimate pro.”33 Although these photographs are never made public and Sophie is the only witness to this betrayal, Harry abandons his career in self-disgust, having arrived at a forced realisation of the extent to which he has become desensitized. With his father dead, his daughter emigrating, and his selfrespect shattered, Harry no longer needs to travel to the world’s danger zones to escape his family. He takes up aerial photography and abandons

 30

Swift, Out of This World, 194. 31 Swift, Out of This World, 193. 32 Swift, Out of This World, 194. 33 Swift, Out of This World, 94.

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the present in favour of the “hidden spectacle of the past,”34 working for an archaeologist who investigates submerged Iron Age field systems. A decade later, in 1982, the prospect of a new life—possible through a new life partner and the child she is already carrying—produces renewed hope for the future. Now Harry feels the need to reconcile himself to the past by reconnecting with his only surviving relative. In his mind first, and then in actuality, he drafts a letter to Sophie asking her to come back to England for his wedding. As Harry and Sophie, representatives of generations of estranged parents and children, take turns voicing their traumas and revisiting global and domestic warfare through memory, the novel highlights the meaning of the past and the consequences of choices related to history. These “unconfessed confessions”35 focus on a fundamental aspect of family life: blood bonds do not guarantee emotional ties. The characters are forever discovering that they need to strive to communicate with their parents or their children. Love is neither automatically generated nor effortlessly reciprocated; it is nurtured by stories that allow interpretations of the world and create connections among people. When Harry, Robert, or Sophie choose to withdraw from family, they also withdraw from nature. Harry terms the captivating view of the Earth from space “the ultimate photo” because it is unreal: to be out of yourself looking at yourself. On the very night of the moon landing, Harry wonders whether the scenes on television are actually happening or whether they have been staged and emphasises the irreplaceable advantage of personal experience: “How do we know they’re really there? It could all be happening in some studio mockup…. To know, you’d have to go yourself.”36 Harry feels like one of the millions of people who eventually abandon the images of the “moon-men” over the Sea of Tranquillity; he proceeds outdoors to look at the familiar silvery globe in the sky: the real moon, not the televised simulacrum. Harry opts for an eco-memory to accompany the technologically produced image; resisting reproduction, this photographer uses his eyes, not the lens. When the real can be found “out of this world,” the ability to include it in our lives allows reality to defragment and shows resistance to simulacra.37

 34

Swift, Out of This World, 36. 35 Swift, Out of This World, 45. 36 Swift, Out of This World, 170. 37 The contemporary cultural preoccupation with technology-enabled simulacra has been discussed by thinkers as diverse as Susan Sontag in her 1977 collection of essays entitled On Photography and Jean Baudrillard in his 1981 book Simulacra and Simulations (in Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, edited by David Lodge and Nigel Wood, 2nd edition, Harlow: Longman, 2000). Sontag argues that photography has created “a new visual code” that she terms “an ethics of seeing” (3)

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Out of This World also foregrounds the significance of the natural world through the juxtaposition between representation and reality, which technology has enabled via film, television and photography. Is a photograph a record of reality devoid of aesthetic value, “no art, just straight photography,”38 as Harry would like to believe? Can a moment isolated in time communicate authenticity or truth? The novel reveals the camera’s ability to stage events, manipulate reality and hold us captive. As Harry Beech realises, without “a task force of cameras,” war “could not take place.”39 Harry’s characterises the Falklands campaign as “the TV event of the year.”40 The narrator considers whether a photograph records “the point at which narrative goes dumb” (92)—not a story, but the lack thereof. Is a photograph “fact or phantom? Truth or mirage?” Harry wonders.41 Harry acknowledges that what prompts the taking of a photograph is not so much the need to immortalise, preserve, record or witness but the fear of taking action: “a photo is a reprieve, an act of suspension, a charm.”42 As a boy raised without a mother and with a disapproving father, Harry discovers that the only place where he feels safe is in a “transit region” of “numb suspension,” where “all you are is your eyes.”43 Long before he becomes a professional photographer, Harry is already a spectator. He develops a passion for all the visual media that can protect him from the

 since it enables the isolation of a moment in time, which may then achieve the iconic status of historical truth. The availability of reproduction is equally detrimental in “an image-choked world,” notes Sontag (London: Penguin, 1979, 15). Through the camera, Sontag argues, “people become customers or tourists of reality” (London: Penguin, 1979, 110). Man’s quest for authenticity, the deep human need for the real, may yet survive intact the scourge of the virtual, or at least overcome, as Baudrillard notes, “the characteristic hysteria of our time: the hysteria of production and reproduction of the real” (in Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, edited by David Lodge and Nigel Wood, 2nd edition, Harlow: Longman, 2000, 410). In a 1991 interview with Catherine Bernard and Gilles Menegaldo, Swift confesses to “an unsettling idea” (in Graham Swift Ou Le Temps du Recit, edited by Michel Morel et al., Paris: Messene, 1996, 15): the possibility that our current over-dependence on visual records, which turns us into, in Sontag’s words, “image-junkies” (London: Penguin, 1979, 24), alters reality to accommodate the camera. Swift’s “sinister feeling” that “things happen now in a different way from the way they did before the camera was invented” (Bernard and Menegaldo, 15) hints at the blurring between the real and simulacra in contemporary society. 38 Swift, Out of This World, 92. 39 Swift, Out of This World, 189. 40 Swift, Out of This World, 185. 41 Swift, Out of This World, 205. 42 Swift, Out of This World, 122. 43 Swift, Out of This World, 121.

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world around him; airplanes and cameras become his armour, a cocoon that cannot be penetrated by life. Harry lives out of this world for so long that he sleepwalks through danger zones, a witness but never a participant. Or, so he thinks, until his instinctive coverage of his father’s assassination and the realisation that his daughter has been witness to an aloofness that has turned into callousness force him to acknowledge that he is a part of the here and the now. Although Harry gives up photojournalism as a result of this realisation and the subsequent shock of his daughter’s rejection, he cannot deny himself the protection of the camera and life in the air. While he sells his London home and studio and changes places of residence, he remains a photographer despite the mounting guilt that forces him to “crawl into the tent of [him]self” in a “picture-book” Wiltshire cottage.44 The structure of Out of This World suggests discontinuity rather than cohesion as it imitates fragments of time and space caught in photographs. A photograph is still and a televised image is one-dimensional. The simulated world of second-hand experience must be rejected if Swift’s characters are to transcend the stasis which causes their emotional trauma. Out of This World explores technology’s dubious gift of double vision: the world seen through the eyes and another world viewed through film-enabled reproduction. Each of the novel’s thirty-five unnumbered sections begins on a new page and constitutes a fragment of an event replayed in memory. The narrative is seemingly incoherent as the novel seeks to expose the insubstantiality of reality, particularly when experienced second-hand through technology. The fragmentation of the novel’s narrative technique— none of the narrators tells a whole story and every memory is broken down into parts not presented in chronological order—is a method suitable to the psychological discontinuity of the characters’ lives. Caught in an endless cycle of self-blame and resentment, Harry and his daughter, Sophie, seem unable to forgive themselves or each other. The stylistic differences between the voices of the principal narrators create a fragmented narrative that initially threatens to turn polyphony into cacophony. In the first ten sections of Out of This World, the linguistic variations and the chronological and geographical distances between the two narrators are subtly brought together by the fact that both Harry and Sophie feel tormented by fathers who seem to have rejected them; both Harry and Sophie portray themselves as abandoned children who suffer in exile. In the second part of the novel (sections eleven to twenty), as the loose strands of the narrative begin to intertwine, the father-figure motif strongly emerges through Harry’s and Sophie’s separate portrayals of Robert Beech.

 44

Swift, Out of This World, 60.

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The narrators take turns recounting their contested or fulfilling relationship with the paterfamilias whose assassination and its aftermath become the definitive events in their lives. The novel’s final part (sections twenty-one to thirty-five) is more complex stylistically and characterised by more positive emotion than exists in the novel’s previous parts, as interest shifts from the figure of the father as a defining presence in a child’s life towards motherhood, a subtle symbol of reconciliation and of nature. In this part, three mothers dominate the narrative: Sophie’s dead mother, Anna, represents the past; Sophie herself is the present; and Jenny, the mother-to-be, signifies the future. Through a lengthy monologue, Anna emerges as a displaced war orphan, stressing the need for parenthood to reaffirm blood bonds. Female voices suggest the possibility of an alternative world where salvation becomes synonymous with female love and empathy across life forms. Thus, while at the beginning of the novel Sophie and Harry are separated by nearly insurmountable events in their personal history, mirrored in the content and the language of their all-too-distinct narratives, eventually father and daughter, through the symbolic worship of the mother and of mother nature, hint at a possible reconciliation. By rediscovering love, they find themselves in the air, reunited out of this world.

Conclusion At the end of Out of this World, Harry and Sophie are suspended in the air. Replacing personal memories with eco-memories, that is, happy moments in nature, the protagonists, representatives of two different generations, move from history to geography, from a painful past to a therapeutic present rooted in the ever-presentness of the earth witnessed from the air. Although in the novel, father and daughter never address each other directly, always communicating through other people, the end of the book, which finds them both literally suspended in mid-air, suggests a real possibility of reconciliation. The novel has three endings, all of them related to airplanes. These flights allow the protagonists to maintain a transcended, out-of-thisworld status, which enables the creation of eco-memories. While Sophie is flying with the boys from New York to London and begins to tell them about the past, Harry recalls one of the few happy memories of his childhood when, in 1928, his father arranged for him to fly in the cockpit of an Argosy, which propels him “into the age of air.”45 In the “ancient Argosy,” Harry experiences a transcendent moment of suspension, encouraging his life-long

 45

Swift, Out of This World, 208.

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fascination with flying. Thus, the novel ends with a redeeming eco-memory: the sensation “of being lifted up and away, out of his [father’s] world, out of the age of mud, out of that brown, obscure age, into the age of air.46” As this chapter has illustrated, in Out of this World Swift demonstrates an ecological conscience and a resistance to a world of simulacra in agreement with the ecocritical consensus that, as Helena Feder suggests, we should recognize “our relations with other lifeforms as political,” acknowledging that rejecting “the idea of nonhuman cultures is not, or not only, intellectual but ideological.”47 The juxtaposition of technological sophistication and spiritual blindness in the novel suggests the need to seek an earth-centred approach to our feeling of displacement and to connect to the physical world in a less destructive and more environmentally conscious manner. As Hubert Zapf argues in “Literature as Cultural Ecology,” Imaginative literature, is not just a rhetorical vehicle of contemporary structures of power and discourse, but has a potential of transgressing and breaking out of their totalizing pressures, both socially in their resistance to modern consumer society … and ecologically in their resistance to the ideological dominance and discursive appropriation of other-than-human nature.48

In Out of this World, Graham Swift records the gradual shift from entrapment to release, from technology to nature, from the reality of mud and history to freedom in the air.

References Antor, Heinz. “Graham Swift, the Novelist.” Anglistik: International Journal of English Studies 8.2 (1997), 153-155. Armbruster, Karla. “Ecocriticism and the Postmodern Novel: The Case of Waterland.” Green Letters 10.1 (2009), 19-38. https://doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2009.10589042. Baudrillard, Jean. “Simulacra and Simulations.” In Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader, edited by David Lodge and Nigel Wood, 2nd ed, 404412. Harlow: Longman, 2000.

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Swift, Out of This World, 208. 47 Helena Feder, “Biology and the Idea of Culture,” in Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture (London: Routledge, 2014), 10. 48 Hubert Zapf, “Cultural Ecology of Literature: Literature as Cultural Ecology,” in The Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology, edited by Hubert Zapf (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), 137.

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Baysal, Kübra. “Introduction.” In Apocalyptic Visions in the Anthropocene and the Rise of Climate Fiction. Edited by Kübra Baysal, v-xiii. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2021. Bernard, Catherine, and Gilles Menegaldo. Interview with Graham Swift. In Graham Swift Ou Le Temps du Recit. Edited by Michel Morel et al., 9-18. Paris: Messene, 1996. Bracke, Astrid. “’Man is the Story-Telling Animal:’ Graham Swift’s Waterland, Ecocriticism and Narratology.” ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 25.2 (Spring 2018), 220–237. doi:10.1093/isle/isy029. Bracke, Astrid. “Pastoral.” In Climate Crisis and the 21st-Century British Novel. 49–78. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9781474271158. Bradbury, Malcolm. The Modern British Novel. London: Penguin, 1994. Buell, Lawrence. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing, and the Formation of American Culture. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. Buell, Lawrence. The Future of Environmental Criticism: Environmental Crisis and Literary Imagination. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005. Coe, Jonathan. “Jagged Edges.” Review of Out of This World. Guardian 11 Mar 1988. https://www.theguardian.com/books/1988/mar/11/fiction.grahamswift. Craps, Stef. Trauma and Ethics in the Novels of Graham Swift: No Shortcuts to Salvation. Brighton: Sussex Academic Press, 2005. Coupe, Lawrence, ed. The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2000. Feder, Helena. “Biology and the Idea of Culture.” In Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture, 1-28. London: Routledge, 2014. Garrard, Greg. Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2004. Garrard, Greg. “Reading as an Animal: Ecocriticism and Darwinism in Margaret Atwood and Ian McEwan.” In Local Natures, Global Responsibilities: Ecocritical Perspectives on the New English Literatures, edited by Laurenz Volkmann, Nancy Grimm, Ines Detmers, and Katrin Thomson, 223-42. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2010. Garrard, Greg. “Solar: Apocalypse Not.” In Ian McEwan: Contemporary Critical Perspectives, 2nd edition. Edited by Sebastian Groes, 93-101. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Head, Dominic. “Ecocriticism and the Novel.” In The Green Studies Reader: From Romanticism to Ecocriticism. Edited by Lawrence Coupe, 235-41. London: Routledge, 2000.

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Higdon, David Leon. “Double Closures in Postmodern British Fiction: The Example of Graham Swift.” Critical Survey 3.1 (1991), 88-95. Howard, Philip. “Camera Ergo Sum.” Review of Out of This World. Times 10 Mar 1988, 19. Janik, Del Ivan. “No End of History: Evidence from the Contemporary English Novel.” Twentieth-Century Literature 41.2 (1995), 160-189. Kemp, Peter. “Coming to Terms with Life After the Bomb.” Review of Out of This World. Sunday Times 13 Mar 1988, G7. Kern, Robert. “Ecocriticism: What Is It Good For?” In The ISLE Reader: Ecocriticism 1993-2003. Edited by Michael P. Branch and Scott Slovic, 258-281. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2003. Lea, Daniel. Graham Swift. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2005. Lee, Hermione. “Shutter and Lens.” Review of Out of This World. Observer 13 Mar 1988, 43. Malcolm, David. “Witnesses.” In Understanding Graham Swift. Columbia: U of S Carolina P, 2003. McKinney, Ronald H. “The Greening of Postmodernism: Graham Swift’s Waterland.” New Literary History 28 (1997), 822-32. McMurry, Andrew. “Ecocriticism and Discourse.” In The Routledge Handbook of Ecocriticism and Environmental Communication. Edited by Scott Slovic, et al., 15-25. London: Routledge, 2019. Poole, Adrian. “Graham Swift So Far.” Cambridge Review 109.2302 (1988), 111-115. Shaffer, Brian. “Graham Swift’s Last Orders (1996).” In Reading the Novel in English 1950-2000, 195-211. London: Blackwell, 2006. Smethurst, Paul. The Postmodern Chronotope: Reading Space and Time in Contemporary Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000. Sontag, Susan. On Photography. 1977. London: Penguin, 1979. Swift, Graham. Last Orders. London: Picador, 1996. Swift, Graham. Out of This World. 1988. New York: Vintage, 1993. Swift, Graham. Waterland. 1983. Rev. ed. London: Picador, 1992. Swift, Graham. Wish You Were Here. London: Picador, 2011. Tange, Hanne. “Regional Redemption: Graham Swift’s Waterland and the End of History.” Orbis Litterarum 59 (2004), 75-89. Wheeler, Wendy. “Melancholic Modernity and Contemporary Grief: The Novels of Graham Swift.” Literature and the Contemporary. Edited by Roger Luckhurst and Peter Marks, 63-79. London: Longman, 1999. Widdowson, Peter. Graham Swift. Plymouth: Northcote House, 2006. Zapf, Hubert. “Cultural Ecology of Literature: Literature as Cultural Ecology.” in The Handbook of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. Edited by Hubert Zapf, 135-153. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016.

CHAPTER THREE RESILIENT TOXIC MASCULINITY: BOYS AND THE GIFT BY ELLA HICKSON1 BELGIN BAöIRLAR

Introduction Although being strong, resilient, and fearless are commonly recognised as masculine traits in various cultures, the definition of masculinity varies over time and across different cultures.2,3 “It is indexical of class, subculture, age and ethnicity, among other factors.”4 Masculinity’s interactive nature is also the reason behind the formation of various masculinities. Individuals reshape and redefine the notion of masculinity instead of merely adhering to a predetermined script. This illustrates that masculinity is not a universally applicable, timeless, or rigid concept but rather one that is adaptable and subject to change. For this reason, Connell, an Australian sociologist, argues5 that it is impossible to have a single definition of masculinity related to dominance and inequality. She asserts that gender binaries, encompassing both femininity and masculinity, are intertwined, and one cannot exist without the other. According to her: ‘Masculinity’, to the extent the term can be briefly defined at all, is simultaneously a place in gender relations, the practices through which men and women engage that place in gender, and the effects of these practices in bodily experience, personality and culture.6

1 Both of Hickson’s plays, Boys and The Gift, have been accessed from different sources for this study. 2 John Beynon, Masculinities and Culture (McGraw-Hill Education,UK, 2001), 4. 3 Connell Raewyn, Masculinities, (Polity press, UK, 2005), 3. 4 John Beynon, Masculinities and Culture. (McGraw-Hill Education, UK, 2001), 2. 5 Connell Raewyn, Masculinities, (Polity Press, UK., 2005), 68. 6 Ibid., 71.

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In this sense, Connell reminds us that the concept of masculinity is dependent on multiple factors and she underscores its significance within gender dynamics. Drawing attention to the significant dimension of differences between the genders, Connell7 and Kimmel8 believe that masculinity is a dynamic construct continually sustained and reconstructed through gender interactions under changing conditions, including instances of resistance from marginalised groups. Since advancements in technology, politics, and social classes play roles in changing gender dynamics, it is crucial for feminists to focus not only on women’s experiences but also on masculinities to better understand this social structure.9 In fact, feminists who criticise the inequality between women and men, such as MacCormack and Strathern (1980)10 or Moore (1988),11 are aware that the differences in gender roles are a societal construct. In A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,12 Mary Wollstonecraft criticised the traditional role of women in the 18th century within the domestic sphere and argued that women should have the opportunity to work and receive equal education. Wollstonecraft defined masculine traits as being independent and productive and feminine traits as being passive and emotional, emphasising the differences between the genders. Furthermore, she encouraged women to become part of the masculine society from which they were excluded. In this way, she said, women could embrace equal educational rights and the right to be 7

Ibid., 198. “The history of masculinity, it should be abundantly clear, is not linear. There is no master line of development to which all else is subordinate, no simple shift from 'traditional' to 'modern'. Rather we see, in the world created by the European empires, complex structures of gender relations in which dominant, sub焁 ordinated and marginalized masculinities are in constant inter焁 action, changing the conditions for each others' existence and transforming themselves as they do. 8 Michael S. Kimmel "The Contemporary “Crisis” of Masculinity in Historical Perspective.” The Making of Masculinities,ed. Harry Brod (Routledge, 2018), 125. “The historical evidence suggests that while both masculinity and femininity are socially constructed within historical context of gender relations, definitions of masculinity are historically reactive to changing definitions of femininity”. 9 Connell Raewyn, Masculinities, (Polity press, UK., 2005), 39. 10 Carol MacCormack and Marilyn Strathern, eds. Nature, Culture and Gender. (Cambridge University Press, 1980), 45. 11 Helen A. Moore, "Effects of gender, ethnicity, and school equity on students' leadership behaviors in a group game." The Elementary School Journal no. 88.5 (1988): 515-527. 12 Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women & A Vindication of the Rights of Men, (Cosimo, Inc., New York, 2008), 31-32.

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productive while assimilating masculine traits. Towards the end of the 20th century, Catharine MacKinnon13 critiqued the capitalist system and called for equal pay, emphasising that women’s contributions to the workforce are as valuable as those of men. While in the 18th century, Wollstonecraft spoke about masculine qualities such as claiming the right to education and being productive outside the home, MacKinnon, in the 20th century, engaged in the struggle to create awareness that the labour and efforts of working women—now productive women—are just as valuable as those of men. In this context, due to evolving societal structures, economies, and policies, feminists have approached gender dynamics from various perspectives, including race and class, starting with Simone de Beauvoir. Moreover, “gender is too important to ignore, and feminist theories explain more about gender than other theories.”14 While feminists such as Irigaray and Mitchell have primarily focused on developing theories about femininity rather than masculinity, Chodorow, McGinley, and Dimerstein have focused on masculinities. Masculinity is not a concept that can be defined with a simple sentence, as it can manifest in different forms in every society. Connell explains that masculinity is “the pattern or configuration of social practices linked to the position of men in the gender order, and socially distinguished from practices linked to the position of women.”15 Since masculinity is directly connected to social distinctions, it does not encompass only men. Feminine men and masculine women are also within the scope of masculinity theory.16 According to Connell, just as it is natural for society to have different classes, such as the working class and upper classes, or different races, it is equally natural for there to be different expressions of masculinities, such as hegemonic, subordinate, complicit, and marginal masculinities. Hegemonic masculinity represents the prevailing and revered expression of masculinity in a specific society or culture. It frequently encompasses attributes like physical strength, authority, and emotional restraint. Moreover, in hegemonic masculinity, women are attributed a secondary position and men are always considered superior to women. This form of masculinity establishes the benchmark 13

Catharine, MacKinnon, Sexual Harrassment of Working Women, (New Haven: Yale University, 1979), 68. 14 Scott Coltrane, “Theorizing masculinities in contemporary social science,” Theorizing Masculinities, eds. Harry Brodd and Michael Koufman (Sage publications, 1994), 43. 15 Raewyn Connell, "Masculinities: The field of knowledge." Configuring Masculinity in Theory and Literary Practice. Brill (2020): 40. 16 Ibid.

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against which other expressions of masculinity are measured and typically seeks to uphold authority and dominance. Complicit masculinity describes men who do not fully conform to the hegemonic standard yet still derive advantages from it. They may not actively oppose conventional gender norms and may engage in actions that reinforce the prevailing model of masculinity. Connell compares hegemonic masculinities to complicit ones by noting ‘the difference between the men who cheer football matches on TV and those who run out into the mud and the tackles themselves’.17 Complicit masculinities are not as authoritative as hegemonic masculinities, but consciously or inadvertently, they are part of hegemonic masculinities. Subordinated masculinities refer to expressions of masculinity that deviate from the hegemonic archetype. These expressions can include not only subordinated women but also men who belong to marginalised or disadvantaged groups, such as men of colour, LGBTQ+ individuals, or men of lower socio-economic status. Subordinated masculinities are often perceived as having less authority or being less respected in society. Marginalised masculinities occupy the periphery of the prevailing culture and can go unnoticed or be dismissed. They can embody a variety of non-standard gender expressions and are often influenced by intersecting elements such as race, socio-economic status, and sexual preference. However, Connell notes that all of these varieties of masculinity are not entirely distinct from each other and she draws attention to their similarities, describing the “relations between the different kinds of masculinity: relations of alliance, dominance, and subordination.”18 These relationships among various forms of masculinity are characterised by dynamism rather than stability, intertwining with each other. Emphasising that hegemonic masculinities encompass other masculinities like an umbrella, Connell states that hegemonic masculinities also include negativities such as violence, homophobia, aggression, and oppression—both the subordination of men to men and the subordination of men to women. Furthermore, Connell refers to all these negative characteristics encompassed by hegemonic masculinities as ‘toxic masculinity’. The term ‘toxic masculinity’ was initially introduced by Shepherd Bliss in “the mythopoeic men’s movement of the 1980s.”19 According to 17

Raewyn Connell, Masculinities, (Polity press, UK, 2005), 79. Connell Raewyn, “The big picture: Masculinities in recent world history.” Theory and Society (1993): 615. 19 Carol Harrington, "What is “toxic masculinity” and why does it matter?” Men and Masculinities 24.2 (2021): 347. 18

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Harrington,20 although feminists began using the term ‘toxic masculinity’ to explain social problems such as sexual harassment and mass shootings at the beginning of the 21st century, no one has achieved an explicit consensus on the definition of the term. Toxic masculinities, within the scope of hegemonic masculinities, are “the constellation of socially regressive male traits that serve to foster domination, the devaluation of women, homophobia, and wanton violence that involves the need to aggressively compete and dominate others and encompasses the most problematic proclivities in men.”21 In this sense, toxic masculinities encompass negative masculinities that contribute to social problems and cannot be used interchangeably with hegemonic masculinities, which include both negative and non-toxic facets of masculinities. According to Kupers, “toxic masculinity has four major components: suppression of anything stereotypically feminine; suppression of emotions related to vulnerability, like fear, sadness, or helplessness; male domination over women and other men; and aggression.”22 At this point, multifaceted suppression, cruelty, and violence are keywords for toxic masculinities. The concept comprises detrimental elements of conventional masculinity and encourages men to exhibit dominance, aggression, and emotional suppression. Toxic masculinity is a recurring theme in contemporary theatre, reflecting an increasing awareness of the detrimental effects of rigid gender norms. Numerous modern plays address the harmful consequences of toxic masculinity for both individuals and society, often challenging these norms with their narratives. For instance, in Harold Pinter’s The Birthday Party,23 the power dynamics and aggression between characters serve as a reflection of aspects of toxic masculinity. Similarly, Simon Stephens’ Punk Rock24 explores the lives of several students in an English grammar school, depicting male aggression, violence, and bullying, which are connected to toxic masculinity. Another illustration can be found in Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and Fucking,25 a provocative play that delves into contemporary urban life, tackling themes of drug addiction, violence, and sexual exploitation, which can be associated with toxic masculinity. 20

Ibid. Terry A., Kupers, “Toxic masculinity as a barrier to mental health treatment in prison.” Journal of clinical psychology 61.6 (2005): 714. 22 Ibid: 717. 23 Harold Pinter, The Birthday Party, and The Room: Two Plays. Vol. 315. (Grove Press, 1961). 24 Simon Stephens, Punk Rock. (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016). 25 Mark Ravenhill, Shopping and F*** ing. (A&C Black, 2013). 21

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Ella Hickson’s plays, Boys26 and The Gift,27 also challenge traditional masculine norms and aim to expose the adverse effects of toxic masculinity on relationships. Ella Hickson, a playwright and director, stands out as one of the most captivating British playwrights of the twenty-first century, offering critical perspectives on women’s issues, environmental concerns, and social problems. Her works explore a diverse range of themes, much like her multidimensional characters. Hickson’s plays often feature open endings, allowing room for interpretation by her audience, which makes her work thought-provoking. She has experimented with various play formats. Alireza Fackhrkonandeh observes that Hickson incorporates feminist critiques into her plays, demonstrating an awareness of the “theatre’s phallocentric and heteronormative nature.”28 Fackhrkonandeh also emphasises the impact of Hickson’s ‘queer feminist sensibility’ in her plays. Examining the portrayal of female bodies in Hickson’s play Ann,29 Vicky Angelaki highlights how Hickson skilfully integrates her feminist perspective through metaphorical language. In her more recent works, such as the short play The Gift30 and Boys,31 Hickson innovatively presents her feminist perspective by focusing more on the experiences of male characters than female characters. The analysis of the present study will thus focus on masculinities, a relatively new theme in contemporary theatre, and explore how Hickson utilises this theme and the message she aims to convey to her audience.

Hegemonic Bodies in Boys Hickson’s Boys32 premiered at the HighTide Festival Theatre in 2012. The play delves into the lives of a group of young people in their final year of school. Noted for its exploration of relevant and thought-provoking 26

Ella Hickson, Plays: One, Nick Hern Books, 2018. Ella Hickson, “The Gift,” Decade: Twenty new plays about 9/11 and its legacy, ed. Samuel Adamson (Nick Hern Books, 2011), 74. 28 Alireza Fakhrkonandeh, “Crossing the Mirror into Maternal Waters: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Becoming-other in Ella Hickson’s The Writer (2018).” English Studies 103.6 (2022): 789. 29Vicky Angelaki, “Ella Hickson’s ANNA (2019) and Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes (2017): Staging the Female Body Electric.” The New Wave of British Women Playwrights: 2008–2021 33 (2023): 93. 30 Ella, Hickson, Plays: One, (Nick Hern Books, 2018). 31 Ibid. 32 Ibid. 27

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themes, Boys received positive reviews. Critics praised the unconventional length of Hickson’s play and her innovative approach in terms of language and theme. Michael Coveney commended the play, stating that the ‘actors have long lyrical speeches, and there are great shifting sands of mood and atmosphere on the stage’,33 thus highlighting the success of transitions between ambiance and dialogues. On the other hand, Ben Brantley found the play to be traditional, describing it as being ‘about youth in a state of both crisis and stasis’.34 In The Independent, Paul Taylor emphasised the realistic aspects of the play as follows: ‘Tensions rise in a play that both powerfully captures the mood of a generation and addresses permanent truths with exhilarating flair’.35 Finally, Honour Bayes highlighted the reflection of Hickson’s feminist views in the play, expressing that “boys will be boys”36 while addressing the resilient theme of masculinity. Hickson’s examination of masculinity and the challenges faced by young people has thus contributed to discussions about gender roles and societal expectations. Boys explores the challenges, friendships, and complex emotions that come with the transition from adolescence to adulthood. It tackles issues such as identity, societal expectations, and toxic masculinities. Hickson’s male characters, who live together in a shared house, reveal their toxic masculinities within their group dynamics. In The Men and the Boys, Connell argues the following: …different masculinities do not sit side-by-side like dishes on a smorgasbord. There are definite social relations between them. Especially, there are relations of hierarchy, for some masculinities are dominant, while others are subordinated, marginalized.37

There is no clear-cut distinction among masculinities that remains consistent across different socio-cultural contexts. In Hickson’s play, one 33 Michael Coveney, Boys, Whatsonstage, 01.June.2012, Web. 24.11.2023. https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/boys_4007/ 34 Ben Brantley, London Theater Journal: Imagination from Despair in Edinburgh and Minsk, NewYork Times, Web, June 18, 2012. https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/londontheater-journal-imagination-from-despair-in-edinburgh-and-minsk/ 35 Paul Taylor, Boys, Soho Theatre, London, Independent, Web, June 06, 2012. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/reviews/boyssoho-theatre-london-7820505.html 36 Honour Bayes, Boys, TimeOut, Web, June 01, 2012. https://roberticke.com/reviews/boys 37 Connell Raewyn, The men and The Boys. (Univ. of California Press, 2000), 10.

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can observe multiple masculinities within a single character or among different characters. Her creation of well-defined and multidimensional characters serves as an illustration of toxic masculinity in 21st-century British society. The characters each wrestle with their own insecurities, desires, and the pressures of conforming to traditional gender roles, leading to the manifestation of different patterns of masculinity. However, toxic masculinity patterns are evident in all of them. Among all the male characters in the play, Mack exhibits the most toxic behaviours. Mack’s manner of opening doors or entering rooms and his attitude towards his friends are both oppressive and authoritative. Timp and Cam are cautious around Mack. For instance, while talking about a girl, Cam playfully slaps Mack on the shoulder, but upon seeing Mack’s expression, Cam quickly withdraws his hand. Timp is even more careful in his interactions with Mack. Throughout the play, Mack asserts his authority a few times, stating “I’m the Power”38 and thereby declaring his dominance and control over the others. Hickson reflects the embodiment of power and privilege through the character of Mack. Jackson Katz separates men with elements of toxic masculinity into two categories. He claims that men in the first category may have two different reasons for their derogatory behaviours towards women. First, he suggests that they may unknowingly mimic what they have seen in their families and among their peers. Second, even if they are demeaning women, they may not be aware of the injustice of their actions and may not know how they should behave. However, constituting the second category, “some men are conscious of the contradictions between what they say about how much they respect women and the things they have done.”39 In the play, Mack engages in a relationship with a 17-year-old girl and is conscious of the injustice of this action: BENNY. Sometimes people don’t know what they want. MACK. So what – we should make their decisions for them? BENNY. She was seventeen. You’re twenty-three. MACK. Seventeen-year-olds have brains. TIMP. Not all of them. I didn’t. Still don’t.40

Although Mack is aware of the immorality of his action, he blames the girl and he does not take responsibility for his disrespectful behaviour. 38

Ella Hickson, Plays: One, (Nick Hern Books, 2018), 314. Jackson Katz, Macho Paradox: Why some men hurt women and and how all men can help. (Sourcebooks, Inc., 2006), 92. 40 Ella Hickson, Plays: One, (Nick Hern Books, 2018), 271. 39

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Cam has chosen a different path, diverging from toxic masculinity, and he aligns himself more with the female characters in the play. His understanding of people, relationships, and social interactions is not influenced by traditional masculine ideas of domination and predation; rather, it revolves around service and cooperation. Cam is sensitive enough to be disturbed by the rude behaviour of the famous Russian musician he encounters at the concert towards an old photographer. He does not apply pressure or violence to his male friends. In this sense, although Cam’s behaviours appear to deviate from the patterns of hegemonic masculinities, he exhibits characteristics of complicit masculinity. While Benny may not be as authoritarian and aggressive as Timp or Mack, he still benefits from the privileges offered to men by the patriarchal structure. Cam, despite considering it inappropriate for Mack be intimate with a 17-year-old girl at a party, does not prevent the situation. Instead, he joins Benny and Timp in making fun of her whenever the girl is mentioned. In this play, Hickson emphasises the reflections of toxic masculinity by using more male characters than female characters. Through dialogues composed of conversations among groups of male characters, Hickson also includes toxic jokes among men in the play. Peter Lyman clarifies: The humor of male bonding relationships generally is sexual and aggressive, and frequently consists of sexist or racist jokes. […] The jokes that men tell about women in the presence of other men are sexual and aggressive rather than erotic and use hostile rather than clever verbal forms…41

In the play, Timp, Cam, and Benny discuss the ‘Polish girl’ and try to remember her name: CAM. Megan. TIMP. Was it not Mégane – like the car? CAM. Like a Renault Mégane? TIMP. No, you’re right – it was Megan. I think – anyway – she’s hot, right? Impressive honkers – long hair, big eyes – lovely looking; she’s Australian or something – 42

Timp and Cam make cruel comments about the Polish girl. While they acknowledge her beauty, Timp also makes hostile comments about her, 41 Peter Lyman “The Fraternal Bond as a Joking Relationship: A Case Study of the Role of Sexist Jokes in Male Group Bonding,” Men's Lives, eds. Michael Kimmel and Michael Messner (Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1998), 171. 42 Ella Hickson, Plays: One, (Nick Hern Books, 2018), 244.

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saying that her smile is strange. Thus, both Timp and Cam, to maintain and establish their hegemonic masculinities, make sexist and objectifying remarks in front of Benny. In Gender and Power, Connell defines hegemonic masculinity as “the most privileged form of masculinity within a patriarchal system, always constructed in relation to various subordinated masculinities as well as in relation to women.”43 Hickson vividly portrays the dominance of toxic masculinities over women in the theatrical context. In the play, three female characters are subjected to the oppression of toxic masculinities. Representing subordinated bodies, the Polish girl, Laura, and Sophie are objectified by hegemonic masculinities. The objectification of women’s bodies is widespread in the media, magazines, and among men, often focusing on the female body. Fosbraey and Puckey emphasise that women are sexually objectified when their bodies or specific body components are isolated and detached. This reduces them to mere objects, valued solely for their ability to please male sexual desires.44 Therefore, when Timp and Cam compare the Polish girl’s body to a car or Timp objectifies Laura as a dinner, it reveals their efforts to assert dominance and showcase their toxic masculinity by degrading women’s bodies. Kilmartin and Allison argue that “toxic masculinity provides justifications and rationalizations for men’s subordination of women, and this set of cultural beliefs is both created and maintained by individuals, groups, institutions, and society at large”.45 Changing societal structures and politics contribute to the cultural and variable nature of toxic masculinity. Hickson exposes the detrimental impact of toxic masculinity on society through Timp’s comment after kissing the Polish girl: TIMP. What else could you do – I had to kiss her. To apologise, to defend the name of the British gentleman in her head; it was basically an act of patriotism. All things considered – I slept with her – for Queen and country.46

Timp apologises for his rude behaviour through his toxic explanation. He claims that he has to kiss her because this is what society expects from him. Hickson clearly emphasises the impact of patriarchal policies on 43 Raewyn Connell, Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics (Standford University Press, 1987), 183. 44 Glenn Fosbraey and Nicola Puckey, eds. Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music (Springer Nature, 2021), 57. 45 Christopher Kilmartin and Julie Allison. Men's violence against women: Theory, research, and activism (Psychology Press, 2007), 61. 46 Ella Hickson, Plays: One (Nick Hern Books, 2018), 265.

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individuals. The ease with which privileged men in society can exert their dominance over women is expected. Violence and sexuality are key points used for the subordination of women. Aware of this, Hickson sarcastically exposes both subordination methods in her play to avoid naturalising the patriarchal order in society. Timp not only sees women solely as objects of desire and sexual engagement; he also lacks any sense of loyalty towards Laura. He does not value Laura much outside of the realm of sexuality. When Laura learns that Timp has been with other women, she wants to leave, but she is subjected to Timp’s toxic pressure. Each time Laura expresses her desire to leave, Timp loudly opposes her, thereby asserting a form of dominance over Laura. Timp’s drug use and constant involvement with different women indicate his alienation, a sign of toxic masculinity. Nancy Dowd argues that in toxic masculinity, the crucial aspect is “not defining what masculinity is, but what it is not”.47 This means that “the two key negatives to being a man are not being a girl or woman, and not being gay.”48 Being gay, as it challenges the boundaries of patriarchal policies and is seen as a problem that needs to be dealt with, becomes an unavoidable issue in the theory of hegemonic masculinities. To avoid being labelled as the ‘other’, men refrain from both feminine behaviours and gay behaviours—essentially, behaviours considered feminine. Particularly during adolescence, acts of violence, mockery, exclusion, and harassment towards gay men, done explicitly to emphasise one’s own heterosexuality, fall within the scope of toxic masculinities. In the play’s early portions, Hickson portrays Benny, Timp, and Cam expressing mocking and hateful remarks towards gay people. Benny performs the Heimlich manoeuvre on Cam to help dislodge an accidentally swallowed drug, but the sounds suggest pleasure of a sexual nature. ‘Benny stands angry and red’49 while others mockingly laugh. While Timp and Cam belittle queer bodies, imitating them, Benny exhibits violent tendencies. At the end of Act One, when Cam is about to express his discomfort about the rude behaviour of a successful Russian violinist named Viktashev towards an elderly man after celebrating his success returning from the concert, Benny anxiously adds: BENNY. Did he put his hand on your leg? I’ll fucking kill him if he did. CAM. No – he didn’t put his hand on my leg. BENNY. He put his hand on 47 Nancy E. Dowd, “Masculinities and feminist legal theory.” Wis. JL Gender, & Soc'y 23 (2008): 201, 209. 48 Ibid. 49 Ella Hickson, Plays: One (Nick Hern Books, 2018), 197.

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your cock? CAM. No – (Laughing.) listen – BENNY. It’s no fucking laughing matter – I’ll chop his cock off, if you need someone to – 50

Hickson explicitly exposes homophobic hatred to bolster her perspective on men’s intense homophobia, which is connected to avoiding femininity to conform to masculine norms. From another perspective, she highlights why queer individuals conceal their true identities to protect themselves from degradation and harm. Thus, we witness how the characters’ homophobia is toxic and cruel. Violence within the scope of toxic masculinity is a prevalent and brutal form of pressure used against subordinated bodies. Those subjected to violence are often women. In her play, Hickson addresses both violence against women and violence between men. Mack’s violent and toxic behaviour towards Sophie references male hegemony, while the violent altercation between Benny and Mack—a knife attack by Benny—points to the power struggle among men. The character Benny in the play encompasses both complicit and hegemonic aspects of masculinity. Benny does not directly inflict violence on Laura or Sophie. In fact, when everyone else ignores Laura’s need for help at the party, Benny assists her. However, Benny remains silent and turns a blind eye to the subordination of Laura and Sophie. In this regard, Benny possesses characteristics of complicit masculinity. On the other hand, with his homogeneous male group, Benny does not shy away from openly displaying toxic masculine behaviours. Moreover, despite needing emotional support because of his brother’s suicide, Benny tries not to show his real feelings to appear strong precisely for this reason; that is, he strives to appear strong as expected by patriarchal society and resorts to toxic violence to prove his strength. According to Horlacher,51 discussions of masculinity at the beginning of the 21st century have consistently presented disturbing images. He notes that toxic masculinity is often linked to violent events, such as the massacres carried out by Anders Behring Breivik in Norway or shootings in universities and schools. In the ongoing discourse on education, especially in Germany, masculinity has been recognised as a potential issue. Recent data from the German government and the World Health Organization (WHO) reveal that men face significantly higher risks of experiencing challenges such as alcoholism, personality disorders, and suicide. It might be said that Hickson also addresses this globally spreading problem of toxic masculinity in Boys. Timp’s drug addiction 50

Ibid, 301. Stefan Horlacher, Configuring masculinity in theory and literary practice (Brill, 2015), 2. 51

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and Benny’s brother’s suicide confront the audience with the reality that toxic masculinity is a rapidly spreading and growing issue.

Marginalised Masculinity in The Gift Although Hickson’s staged plays are generally long, The Gift is quite short. In this play, Hickson addresses the concept of toxic masculinity in terms of gender roles. Unlike Boys, this play has only one male character and multiple female characters. Despite its brevity, Hickson effectively presents the theme of toxic masculinity in various regards within a theatrical framework. Throughout the play, Hickson focuses solely on the feelings and thoughts of Jason, a one-dimensional character in his midtwenties from Panama who grew up in the southern region of the United States. After the First and especially the Second World Wars, the United Kingdom and the USA experienced a rapid increase in migration due to economic reasons. West Indians and Afro-Panamanians constituted a significant portion of this migration. This change in society has also brought along the issue of racism. Paul Kivel and bell hooks draw attention to the dangerous presence of racism, still prevalent today, arguing that the belief that men of different cultures and colours are untrustworthy and dangerous is taught from generation to generation. Kivel asserts that “racism has produced myths about every group of nonwhite, non-mainstream men being dangerous to white women and children.”52 However, while Hickson also emphasises the theme of men from different cultures or colours being dangerous by using a young male character from Panama, the play is not only focused on racism. As Hickson also did in Boys, she generally attributes the theme of toxic masculinity to men from different angles. In the beginning of her book,53 Hickson confesses that she wrote The Gift after learning to be ‘provocative’ at a writing camp at Headlong Theatre and she admits that she wrote her play directly from her own thoughts. The Gift is both provocative and realistic, as it offers a different perspective on toxic masculinity, making it engaging and fluid. In the play, Jason, showing signs of toxic masculinity, works in a gift shop and often observes women gathering in front of his shop for guided tours.

52

Katz Jackson. Macho Paradox: Why some men hurt women and how all men can help (Sourcebooks, Inc., 2006), 78. 53 Ella Hickson, Plays: One (Nick Hern Books, 2018), VII.

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Richard Majors argues that “black men often cope with their frustration, embitterment, alienation, and social impotence by channeling their creative energies into the construction of unique, expressive, and conspicuous styles of demeanor, speech, gesture, clothing, hairstyle, walk, stance, and handshake”.54 Hickson’s character is alienated from society because of his race. He is from somewhere that even Karen—a tour guide—does not know. In this sense, Jason represents marginalised masculinity and seeks to gain appreciation through his suppressed anger and loneliness, hiding them behind courteous and gentle behaviour: And I always put their coat back on for them – real gentle – And they appreciate the chivalry. They’re real grateful… for the kindness. They are.55

Satisfied with the idea that his courteous behaviour is appreciated, Jason suppresses his sense of alienation and reveals his toxic masculine personality. Jason uses women to fill an emotional void and avoid emotional attachment in his life. Karen advises Jason to get a girlfriend and says, ‘you measure your life by the heartbeats of the people that you’ve slept alongside’.56 Jason, lacking this feeling himself, establishes dominance over an unfamiliar woman who comes to his shop by telling her about it and ends up being with her. In this sense, women are only sexual objects for Jason. According to bell hooks, “at a time when black men are losing ground on all fronts and, in many cases, losing their lives, rather than creating a politics of resistance, many black men are simply acquiescing, playing the role of a sexual minstrel.”57 In this sense, Hickson's character Jason, instead of opposing social discrimination policies, toxically employs sexuality as a means of asserting dominance on women. For this reason, Jason acts as if he is the only one who understands the sadness of women and comforts them, leaving a pin in their pockets to be remembered. Even his belief that all women like to cry shows that he sees women as helpless and weak, belonging to a lower class.

54 Richard Mayors, "Cool pose: Black masculinity and sports." African Americans in sports, ed.Gary A. Sailes (Routledge, 2017),17. 55 Samuel Adamson ed., Decade: Twenty new plays about 9/11 and its legacy (Nick Hern Books, 2011), 74. 56Ibid, 72. 57 Bell Hooks, We real cool: Black men and masculinity (Psychology Press, 2004), 75.

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Cahill criticises the objectification of women and claims the following: To be viewed as a sex object is to be regarded as less than a full human person, to be debased and reduced to mere flesh. The male gaze - which is male primarily in its effect, not necessarily in its origin, in that women can also adopt it - defines and constrains women, assesses their beauty, and in doing so dehumanizes.58

Thus, underestimating or reducing the value of women to an object is one of the most prominent characteristics of toxic masculinity. In the play, Jason compares the women he is with to ‘dolls, plastic’ and says: ‘I sometimes think what they’d look like all together – all laid out on their backs – like – if it would fill a football field… like, they’d look like – like swimmers’.59 Jason, who does not establish any emotional connection with the women he is with, emphasises their worthlessness and insignificance, portraying them as mere bodies. For him, women are like crying babies. With Jason, Hickson creates a toxic character who attempts to establish dominance over women by using his sexual power to conceal his own weaknesses.

Conclusion Toxic masculinity is related to the enduring legacy of the patriarchal system, where a man constantly strives to feel and appear strong and consciously or unconsciously discriminates against other people by not seeing them as a whole. Hickson explores the theme of toxic masculinity, referring to negative and harmful behaviours from various perspectives in the plays Boys and The Gift. Hickson’s characters do not only represent the type of masculinity distinguished by Connell. In her male characters, features of hegemonic, complicit, marginalised, and subordinated masculinities are visible. While addressing the toxic behaviours of men within a group in the play Boys, Hickson focuses on the toxic masculinities of a solitary black man in The Gift. In both of these plays, Hickson effectively explores the detrimental nature of patterns of toxic masculinity in both male and female characters. She utilises male friendships and romantic relationships to expose toxic 58

Ann J. Cahill, Overcoming objectification: A carnal ethics (Routledge, 2012), 84. 59 Samuel Adamson ed., Decade: Twenty new plays about 9/11 and its legacy (Nick Hern Books, 2011), 74.

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masculinity in the plays, illustrating how these dynamics impact the characters and their interactions adversely. Her characters display destructive, aggressive, and violent attitudes both among themselves and in their interactions with women. In Boys, Hickson’s characters resort to violence and objectification to suppress their vulnerabilities, loneliness, and anxieties, aiming to assert their dominance. Similarly, in The Gift, the male character Jason attempts to prove his superiority by exploiting the vulnerabilities of women. The objectification of women is another aspect of toxic masculinity that Hickson focuses on in both of her plays. Her characters label women and girls as either troublemakers or mere objects—dolls, cars—to dehumanise them. In both plays, Hickson exposes the harms of toxic masculinity by highlighting traits such as hypersexuality and aggressiveness in her characters that fall within the scope of toxic masculinity. Characters like Timp in Boys and Jason in The Gift, by rejecting emotional and romantic relationships, satisfy these emotions through hypersexual actions, reducing the women they are with to mere bodies or flesh. In this sense, all of Hickson’s characters embody policies of gender inequality, which are key elements of the patriarchal system. Homophobia is, to some extent, a result of the resilient and oppressive policies of the patriarchal system. In patriarchal societies, subordinated bodies often belong to groups that are suppressed and marginalised through violence and humiliation, existing outside of societal boundaries. Although Hickson does not explicitly address the theme of violence against subordinated bodies, she generally highlights the perspective of toxic masculine bodies towards them. In Boys, Hickson underscores how characters like Cam and Benny demean subordinated bodies to emphasise their fear of otherness and assert their own superiority. Both of Hickson’s plays are open-ended; she does not provide a specific plan for shifting the nature of masculinity from toxicity towards its opposites—kindness, love, anti-racism, and non-violence. In the plays, both genders are adversely affected by toxic masculinity, emphasising the necessity of confronting toxic masculinity to create a more inclusive and equal society for all genders.

References Adamson, Samuel ed., Decade: Twenty new plays about 9/11 and its legacy. Nick Hern Books, 2011. Angelaki, Vicky. “Ella Hickson’s ANNA (2019) and Lucy Kirkwood’s Mosquitoes (2017): Staging the Female Body Electric.” The New Wave

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of British Women Playwrights: 2008–2021. Edited by Elisabeth AngelPerez and Aloysia Rousseau. Boston, CPI Books,2023, pp. 93-110. Bayes, Honour. Boys, TimeOut, Web, June 01, 2012. https://roberticke.com/reviews/boys Beynon, John. Masculinities and Culture. UK., McGraw-Hill Education, 2001. Brantley, Ben. London Theater Journal: Imagination From Despair in Edinburgh and Minsk. NewYork Times, Web, June 18, 2012. https://archive.nytimes.com/artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/18/lo ndon-theater-journal-imagination-from-despair-in-edinburgh-andminsk/ Cahill, Ann J. Overcoming Objectification: A Carnal Ethics. Routledge, 2012. Coltrane, Scott. “Theorizing Masculinities in Contemporary Social Science”, Theorizing Masculinities. Edited by Harry Brod and Michael Koufman, Sage publications, 1994, pp. 39-60. Connell, Robert W. “The big picture: Masculinities in recent world history.” Theory and Society, Vol.22, No. 5 (1993): 597-623. Connell W., Raewyn. The Men and the Boys. Univ of California Press, 2000. Connell W., Raewyn. Masculinities. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2005. Connell W., Raewyn. Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. John Wiley & Sons, 2013. Connell W., Raewyn. "Masculinities: The field of knowledge." Configuring masculinity in theory and literary practice, Vol.58, (2020): 39-51. Coveney, Michael. Boys, Whatsonstage, 01.June.2012, Web. 24.11.2023. https://www.whatsonstage.com/news/boys_4007/ Dowd, Nancy E. "Masculinities and feminist legal theory." Wis. JL Gender, & Soc'y 23 (2008): 201. Fakhrkonandeh, Alireza. “Crossing the Mirror into Maternal Waters: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Becoming-other in Ella Hickson’s The Writer (2018).” English Studies, 103.6 (2022): 787-820. Fosbraey, Glenn and Nicola Puckey, eds. Misogyny, Toxic Masculinity, and Heteronormativity in Post-2000 Popular Music. Springer Nature, 2021. Harrington, Carol. “What is “toxic masculinity” and why does it matter?.” Men and Masculinities 24.2 (2021): 345-352. Hickson, Ella. Plays: One, Nick Hern Books, 2018. hooks, bell. We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity. Psychology Press, 2004.

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Horlacher, Stefan. Configuring masculinity in theory and literary practice. Brill, 2015. Katz, Jackson. Macho Paradox: Why some men hurt women and and how all men can help. Sourcebooks, Inc., 2006. Kilmartin, Christopher, and Julie Allison. Men's violence against women: Theory, research, and activism. Psychology Press, 2007. Kimmel, Michael S. "The Contemporary “Crisis” of Masculinity in Historical Perspective.” The Making of Masculinities. Edited by Harry Brod. Routledge, 2018, pp. 121-154. Kupers, Terry A. "Toxic masculinity as a barrier to mental health treatment in prison." Journal of clinical psychology, 61.6 (2005): 713-724. Lyman, Peter. "In Male Group Bonding." Men's Lives (1998): 171. MacCormack, Carol and Marilyn Strathern, eds. Nature, culture and gender. Cambridge University Press, 1980. MacKinnon, Catharine. Sexual harassment of working women: A case of sex discrimination. Yale University Press, 1979. Majors, Richard. "Cool pose: Black masculinity and sports." African Americans in sports. Edited by Gary A. Sailes. Routledge, 2017, pp. 15-22. Moore, Helen A. "Effects of gender, ethnicity, and school equity on students' leadership behaviors in a group game." The Elementary School Journal 88.5 (1988): 515-527. Pinter, Harold. The Birthday Party, and The Room: Two Plays. Grove Press, 1961. Ravenhill, Mark. Shopping and F*** ing. A&C Black, 2013. Stephens, Simon. Punk Rock. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2016. Taylor, Paul. Boys, Soho Theatre, London, Independent, Web, June 06, 2012. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatredance/reviews/boys-soho-theatre-london-7820505.html Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Women & A Vindication of the Rights of Men. Cosimo, Inc., 2008.

CHAPTER FOUR NEGOTIATING THE FEMININE SPACE IN A MULTIRACIAL SOCIETY: SITES OF RESISTANCE IN ANDREA LEVY’S SMALL ISLAND FARAH ALI

This chapter discusses the portrayal of the two female characters in Small Island, considering Luce Irigaray’s mimesis theory. Both Queenie Bligh and Hortense Roberts assume unconventional roles that mediate change in postwar 1940s Britain. Queenie, the white landlady, opens her house to Black lodgers, angering her neighbours and later her husband. Hortense, the Black Jamaican teacher, brokers her move from Jamaica to London by marrying Gilbert Joseph, an RAF (Royal Air Force) officer. Both Hortense and Queenie escape an environment that aims to prepare them for their proper feminine roles. Queenie’s rural Yorkshire background aims to domesticate her so she can be part of her father’s butchery business, and Hortense’s teacher training, which she prides herself upon, intends to subjugate her into being a dutiful subject of the Empire. Nevertheless, both women create cracks in the system from which they occupy sites of resistance to push back against their assigned roles. Queenie’s welcoming of the Black lodgers and Hortense’s move to Britain and her subsequent dominance over Gilbert show how they rebel against social norms. By attempting to effect change from the different positions they occupy in society, both women fit into a model suggested by Irigaray of female resistance from within the phallocentric culture. Irigaray defines mimesis as a political action through which women, by submitting to their assigned feminine roles, attempt to make visible, through playful repetition, what is otherwise meant to be invisible. By accepting their womanly roles yet embracing a different identity from the one given them by society, both Queenie and Hortense redefine women’s roles in mediating

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change. Although both, in the end, settle for less contentious positions, they have proven throughout the novel that change can be effected from within the system, even in a highly racially segregated society.

Technologies of Life Unlike Zadie Smith and Monica Ali, who refuse to categorise their work as part of the Black British tradition, Andrea Levy unreservedly accepts the classification of her work as Black British. She has always emphasised her desire to unearth the silenced experiences of the Black British population. In an interview with Maria Helena Lima, Levy says: For me the starting point of writing books has always been about wanting to make the unseen visible, wanting to show the experience of [my] parents’ generation and the children that came after, having to live in this country, quite a hostile environment, and how [they] cope with that.1

Small Island portrays four characters: Queenie, Bernard, Gilbert, and Hortense, each narrating their side of the story. Set against the backdrop of the Second World War, the novel oscillates between before and after 1948. It recounts the lives of two couples: a white British-born couple, Queenie and Bernard, and a Black Jamaican-born couple, Gilbert and Hortense. To capitalise on the balance Levy creates in portraying her characters, she involves them in general experiences in the late 1940s and early 1950s to shed light on British history after the war and the significant migration of the Black population. In response to the call of the “Mother Country” to help with rebuilding efforts, many Black British individuals migrated to the United Kingdom in search of better opportunities for work and settlement. The efforts of the Black British people, however, were not limited to rebuilding the country after the war; they also fought as British soldiers of the Empire. Michael Roberts, who has a brief cameo in the novel through his short relationship with Queenie, is a Royal Air Serviceman whom his father was proud to send to war: “They need men like my son. Men of courage and good breeding. There is to be a war over there. The Mother Country is calling men like my son to be heroes whose families will be proud of them.”2 This pride-inspiring moment clashes with the opening of the novel, in which Levy transports us to the year 1924 and the Wembley Exhibition,

 1

Gigi Adair, Kinship Across the Black Atlantic: Writing Diasporic Relations (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019), 146. 2 Andrea Levy, Small Island (London: Headline Publishing Group), 59.

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where a miniature of the British Empire is brought to London to showcase colonised native people and their artefacts, an event described by Thomas Bonnici as a “reverse diaspora.”3 Queenie and her parents attend the exhibition.4 Queenie fondly remembers this trip to Wembley, particularly when her father tells her, “See here, Queenie. Look around. You’ve got the whole world at your feet, lass.”5 Queenie becomes intrigued by the prospect of encountering more people and exploring different countries within the confines of London. She spots a group of Indian women with dots on their foreheads and is curious to ask about the significance of the dots, but her mother warns her against it, fearing they might be contagious.6 This attraction and rejection exemplify Homi Bhabha’s concept of ambivalence, where fixed images of the colonised are created yet accompanied by a fear of the unknown aspects of those images. Bhabha explains that colonial discourse oscillates between recognising cultural and racial differences and disavowing them by linking the unfamiliar to something familiar, resulting in a repetitive and fluctuating pattern of delight and fear.7 The ambivalence is evident in Queenie, who experiences attraction and repulsion simultaneously, influenced by her mother’s colonial gaze that renders Indian women as “invisible.”8 These conflicting feelings are shattered, and a new negotiable space is created when Queenie’s family’s jokes about Black people’s dark skin and physical characteristics are called into question upon Queenie’s encounter with an African man. She becomes bewildered by his “good manners, his patience, his tact, his humanity.”9 While Queenie felt a sense of superiority as part of the British Empire and saw the whole world “at her feet,”10 the African man, as the Other, made her uneasy. When teased to go and kiss him despite his dark “chocolate” skin, Queenie is afraid that he will engulf her, another reference to being dominated by a foreign culture. However, she is pleasantly surprised. The Other turns out to be well-spoken, refusing the kiss and suggesting they “shake hands instead.”11

 3

Thomas Bonnici, “Diaspora in Two Caribbean Novels: Levy’s Small Island and Phillips’s A State of Independence”, Revista de Letras, 45, no. 2. (2005): 89. 4 Levy, Small Island, 2. 5 Ibid., 6. 6 Ibid., 4. 7 Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994), 73. 8 Corinne Duboin, “Migrant Stories and Liminal Selves in Andrea Levy's Small Island”, Obsidian, 12, no. 1 (2011): 17. 9 Bonnici, “Diaspora in Two Caribbean Novels”, 90. 10 Levy, Small Island, 6. 11 Ibid., 5.

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Queenie’s ambivalence toward the Other is mirrored, albeit in a different manner, in Hortense’s reaction to the Mother Country. One amusing example is when Gilbert asks Hortense to cook him some chips. Despite believing that she has received the finest British education and possesses the best English accent, Hortense’s attempts result in Gilbert teasingly calling her “Miss Mucky Foot” as she boils the chips instead of frying them.12 Despite seeking Queenie’s guidance on how to prepare the chips, Hortense fails to create an authentic English meal for Gilbert. The chips incident highlights Hortense’s imitation of British customs, which, unfortunately, she falls short of attaining. Her failure can be attributed to two reasons: her unquestioning belief in everything she has read in British textbooks, which causes her to come across as a naive snob, and her inability to grasp the everyday language spoken by people in London. Andrea Levy’s primary concern in this novel is to unearth and expose the history that has been hidden and silenced. In an interview with Charles Henry Rowell, Levy expressed her shock at the absence of Black British history and realised that there was a gap that needed to be filled: “Actually, there is a hole here where the Black British experience is missing. So, I thought, ‘Hey, I’ll do it, I’ll start.’”13However, as mentioned earlier, Levy’s novel does not aim to depict the dichotomous worlds of black British people versus white British people. Instead, it seeks to transcend those binaries and explore the liminal space that influences and is influenced by both, creating a shared zone where they intersect to shape the nation’s history and construct a national identity. In other words, Levy aims to reveal what Bhabha refers to as Western symbols,14 which he sees as cultural markers of difference and channels of understanding. Her intention is not to dismiss these symbols but to engage them in dialogue with other symbolic systems. Levy’s desire to unearth the rich history of Black British people and the Windrush generation stems from the need to challenge and expose the distorted, ambiguous, and vague portrayal of the Other. The fragmented and contradictory image of the Other serves as a compelling reason to delve into different contexts and narratives. One of the ways to counter the authoritative regime perpetuated by the colonisers is to dismantle the binary opposition.

 12

Ibid., 271. 13 Charles Henry Rowell, “An Interview with Andrea Levy.” Callaloo, 38, no. 2 (2015): 260. 14 Bhabha, “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817. “Race”, Writing and Difference. Special issue of Critical Inquiry. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr, 12, no. 1 (1986), 52.

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In one episode, when Gilbert returns with two portions of fish and chips following Hortense’s unsuccessful cooking attempt, he humorously remarks, “[N]ot everything the English do is good.”15 This incident, along with numerous others in the novel, challenges the language, culture, and space of the colonisers. These instances drive Levy’s narrative to unveil the significant contribution of black British people to enriching and diversifying the presumed homogeneous British society. Miri Rozmarin, a feminist philosopher, introduces the concept of the “technology of life” in Luce Irigaray’s mimesis, which refers to self-applied social practices that shape one’s sense of self and position in the world.16 Rozmarin identifies three technologies within Irigaray’s mimesis: the speaking Other, parodic imitation of discourse, and the creation of body language.17 The speaking Other represents the position of women as objects in society, serving as a silent mirror that reflects only the image of men (the subject). When the speaking Other breaks the silence, it challenges the phallocentric positioning of the feminine and establishes an alternative position where the silent mirror becomes self-reflective and self-assertive.18 In the case of Queenie, her volunteering at a relief centre to assist English families displaced by the London bombings challenges her husband’s objections and defies his will. Hortense, on the other hand, challenges societal norms by brokering her own move to London through her marriage proposal to Gilbert. The second technology, the parodic imitation of discourse, involves women operating within the phallocentric masculine world to reveal an alternative subjectivity of the feminine. This alternative subjectivity has been suppressed by essentialist thinking that excludes and diminishes any possibility of difference within the feminine category. Rozmarin describes this parody as sometimes “exaggerated, even grotesque” when reflecting women’s subjectivity.19 Queenie’s decision to accept Black lodgers in her house while her husband is absent demonstrates her taking control and assuming a traditionally male role. Hortense’s efforts to seek employment without relying on Gilbert’s help, and even discouraging him from accompanying her to the interview due to his shabby appearance, flip the typical scenario we often see with men.

 15

Levy, Small Island, 271. 16 Miri Rozmarin, “Living Politically: An Irigaryan Notion of Agency as a Way of Life.” Hypatia, vol. 28, no. 3 (2013), 473. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 472. 19 Ibid., 473.

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The third technology is the creation of body language. Irigaray presents the female body as reduced to silent matter, where its desire and subjectivity become distinctly male.20 Irigaray suggests that mimesis presents the female body as the excess of phallic sexuality, an origin that cannot be conceptualised.21 She argues that for women to undergo self-transformation, they need to challenge the cultural construction of femininity that inhibits their sensual experiences. They must speak out against the societal representations imposed upon them as mothers, daughters, or wives, and create spaces that allow them to voice their opposition to the phallocentric culture’s impositions on their existence. Rozmarin suggests that Irigaray’s notion of the creation of body language proposes that women should dare to present their hurt, objectified, or abused bodies, as well as their normatively sexed bodies, as integral parts of their participation in public arenas.22 Both Queenie and Hortense have utilised their bodies to subvert expectations. When Queenie engages in a sexual relationship with the black British officer Michael Roberts, she employs her body to challenge the dominant culture. Hortense, too, resists Gilbert’s attempts to control her by leveraging her body and navigating the system once she arrives in London. Her pride in her honey-coloured skin and her tendency to dress ostentatiously are tactics she employs to challenge mainstream norms. This chapter extends Irigaray’s feminist theory by applying it to the segregated society of 1940s London, which serves as a barrier that both Queenie and Hortense are attempting to overcome in their own ways. In addition to challenging the patriarchal and phallocentric culture that sought to confine them, their acts of resistance also aim to dismantle the racial prejudice that was pervasive in 1940s and 1950s Britain. The chapter argues that the Windrush scandal in 2018, a consequence of the “hostile environment” policy implemented by the Home Office, underscores the necessity of shedding light on the history of the Black Caribbean community in Britain. Furthermore, by emphasising the small acts and sites of resistance undertaken by Queenie and Hortense, this study demonstrates that change is possible, even if its effects may not be immediately apparent by the end of the novel. The chapter aligns with the work initiated by Guardian journalist Amelia Gentleman, who has been a vocal advocate for the Windrush victims. According to Guy Hewitt, the

 20

Ibid. 21 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), 96. 22 Rozmarin, “Living Politically”, 474.

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High Commissioner in London for Barbados, Gentleman “inflicted the first blows on the bureaucratic Goliath of the Home Office.”23

Shades of Resistance In her analysis of the role of white femininity and spaces in facilitating change, Sarah Brophy asserts that “spaces hold particular significance in interpreting the novel’s critical portrayal of white femininity.”24 This chapter builds upon Brophy’s statement and pushes its boundaries by suggesting that spaces, particularly those inhabited by female characters in the novel, are not only crucial for understanding white femininity, but also the broader feminine role, encompassing both Black and white women. Ruth Frankenberg introduces three aspects of whiteness that influence individuals’ identities within society: first, whiteness represents a position of structural advantage; second, it serves as a “standpoint” from which white individuals perceive themselves, others, and society; and third, “whiteness” encompasses a set of cultural practices that often go unnoticed and unnamed.25 However, in Queenie’s case, such markers of whiteness become uncertain, as suggested by Brophy: [Queenie] extends social camaraderie, flirtation, temporary shelter, and, occasionally sex to the West Indian men she meets during the war, but, as the novel’s pervasive, discomfiting imagery of consumption and violence suggests, her attitude toward the new immigrant arrivals – including her own new arrival, her mixed-race child - is a vexed and shifting one.26

Despite this narrative shift, this chapter suggests that Queenie, through her inclusive approach to Black Caribbeans, has utilised her position to challenge, subvert, and facilitate change in the deeply entrenched segregation norms of 1940s Britain. Queenie’s unique character as someone who embraces the Other becomes evident early in the novel when she opens her home as a landlady to welcome Gilbert Joseph, who reminds her of her former lover, Michael. Queenie’s role as a property owner and landlady

 23

Guy Hewitt, “Winning the Windrush Battle”, The World Today, Royal Institute of International Affairs, 17 (June and July 2018): 38. 24 Sarah Brophy, “Entangled Genealogies: White Femininity on the Threshold of Change in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Contemporary Women’s Writing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 2. 25 Ruth Frankenberg, White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. 1993), 1. 26 Brophy, “Entangled Genealogies”, 2.

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during her husband’s absence on the Burmese front reflects the parodic imitation of discourse, wherein women employ their femininity to overturn societal expectations and undermine dominant cultural norms in order to bring about transformation. These female characters deliberately leverage their femininity to carve out a space from which they can expose their own subjugation. If Bernard had been present, Queenie would never have been able to rent out their shared home to Black tenants. By challenging the established norms, Queenie is engaging in a form of mimicry that confronts both the pro-segregation British culture and the patriarchal order. Irigaray explains this phenomenon as follows: To play with mimesis is thus, for a woman, to try to recover the place of her exploitation by discourse, without allowing herself to be simply reduced to it. It means to resubmit herself […] to ideas about herself that are elaborated in/by a masculine logic, but to make “visible,” by an effect of playful repetition, what was supposed to remain invisible.27

Thus, the women employ the tools of mimesis to illuminate what is meant to remain unseen. They strive to articulate alternative spaces from which they can project a different cultural image of femininity and express their desire to exist as women and subjects rather than commodities in a maledominated world. Rozmarin suggests that this revolt serves both as a political tool to destabilise the phallocentric system and as an individual tool for women to navigate the inherent loss and pain associated with their identities.28 According to Irigaray, if women are labelled as illogical, they should articulate their responses to this viewpoint using logic. By juxtaposing the concepts of logic and illogic, they undermine the categorisation of women as inherently illogical.29 When Queenie opens her house to Gilbert Joseph, both Queenie and Gilbert are renegotiating their identities in response to the unsettling feelings imposed upon them by their new social reality. However, Queenie’s action, which is perceived by her neighbours as illogical (a white woman accommodating Black men), is presented by her as a financial necessity (a logical action). In this way, Queenie speaks out against the phallocentric and racist society of 1940s Britain.

 27

Irigarary, This Sex, 76. 28 Rozmarin, “Living Politically”, 474. 29 Farah Ali. “Get Back to Your Trough: Postcolonialism in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker”. The Harold Pinter Review, 6 (2022): 116.

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Hortense’s mimicry takes on a more cosmopolitan nature. When Hortense follows Gilbert to England six months later, she is shocked by the condition of the dilapidated room he is occupying. They wash themselves, their vegetables, and their clothes in the same sink, prompting Hortense to ask, “Is this the way the English live?”30 Yet despite her disappointment with the gloomy, squalid reality of London’s housing, she remains determined to effect change. England becomes her “destiny.”31 It is important to note that while other writers such as Edward Said and Frantz Fanon have raised concerns about the postcolonial subject position, arguing that the knowledge produced about the postcolonial condition is structured within oppositional categories, Bhabha, as will be discussed, transcends this worldview. Hortense’s double vision is not limited to her disappointment in the contrast between the idealised image she held before arriving in England and the harsh reality she faces alongside Gilbert, but also extends to her use of parody. Cynthia James defines parody as an imitation of conventions—an imitation of the way in which a lofty or accepted idea works, with the intention to undermine. It is a destabilizing of accepted norms by juxtaposing the low and high to comment on each other in a comical way. Small Island parodies the concept of Empire—the way in which the Empire is scripted for the English as well as West Indians.32

Building on James’s statement, Hortense’s parody not only exposes her snobbery but also highlights the class struggle that shapes politics in Britain. To further unpack this point, this chapter cites Bhabha’s definition of the image/knowledge/stereotype. Bhabha argues that “colonial discourse produces the colonised as a social reality, which is at once an “Other” and yet entirely knowable and visible.”33 Hortense’s snobbish attitude reveals two things: the shifting social realities of both Black and white people in terms of negotiating, sharing and redistributing their space, and what Fanon describes as “nauseating mimicry.”34 Hortense’s snobbish attitude reflects her double vision of the Empire, wherein she still believes that they think, eat, and speak like the colonials she encountered in Jamaica. What Fanon finds disturbing is her “imitation

 30 Levy,

Small Island, 22. 31 Ibid., 226. 32 Cynthia James, "‘You'll Soon Get Used to Our Language’: Language, Parody and West Indian Identity in Andrea Levy's Small Island.” Journal of West Indian Literature, 18, no. 2 (April 2010): 46. 33 Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 70. 34 Franz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks. Trans. Charles Lam Markmann (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 311.

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game,” distancing herself from lower social classes. However, by making the decision to follow Gilbert to England and exposing Britain (even through “nauseating mimicry”), Hortense juxtaposes her logical move to Britain with her illogical reaction to the shabby conditions of the place. This becomes a tool for subverting an even larger narrative than what Queenie is subverting —the reality of English society and Black people’s contribution to it. Thus, Hortense’s actions fill in the gap that Levy is trying to highlight. In her interview with Rowell, Levy stated, “We’re still having to fight very hard for [...] respect. That’s my battle, that’s my lot in life, that’s why I get up in the morning.”35 While Brophy believes that Queenie and Hortense “throw into disarray one another’s strategies of linguistic mastery, fetishization, and territorialization,”36 this chapter contends that both women, in their own distinct ways, are subverting an extensively patriarchal, racist, and male-dominated system. The women also utilise their sexuality or femininity to obtain pleasure and transgress the Black/white binaries that segregate their society. When Queenie first sees Michael Roberts, she experiences an almost instant sexual attraction, stating, “I was aware of what every single part of me was doing. Bits that used to work on their own suddenly needed my control. Move hand and don’t shake. Come on lungs, in and out, in and out.”37 Considering Queenie’s erotic desires in light of Irigaray’s theory and her erotic education at the exhibition, Brophy’s statement comes to mind: “Small Island presents white women’s attraction to difference as inculcated and shaped through spectacular, monumentalizing forms of civic entertainment that make transgression a consumable pleasure.”38 Expanding on Brophy’s statement, this chapter suggests that both Queenie and Hortense use their bodies and sexuality to undermine the mainstream culture of postwar Britain. In Queenie’s case, her sexual encounter with Michael and subsequent pregnancy reinforce Irigaray’s mimesis theory, in which she argues that “women are a mirror of the value of and for man.”39 In other words, for women to participate in society, they must submit their bodies to the rules that transform them into “value-bearing objects.”40 To be a value-bearing object, the mirror (woman) must reflect the image of the male, as Virginia Woolf states, “at twice its natural size.”41

 35

Rowell, “An Interview”, 266. 36 Brophy, “Entangled Genealogies”, 5. 37 Levy, Small Island, 243. 38 Brophy, “Entangled Genealogies”, 8. 39 Irigarary, This Sex, 177. 40 Ibid., 180. 41 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (Boston, MA: Harcourt, 2005),35.

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In a chilling echo, Queenie, while using her sexuality to satisfy her desires and secure her economic needs, marks herself as a manipulator. At the same time, she mimics her role to push the boundaries of a binary society towards a more multicultural one. Queenie’s manipulation, which increases her agency, is not solely a privilege of her whiteness. On the other hand, Hortense uses her Blackness to set herself apart from others. Mindi McCann suggests that while living in Jamaica, Hortense is aware of her Blackness. She reinforces the colonial legacy of racialisation in Jamaica, taking advantage of her ill-defined category of Mulatto.42 McCann notes, “Unlike her mother and grandmother, whose skin she describes as the color of bitter chocolate, Hortense has proudly inherited her father’s complexion: the color of warm honey.”43 This chapter argues that once Hortense realises that her honey-coloured skin does not set her apart from other black people with darker shades, she finds herself in a disadvantageous position. Nevertheless, by internalising the racial hierarchical system of the British Empire and manipulating her skin tone, Hortense exposes the hypocritical classification of the color system and subverts the Black/white binary by emphasising her physical appearance, dress, and manners, making her a perfect speaking Other. According to Irigaray, mimicking the role of a woman with all its positive and negative traits is the only way women can comment on their exploitation. Irigaray states, “Exploitation is so integral a part of our sociohistorical horizon that there is no way to interpret it except from within this horizon.”44 Hence, although Queenie and Hortense reflect the image of free women to some extent, their freedom is limited because they are held more accountable for their actions than their male peers. In Irigaray’s theoretical work, mimetic action cannot be solely distinguished from the oppressive patterns it mimics. This means that “[on]e’s cultural intelligibility, as well as one’s sense of self, is contingent upon acting and thinking within given cultural limits.”45 The only way to subvert this masculine order is to act from within because, according to Irigaray, exploitation is so deeply ingrained in this culture that “even the critique of this culture has no way of beginning except within, and with

 42

Mindi McCann, “‘You’re Black’: Transnational Perceptions of Race in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi’s Americanah and Andrea Levy’s Small Island”, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 59, no.2 (2018): 203. 43 McCann, “You’re Black”, 204. 44 Irigarary, This Sex, 171. 45 Rozmarin, “Living Politically”, 475.

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critical tools that are themselves formed by the cultural order they would contest.”46 Nevertheless, both Queenie and Hortense use the creation of body language as one of the technologies they employ to undermine mainstream culture. When Queenie offers her hospitality to the Jamaican airmen, she reflects, according to Brophy, two things: “her capacity for identification with them and her desire for upward mobility.”47 While this chapter agrees with Brophy’s first assumption, it disagrees with the second one, considering Queenie an agent for change. Queenie herself uses her position as a landlady, her body, and her close encounters with Black people to disrupt the parochial order. Therefore, she is an agent for social change rather than social mobility. When Gilbert and Queenie go to the cinema together, Queenie is not oblivious to the implications of displaying her affection for Gilbert, as Brophy suggests.48 Instead, she uses her body language to challenge the segregation system, both by expressing her femininity to Gilbert and by going out with a Black man to create sites of resistance. Queenie’s fight with the usherette in the cinema, insisting on sitting in the front seats rather than being segregated, is another act of resistance. She exploits the power of her body and that of Gilbert to create a crack in the system and facilitate change. Contrary to Brophy’s suggestion that Queenie is inviting violence by insisting on sitting in the front seats, this chapter believes that she is inviting change by provocatively defying the American GIs who protested at her sitting next to a Black man. According to Brophy, “rather than pursuing a political stand as suggested by Mica Nava, Queenie unconsciously courts violence in the pursuit of her own pleasure and authority.”49 However, this chapter agrees with Mica Nava’s suggestion50 that Queenie is indeed pursuing genuine political change and taking a stand through the politics of her body and her feminine attributes. Thus, she fulfills Irigaray’s theoretical approach, which advocates for political change to be pursued from within.

 46

Charles Shepherdson, “Biology and History: Some Psychoanalytic Aspects of the Writing of Luce Irigaray,” Textual Practice, 6, no.1 (1992): 57. 47 Brophy, “Entangled Genealogies”, 13. 48 Ibid. 49 Ibid. 50 Mica Nava, Visceral Cosmopolitanism: Gender, Culture, and the Normalisation of Difference (London: Berg, 2007), 15.

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Contested Roles When Queenie goes into labour, Hortense assists her. Gilbert describes Hortense emerging from the room after the birth with “her hands [...] covered in the congealing scarlet stains of a hapless butcher.”51 Initially, Gilbert believes that Hortense has murdered Queenie in retaliation for the insults she has endured in the past. However, upon seeing Queenie with the baby, Gilbert realises that Queenie has given birth to a boy named Michael, after her lover. Queenie’s decision to give up her baby can be seen as a deliberate act to disentangle her life from that of her son, motivated by selfprotection.52 However, this chapter, drawing on Irigaray’s mimetic theory, argues that Queenie is using her bodily strength and femininity to challenge the mainstream culture that shames white women for having “brown babies.”53 Queenie’s actions are an act of defiance rather than selfprotection or butchery. When Hortense accepts the money and photographs entrusted to her by Queenie (of Michael, the child’s biological father, and his family), it is seen as an act of female camaraderie, not as an act that limits the narratives of origin available to the next generation or obscures their complex histories.54 Both Queenie and Hortense, in their own ways, use the tools available to them within the phallocentric culture to challenge the system and disrupt the order of things. On the other hand, Hortense serves as Levy’s vehicle to parody English culture, which upholds purity and monoculturalism. By channeling her dreams, language, food, and desires through an English lens, Hortense exposes the reality that English culture is not pure and monocultural, but rather mixed and multicultural. This aligns with Levy’s aim of filling the gaps in Black British history. Queenie and Hortense, as agents of change, utilise their feminine strength to fulfill this mission. Stories, as Karen Green suggests, are fields of struggles.55 How we interpret the stories of Queenie and Hortense shapes new themes and categories regarding female identity and politics in contemporary culture. This chapter provides a fresh examination of these women, highlighting their role in mediating change through different feminine routes, despite the restrictions they face as women in post-war Britain. Rather than being seen as limiting agents or reinforcing racial boundaries, their actions reveal their subversive power, which, according to Irigaray, can “jam the patriarchal

 51

Levy, Small Island, 484. 52 Brophy, “Entangled Genealogies”, 15. 53 Ibid., 14. 54 Ibid., 17. 55 Karen Green, “The Other as Another Other.” Hypatia, 17, no. 4 (2002): 15.

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machinery of oppression.”56 These acts of subversion, however, do not render them completely liberated or victorious agents, nor are they limiting agents viewed solely through a racial lens, as Brophy suggests. Instead, they represent different images of subversion within various contexts and settings. This chapter challenges the characterisation of Levy’s Small Island and its female protagonists, shifting the focus away from viewing these women as standing on opposite sides of the racial boundary, as suggested by Brophy.57 Instead, it invites a reading that utilises Irigaray’s ideas to shed light on a new way of examining women’s representation in Levy’s novel. Instead of reverting to old stereotypes such as being purely erotic, seeking financial gain, or striving for upward social mobility, these women threaten patriarchal codes by subverting them from within. Furthermore, this chapter offers a contemporary reading that considers the cultural and political changes of recent years, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the Windrush scandal. These events testify to the multiculturalism of post-war Britain and emphasise the contributions of different minorities, particularly Black Caribbeans, to nation-building.

References Adair, Gigi. “As Constricting As the Corset They Bind Me in to Keep Me a Lady’: Colonial Historiography in Andrea Levy’s The Long Song” in Kinship Across the Black Atlantic: Writing Diasporic Relations. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2019. Ali, Farah. “‘Get Back to Your Trough’: Postcolonialism in Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker’”. The Harold Pinter Review 6 (2022): 36–50. Ashcroft, Bill, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 1989. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994. Bhabha, Homi. “Signs Taken for Wonders: Questions of Ambivalence and Authority Under a Tree Outside Delhi, May 1817. “Race”, Writing and Difference. Special issue of Critical Inquiry. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr, 12, no. 1 (1986): 144–165. Bonnici, Thomas. “Diaspora in Two Carribean Novels: Levy’s Small Island and Phillips’s A State of Independence’. Revista de Letras 45, no. 2 (2005): 81–110.

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Irigarary, This Sex, 78. 57 Brophy, “Entangled Genealogies”, 17.

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Brophy, Sarah. “Entangled Genealogies: White Femininity on the Threshold of Change in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Contemporary Women’s Writing 4 (July 2010): 100–113. DOI: Entangled Genealogies: White Femininity on the Threshold of Change in Andrea Levy’s Small Island | Contemporary Women’s Writing | Oxford Academic (oup.com) Duboin, Corinne. “Migrant Stories and Liminal Selves in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Obsidian 12, no. 1 (2011): 14–33. Evelyn, Kim. “Claiming a Space in the Thought-I-Knew-You-Place: Migrant Domesticity, Diaspora, and Home in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” South Atlantic Review 78, no. 3/4 (2013): 1–32. Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. Translated from the French by Charles Lam Markmann. New York: Grove Press, 1967. Frankenberg, Ruth. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Githire, Njeri. “The Empire Bites Back: Food Politics and the Making of a Nation in Andrea Levy’s Works”. Callaloo 33, no. 3 (2010): 857–873. Green, Karen. “The Other as Another Other.” Hypatia, 17, no. 4 (2002): 1– 15. Hewitt, Guy. “Winning the Windrush Battle.” The World Today, Royal Institute of International Affairs 74, no. 3 (June & July 2018): 38–39. Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. Translated by Catherine Porter with Carolyn Burke. New York: Cornell University Press, 1985. James, Cynthia. “‘You’ll Soon Get Used to Our Language’: Language, Parody and West Indian Identity in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Journal of West Indian Literature 18, no. 2 (April 2010): 45–64. Johansen, Emily. “Muscular Multiculturalism: Bodies, Space, and Living Together in Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 56, no.4 (2015): 383–398. Lacan, Jacques. Ecrits. Translated by Bruce Fink. New York: Norton, 2006. Levy, Andrea. Small Island. London: Headline Publishing Group, 2004. Levy, Andrea. “This is my England.” The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2000/feb/19/society1. 19 Feb. 2000. (Accessed 11 June 2023). McCann, Mindi. “‘You’re Black’: Transnational Perceptions of Race in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichi’s Americanah and Andrea Levy’s Small Island.” Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction 59, no. 2 (2018): 200–212. Nava, Mica. Visceral Cosmopolitanism: Gender, Culture, and the Normalisation of Difference. London: Berg, 2007. Rowell, Charles Henry. “An Interview with Andrea Levy.” Callaloo, 38, no. 2 (2015): 257–281.

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Rozmarin, Miri. “Living Politically: An Irigaryan Notion of Agency as a Way of Life.” Hypatia 28, no. 3 (2013): 472–476. Shepherdson, Charles. “Biology and History: Some Psychoanalytic Aspects of the Writing of Luce Irigaray.” Textual Practice 6, no.1 (1992): 47– 86. Woolf, Virginia. 1929. A Room of One’s Own. Reprint Boston, MA: Harcourt, 2005.

CHAPTER FIVE EMBODIED RESISTANCE THROUGH PSYCHOGEOGRAPHICAL LITERARY MOMENTS IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH CITY FICTION KAI QING TAN

Introduction At the “Cities in Contemporary UK Literature” seminar organized by the British Council in Berlin in 2019, the final roundtable speakers were asked about the role of psychogeography in recent British urban writings. To this question, which seemed largely appropriate in relation to the seminar topic, one speaker declared without hesitation, “[P]sychogeography is dead.”1 This candid answer, which elicited laughter from the audience, effectively concluded the discussion about the place of the Situationist urban practice of deviation as a means of resistance in contemporary British city literature. Yet, contrary to the damning pronouncement, recent publications by excellent critics of twenty-first-century British fiction continually underscore psychogeography and its foregrounding of movements, transgressions and phenomenological sensing of built environments as a salient feature of British city literature.2 The main features of such works, state the scholars, include instances of boundary crossings, the experiencing 1

Olivia Laing et al., “Roundtable”, Cities in Contemporary UK Literature, chaired by Michael Symmons Roberts, the British Council Literature Seminar (Berlin: 2019). 2 See Siân Adiseshiah and Rupert Hildyard, “Introduction: What Happens Now”, Twenty-First Century Fiction: What Happens Now, eds. ibid. (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2013), 1-33; Caroline Herbert, “Postcolonial Cities”, The Cambridge Companion to the City in Literature, ed. Kevin R. McNamara (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 200-15; and Daniel O’Gorman and Robert Eaglestone, “Introduction”, The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction, eds. ibid. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 1–10.

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of peripheral spaces such as alleyways and the suburbs, and the polyphony of old and new inhabitants’ voices.3 In addition, the striking themes in recent city literature comprise the sensing of the urban environment and its affordances, as well as the tracing and rewriting of both city narratives and urban identities.4 These key elements of contemporary British urban fiction, with an especially strong emphasis on phenomenological and grounded experiences in contemporary urban writings to assert the presence and agency of living organisms in twenty-first-century built environments, underscore the sense of contemporary optimism that is typical of today’s fiction.5 Such optimism, according to the scholars, stems from the ability of urban writings to expand readers’ imagination and raise their hopefulness in real life through the enactment of possibilities and utopian places.6 It also addresses the 3

See works such as Adiseshiah and Hildyard, “Introduction”; O’Gorman and Eaglestone, “Introduction”; Nick Hubble and Philip Tew. “Introduction: Parallax London”, London in Contemporary British Fiction: The City beyond the City, eds. ibid. (London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2016), 7; Ged Pope, Reading London’s Suburbs from Charles Dickens to Zadie Smith (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2015), 1; Kevin R. McNamara, “Introduction”, The Cambridge Companion To The City in Literature, ed. ibid. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 8; Laura Colombino, Spatial Politics in Contemporary London Literature Writing Architecture and the Body (New York and London: Routledge, 2013), 7–8; and Vanessa Guignery, “Introduction”, Novelists in the New Millennium Conversations with Writers, ed. ibid. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 5–6. 4 Marc Brosseau, “In, Of, Out, With, and Through: New Perspectives in Literary Geography”, The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space, ed. Robert T. Tally Jr. (London and New York: Routledge, 2017), 9; Magali Cornier Michael, ed., Twenty-First-Century British Fiction and the City (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018); and Nick Bentley, “Introduction: Mapping the Millennium. Themes and Trends in Contemporary British Fiction”, British Fiction of the 1990s, ed. ibid. (London: Routledge, 2005), 14. 5 See Peter Boxall, Twenty-First-Century Fiction: A Critical Introduction. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 127; Sebastian Groes, The Making of London: London in Contemporary Literature (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 260–61; Magali Cornier Michael, “Introduction”, Twenty-First-Century British Fiction and the City, ed. ibid. (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 6; and Kristian Shaw, Cosmopolitanism in Twenty-First Century Fiction (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), 21. 6 Benjamin Rossiter and Katherine Gibson, “Walking and Performing ‘the City’: A Melbourne Chronicle”, The New Blackwell Companion to the City, eds. Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson (New York: Blackwell, 2011), 490–91; Caroline Levine, Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 122; Markku Salmela et al., “The Possible in Literature and Urban Life: Clearing

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employment of postmodernist techniques in the works, such as selfreflexivity and ludic metafiction, which illustrate the political importance of storytelling as a postcolonial means of “writing back”.7 The essential traits of contemporary British fiction and the possibility of real-world social changes through exposure to literary works also underline the relevance of psychogeography. Formally established by the Situationists after the Second World War, the urban practice is “the study of the specific effects of the geographical environment (whether consciously organized or not) on the emotions and behaviour of individuals.”8 Echoing the spatial theories of urban cultural geographers and Neo-Marxist theorists since the 1960s, the proponents of psychogeography perform dérives and détournement to insert new ambiances and situations in city space.9 The dérive (drift) is “a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances,” while détournement (rerouting) refers to recontextualizing and subversion of “past texts, images, forms, practices, into others” to disrupt naturalized signification processes and modify the dominant culture.10 During arrhythmic drifts, walkers enact new spatial practices and experience unexpected affective responses to the environmental affordances.11 Their new insights via the destabilized urban signs transform

the Field”, Literatures of Urban Possibility, eds. ibid. (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021), 2, 4, 5; Bertold Schoene, The Cosmopolitan Novel (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 32; and David Pinder, “Afterword: Urban Possibilities in Times of Crisis”, Literatures of Urban Possibility, eds. Markus Salmela et al. (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021), 263. 7 John Thieme, Postcolonial Con-Texts: Writing Back to the Canon (London: Continuum, 2002). 8 Guy Debord, “Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography”, Situationist International Online, trans. Ken Knabb, www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/presitu/geography.html. 9 Ibid. 10 Guy Debord, “Theory of the Dérive”, Situationist International Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2007), 62; ibid. “Potlatch #5: Information Bulletin of the French Section of the Lettrist International. 20 July 1954”, Situationist International Online, trans. Gerardo Denís et al., www.cddc.vt.edu/sionline/presitu/potlatch5.html; McKenzie Wark, The Spectacle of Disintegration (London: Verso, 2013), 16; Guy Debord and Gil J. Wolman, “A User’s Guide to Détournement”, 1956. Bureau of Public Secrets, trans. Ken Knabb, 2006, www.bopsecrets.org/SI/detourn.htm. 11 Arrhythmia refers to the “pathological” rhythm that disturbs order in the city. Henri Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, trans. Stuart Elden and Gerald Moore (London: Continuum, 2004), 6; Rebecca Solnit, Wanderlust: A History of Walking (London: Verso, 2001), 3–5; Ivan Chtcheglov, “Formulary for a

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the city from a “place” with fixed meanings into lived “space” as floating signifiers.12 The freedom of signification afforded by psychogeography hence leads to not just the imagination of new city visions but also the emphasis on intersectional experiences that counter the dominant city discourse and its authoritarian schemas.13 In addition, psychogeography allows walkers to step out of their comfort zone and perceive city space as an “other,” which conversely creates opportunities for their critical assessment of their own (oft-privileged) positions in society. Reflecting many of the characteristics of the Situationist urban practice, British literary psychogeography features fragmented and oft-contradicting urban experiences, defamiliarized everyday spaces, as well as outliers of society who drift and unveil hidden realities through counternarratives.14 Moreover, the experiencing characters’ bodies, which interact with physical affordances, are conduits that make possible the imagination of possibilities and new meanings in the world. The magnified subjective bodily rhythms and multisensory responses ground the invention of new situations and urban geographies in the narratives.15 Often avoiding closure, British literary psychogeography encourages the readers to engage in playful speculations on the future using their imagination of “what it is like” in the defamiliarized city of the storyworld. Ultimately, it becomes “a social instrument” when readers, like real-life psychogeographers, embark on the

New Urbanism”, Situationist International Anthology, ed. Ken Knabb (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2007), 21. 12 Henri Lefebvre, Dialectical Materialism (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2009), 24; and ibid., The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991), 46. 13 Catharina Löffler, Walking in the City: Urban Experience and Literary Psychogeography in Eighteenth-Century London (Wiesbaden: Metzler, 2017), 45. 14 Merlin Coverley, Psychogeography (Harpenden: Pocket Essentials, 2010); Tjebbe van Tijen, Literary Psycho-Geography of Edo/Tokyo & Amsterdam. Scribd, 06 Oct. 2009, uploaded by Tjebbe van Tijen, www.scribd.com/document/20699094/TjebbevanTijen-Literary-Psycho-Geography-of-Edo-Tokyo-Amsterdam#; Löffler, Walking in the City; Tina Richardson, “Introduction”, Walking Inside Out: Contemporary British Psychogeography, ed. ibid. (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015), 1–30; and Ella Mudie, “Convulsions of the Local: Contemporary British Psychogeographical Fiction”, Twenty-First-Century British Fiction and the City, ed. Magali Cornier Michael (Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2018), 205–31. 15 See Michael Sheringham, Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from Surrealism to the Present (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 162.

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process as “others” in society to question their assumptions and the indoctrination of normative schemas. 16 However, British literary psychogeography to date remains largely dominated by the names and experiences of white and male writers.17 To cement it as a resolute form of resistance against grand city narratives, it is imperative to identify its functions in works across genres and by writers from diverse backgrounds. PLMs spotlight unseen and overlooked realities by mediating subjective and limited spatial experiences, accentuating the aspects of multimodality and ekphrasis in the texts, and highlighting the postmodern awareness of the extra-diegetic world. Situating unexpected actions in everyday twentieth- and twenty-first-century urban settings, they chiefly employ the following narrative techniques: internal focalization that reveals recollections of memories, mind-wandering, as well as descriptions of unexpected visceral reactions; non- and/or hypertextual elements and metareferences, which underscore multimodality as well as references to different texts and diegeses during the reading process; and lastly, ekphrasis or a slow and detailed explication of scenes, which increases readers’ feelings of estrangement by extending the discourse time when experiencing everyday spaces and activities in the narrative.18 Such techniques support the thematized of issues, such as the alienation of (both) rich and poor, the need for play to undermine official or grand narratives, the unveiling of intersectional city experiences, and the futile search for truth as a postmodern reality.

Reading Strategies Based on Embodied Cognition With the above characteristics, PLMs call readers’ attention to disruptions in normal everyday life. The readers’ experiences of fragments, temporally disordered information, and deviations rather than a coherent plotline necessitate the alteration of their rhythm or pace of reading when encountering the seemingly mundane events and banal space in the narratives. These aspects of PLMs also establish the spatializing practices of literary psychogeography beyond the text by prompting readers to drift and exercise resistance against hegemonic norms in the real world. To 16

Robert Bond, Iain Sinclair (London: Salt, 2005), 12. Examples include Alan Moore, Iain Sinclair, and Stewart Home. 18 The narrative features and thematic concerns of PLMs are only briefly presented here. For details, see the following PhD dissertation: Kai Qing Tan, Readers’ Affective Enactment in Contemporary British Novels (2000–) (Aachen: RWTH Publications, 2023), https://publications.rwth-aachen.de/record/963803/files/963803.pdf. 17

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substantiate this connection between the real-world effects and strategies of reading, it is necessary to turn to the recent findings from embodied cognition (also known as the 4EA approaches to cognition).19 As laid out by the principles and strands of embodied cognition, our spatial experiences are constitutive of our meaning-making processes. Such claims about the body’s interactions with the environment, which includes the social and cultural environments, underline the role of the body in determining our lived (or biological and phenomenological) experiences while challenging the claims of classic disembodied cognitivism, i.e., cognition taking place only in the brain/mind. One strand of the 4EA approaches, affective enactivism, is especially key to explaining readers’ embodied strategies when encountering space in PLMs.20 Enactivism argues for not only the co-dependent agentenvironment relationship but also the agent’s actions with things, or affordances, in order to survive in the world, i.e., autopoiesis.21 Furthermore, the agent’s affective reactions to its surroundings are intrinsic to cognition as they facilitate the restoring of homeostasis, or “[t]he tendency towards a relatively stable equilibrium between interdependent elements, especially as maintained by physiological processes.”22 As we perceive affordances, we imagine possible settings for future actions while

19 Peter Garratt, “Introduction”, The Cognitive Humanities: Embodied Mind in Literature and Culture, ed. ibid. (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 7. The 4EA approaches refer to “embodied”, “embedded”, “extended” and “enactive” cognition, as well as affect. The 4E approaches underline the cognitive effects that arise when the agent interacts with the ecological setting. Affect refers to pre-cognitive emotional responses triggered by the environment as living beings seek to restore homeostasis. See Dave Ward et al., “Introduction: The Varieties of Enactivism”, Topoi 36 (2017): 373; Giovanna Colombetti, “Enaction, Sense-Making, and Emotion”, Enactment: Toward a New Paradigm for Cognitive Science, ed. John Stewart et al. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2016), 145. 20 Francisco J. Varela et al., The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), xv, xvi. 21 “Autopoiesis, N.”, Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), www.oed.com/view/Entry/250011; Ward et al., “Introduction”, 368. See also Giovanna Colombetti, The Feeling Body: Affective Science Meets the Enactive Mind (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2017), 101–102. Affordances are “value-rich ecological objects” that benefit someone or put another in a disadvantaged position. See James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception (New York: Psychology Press, 2015), 132. 22 Ward et al., “Introduction”, 373; Colombetti, “Enaction”, 145–46; “Homeostasis, N.”, Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), www.oed.com/view/Entry/88025.

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experiencing proprioceptive reactions. Subsequently, we voice our feelings towards the situation through expressions such as adjectives and quantifiers.23 When experiencing the perceived settings and possible actions, people enact “what it is like” to interact with the affordances, with the new experiential traces eventually modifying their worldviews. Following suit, the scholars of the so-called second-generation cognitive approaches to narrative describe reading strategies based on 4EA cognition. Unlike earlier approaches, the recent ideas refer to the influences of the (physical-social-cultural) environment, i.e., the body-environment interaction and the higher-order socio-cultural meanings and values gained from the real world, on readers’ sense-making processes.24 This means that to enact the narrated situations, the embodied reader refers to its experiential background, i.e., the trove of “experiences, evaluations, and bodily engagements,” and uses its “virtual body” to blend its “embodied abilities” with the characters’.25 Through the enactment of possible actions in the narrative, the embodied reader acquires new story-driven experiences, such as those previously acquired as indirect experiences (e.g. watching actions in a film), in its experiential background.26 According to Caracciolo, the experientiality of the text arises when there is tension between the reader’s experiential traces and the textual cues.27 Moreover, such hypothetical enactment, which recalls our sensory experiences of the real world, involves

23

Louise Barrett, Beyond the Brain: The Body and Environment Shape Animal and Human Minds (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 111; Judith Eckenhoff and Kai Tan, “Space”, Introduction to Cognitive Narratology, eds. Jan Alber and Peter Wenzel (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2021),71; Rolf A. Zwaan, “Situation Models, Mental Simulations, and Abstract Concepts in Discourse Comprehension”, Psychon Bull Rev 23 (2016): 1028–34. 24 Marco Caracciolo, “Experientiality”, The Living Handbook of Narratology, eds. Peter Hühn et al. (Hamburg: Hamburg University, 2014), www.archiv.fdm.unihamburg. de/lhn/node/102.html, par. 2; Karin Kukkonen and Marco Caracciolo, “Introduction: What is the ‘Second Generation’?”, Style 48, no. 3 (2014): 261. 25 Marco Caracciolo, The Experientiality of Narrative: An Enactivist Approach (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 35. For information on the virtual body, see ibid., “Notes for A(nother) Theory of Experientiality”, Journal of Literary Theory 6 (2012): 181; 188; and ibid., “The Reader‫ތ‬s Virtual Body: Narrative Space and Its Reconstruction”, Storyworlds 3 (2011): 117–21. See Brian Boyd, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cognition, and Fiction (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 103-4 for information about mirror neurons. 26 Caracciolo, “Notes”, 190. See also ibid., Experientiality, 46, regarding the modification of the experiential background. 27 Caracciolo, Experientiality, 104; ibid., “Notes”, 188.

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“an experiential feel,” which, while related to “what-it-is-like” to experience something, cannot be represented linguistically.28 The embodied cognitive process, Kukkonen claims, is a predictive one that is “profoundly informed by sensing how actions are going to develop” over time in the narrative space.29 Hence, while encountering affordances that provide “small instructions” for actions in narratives, the embodied reader refers to relevant cultural and world knowledge while mastering the “patterned practices” specific to the narrative.30 By learning what is possible and expected in the storyworld, the embodied reader improves its predictions about the plot development and thereby experiences the feeling of agency.31 The learning process is supported by the three hierarchicallystacked cognitive feedback loops, which affect one another’s “probabilistic grasp” of possible events in the storyworld.32 The first loop refers to the characters’ experience; the second loop points to readers’ models of the storyworld and its possible events as determined by the expectations about “particular ‘practices’ drawn from the cultural memory that they share”; and the third loop points to readers’ real-world predictions.33 Throughout the reading process, the recipient keeps one foot in the real world (i.e., in the third feedback loop) while still remaining immersed in the storyworld as it continually searches for affordances and possible actions in the narrative.

Affective Enactment of Resistance in PLMs: Anna Burns’s Milkman (2018) and Zadie Smith’s NW (2012) To highlight readers’ embodied resistance in the PLMs of contemporary British city fiction, the ideas of the second-generation cognitive approaches to narrative are immensely applicable. When encountering the narrative space in the defamiliarizing PLMs, the embodied reader enacts affordances while appraising the fictional environments for familiar and unfamiliar 28

Caracciolo, Experientiality, 101. Karin Kukkonen, “Bayesian Bodies: The Predictive Dimension of Embodied Cognition and Culture”, The Cognitive Humanities: Embodied Mind in Literature and Culture, ed. Peter Garratt (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 156; see Kukkonen, Probability Designs: Literature and Predictive Processing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 67; and ibid., “Presence and Prediction: The Embodied Reader‫ތ‬s Cascades of Cognition”, Style 48, no. 3 (2014): 372. 30 Kukkonen, “Bayesian”, 153, 154; ibid., Probability, 63. 31 Kukkonen, “Bayesian”, 153–54, 158; ibid., Probability 62–3, 45 and 55. 32 Kukkonen, “Bayesian”, 156–57. 33 Ibid., 160. 29

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elements in order to quickly resume homeostasis and autopoiesis. The latter step also entails the activation of the cognitive feedback loop, where the reader’s expectations about patterned practices and possible actions in the fictional environment are constantly revised in order to reduce erroneous predictions about the narrative. The embodied reader’s interactions with the perceived narrative space and its affordances modify its experiential background, with the new experiential traces acquired from the fictional city subsequently changing its perception of real-life city spaces and its real-life attitudes towards urban lives and identities. This process, very succinctly presented here, is demonstrated here using selected PLMs, which underscore instances of uncertainty in everyday mundane urban settings, from Anna Burns’s Milkman (2018) and Zadie Smith’s NW (2012), two texts that are not labelled as British literary psychogeography and which are written by authors from marginalized British backgrounds. I want to start with the analysis of an exemplary PLM in Burns’s Milkman to provide a quick illustration of how readers might affectively enact PLMs. Then, I will turn to Smith’s NW to present a variety of embodied reading strategies visà-vis PLMs as grounded by findings from a qualitative study with flesh-andblood readers. The historical context of Milkman is particular to the understanding of the political and social situations depicted in the novel. Set in Northern Ireland in the 1970s, issues of sectarianism in various forms during the Troubles are present and indeed continue to grow via the global spread of feminist movements throughout the narrative. Caught amidst a time of instability is the nameless, eighteen-year-old protagonist, who has adopted the deliberate act of “reading-while-walking” in order to avoid the concretized signs of political changes and collective trauma in the streets.34 She also manages the now-normalized material practices, which include the spread of gossip and telling on one another that is typical of absolute and totalitarian societies, by enacting jamais vu or “never seen” and dissociation. However, upon falling victim to the stalking attempts of an older married renouncer, Milkman, the protagonist has no choice but to raise her eyes from her books from the nineteenth century and before and pay attention to her surroundings for the sake of self-preservation. The name “Milkman,” which is both the stalker’s nickname and his actual name, as well as the title of Burns’s work, underscores the thematization of poststructuralism and the slippery connotations of signs in Northern Irish society. Several junctures of the novel cast light on the theme of signification and the issues of “double-talk,” a clear reference to the use 34

Anna Burns, Milkman (London: Graywolf Press, 2018), 3.

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of doublespeak in dystopian narratives such as George Orwell’s 1984.35 In Milkman, rather than one sole authority, the Northern Irish society has to abide by the rules set down by opposing sources of power, including the renouncers or paramilitary, and the state police. As such, “constant hints, symbolisms, representations, [and] metaphors” heavily loaded with political connotations are perpetuated to impose control and breed paranoia amongst the citizens. Names, for instance, have to be selected with care because some might sound too English (or “over the water”).36 In the novel, a handful of names are deemed safe enough to be included: those of the keepers of the name list, Peggy the pious woman, Lassie the family dog, and tablets girl Suzannah Eleanor Lizabette Effie. Eventually, the name of the stalker, Milkman, is likewise revealed, which dissolves the power that was linked to his mysterious identity.37 The strict meanings of “man” and “woman” are also strongly imposed on society, such that the outliers have to leave the country, hide their identities (such as maybe-boyfriend and chef), or move to the so-called “red light district” that “normal” society frowns upon. Regarding the names of places, the cemetery for renouncers, also known as “the usual place,” “the no-town cemetery,” “the no-time cemetery,” and “the busy cemetery,” infers the multitude of lived experiences and meanings imbued by the townspeople.38 The unreliable signification of names and words and the historical situation of the Troubles are also reflected in romantic relationships. In a time of political unrest and where especially men were subjected to violence and punishment, “great and sustained happiness was far too much to ask of it.”39 To avoid the pain of losing a loved one, people “settle” for someone they do not love. To protect themselves from pain, the protagonist and her love interest thus retain the prefix “maybe” in order to assert a noncommittal attitude towards each other. Later in the narrative, the protagonist also realizes that her maybe-boyfriend has settled for her instead of entering an official homosexual relationship with Chef because the latter was rejected by the conservative society. 35

Ibid., 201. Double-talk is also referred to as “codespeak” and “shadow-speak” (ibid., 175 and 308). See also Stephanie Callan, “Pushing the Boundaries of Dystopia: Anna Burns’s Milkman”, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, DOI: 10.1080/00111619.2023.2208263. 36 Burns, Milkman, 23. 37 Ibid., 304–5. 38 Ibid., 213. For an analysis of the language in Milkman, see Beata Piątek, “The ‘Unspeakableness’ of Life in Northern Ireland: Anna Burns’s Milkman”, Literaria Copernicana 3, no. 35 (2020): 105–14. 39 Burns, Milkman, 256.

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Another response to the issue of connotations and their political consequences is the protagonist’s reading-and-walking. The act that protects her from perceiving the real-life unrest around her is repeatedly criticized by other characters in the novel as one that exudes her “entrenched, boxed-in thinking.”40 In addition, it connotes to observers a sense of disregard not just for the protagonist’s own safety but also for the shared fear and trauma of her society. In a highly structured society amidst political conflict, fixed choreography is preferred in everyday life in order to avoid causing even more chaos. As such, choreography is put in place to create a sense of order, such as the “unconscious synchrony” adopted by the paramilitary and the state police when checking the nightclubs, as well as when the protagonist takes the pill from the renouncer fangirls in the bathroom toilet of the club, as if playing the role of someone she was “supposed to be.” 41 As the stalking situation and the related gossip spread by both men and women alike affect her mental and emotional states, she is, however, forced to forsake reading-while-reading.42 As her awareness of her surroundings is heightened, she also begins to undertake unexpected walks that lead her to perceive hidden deaths and traumas beyond those discussed in her town. The PLM discussed in this chapter specifically focuses on the protagonist’s walk home after her French class. It is imperative to mention the happenings of the class itself, where the students rely solely on indoctrinated information and even physically turn away from their teacher’s opposing opinions to declare adamantly that the sky is blue.43 The protagonist’s internal focalization, though, reveals her perception of the colours of the sky, especially after the sunset viewing with her maybe-boyfriend. Unlike 40 Ibid., 204. See Anne Fuchs’s article on reading-while-walking as resistance that re-asserts the protagonist’s agency. Anne Fuchs, “The Translocalisation of Place: Sectarian Neighbourhoods, Boundaries and Transgressive Practices in Anna Burns’ Belfast”, Exploring the Transnational Neighbourhood. Perspectives on CommunityBuilding, Identity and Belonging, eds. Stephan Ehrig, Britta C. Jung and Gad Schaffer (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2022), 139–59. 41 Burns, Milkman, 129. On self-surveillance, see Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage Books, 1995). Regarding material and embodied practices that perpetuate the dominant power, see Marisol Morales-Ladrón, “On Docile Bodies: Silence, Control and Surveillance as SelfImposed Disciplines in Anna Burns’ Milkman”, Irish Studies Review 31, no. 2 (2023), DOI: 10.1080/09670882.2023.2198081. 42 Regarding the women’s political use of gossip, see Natalie Wall, “Gossip, Guerrilla Intelligence, and Women’s War Work in Anna Burns’ Milkman”, Irish Studies Review 31, no. 1 (2023): 69–82. 43 Burns, Milkman, 69.

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the “poor deprived class,” whose senses have become blind to their surroundings44, she is also more sensitive towards her environment, as she keeps a lookout for her stalker in both the streets and her own room. Now able to see “all colours,” she experiences “a non-conforming, unfamiliar, restful consciousness,” which again points to her deviation from societal norms.45 Two quick points can be made about the protagonist’s viewpoint based on the French class. The first is her “seeing anew” after her deliberate employment of jamais vu.46 Due to the years of being shielded from urban signs of the Troubles, her perspective of the town, i.e., her reading of city space based on her experiential traces (including the story-driven experiences and cultural knowledge derived from her books), differs from those of her peers. Ironically, it is this turning away from the everyday sights of “the sorrows, the losses, the troubles, the sadnesses” in the streets that enables her to perform unlikely actions, hijack city affordances and insert new meanings once she begins to drift in her environment.47 The second point is related to the ability to perceive “colours, plural,” as maintained by the French teacher about the make-up of the sky.48 The imagery returns later in the narrative when the protagonist refers to “an explosion of colours” while watching her younger sisters taking over the streets and pretending to be the international ballroom dancers. The dancers have nevertheless become popular across political and geographical boundaries, even though it was at the expense of their family.49 By tracing the steps of the waltzing dancers, the girls’ enactment in the street gestures at the possibility of future change and unity within the community, despite the physical bruises gained along the way.50 The PLM that follows further foregrounds the protagonist’s unique experiences of her environment as she lingers and provides an extended description of the ten-minute area. Unlike people who quickly traverse this “ghostly place that simply you had to get through,” she drifts through time as she recalls her childhood imagination of the church towers as “a witch’s hat which everyone would then be forced to walk through.”51 The strange atmosphere of the ten-minute area is exacerbated by the lack of activities 44

Ibid., 72. Ibid., 77. 46 Ibid., 207. 47 Ibid., 61. 48 Ibid., 71. 49 Ibid., 120, 314. 50 Ibid., 313–4. 51 Ibid., 81, 82. 45

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despite the normal urban affordances, such as shops, offices, and a bus stop. With its three dilapidated churches, the “strange, eerie grey place” recalls the occultist ideas about ley-lines in churches that psychogeographers identify as connecting sites of crimes across cities.52 The impression of the lack of life in the ten-minute area is disrupted when the protagonist comes upon the head of a cat, which has been blown off when a German bomb that was left and forgotten from the Second World War exploded at the centre of the three churches.53 Her affective enactment of the discovery while dwelling in the ten-minute area quickly turns from positive to negative. Based on her experiential background, she first perceived the object as “a child’s ball, some toy, a play-moneybag pretending to be a real moneybag, with animal-like ears and fur and whiskers.”54 However, the negative reaction kicks in once she fathoms the true nature of the item and what it implies: that something has lived in the ghostly place, and, contrary to news stating that no one was hurt by the bomb, at least a life has been lost to the explosion.55 The protagonist’s responses to this scene are complicated for several reasons. Because the killing of cats by men and boys is common in her culture, she states that she feels more comfortable with dead cats than with alive ones.56 In other words, due to her experiential background, she appraises the sight of a dead cat as something familiar rather than troubling; homeostasis is therefore largely maintained. Yet, cats in Milkman also symbolize the feminine, which is deemed inferior to the heteronormative ideal of the masculine by 1970s Northern Irish society.57 Her awareness of the marginalized role of cats (and, by extension, women) in her society causes her to feel “jolted as [she] hadn’t remembered ever feeling jolted, not understanding why either, in this instance [she] was having this strong response.”58 Such are her visceral, low-level cognitive reactions as her experiential resonances from other levels of the feedback loops inform her sense-making process of the scene.

52

Ibid., 84. Here, the protagonist’s mother highlights the connections between the ten-minute area and evil or crimes. For information about ley-lines, refer to Merlin Coverley, Occult London (Harpenden: Oldcastle Books, 2012) and Tan, Encountering Psychogeographical Literary Moments, 96, FN 57. 53 Burns, Milkman, 93. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., 83. 56 Ibid., 93. 57 Ibid., 1, 8, 307. 58 Ibid., 100.

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As rightly pointed out by Harriet Baker, “Anna Burns is masterly in her creation of a reading experience that so closely simulates the plight of its protagonist… Burns does not write about fear so much as create the experience of it.”59 Thus, when encountering this PLM, readers affectively enact possible actions in the narrative space by blending the embodied abilities of their virtual bodies with the protagonist’s to experience “what it is like” to perceive the dead cat’s head. As they affectively enact “averting [their] eyes,” “walking firmly on,” then “stopping and turning around” to return the cat’s head60, they simulate the repeated start-stop action, which calls attention to the experiential complexity constituting the character’s juxtaposed cultural knowledge and contradictory reactions in the PLM. Their feelings of uncertainty grow ever more as they affectively enact the protagonist’s “retracing” of her steps.61 The repeated cognitive process of “retracing” produces the feeling that they are now walking with a developed version of the protagonist, whose actions deviate even more than her former reading-while-walking self. The readers’ negative affective enactment, i.e., their unfamiliarity with the situation and the ambiguity of possible actions, only persists as they affectively simulate her closed-up look at the cat’s head. In addition, the detailed descriptions of the unenticing sight of the missing eye and maggots, as well as the “sweetish and yeast-like” smell, continue to activate readers’ senses as they encounter and make sense of the environment in the PLM. The protagonist’s own negative affective enactment is only overcome when she recalls her French teacher’s advice to “[c]hange one thing” so that “everything else will change also.”62 This call for both personal and political agency is key to the character’s and readers’ embodied resistance against the oppression and imposition of norms by the dominant powers. In order to imagine with higher accuracy the myriad of possible actions with the affordances in the PLM, the readers, like the protagonist, must alter their expectations through their cognitive feedback loops, “as if having no choice in the matter.”63 However, of course, the readers have the choice to stop their affective enactment of the narrative space in the PLM. In particular, those who undergo negative affective enactment of the scene, i.e., they are unable to resume homeostasis, might choose to put the book down and

59 Harriet Baker, “Fiction: Lulls and Prickles”, Times Literary Supplement, 12 Oct. 2018, www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/lulls-and-prickles/. 60 Burns, Milkman, 100. 61 Ibid., 101. 62 Ibid., 100–1. 63 Ibid., 101.

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“return” to the real world, where they can regain a sense of comfort in familiar surroundings. To enact resistance in PLMs necessitates different levels of discomfort so that the readers can gain new experiential resonances from the narrative and engage with their real world differently in the post-reading phase. By remaining immersed in the above PLM, the readers will experience the different forms of division presented in the narrative through embodied means. With its mentions of the churches, the German bomb, and the deadly silence of the ten-minute area, the PLM underscores the religious and English-Irish divides. Yet, the globalized movement of second-wave feminism at the time of this narrative also comes to the fore with the protagonist’s detailed engagement with the cat’s head, something that she would not have noticed had she, like others, blindly and swiftly passed through the area. By affectively enacting the deliberately laid-out passage, the readers, slowing down their own pace when imagining the ten-minute area, are prompted to dwell on the symbolism of cats and the social inequalities that were rampant at the time of the narrative. The issue of intersectionality becomes clear as day: the realities of women and other outliers, i.e., the “beyond the pales,” are burdened not only because of the political unrest; their marginalized positions as regards sexuality and gender are an additional weight to bear—and hide—in the non-forgiving conservative society. By affectively enacting the scene with the cat’s head, though, readers are able to perceive additional societal issues that are saturated with doublespeak and denials. Yet, recalling the earlier debate on “colours, plural,” which urged the protagonist’s “turning around” to honour the secret life lost from the bomb explosion, they also sense a growing optimism for the future of gender rights. Here, the act of jamais vu becomes a means to defamiliarize people’s political perspectives. Rather than a matter of forgetting, which the protagonist was accused of doing because of her jamais vu, the act is used to “see anew” and raise questions about the words and their connotations.64 Jamais vu as an act of self-empowerment rather than self-protection is exemplified by the nuns, who brought to light the first

64 The act of “seeing anew” echoes Burns’s point that it is easier to perceive the impact of violence on our perception of norms when there is distance from memories of past conflicts. See Anna Burns, “Interview with Anna Burns,” interview by Lisa Allardice, The Guardian, 17 Oct. 2018, www.theguardian.com/books/2018/oct/17/anna-burns-booker-prize-winnerlifechanging-interview.

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brother-in-law’s lewd connotations through seemingly harmless questions about the statue of Teresa of Avila’s levitation.65 Invisible harassment now becomes verbalized by the feminists, the nuns, as well as the women who attacked Somebody McSomebody for his threats and assault against the protagonist after Milkman’s death.66 As the community grows to question the connotations underlying mere words and actions, it turns from “a suspect community” into one where “people. . . did give a fuck” about the well-being of one another.67 Such a genuine interpersonal connection underscores the protagonist’s mental growth in this coming-of-age novel. In addition, it points to the increasing empowerment of the members of her society to challenge the dominant nationalist (i.e., male) narratives of the Troubles. The readers’ subsequent positive affective enactment of the protagonist watching the girls dancing in the streets also spotlights girls as the future unifiers of the community, who emulated the older women “amply spreading themselves all around” outdoors after curfew.68 As the foil to the reiterated postmodern sentiment, “What’s the point? There’s no point” and the violence enacted by the boys pretending to be “Renouncer Hero Milkman,” the girls paint the streets with hope through the explosion of vibrant colours (not bombs) that pique (not numb) the observer’s aesthetic senses.69 Their reliance on their imagination or other girls for dance partners also exudes a calming sense of unity, which the “ex-pious” women lack in their competitive pursuit of their shared romantic interest.70 With experiential traces that are influenced by contemporary times, most readers will likely perceive the street scene as absolutely normal. When reading the PLM, however, they imagine it anew as they affectively enact the scene through the protagonist’s wonderment, as demonstrated via her internal focalization. By sensing the explosion of colours, i.e., by blending their experiences of dangerous explosions with the pleasing sensations of colours, they can thus simulate embodied resistance against the violence in society. Moreover, as they imagine the girls’ dancing in the streets, their 65

Burns, Milkman, 209–10. The recognition of different forms of harassments in the novel is linked to the #MeToo movement in 2018. See Aoileann Ní Éigeartaigh, “This was the ‘I’m male and you’re female’ territory’: Inserting Gender into the Historical-Political Binary in Anna Burns’s Milkman”, antae 7, no. 1 (2020): 42-55. Contemporary readers will recall the movement when affectively enacting the scenes of harassment. 67 Burns, Milkman, 206, 346. 68 Burns, Milkman, 160. 69 Ibid., 70, 87, 185, 315, 341. 70 Ibid., 338. 66

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virtual bodies enjoy the freedom of movement and enact resistance as they sense feelings of playful inventiveness and childlikeness that are often lost in adulthood.71 It is then that the readers, too, overcome the depravity that the French teacher laments in class. The resonances gained from the reading process, as well as the updated expectations of possibilities in Milkman, enable the readers not only to experience the narrative with fewer prediction errors; based on the secondcognitive approaches to narrative, their modified experiential backgrounds also affect their sense-making processes in the real world, which in turn leads to self-transformation as well as a more conscious embodiment of resistance against real-life inequalities and discrimination. Such claims about the post-reading effects of PLMs are substantiated by findings from my empirical study with selected passages from contemporary British novels, including Zadie Smith’s NW, as the stimulus material. Similar to Burns’s Milkman, but set in more contemporaneous times and in the suburbs of the more well-known site of London, Smith’s NW presents PLMs that challenge the multicultural image of the capital via the depictions of “outlier” characters‫ ތ‬private experiences and diverse narratives based on their knowledge of the hidden side of the city. Constantly interrupting normative behavioural and thought patterns, such fragmented passages prompt readers’ visceral reactions, which give rise to the updating of their experiential traces as they seek to resume homeostasis and arrive at better predictions of possible actions in the fictional settings. In addition, while using their virtual bodies to blend their embodied abilities with the characters’, the readers also rely on their subjective resonances with the action settings to imagine additional affordances that aid in the meaningmaking process. The continual modification of experiential traces, which is supported by the cognitive feedback loops, also leads to the readers’ new understanding of the harsh realities of suburban London as they learn to recognize the “disparate lives of individuals who populate [the streets].”72 The findings from my empirical research conducted in 2020–2021 with German students from the English Department of RWTH Aachen University lend support to these hypotheses about readers’ affective enactment of PLMs.73 The study sought flesh-and-blood readers’ qualitative responses to how they imagined and experienced the narrative space in 71 Regarding inventiveness and childhood as key to psychogeography, see Walter Benjamin, The Storyteller: Tales out of Loneliness, ill. Paul Klee, eds. Sam Dolbear, Esther Leslie and Sebastian Truskolaski (New York: Verso, 2016). 72 Shaw, Cosmopolitanism, 89. 73 Due to the article’s length, only the key findings are included here. For the full exposition, see Tan, Encountering Psychogeographical Literary Moments, ch. 6.

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PLMs. One of the PLMs traces Natalie’s return to her roots in NW after her fight with Frank about her affairs as “Keisha.”74 Negative affective enactment abounds as Natalie’s journey becomes impeded by obstacles that necessitate drifts down unplanned routes.75 When reading about Natalie’s climb up the hill and her making of a “queer keening noise, like a fox,” the participants noted the strangeness of the noise, as if they had heard it in real life.76 Merging their embodied abilities with her unkempt and injured physical state, they also reported feelings of exhaustion and discomfort. The participants also imagined additional affordances such as “a crossroad” or a “dark passage” where necessary to make sense of the situation.77 The obstacles to Natalie’s movements are also thematized by the participants who recalled Felix’s murder to comprehend the PLM.78 It was especially pertinent to these participants that Felix, like Natalie, had been misled by the myth of meritocracy.79 Their references to Felix’s demise infer their negative affective enactment of Natalie’s solo nightwalking. They also simulated her loss of control over the surroundings and her identity when imagining her interaction with the police officer, who probably saw her as “a junkie” because of her physical state, her race, and the place of the estates. Several participants quoted from the PLM to accentuate Natalie’s negative self-perception as a “no-one” who “didn’t merit answering.” They also cited her thoughts about being “the phenomenon of walking” and a drifter with “no name, no biography, no characteristics.”80 Here, the participants’ gendered experiential traces did not influence their sense of vulnerability in response to Natalie’s loss of identity, even if the male participants tended to differentiate their affective enactment from the female character’s experiences using the “I” and “she” pronouns, respectively.81 To resume homeostasis, the participants, who lacked experiences of the estates, drew from other experiential traces to construct a familiar version of Caldwell in the PLM. While some recalled familiar city walks in England, one participant, who did not know anything about the estates, 74

Zadie Smith, NW (New York: Hamish Hamilton, 2012), 303–4. Tan, Encountering Psychogeographical Literary Moments, 211. 76 Ibid., 182. Readers who are British or have experience in the British suburbs might instead recall the wild pests of the streets at night and comprehend Natalie’s current identity as such. 77 Ibid., 200. 78 Ibid., 202, FN 18. 79 Ibid., 201–2. 80 Ibid., 211–2. 81 Ibid., 200–1. 75

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merged his experiences of US ghettos with the descriptions of Caldwell to imagine the narrative space.82 Although he could not imagine the real-life estates, his references to his experiences in US ghettos infer that he affectively enacted both sites, albeit from different countries and cultures, in similar ways. His responses thus illustrate his comprehension of the shared severe realities in such marginalized places. The PLM ends with an omniscient narrator, whose speculation on Natalie’s intentions as she repeatedly traces Caldwell’s boundary wall increases the feelings of uncertainty. The readers’ simulation of Natalie’s actions as she lifts her leg to climb over the wall is interrupted by the sudden mention of her former name, “Keisha.” Recall the participants’ negative affective enactment thus far, as well as their worries about Natalie’s safety and emotional stability.83 Such low-level cognitive responses would now be aggravated by the sudden presence of an unseen speaker. The name “Keisha” also evokes story-driven resonances about Natalie’s past and her secret sexual trysts, i.e. the direct cause of Natalie’s current drift. The participants, who felt lost and scared, might have also feared for Natalie’s life because of their recollection of Felix’s death and their knowledge that the murderers were still on the loose in the neighbourhood. Faced with several destabilizing textual cues and left without closure at the end of this PLM, the readers must speculate on possible affordances and actions to re-situate themselves and resume homeostasis. This step is facilitated by the sections after the PLM. For instance, readers update their pessimistic predictions upon meeting Nathan Bogle, who, as Natalie’s foil, assists in her “crossing.” In addition, as the readers learn about the circumstances surrounding his life, such as his injuries that ended his football aspirations, they affectively enact his realities and gain insights into the experiential complexity of life in the marginalized British suburbs.84 Tracing the footsteps of the two “nobodies” (NBs) gives the readers the chance to perceive persisting urban inequities and acknowledge the diverse dreams of marginalized individuals that deviate from those imposed by the grand narratives of the capital.85 Their acknowledgement of “other” realities grows via the feedback loop. With their new story-driven experiential traces, my participants were prompted to assess their own belief system, identity, and agency in the world. They noted the destructive myth of meritocracy and the need to 82

Ibid., 198, 207. Ibid., 199. 84 Smith, NW, 319, 321. 85 Pope, Reading London’s Suburbs, 207–208; see also Terry Eagleton, After Theory (London: Penguin Books, 2003), 220. 83

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respect people whose aspirations differ from their own.86 This also acted as an impetus for them to acknowledge their moral responsibility for standing up for those affected by class inequalities and social injustices.87 By comparing their own responses to those of the marginalised characters, they recognized their own biases as influenced by urban norms and stereotypes. After their drifts in the PLM of NW, the participants thus modified their perceptions of real-world city realities. For example, their new perception of suburbia as “a place where a personal sense of belonging and community can be developed” challenged the inaccurate beliefs of self-invention and social mobility in the city.88 Noting the need to work on their selfacceptance and regain agency, the participants were then able to turn the city “into sites of possibility,” where they themselves, too, could undertake transformations and metaphorical crossings that produce “the possibility for more authentic fulfillment” and agency in urban space.89

Conclusion With its move away from abstract portrayals about the reading process and towards recent considerations of embodiment, space and selftransformation, this chapter gestures at the socio-cultural effects of reading that have been highlighted by scholars of contemporary British fiction.90 As pointed out by Sebastian Groes, the act of reading creates “a space of enunciation where [the] reader and the writer may engage in a meaningful dialogue.”91 This chapter confirms that the manifestation of the space of enunciation occurs when readers, who are equipped with their own history, memories, and knowledge of the world in their experiential background, conceive of both fictional and real-world cities by producing their own cognitive geography that politically merges the real and the imagined.92 86

Tan, Encountering Psychogeographical Literary Moments, 212. Shaw, Cosmopolitanism, 72. 88 Zadie Smith, “Guardian Book Club: Zadie Smith”, personal interview, Kings Place, London, 2013. 89 Tan, Encountering Psychogeographical Literary Moments, 215; Rachel Stroia, “‫ދ‬I Am the Sole Author‫ތ‬: Challenging the Dictionary of the Social Self in Zadie Smith‫ތ‬s ‫ދ‬NW‫”ތ‬, The Macksey Journal 1, art. 124 (2020): 19; Shaw, Cosmopolitanism, 89. 90 For related discussions about the senses and (urban) fiction, see Robert T. Tally Jr., ed., The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space (London and New York: Routledge, 2017); Colombino, Spatial Politics; and Nigel Thrift, Spatial Formations (London: Sage, 1996). 91 Groes, The Making of London, 15; 14. 92 Ibid., 15. 87

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PLMs, which often utilize multimodal means93, can evoke readers‫ތ‬ experiential traces by presenting “reality…[in terms of] its materiality, its relation to touch, to narrative and to visuality,” while concurrently addressing the “contemporary real” via the “otherworldly temporality” of the new millennium that is mostly experienced through virtual means.94 Facilitated by the imaginative geographies in the urban novel, which comprise “borders and boundaries... to be transgressed, erased, redrawn, or reconceived almost daily,” the readers‫ ތ‬affectively enacted drifts deviate from the rules and authorized paths of the orderly city.95 Just like flesh-andblood psychogeographers, readers play with urban signs provided by the writers of PLMs to resist and reject normalized connotations. By actively imbuing new meanings in urban environments and destabilizing naturalized material practices, both readers and real-life walkers can counter dominant city narratives.96 In addition, by affectively enacting PLMs in contemporary British urban fiction, the readers learn through the cognitive feedback loop to imagine and acquire experience in digression and transgression in built environments, i.e., structures that impose heteronormativity and hegemonic norms.97 The practice of deviation during embodied reading enables the readers to stand against “the [urban] strategies of the powerful” and employ “everyday tactics… [to] play upon the imposed terrain.”98 As they playfully take on new urban identities as new psychogeographers, they produce liminal sites, or “the space of radical openness, the space of social struggle,” while resisting their interpellated roles in highly-contested city spaces.99 The new sites of dissensus, which emerge in both PLMs and real-world settings, offer the marginalized free space to voice their alterity and foreground 93

Wolfgang Hallet, “The Multimodal Novel: The Integration of Modes and Media in Novelistic Narration”, Narratology in the Age of Cross-Disciplinary Narrative Research, eds. Sandra Heinen and Roy Sommer (Berlin and Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), 129. 94 Boxall, Twenty-First-Century Fiction, 10; Paul Virilio, Open Sky, trans. Julie Rose (London: Verso, 2008), 4. 95 Tally, “Introduction”, 2. 96 See Louis Althusser, “Ideology and the Ideological State Apparatuses”, Literary Theory: An Anthology, eds. Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan (New York: Blackwell, 2004), 693–703. 97 See Kukkonen’s works on the topic. 98 Pinder, “Afterword”, 263. In the post-reading phase, readers-turnedpsychogeographers can drift in everyday spaces to perform arrhythmia and otherness in real life when the chance arises, such as during pandemic lockdowns. 99 Edward Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Malden: Blackwell, 1996), 68.

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intersectionality as well as social inequalities resulting from governmental policies.100 The findings from my qualitative study conducted on the topic in 2020–2021 empirically support these claims about the real-life changes and resistance arising from reading contemporary British fiction. According to McNamara, writings about urban realities are “selectively composing—they may also deform and thereby defamiliarize—the known in order to stage the process of making sense of the city, whether it is perceived from above or within.”101 While most scholars of city literature focus on authorial agency to create imaginative geographies, this chapter emphasises the “meaningful dialogue” between writers and readers. Beyond the text, readers—as walkers and real users of city spaces—are invited to “see the patterns out of which the city is constituted, or to experience the life of the city, and to do the work of making sense of it.”102 This position on contemporary readers‫ ތ‬critical role in imagining geographies and transcending strict binary relations to acknowledge “the interconnections and entwinements of different societies and cultures” necessarily points the discourse of resistance in literature in the direction of embodied cognition, the concepts of which yield new insights into reading processes.103 The focus of this chapter is on the affective enactment of PLMs in contemporary British fiction thus effectively addresses reading as “a recursive process that tests the reader’s own assumptions and conclusions about the ways of cities and their inhabitants.”104 With corroboration from empirical evidence of my participants’ self-transformation in the post-reading phase, it substantiates the strong claims about the “recognizable ethical reality” in contemporary British urban fiction and the larger social effects of reading in real life.105

100

For dissensus, see Jacques Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics, ed. and trans. Steven Corcoran (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), 7. 101 McNamara, “Introduction”, 5. 102 Ibid. 103 Brosseau, “In, Of, Out, With, and Through”, 13, 14; Clive Barnett, “Postcolonialism: Space, Textuality and Power”, Approaches to Human Geography, eds. Stuart Aitken and Gill Valentine (Los Angeles: Sage, 2006), 153. 104 McNamara, “Introduction”, 5–6. 105 José Francisco Fernández, “The Introduction to The New Puritan Generation”, The Introduction to The New Puritan Generation, thresholds.chi.ac.uk/wpcontent/uploads/2014/06/INTRODUCTION-to-NEWPURITANGENERATION_JoseFranciscoFernandez.pdf.Fernández 15.

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Rancière, Jacques. Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics. Edited and translated by Steven Corcoran. London: Bloomsbury, 2015. Richardson, Tina. “Introduction.” Walking Inside Out: Contemporary British Psychogeography. Edited by Tina Richardson. London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2015, pp. 1–30. Rossiter, Benjamin, and Katherine Gibson. “Walking and Performing ‘the City’: A Melbourne Chronicle.” The New Blackwell Companion to the City. Edited by Gary Bridge and Sophie Watson. New York: Blackwell, 2011, pp. 488–98. Salmela, Markku, et al. “The Possible in Literature and Urban Life: Clearing the Field.” Literatures of Urban Possibility. Edited by Markku Salmela et al. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2021, pp. 1–18. Schoene, Bertold. The Cosmopolitan Novel. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009. Shaw, Kristian. Cosmopolitanism in Twenty-First Century Fiction. Cham: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017. Sheringham, Michael. Everyday Life: Theories and Practices from Surrealism to the Present. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Smith, Zadie. “Guardian Book Club: Zadie Smith.” Personal Interview. Kings Place, London, 2013. Smith, Zadie. NW. London: Hamish Hamilton, 2012. Soja, Edward, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-andImagined Places. Malden: Blackwell, 1996. Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust: A History of Walking. London: Verso, 2001. Stroia, Rachel. “‫ދ‬I Am the Sole Author‫ތ‬: Challenging the Dictionary of the Social Self in Zadie Smith‫ތ‬s ‫ދ‬NW‫ތ‬.” The Macksey Journal 1, art. 124 (2020): 1–26. Tally Jr., Robert T. “Introduction: The Reassertion of Space in Literary Studies.” The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space. Edited by Robert T. Tally Jr. London and New York: Routledge, 2017, pp. 1–6. Tan, Kai Qing. Encountering Psychogeographical Literary Moments: Readers’ Affective Enactment in Contemporary British Novels (2000–). 2023. RWTH Aachen University, PhD dissertation. RWTH Publications, https://publications.rwthaachen.de/record/963803/files/963803.pdf. Thieme, John. Postcolonial Con-Texts. Writing Back to the Canon. London: Continuum, 2002. Thrift, Nigel. Spatial Formations. London: Sage, 1996. Van Tijen, Tjebbe. Literary Psycho-Geography of Edo/Tokyo & Amsterdam. Scribd, 06 Oct. 2009, uploaded by Tjebbe van Tijen,

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www.scribd.com/document/20699094/Tjebbe-vanTijen-LiteraryPsycho-Geography-of-Edo-Tokyo-Amsterdam#. Varela, Francisco J., et al. The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006. Virilio, Paul. Open Sky. Translated by Julie Rose. Verso, 2008. Wall, Natalie. “Gossip, Guerrilla Intelligence, and Women’s War Work in Anna Burns’ Milkman.” Irish Studies Review 31, no. 1 (2023): 69–82. Ward, Dave, et al. “Introduction: The Varieties of Enactivism.” Topoi 36 (2017): 365–75. Wark, McKenzie. The Spectacle of Disintegration. London: Verso, 2013. Zwaan, Rolf A. “Situation Models, Mental Simulations, and Abstract Concepts in Discourse Comprehension.” Psychon Bull Rev 23 (2016): 1028–34.

CHAPTER SIX RESISTANCE AND IDENTITY FORMATION IN BRITISH DIASPORIC FICTION: BERNARDINE EVARISTO’S GIRL, WOMAN, OTHER LEMAN DEMIRBAù

Introduction Bernardine Evaristo, an acclaimed novelist, poet, dramatist, essayist, and activist, has been honoured with numerous awards, including The Booker Prize in 2019 -as the co-recipients together with Margaret Atwood- for her remarkable work, Girl, Woman, Other, making her the first Black female author to get the Boker Prize and to achieve the distinction of topping the paperback fiction chart in the United Kingdom. As her Booker Prize committee writes, “with vivid originality, irrepressible wit and sly wisdom, Bernardine Evaristo presents a gloriously new kind of history for this old country”1. However, this is not her first endeavour to address a new kind of history and to represent the portrayal of black British individuals, specifically women, in English literature. She was always after “the black presence in British history”2. During the 1990s, Bernardine Evaristo emerged as one of the most talented, innovative, and successful contemporary writers in Britain. Evaristo, who was born in London to Nigerian and British parents, has found her personal history to be a significant source of inspiration for her 1

The Booker Prizes. Bernardine Evaristo. https://thebookerprizes.com/the-bookerlibrary/authors/bernadine-evaristo 2 Penguin Books UK, ‘At Home with Bernardine Evaristo. Live Q&A’ (2020), last accessed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EI9ibDo-Zw last accessed on 25 December 2023

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fictional writing. The deliberate blend of identities she portrays in her work has led to comparisons with a new generation of British-born, Black British writers such as Andrea Levy, Jackie Kay, and Hanif Kureishi. Evaristo’s writing is notably influenced by her diverse heritage, which positions her as both a British writer and a writer belonging to the postcolonial era. The fact that Evaristo identifies as both “Black” and “British” does not create a contradiction. Through her fiction, Evaristo highlights the undeniable reality that it is no longer possible, and more importantly, never was, to return to a pure, white, Anglo-Saxon Britain that existed before immigration. Strating from her first novel, Evaristo displayed a vested interest in black history. Lara (1997), her first novel, tells the story of Lara, a woman of mixed race born in London in the 1960s. The novel unfolds across three continents and spans several decades, chronicling Lara’s journey of selfdiscovery and identity formation. The narrative is intricately woven, exploring Lara’s complex heritage as the daughter of a Nigerian father and an English mother, similar to Evaristo. As Lara navigates societal expectations, cultural clashes, and personal relationships she Lara grapples with her sense of belonging and the fluidity of her racial and cultural identity. Following this deeply personal work, Evaristo shifted her attention towards the broader exploration of black history within the contexts of Britain and Europe. She embarked on the creation of revisionist historical novels such as The Emperor’s Babe, Soul Tourists, and Blonde Roots, which fervently extol the resilience and creative prowess of black individuals. This approach aligns with a prevailing trend within black British culture, particularly in the realm of art, to deviate from the portrayal of black individuals as mere victims and instead accentuate their capacity for resistance and innovation3. The Emperor’s Babe (2001) was a groundbreaking tale that intertwines tragedy and comedy, recounting the life of Zuleika, a young woman of Sudanese heritage who matures in Roman London two millennia ago and embarks on a passionate romance with the esteemed Roman Emperor Septimius Severus. Later in Soul Tourists (2005) Evaristo combines the elements of a novel and poetry, chronicling a car journey across Europe featuring an unlikely pair, namely Stanley and Jessie. On their expedition, they encounter supernatural manifestations of individuals from European history such as Pushkin, Alessandro de Medici, and Mary Seacole. In her next novel Blonde Roots (2008), Evaristo took it one step further and 3

Ingrid von Rosenberg, “If… Bernardine Evaristo’s (gendered) reconstructions of black European history" Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, vol. 58, no. 4, (2010), p. 381

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created an alternated history, reversing the roles typically associated with the transatlantic slave trade and depicting a world where Africans enslaved Europeans. Later in Mr Loverman (2014) Evaristo explored the life of Barrington Jedidiah Walker, 74-year-old Caribbean man living in London, pursuing a secret double life to conceal his homosexuality. When she published Girl, Woman, Other in 2019, she continued to explore similar themes but with a focus on a larger ensemble cast and a wider range of perspectives, adding a critically acclaimed novel into a cohesive body of work that consistently explores issues of identity with a focus on race, gender, and sexuality. Within the complex tapestry of British diasporic fiction, Bernardine Evaristo’s magnum opus, Girl, Woman, Other, emerges as a profound examination of the nuanced interplay between resistance and the formation of identity. The novel manifests as a multifaceted compilation of interconnected narratives, wherein each section is dedicated to an individual character, predominantly women, whose lives intersect in various manners. The chronicle spans numerous decades, commencing with the early 20th century and extending into the present, thereby constructing a temporal mosaic that mirrors the ever-evolving landscape of British society. The narrative introduces figures such as Amma, a feminist playwright; Yazz, Amma’s daughter, Carole, a prosperous businesswoman, Shirley, a teacher, Hattie, and her gender-free granddaughter Megan/Morgan. Through their individual accounts, Evaristo delves into matters of race, gender, and class, portraying the characters’ struggles, triumphs, and the intricate nuances of their relationships. Using multiple focalisation and a polyphonic narrative structure in the Bakhtinian sense4, Evaristo effectively creates a multifaceted representation of the experiences of black British women. The incompatible elements in their story “are distributed among several worlds and several autonomous consciousnesses; they are presented not within a single field of vision but within several fields of vision, each full and of equal worth”5. Although they intersect with one another, Evaristo provides each of her twelve main characters with their own personal space and voice. Within their respective sections, she never exceeds the boundaries of their individual consciousness. For instance, 19-year-old Yazz, who is concerned about her university “squad” and strives to establish herself within intersectional feminist politics, does not surrender to or influence 93-year-old Hattie, who is primarily focused on upholding 4

Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. (London: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), p.10. 5 Ibid, p.43

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her family farm’s legacy and voted in favour of leaving the European Union, remains unaffected by Yazz’s pursuits. Another example is the different versions of feminism explicitly referred in the novel, yet it is not separating but uniting them: As Amma says in the novel “we should celebrate that many more women are reconfiguring feminism and that grassroots activism is spreading like wildfire and millions of women are waking up to the possibility of taking ownership of our world as fullyentitled human beings”6. On the other hand, Evaristo also presents the collective experiences of her fictional characters in patriarchal society, which, in the end, fosters a sense of shared identity and community, and helps them survive the atrocities. The friendship between Dominique and Amma, is so deep and healing that they comforted each other on their journey to found their own theatre company. Through the experiences of these women and their recurrent confrontations with sexual harassment and gender discrimination across various contexts, Evaristo exposes the enduring prevalence of misogyny and sexism as a deeply rooted systemic predicament. As readers embark on the journey through the eyes of these characters, they bear witness to the ramifications of historical events, societal shifts, and personal choices on the construction of both individual and collective identities. Situated against the backdrop of contemporary British society, where the intricate intersections of race, gender, and class converge with the challenges inherent in diasporic existence, this study undertakes a scholarly investigation into the thematic dimensions of resistance and identity formation within Evaristo’s narrative. By contextualising the text within the theoretical lens of diaspora studies and the arguments of scholars such as Stuart Hall, Avtar Brah, Homi Bhabha and Ato Quayson, this chapter seeks to unravel the intricacies interwoven into the lives of the characters who function as representatives of the broader diasporic experience. The first aim is to investigate diverse strategies of resistance employed by characters in the novel within the context of the British diaspora, focusing on their responses to societal norms, discrimination, and power structures. The second aim is to explore the ways in which diasporic identities are negotiated and constructed by the characters, emphasising the influence of cultural heritage, migration experiences, and the interplay of multiple identities.

6

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Black British Fiction Though the term black British fiction dates back to the Caribbean Artists Movement in the late 1960s7, it gained popularity towards the end of 1990s. One of the prominent writings on the genre is Kwame Dawes’s 1999 article, “Negotiating the Ship on the head: Black British fiction” in which he argues that the black populations of Britain had worn a figurative “ship on the head” for centuries, in which the ship stood for an “instantaneous narrative of journey” which both explains and apologises for their presence on the English land8. In discussing the emergence of a black British literature at the end of twentieth century, Dawes writes that [t]imes have changed and the children of the earlier generation, born in England and often to bi-racial parents, do not carry the ship comfortably on their heads. They are introducing something of a dilemma in the British literary scene because they are often unwilling to or incapable of wearing that ship that points to an immigrant identity of ‘otherness’. Many of them will reject any lineage with the [migrant] writers of the fifties and sixties and quite arrogantly (if understandably) and perhaps foolishly, assert a new invention: the black British voice.9

While Dawes acknowledges the inherent difference in status between ‘first-generation’ migrant writers such as Lamming and Selvon, and the later work of British-born black writers, he also dismisses these differences as ‘foolishly’ leading the second- and third- generations of British-born blacks to believe that they could realistically write a new canon into existence – that of black British literature. He argues that, on the contrary, black British writers’ preoccupation with being ‘at home’ in Britain builds upon the themes of alienation and exile so apparent in the work of post-war migrant writers. However, as Mark Stein has pointed out, whatever the problems of setting all minoritized English literature under the umbrella term “black British”, “nevertheless, in propounding connections and connectedness across difference, the concept is of particular usefulness”10.

7 Mark Stein, Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation, (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2004) p.12 8 Kwame Dawes, “Negotiating the ship on the head: Black British fiction.” Wasafiri. Vol.14, no. 29 (1999), p.18 9 Ibid, 19. 10 Mark Stein, Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation, (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2004) p.91

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According to Bénédict Ledent in the Oxford Companion to English Literature, throughout the 1970s, writers based in Britain but with African heritage were often referred to as producing “black British literature.” The term “black British literature” is often used to describe a literary tradition that did not come into being until after World War II, following the arrival of the ship Empire Windrush, which carried Jamaican immigrants to London in 1948 and is therefore thought to have marked the beginning of the black presence in Britain11.In A Black British Canon? (2006), Gail Low and Marion Wynne-Davies argue “that contestations over the meaning of the terms, “British” and “black British” should not be swept aside, since they foreground the ideological and discursive imprint of key political signs”12. Most criticism of black British writing is focused on the post-war paradigms of migration and belonging as integral parts of black British identity, such as in David Ellis’s Writing Home: Black British Writing in Britain Since the War (2007) and Mark Stein’s Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation (2004). When exploring the genealogy of black British literature, it is imperative to consider the complexities and limitations of attempting to situate black British writers within a conventional postcolonial framework. As Reive discusses,13 the endeavour to position black British literature within the realm of postcolonialism encounters challenges once we recognise that the experiences of black British individuals, characterised by hybridity and otherness, differ from those of migrants who find themselves in a state of tension with the imperial centre. Conventional postcolonial theories of diaspora and migration prioritise an imperialist mapping of the world within which black British writing intervenes. Whilst highlighting the problematical positioning of black Britishness within tropes of postcolonialism, critics sometimes struggle to imagine a new framework within which to place black British writing.14 11 Bénédicte Ledent. “Black British Literature”. The Oxford Companion to English Literature, 7th ed., ed. by Dinah Birch (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p.16. 12 Gail Low and Marion Wynne-Davies, “Introduction”, eds. A Black British Canon? (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 5. 13 Samantha Elizabeth Reive, Between the black Atlantic and Europe: Emerging paradigms in contemporary black British writing. PhD Dissertation. University of Leeds 2015, p.6-7. 14 Samantha Elizabeth Reive, Between the black Atlantic and Europe: Emerging paradigms in contemporary black British writing. PhD Dissertation. University of Leeds 2015, p.6

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Similarly, John McLeod, in his investigation into alternative approaches to interpreting black British writing, has observed that in the black writing of today’s Britain, a new national vision is being prompted, if not preoccupied, by racial and cultural specifics; in this vision, the concept of mixed-race plays a major guiding role.15 According to McLeod, the postwar migrant or second-generation identity politics of racialised intervention serve as the foundation for the paradigms that have historically been utilised to interpret black British writing. Feeling the lack of representation in Black British fiction, Evaristo explained the motive behind the novel as “to put presence into absence” and noted that she felt frustrated that “black British women weren’t visible in literature”16. Growing up in the 70s and 80s in the UK, she acknowledges that they “had a very white education system,” and the history taught at school was “white British history”.17 It was only when she was at theatre school at the age of 19 that she encountered other black British women and realised the common experience among them that she had not articulated before. During those years, she also met feminist literature and African heritage. At the same time, I was being introduced to feminist literature, feminist poetry. The writers who struck a chord with me were African-American women writers; in the early 1980s, there was not a body of Black British women's writing. So we looked to the American writers who were being published in the U.K.-Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison… I am a woman of 60. I have lived here [Britain] all my life. For all of my adult life, I have witnessed how culturally - and to a certain extent politically-certainly African American culture has predominated and has been revered in a way that sort of British-born culture isn't… British publishers were not interested in publishing Black British writers- and that only began to change in the late-1990s. We're still not there yet.18 15 John McLeod, “Extra dimensions, new routines: Contemporary Black Writing of Britain.” Wasafiri, 25(4) (2010), p.43. 16 Evaristo, Bernardine. “I want to put presence into absence.” Interview by Anita Sethi. The Guardian, April 27, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/27/bernardine-evaristo-girlwomanother-interview. 17 Eleanor Wachtel. “Bernardine Evaristo on Black British identity and her Booker-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other” CBS Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany/bernardine-evaristo-on-black-britishidentity-and-her-booker-winning-novel-girl-woman-other-1.5430954 18 Eleanor Wachtel, “Bernardine Evaristo on Black British identity and her Booker-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other” CBS Radio.

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Evaristo’s intellectual exploration into the feminist literature and black history as she notes above resonates with the novel as well, especially with Amma and Dominique who underscored the pivotal role feminist authors played in shaping their understanding of feminist discourse as well as their identity when they were young. Dominique is described in the novel as “a drinking, drug-dabbling, chain-smoking lesbian feminist carnivorous clubber who produced theatre by women and lived in a London flat”19 she was proud to be a blackfeminist. As a mixed-race woman born in London, “to an Afro-Guyanese mother, Cecilia, who tracked her lineage back to slavery, and an IndoGuyanese father, Wintley, whose ancestors were indentured labourers from Calcutta”20 Dominique is Amma’s best friend. She leaves her home at the age of sixteen for London, which allows her to live authentically as a lesbian and pursue her aspirations in acting. Together with Amma, Dominique establishes the Bush Women Theatre Company, as both individuals grow weary of the dismissive typecasting and racism prevalent in the mainstream theatre community. Embarking on a quest for selfeducation, she immerses herself in the realms of black history, culture, politics, and feminism. This intellectual journey leads her to the discovery of London’s alternative bookshops, among which Sisterwrite in Islington stands out where she encounters female authors. As she couldn’t afford them, she dedicates hours to reading in the bookshop, and “read the whole of Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology in weekly instalments, standing up, as well as anything by Audre Lorde”21 When she met Nzinga, she said “she’d been thinking about renaming Dominique as Sojourner, a feminist re-baptism, after Sojourner Truth, the anti-slavery activist”22 Dominique’s is not the only instant in the narrative that included references to black feminism and literature. In fact the novel is filled with references such as Sam Selvon, Jamaica Kincaid, Buchi Emecheta, Grace Nichols, Betty Friedan, and Gloria Steinem.

Poetics and Politics of Identity The unique narrative style of the novel, characterised by the absence of conventional punctuation and the emphasized fluid prose, heightens the https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany/bernardine-evaristo-on-black-britishidentity-and-her-booker-winning-novel-girl-woman-other-1.5430954 19 Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (London: Penguin, 2020, e-book),p 72 20 Ibid, 15 21 Ibid, 15 22 Ibid, 76

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immersive encounter of characters with violence and loss. It is an illustration of what Evaristo refers to as fusion fiction, delineated as a “remarkably unrestricted” structure distinguished by “the omission of periods, [and] the extensive sentences.”23 During her conversation with Alison Donnell, she elucidated that this genre of fiction “utilizes a sort of poetic arrangement” and condensation reminiscent of prose poetry.24 It is Evaristo’s daring and innovative form of fusion fiction, seamlessly blending poetry with prose and employing narrative techniques such as free indirect discourse, that enables her to intricately weave together the life stories of fictional protagonists from different eras and locations 25. In her interview with Sethi, Evaristo remarks that this “fusion fiction” gave her “so much freedom,” which she defines as such: I call the novel fusion fiction because there are very few full stops. And I found it a very exciting form to experiment with. I think I might have discovered it, I’m not sure. And the absence of full stops meant that it was a very freeဩflowing writing experience for me… If I had structured the novel in a very traditional way, with traditional sentences, with traditional paragraphs, I think I would not have been able to write the novel as I did. It would not have the scope that it does, twelve interlinked British women’s stories where you feel you know them deeply, intimately, you know the scope and span of their lives and I think that was made possible by this quite proဩpoetic form that I use without being poetry26

In her groundbreaking literary style, Evaristo boldly breaks away from traditional storytelling conventions as well. Instead of following a linear and predictable chronology, the novel also gracefully traverses time and space, intermingling events from the late nineteenth century to the present day and spanning various geographical settings. This departure from standard narrative practices is evident not only in the format of the text but 23

Bernardine Evaristo, “I want to put presence into absence.” Interview by Anita Sethi. The Guardian, April 27, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/27/bernardine-evaristo-girlwomanother-interview. 24 Alison Donnell, “Writing of and for Our Time”, Wasafiri, vol. 34, no. 4 (2019), 99. 25 Sara Strauss, (2023) Intersectionality and Fourth-Wave Feminism in Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, Women: A Cultural Review, vol. 34, no. 1-2 (2023), p. 21. 26Bernardine Evaristo, “I want to put presence into absence”, Interview by Anita Sethi. The Guardian, April 27, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/27/bernardine-evaristo-girlwomanother-interview.

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also in its deliberate disregard for key syntactic rules, such as the omission of most punctuation marks and Evaristo’s deliberate choice to forgo capitalising sentence-initial words. Instead, the narrative is characterised by long, uninterrupted sentences that seamlessly flow into short fragments and individual words. This fluid and unrestricted aspect of the verse narrative allows the author to capture the immediacy of the fictional characters’ inner lives, their memories and their spontaneous recollections of past experiences. Without the constraints of punctuation, line breaks serve as markers for new semantic units, effectively structuring the text and imbuing it with a profound lyrical quality. The rhythm created by these means elevates the specific feminine experiences of the fictional characters, bringing them to the forefront and lending weight to feminist ideas that revolve around these experiences of marginalisation and exploitation. ten months, eleven, twelve months and one year one year and two months and four days Grace woke up early as usual, keen to begin another day with her daughter, delighted that Lily had only needed feeding once in the night, they’d been told by the midwife this meant they could start to look forward to more uninterrupted sleeps she got up and went to Lily’s cot by the side of the bed she reached out her arms to pick her little darling up, but Lily felt stiff, was cold, did not move, not when Grace stroked her cheek, or put her palm against her forehead held her hands cupped her toes rocked her.27

The lyrical narrative of the death of Lily’s baby, for instance, has a profound effect on the reader. The fluid and lyrical structure immediately takes us to the moment when she experiences loss. Through the stories of several female characters, Evaristo shows in the novel a detailed look into black British womanhood today as well as how stigmatisation and discrimination are portrayed through gender, colour, class, and sexual orientation in the narrative, making them invisible in society. The female characters depicted in this novel frequently challenge the conventional perceptions of gender roles established by preceding generations, as well as their attitudes towards patriarchy, feminism and sexual orientation. According to Strauss, the novel “mirrors the historical 27

310.

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development of the different waves of feminism” and through its portrayal of the intersectional experiences of women from various age groups, multicultural backgrounds, and diverse sexual orientations, it can be regarded as “foundational literary texts of what we may see as a fourth wave of feminism, currently gathering momentum”.28 The novel includes five chapters in which each one of the twelve women takes turns telling their stories and a final epilogue. The first chapter opens with Amma as she walks past the Thames on her way to work: Amma is walking along the promenade of the waterway that bisects her city, a few early morning barges cruise slowly by to her left is the nautical-themed footbridge with its deck-like walkway and sailing mast pylons to her right is the bend in the river as it heads east past Waterloo Bridge towards the dome of St Paul’s she feels the sun begin to rise, the air still breezy before the city clogs up with heat and fumes29

The narrative starts with Amma and ends with all the characters coming together at the post-performance gathering for Amma’s play, The Last Amazon of Dahomey. Despite enduring racism and discrimination that marginalised her within the mainstream theatre for many years, Amma’s play, which focuses on the stories of influential African women, premieres at London’s National Theatre. Her story with the theatre company has certainly had autobiographical parallels since Evaristo also co-founded the Theatre of Black Women in the 1980s as she says.30 Amma is a black homosexual woman in her fifties, living with her nineteen-year-old daughter Yazz. As a lesbian, single mother, she ponders the complexities and challenges of black identity in British society. She remembers Dominique: “[T]hey met in the eighties at an audition for a feature film set in a women’s prison (what else?)”31. Dominique was a kindred spirit for Amma; they were both discriminated against and marginalised in the white-male-dominated theatre world; “both were disillusioned at being put up for parts such as a slave, servant, prostitute, nanny or crim/and still not 28 Sara Strauss (2023) Intersectionality and Fourth-Wave Feminism in Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other, Women: a cultural review, 34:1-2, 14-32. p.15. 29 Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (London: Penguin, 2020, e-book) p.1 30 Bernardine Evaristo. "Older black women, who write about that?" Interview by Hannah Chukwu. Five Dials, 2019. https://fivedials.com/interview/older-blackwomen-who-writes-about-thatbernardine-evaristo/. 31Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (London: Penguin, 2020, e-book) p13

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getting the job,” “perfect slave girl material” one director told her when she walked into an audition for a play about Emancipation32. She initially intended to build their own theatre company and pursue acting careers with Dominique, but that idea ultimately fell through. She started working at a burger bar at Piccadilly Circus, “which gave her spots; the orange nylon suit and hat she wore meant customers saw her as a uniformed servant to do their bidding”.33 Similarly, Dominique was rejected for a role in a Victorian play, the reason for which is that “there weren’t any black people in Britain then,” as the director tells her. She had the mission to educate herself in black history, culture, politics and feminism. When she studied at the drama school, she was already politicised. Dominique experienced another disappointment as an adult that was different from her first experience with white supremacy. This time, her disappointment was caused by her encounters with Nzinga, an AfricanAmerican lesbian radical feminist who was visiting London on a temporary basis. At first, Dominique saw Nzinga as a kind mentor who helped her find her true self, but she eventually had to face the upsetting truth that Nzinga’s supposedly kind personality was characterised by cruelty, hostility, violence, and even sadism. Notably, Dominique was able to free herself from Nzinga's damaging influence because she was tenacious in her quest for self-repair. She then joined a therapeutic support group for women who had experienced domestic abuse, got married to Laverne, a fellow group member, and was instrumental in starting the Women’s Arts Festival. By providing a way for oppressed women to heal from their wounds and find comfort in the experiences of other women in similar situations, Amma and Dominique’s stories together highlight the transforming power of sisterhood and sorority for these women.34 Both ladies show up in the story as strong black lesbian characters who not only skillfully deal with their struggles but also overcome the biasing forces present in the dominant white-dominated society. As Evaristo reminds us, “there are so many stories of the different black generations in this country [England] we don’t hear about… So because there aren’t many of us writing from a black British female perspective there is a real paucity of characters of all generations”.35 Girl, Woman, Other, as noted, redresses this paucity by presenting black women 32

Ibid, p.14. Ibid., 21. 34 Merve Sarkaya-ùen, “Reconfiguring feminism: Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other”, The European Legacy vol.26, no.3-4, (2021), 305. 35 Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (London: Penguin, 2020, e-book).p25 33

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from different generations, the oldest being Hattie, a ninety-three-year-old farmer in the North of England. In the narrative, Bummi’s story has a unique quality in that she graduated from the University of Ibadan, studying mathematics, but she worked as a cleaner. She was complaining to her husband “that people viewed her through what she did (a cleaner) and not what she was (an educated woman).36” In a highly racially classified society, “her first-class degree from a Third World country would mean nothing in her new country.37” Similarly, Augustine, her husband had a PhD in Economics, but he was unable to find a job and had to settle in as a taxi driver. He eventually “died of a heart attack while driving over Westminster / Bridge transporting drunken partygoers in the early hours of New Year’s Day38.” Bummi raised her daughter as a single mother, feeling extremely proud for her every success: proud when Carole got into the famous university for rich people that she photocopied her university acceptance letter not once, not twice, but thrice framed and mounted them – one on the wall in the hallway, one on the door inside the toilet and one above the television where she herself could glance up at it while watching the box 39

Bummi’s pride in her daughter was so overwhelming that she went to great lengths, photocopying her university acceptance letter not once, but thrice, displaying these copies at various points of their home. However, little did she anticipate that this accomplishment would lead Carole to distance herself from her authentic cultural identity. With Bummi and Carole, as well as with amma and Yazz, Evaristo establishes a significant correlation between strong black mothers and their equally formidable daughters, which is represented through their strong individuality. The unique ability possessed by these individuals to overcome their initial marginalised state allows them to reveal both their resilience and determination. Another major character in the book is Carole, whose journey from trauma to achievement is chronicled by the author. First of all, she is a British-born Nigerian descendant who was the family’s only child. However, her university degree and the rich people around her was the

36

Ibid, p.136 Ibid, p.136 38 Ibid, p.137 39 Ibid, p.127 37

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reason why she “reject her true culture,” according to Bummi, who disapproved Carole’s engagement to a white man as well: “[T]here is no point getting on in this country if you lose who you really are40.” Carole attended the school where Shirley worked as a teacher; although she was not the best student, she was nevertheless competent. She was thirteen and a half years old when she received an invitation to her friend Latisha's birthday party at her home, where she experienced her worst life trauma when her classmate Carole was gang-raped by her old brother Trey and his friends. The most excruciating and unpleasant feeling that she ever felt is represented strongly in the narrative: how had her clothes come off? then her body wasn’t her own no more it belonged to them and she, who loved numbers, became innumerate couldn’t count, didn’t want to feeling alien body parts on and in parts of her body that were so private, so gross, she hadn’t even felt them herself it was hurtinghurtinghurting onandonandonandon into infinity41

Trough the poetic language, her suffering deeply influences the reader as well. Carole never talks about the assault, believing it happened because of her provocative clothes. She falls into a deep state of sadness, losing interest in education, until one year later when she suddenly becomes overwhelmed with determination to break free from a terrifying future she sees in her friends: poorly compensated employment, becoming pregnant, and being a single mother. When she is accepted to Oxford, she feels worthless and invisible. The number of brown individuals at Oxford is quite limited, which makes Carole stand out as the darkest among them. Feeling out of place among 40 41

Ibid, p.127 Bernardine Evaristo, Girl, Woman, Other (London: Penguin, 2020, e-book) p.104

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her privileged peers, she withdraws into herself, feeling worthless and unseen. Struggling to adapt to Oxford, Carole desires to keep her Nigerian heritage separate from her new life because she thinks that this will facilitate her assimilation. As Oxford becomes a third space of enunciation for Carole, assimilation proves to be a challenging task here because she not only stands out among her predominantly white classmates but also among the other students of colour, due to the colourism that Carole experiences as someone with a darker complexion. As a Black woman on this campus, which upholds white supremacy, Carole is simultaneously highly visible and invisible. Her race sets her apart, and when people notice her, they automatically stereotype her. At the same time, she feels invisible, overlooked, and dismissed by her privileged classmates, whose lives do not have space for someone like her. According to Stuart Hall, a multicultural society needs to create a place where everyone can see themselves mirrored in order to foster a sense of belonging for all citizens. His conception of aesthetics and heritage construction in the post-nation, however, has not yet led to the active integration of Black Britishness into the “lived daily reality” of multicultural Britain. Hall notes that identity is “constructed on the back of a recognition of some common origin or shared characteristics with another person or group, or with an ideal, and with the natural closure of solidarity”. Though it is constructed, it is never complete; it is “constantly in the process of change and transformation.” Hall argues that it is imperative that we contextualise the discussions surrounding identity within the specific historical developments and practices that have disrupted the previously stable nature of various populations and cultures, particularly in relation to the processes of globalisation which are intrinsic to modernity and the post-colonial world, disrupting the settled nature of populations and cultures. Identities are fundamentally concerned with the utilisation of historical resources, language, and culture in the process of becoming rather than being: not solely about who we are or where we came from, but more importantly about what we have the potential to become, how we have been portrayed, and how that influences our ability to portray ourselves. Identities are thus formed through representation, not independent of it. For Hall, identities are …not the so-called return to roots but a coming-to-terms-with our 'routes'. They arise from the narrativization of the self, but the necessarily fictional nature of this process in no way undermines its discursive, material or political effectivity, even if the belongingness, the 'suturing into the story' through which identities arise is, partly, in the imaginary (as well as the

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symbolic) and therefore, always, partly constructed in fantasy, or at least within a fantasmatic field.

Hall acknowledges the imaginary aspect of identity formation, suggesting that belongingness and the construction of identities are, in part, imaginary. However, he emphasises that this does not undermine the discursive, material, or political impact of the process. Precisely because identities are constructed within discourse, not outside of it, it is important to recognise that they are shaped within specific historical and institutional contexts, influenced by distinct discursive formations and practices and crafted through specific enunciative strategies. The enunciative strategies used to articulate identities are crucial, as they shape the ways in which individuals understand and represent themselves. Furthermore, Hall highlights that identities emerge within specific modalities of power and are more a product of marking difference and exclusion than a sign of an identical, naturally constituted unity, challenging traditional notions of identity as an all-inclusive sameness. In Hall’s discussion, “roots” and “routes” are conceptualised as key elements in understanding the formation and nature of identities within the context of diaspora. Roots refer to the cultural, historical, and ancestral ties that individuals have with their countries of origin or cultural heritage. It also signifies the foundational aspects of identity that are deeply rooted in a historical and cultural context. Hall suggests that these roots are not fixed or unchanging. Instead, they are subject to constant negotiation and reinterpretation, reflecting the dynamic nature of identity. Routes, on the other hand, signify the journeys, migrations, and movements that individuals undertake. It represents the dynamic, transnational aspects of diasporic experiences, acknowledging the fluidity and adaptability of identity in the face of changing circumstances and geographies. Hall emphasises that the routes individuals take are integral to the construction of their identities. It is not only about where we came from but also about the ongoing process of becoming, navigating new spaces, and engaging with diverse cultural influences. According to Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani, a diaspora is usually formed out “of a series of contradictory convergences of peoples, ideas, and even cultural orientations,” and contemporary diaspora studies involve “an understanding of the shifting relations between homelands and host nations” viewed from the perspective of both the individuals who have relocated and

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the communities that receive them.42 The investigation of diaspora and transnationalism has granted us the ability to question and critically analyse the prevalent methodological nationalism, thus enhancing our comprehension and examination of both the conceptual representations through which individuals perceive their interconnectedness and the various manners in which transnational movements and affiliations are positioned across borders concurrently43. Paul Gilroy’s study, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, has been an important contribution to black British critical theory and is frequently referred to since its publication in 1993. Gilroy argues that the Black Atlantic as a cultural and historical space transcends national boundaries and explores the interconnectedness of black diasporic experiences across the Atlantic Ocean. Gilroy presents a compelling argument for understanding black cultures, histories, and identities through a transnational lens, arguing that the experiences of people of African descent are interconnected across the Atlantic, creating a shared cultural space. By drawing on the concept of double consciousness introduced by W.E.B. Du Bois, Gilroy delves into the intricate ways in which black individuals navigate various cultural influences and identities. He writes, “striving to be both European and black requires some specific forms of double consciousness,”44 the awareness and negotiation of multiple identities simultaneously. By saying this I do not mean to suggest that taking on either or both of these unfinished identities necessarily exhausts the subjective resources of any particular individual. However, where racist, nationalist, or ethnically absolutist discourses orchestrate political relationships so that these identities appear to be mutually exclusive, occupying the space: between them or trying to demonstrate their continuity has been viewed as a provocative and even oppositional act of political insubordination.45

42

Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani, “Introduction–diaspora and transnationalism: Scapes, scales, and scopes,” A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism, ed. Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani (NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) p.4. 43 Girish Daswani, “The anthropology of transnationalism and diaspora,” A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism, ed. Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani, (NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013), p.35. 44 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. (London: Verso, 1993), p.9. 45 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. (London: Verso, 1993), p.1

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Gilroy argues that individuals who identify as both European and black face challenges, particularly when prevailing discourses present these identities as mutually exclusive, and that black identities are not only shaped by the cultural heritage of Africa but also by the complex interplay with European and American cultures. In the book, he places great emphasis on the notion of cultural hybridity as a defining characteristic of the Black Atlantic and delves into the ways in which black communities in the diaspora have utilised cultural production as a means of resistance against oppression and racism, such as jazz music. In contrast to Gilroy’s emphasis on the interconnectedness of black diasporic experiences within the context of the Black Atlantic, Avtar Brah explores the complex and contested nature of diasporic identities in her seminal work, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. Her main argument revolves around challenging monolithic and essentialist notions of diaspora, against which she emphasises the diverse, fluid, and contested nature of identity formation within diasporic communities. Brah argues against simplifying diasporic identities into singular, fixed categories and highlights the multiplicity of identities within diasporic communities, acknowledging the diversity of experiences, affiliations, and subjectivities. Diasporic identities are contested and negotiated in various social, cultural, and political contexts. Brah emphasises that identities are not predetermined but are shaped through ongoing processes of negotiation and contestation. Diaspora space is the intersectionality of diaspora, border, and dis/location as a point of confluence of economic, political, cultural, and psychic processes. It is where multiple subject positions are juxtaposed, contested, proclaimed or disavowed; where the permitted and the prohibited perpetually interrogate; and where the accepted and the transgressive imperceptibly mingle even while these syncretic forms may be disclaimed in the name of purity and tradition. Here, tradition is itself continually invented even as it may be hailed as originating from the mists of time.46

Brah explores the spatial dimensions of diaspora, considering how individuals and communities construct their sense of belonging within physical and imaginary spaces. Brah argues: [T]he relationship of the first generation to the place of migration is different from that of subsequent generations, mediated as it is by

46 Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. (London: Routledge. 1996), p.205.

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In the context of diaspora studies, the experience of migration and living in a new cultural context can be seen as a liminal state. By highlighting the fluid and changing character of the places produced by diasporic communities, Avtar Brah’s concept of “diaspora space” 48 effectively depicts this liminality. The liminal space, as used here, refers to the area where people negotiate their identities and work through the challenges of belonging to different cultural settings while living between their own nation and the new one. The third space described by Homi K. Bhabha is a liminal zone that naturally arises as a result of cultural hybridisation. Cultural identities in this domain are always shifting and negotiating; they defy labels and encourage a reexamination of conventional ideas of identity. The third space of enunciation is where cultures intersect and new forms of identity emerge. Bhabha (2004) argues that, by confronting the voices of the past and the present, of home and abroad, postcolonial authors create something new and disturbing—a rich space that allows for various emerging identities.

Conclusion Girl, Woman, Other embodies a commemoration of multiplicity and fortitude, presenting a refined depiction of the intricacies that mold the British diasporic experience. Evaristo’s masterful narrative encourages readers to contemplate the subtleties of interpersonal bonds, the endeavour to attain independence, and the ceaseless search for self-awareness within the vibrant fabric of modern-day British society. As Sarkaya-ùen highlights “dedicated to the sisters, the women, the brothers, the men, the LGBTQ+ and members of the human family,” the novel “presents a transmodern, plural and inclusive cultural world that intermingles various cultures and respects otherness and difference”.49 The conceptual framework of this research is based on the valuable perspectives provided by diaspora studies, an interdisciplinary field that explores the experiences of displaced communities, their cultural dynamics, and the development of identities in cross-border contexts. 47 Avtar Brah, Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. (London: Routledge. 1996), p.190. 48 Ibid. 49 Merve Sarkaya-ùen, “Reconfiguring feminism: Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other”, The European Legacy vol.26, no.3-4, (2021), 305.

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Highlighting the interaction between origins and pathways, the interconnectivity of diasporic communities, and the transformative potential of intermediate spaces, diaspora studies present a comprehensive perspective from which to examine the representation of resistance and identity formation in the novel. This theoretical framework underscores the significance of diaspora studies in elucidating the complexities of identity formation and resistance within the realm of British diasporic fiction. By drawing upon the foundational insights of Hall, Gilroy, and Bhabha, our aim is to provide a nuanced analysis of the characters' experiences, emphasising the transformative potential of diasporic narratives in shaping our understanding of cultural hybridity, migration and the negotiation of identity. The women in the narrative, who have been suppressed and invalidated, exhibit resilience through their efforts to confront the individuals who maintain authority and uphold the patriarchal system. More specifically, through the individual stories of its characters, the novel demonstrates that black British women’s resistance and empowerment are related to resilience and their feminine identity which is closely related to motherhood.

References Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Classics Ed. London: Routledge, 2004. Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge. 1996. Courtois, Cédric. “Bernardine Evaristo’s “Black”, British Amazons: Aesthetics and Politics in Girl, Woman, Other (2019).” Études Britanniques Contemporaines, vol. 60 (2021): page numbers???. Daswani, Girish. “The anthropology of transnationalism and diaspora,” A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism, ed. Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani, (NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013) Dawes, Kwame. “Negotiating the ship on the head: Black British fiction.” Wasafiri. 14.29 (1999), p.18-24. Evaristo, Bernardine. Girl, Woman, Other. London: Penguin, 2020. Evaristo, Bernardine. “I want to put presence into absence.” Interview by Anita Sethi. The Guardian, April 27, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/apr/27/bernardine-evaristogirlwoman-other-interview. Evaristo, Bernardine. "Older black women, who write about that?" Interview by Hannah Chukwu. Five Dials, 2019.

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https://fivedials.com/interview/older-black-women-who-writes-aboutthatbernardine-evaristo/. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993. Hall, Stuart. “Cultural Identity and Diaspora.” Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory: A Reader. Edited by Laura Chrisman and Patrick Williams. New York: Columbia UP, 1993, pp. 392-403. Hall, Stuart. “Introduction: Who Needs 'Identity'?” Questions of Cultural Identity. Edited by S. Hall and P. du Gay. London:Sage, 2011, p. 1-17. Quayson and Girish Daswani, “Introduction–diaspora and transnationalism: Scapes, scales, and scopes,” A Companion to Diaspora and Transnationalism, ed. Ato Quayson and Girish Daswani (NJ: WileyBlackwell, 2013), p. 1-16. Rosenberg, Ingrid von, “If… Bernardine Evaristo’s (gendered) reconstructions of black European history” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, vol. 58, no. 4, (2010), p. 381-395. Sarkaya-ùen, Merve (2021), “Reconfiguring Feminism: Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other.” The European Legacy vol. 26, no. 3-4 (2021): 303–315. Stein, Mark. Black British Literature: Novels of Transformation, Columbus: Ohio State UP, 2004. Strauss, Sara. “Intersectionality and Fourth-Wave Feminism in Bernardine Evaristo’s Girl, Woman, Other.” Women: A Cultural Review, vol. 34, no. 1-2 (2023): 14-32. Wachtel, Eleanor. “Bernardine Evaristo on Black British identity and her Booker-winning novel, Girl, Woman, Other.” CBS Radio. https://www.cbc.ca/radio/writersandcompany/bernardine-evaristo-onblack-british-identity-and-her-booker-winning-novel-girl-womanother-1.5430954.

CHAPTER SEVEN NO BIG CONSPIRACY: POETIC HUMANITY AND THE FICTION OF RESISTANCE IN NEVER LET ME GO AND KLARA AND THE SUN MALEK HARDAN MOHAMMAD

Introduction In an interview after the publication of Klara and the Sun (2021), Kazuo Ishiguro suggested that the novel be read next to his earlier book Never Let Me Go (2005): “To some extent as a writer you’re always in dialogue with your earlier books, in terms of the emotions and atmospherics. Part of me wanted to reply to Never Let Me Go, which is a very sad book. It’s not pessimistic exactly, but it’s very sad. So I wanted to reply to that vision . . . I wanted to focus on celebrating the things worth celebrating about human nature . . . As a writer that’s a more positive experience for me.”1

Besides taking the author’s cue to examine the two novels together, the discussion here draws on several points in Ishiguro’s description of the writerly endeavor: that literary texts respond to the world and to each other endlessly, and that poetic work is motivated by the will to continue resisting a negative vision of humanity and to search for redemptive values in the human. For, pessimistic or not, the two novels are about a certain idea of the human, and critics have examined that at length, especially with the earlier

 1

Kazuo Ishiguro, “Kazuo Ishiguro on How His New Novel Klara and the Sun Is a Celebration of Humanity.” Interview with Dan Stewart. Time, 2 Mar. 2021, www.time.com/5943376/kazuo-ishiguro-interview.

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novel, within the context of posthumanism, transhumanism and other contemporary political, ethical and aesthetic debates.2 Kathy, the narrator of Never Let Me Go (NLMG), reminisces about her relationship with now deceased Tommy, formerly a fellow clone at a fictional special colony (Hailsham, now closed, established as part of a humanitarian awareness campaign in England) that purported to cultivate a cultural life for the clones as they progressed through a course of organ harvesting towards their inevitable death. Kathy recalls her life and exchanges with the fellow clones within that environment, supervised by some sympathetic “guardians” and other elusive administrators higher up, in an oddly matter-of-fact way; they whiled away their proscribed and short lives in teenage drama as well as in art contests that would “reveal their souls” and romantic involvements some hoped would earn them the rumored deferrals from donations.3 The novel ends with Kathy standing in the middle of nowhere, squinting to glimpse an imaginary Tommy over the horizon before she gets back to her never-questioned commitments as a “carer” and later as a donor destined for death. In Klara and the Sun (KS), on the other hand, we meet narrator Klara at the beginning of her life as a robot, one of the many models of “AFs (artificial friends)” purchased by wealthy parents for their genetically “lifted” children. After she moves into a solitary and sheltered environment with ailing Josie, we come to realize that Josie’s mother’s plan (in coordination with Capaldi, a designer of custom-made robots) is for Klara, who has vaguely human-like responses, to replace Josie if the latter succumbs to the side-effects of her genetic enhancement. The solar-powered Klara appeals to the Sun—which she reasonably perceives as her nourishing deity—to save Josie, and that seems to work as Josie survives, grows up and moves to college. To the chagrin of Capaldi, who has requested to enlist Klara in his efforts to calm public angst about artificial intelligence, the family gives Klara the “worthy” ending she “deserves” and she “slowly fades” in a junk yard, seemingly content to have accomplished her mission of enriching and saving Josie’s life.4 The two novels evidently deploy conspiracy as a theme and have invited suspicion on the part of critics familiar with the dissonance between Ishiguro’s explicit and implicit layers of narrative.5 NLMG, it has been said,

 2

See particularly Shameem Black, “Ishiguro’s Inhuman Aesthetics.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 55, no. 4 (2009): 785-807. 3 Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 248. 4 Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (London: Faber and Faber, 2021), 294. 5 See particularly Doug Battersby, “Reading Ishiguro Today: Suspicion and Form.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 67, no. 1 (2021): 67-88; and Dominic Dean,

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even “requires two readers, the reader who can be blind to its ugly visage, and the reader who can see into its delicately conflicted soul.”6 Naturally, readers and critics have understandably wondered (even cried) why the clones do not resist their horrible condition and fate (by “moving to France” for instance).7 Also, we feel the same frustration as to why the parents in KS do not take a firmer stand against the often lethal system of offspring enhancement. Yet, we know that there is more to this blindness than meets the eye. No self-respecting conspiracy theorist will waste her time on a project as blatantly manipulative as cloning for organ harvesting, genetically enhancing children, or swapping humans for robots. Ishiguro’s narratives exemplify, a la Foucault, a subtler form of blindness, the implicit failure to see through a seemingly empowering and liberating but possibly hegemonic and repressive discourse; this is namely the poetic rhetoric that posits creative or irreducible response as the very definition of the human. The two dystopian novels enable us to negotiate cultural anxieties and conspiracy theories about putative scientific encroachments on a certain idea of the “human,” specifically “transhumanist” encroachments through cloning, organ harvesting, human gene editing, and artificial intelligence. In that milieu of both outrightly conspiracist and more subtly apprehensive thinking about technological overreach, numerous values are evoked that are admittedly relevant, but Ishiguro’s fiction draws our attention to others, such as creativity and response, that enter the debate obliquely. With reference to Ishiguro’s work, this chapter intervenes to highlight the confluence of fiction, conspiracism, resistance, and this poetic strand of humanism.

Poetic Conspiracism and Ishiguro The currently politicised debate about conspiracy theory aside, conspiracism has epistemological and recognisably aesthetic components. On the one hand, a conspiracist narrative, according to Frederic Jameson at least, is a “structure capable of reuniting the minimal basic components: a potentially infinite

 “Migration Crisis and Conspiracy in Kazuo Ishiguro.” English Studies 103, no. 7 (2022): 1116-34. 6 Rachel Cusk, “Rereading: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.” Review of Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Guardian, 29 Jan. 2011, www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/29/never-let-me-go-kazuo-ishiguro. Accessed 1 Dec. 2023. 7 Qtd. in Black, “Ishiguro’s Inhuman Aesthetics.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 55, no. 4 (2009): 791.

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network, along with a plausible explanation of its invisibility.”8 A conspiracy theory is a concrete interpretation of a seemingly random and mysterious world, but there is also an aesthetic dimension to conspiracism. For one thing, a conspiracy theory often initially needs to mask itself in allusions and symbols as much as it obsesses with them. In fact, some conspiracist accusations started in the form of poems.9 This masking is understandable since conspiracy theories are often met with ridicule, so they come out in figurative disguise. Conspiracism is also artistic in its affinity for “patterns” and its element of “pleasure.” It is “flamboyant and colorful and involves leaps of imagination” that spice up life and make it “exciting.”10 As we will see later, conspiracy is natural substance for literature since both have a perennial concern with the relationship between appearance and reality. One might add that conspiracy theories are interpretations of the world that attribute events to scheming and usually inaccessible agents, in a fashion akin to literary criticism; with some exceptions, readers approach all elements of a text as products of a controlled design and do not attribute to neglect or happenstance what can be explained through some theoretical agency. In some cases, readers probably should assume perfectly intentional design, as in the present case of Ishiguro’s controlled prose. In fact, within Ishiguro studies, conspiracist thinking has received some attention, and this interest will likely grow due to 1) the dramatic proliferation of conspiracy theory in our chaotic era of dynamic media and populist politics and 2) Ishiguro’s use of paranoia not only as a recurring story line but also as a novelistic form that conditions readers to poke for the invisible. Reading Ishiguro, you have “the sense of there being a disparity, tension or dissonance between a narrator’s account and its emotional and ethical impact. . . Ishiguro has repeatedly employed the most suspicious of narrative techniques, unreliable narration.”11 When it comes to conspiracy as the substance of plot, and with reference to the two novels examined here, Dominic Dean writes:

 8

Frederic Jameson, The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992), 9. 9 Colin Wells, “‘Aristocracy’, Aaron Burr, and the Poetry of Conspiracy.” Early American Literature 39, no. 3 (2004): 553-76. 10 Ben Davis, “Why Conspiracy Theories Have Become the Most Influential Art Form of Our Time.” Artnet, 11 May 2020, https://news.artnet.com/art-worldarchives/why-conspiracy-theories-have-become-the-most-influential-art-form-ofour-time-part-i-1854738/amp-page. Accessed 15 Oct. 2023. 11 Doug Battersby, “Reading Ishiguro Today: Suspicion and Form.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 67, no. 1 (2021): 68.

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Klara’s expected function as a re-embodied replacement for Josie is itself a conspiracy, organized between Josie’s mother and Mr. Capaldi, whose efforts are matched by Klara’s own attempt to secure Josie’s life in partnership with the Sun, in what is both a conspiracy (it is intended as a secret agreement) and a theory (relying on an excessively intentionalist, and fantasist, understanding of the world). Klara’s clearest precursor is Never Let Me Go, where the clones develop their own conspiracy theories to account for their opaque status, and to escape the cruelty of their true position with fantasies of secret favor. Tellingly, they establish these theories, despite their paranoid character, as a palliative narrative that explains, and thus partly evades, their bleak reality.12

This proclivity for conspiracism is natural enough in stories about vague origins—of clones, robots, and genetically modified children; an epistemic void presents itself in the originary narrative of all those figures; and “nature abhors a vacuum, as do conspiracy theories,” in Arby Siraki’s words.13 NLMG indeed conditions us not to dismiss conspiracism offhand and it does that in a double gesture by employing a recognisably suspicious narrator who does not take others’ reasonable suspicions seriously. Kathy’s favorite childhood game with her clique is their membership in a secret “guard” ring in charge of foiling a fantastical “plot to kidnap Miss Geraldine [their favorite teacher]” by other not-so-sympathetic staff members.14 She also has a very refined sense for detective work when her friends attempt the (not so) subtle art of teenage exclusion against her. So, while “other critics describe Kathy as naively unsuspicious of the institutions she is both subject to and collaborates with,” argues Battersby, “it is precisely because she does demonstrate some capacity for suspicious interpretation that her ultimate refusal to repudiate the cloning system in the final pages of the novel is so devastating.”15 According to Kathy, one of the informational vacuums her fellow clones, in conspiracist fashion, tried to fill concerned the process by which they had become informed about the future that awaited them. Recalling her fellow clones’ speculation that their “guardians” had followed an intricately gradual and coated way of “telling and not telling” them about the grim purpose of their existence, Kathy remarks: “It’s a bit too much like a conspiracy theory for me—I don’t think

 12

Dean, “Migration Crisis and Conspiracy in Kazuo Ishiguro,” 1118 (emphasis in the original). 13 Arby Ted Siraki and Malek Hardan Mohammad, “Bill Gates and the ‘New Normal’ Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories: ‘it’s a new thing’ or Nothing New under the Sun.” Journal for Cultural Research 27, no. 2 (2023): 137. 14 Ishiguro, NLMG, 49. 15 Battersby, “Reading Ishiguro Today: Suspicion and Form,” 69.

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our guardians were that crafty—but there’s probably something in it. Certainly, it feels like I always knew about donations in some vague way.”16 When Tommy and Ruth (another clone, now deceased), who had already donated some organs, complained that their “carers” hid from them news of donors “completing” [dying] early in the course of donations, Kathy (who even at the time of the narrative is still a “carer” and has not progressed to the role of donor yet) recalls how she scoffed: “There is no big conspiracy about it . . . Sometimes it happens.”17 Eventually, once beloved, now retired Hailsham staff Miss Emily (at that point wheelchair-bound in some remote, cloistered, dark, and curtain-partitioned villa as if she were a disabledvillain-master-of-the-universe trope) disabused Kathy and donationweakened Tommy of the love-based deferral rumors. In between attending to the welfare of her favorite piece of furniture (in older literature she would have been doting on her inanimately sleepy cat), Miss Emily reassured them that the Hailsham project, with its art exercise in particular, had demonstrated to the public that if the clones “were reared in humane, cultivated environments, it was possible for them to grow to be as sensitive and intelligent as any ordinary human being.” Before Hailsham and some other progressive activism, people saw clones as “[s]hadowy objects in test tubes” only.18 In KS, Klara’s necessarily limited perspective also encourages quizzical reading from the start, as the plot, in true Ishiguro fashion, unfolds by implication. By her very design as an AF, Klara is programmed to observe her surroundings, including people, and incorporate that information into her intelligence. Ideally, she is supposed to form a database (perhaps the AI version of Jameson’s “reuniting the minimal basic components”) that enables her to respond well to Josie. A natural problem for the reader is whether to call that “reason” and “understanding” or a “sophisticated statistical regression model.”19 As a machine, there is no room in her mental world for random behaviour; she tries to deduce causality for all events, just like a conspiracist would. Needless to say, the AF modus operandi makes the reader self-conscious; we wonder whether humans do not proceed in the same fashion, negotiating our way through the world picking up clues along

 16

Kazuo Ishiguro, NLMG, 81 (emphasis in the original). 17 Ibid., 221. 18 Ibid., 256. 19 Santiago Mejia and Dominique Nikolaidis, “Through New Eyes: Artificial Intelligence, Technological Unemployment, and Transhumanism in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.” Journal of Business Ethics 178 (2022): 304.

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the way. Is not that also the same process we undertake when we approach and try to make sense of any text, including the fiction at hand? The novel opens with a literally restricted view: “When we were new, Rosa [a fellow AF] and I were mid-store…and could see through more than half of the window…Once we were more settled, Manager allowed us to walk up to the front until we were right behind the window display…And if we were there at just the right time, we would see the Sun on his journey, crossing between the building tops.”20 This self-conscious attempt at gaining insight continues throughout the novel, and it also reflects the thematic suspicion surrounding AI, particularly in relation to the mysterious nature of scientific work. Capaldi sums it up for Klara: [T]here is growing and widespread concern about AFs right now. People…are afraid because they cannot follow what is going on inside any more…That’s where it comes from, this backlash, this prejudice…Fine, then let’s go take a look under the hood. Let’s reverse-engineer. What you don’t like are sealed black boxes. Okay, let’s open them. Once we see inside, not only do things get a lot less scary, we’ll learn.21

Capaldi’s work to counter distrust of AI points to the ever-receding object of conspiracism: “We’ve already succeeded in opening a number of black boxes, but we really need to open up a whole lot more.”22 But what really motivates this resistance to the metaphorical “shadowy tubes” and “sealed black boxes” in the two novels? What is it that the Emilys and Capaldis of the world, who come across as well-meaning but cold operators, want to prove about clones and AFs to the understandably leery public? In the words of one reviewer, “Ishiguro always implies, never details. One reads Ishiguro in a defensive crouch, afraid to have our worst suspicions confirmed.”23 And our worst suspicion, as the books suggest, is that scientists are defining and/or redefining humanity; the suspicion is motivated by a romantic definition of humanity as inscrutable and undefined. The public is anxious that one day they might wake up to a scientifically defined and calculable humanity. Ironically, our fear for the mystery of humans is expressed as fear of the mystery shrouding the work of scientists. The paranoia dates back probably to the time of Pavlov’s dog

 20

Ishiguro, KS, 3. 21 Ibid., 293. 22 Ibid., 294. 23 Ron Charles, “In Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun,’ a Robot Tries to Make Sense of Humanity.” Review of Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Spokesman-Review, 6 Mar. 2021, www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/mar/06/bookreview-in-kazuo-ishiguros-klara-and-the-sun-a/. Accessed 2 Nov. 2023.

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but certainly to the anxiety surrounding B. F. Skinner’s experimental conditioning of human responses. Skinner accurately diagnosed how culture romanticised the unpredictability and mystery of human responses: the “credit a person receives is related in a curious way to the visibility of the causes of his behaviour. We withhold credit when the causes are conspicuous. We do not, for example, ordinarily commend a person for responding reflexly: we do not give him credit for coughing, sneezing or vomiting even though the result may be valuable.”24

Recreating, Responding, and Resisting In the shared space of Ishiguro’s fiction examined here, two concepts take center stage: creativity and response. NLMG dwells on the clones’ creativity, reflected in the art they produce, and on the nature of their responses, as demonstrated in their romantic behaviour, personal bonds, temperaments, and most pointedly in the scene of Kathy hugging an imaginary baby and singing along to the “never let me go” of the title. KS also negotiates the two concepts in the way Klara goes about her AF business, in contrast with other AF models, with Josie and her genetically enhanced cohort and with “normal” people. By including all such variables, Ishiguro obviously makes it very complex, but creativity and response discernably emerge as epistemic bulwarks in the discourse about humanity. The unique capacity to “respond” has defined what it means to be human, as opposed to being a mere animal or, recently, machine, at least in the context of western modernity. Derrida argues that for Descartes, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and Lacan, “the most powerful, impassive, and dogmatic prejudice about the animal did not consist in saying that it does not communicate, that it does not signify, and that it has no sign at its disposal, but that it does not respond.”25 What makes us human in this view is the act of responding, beyond mere instinct and reflex, to experiences outside of ourselves. This responsive sensitivity came to occupy an especially celebrated place in the Romantic tradition of the poetic imagination. For the English Romantics like Wordsworth and Shelley, for example, the passionate and imaginative mind connects us with others across time and space; they actually used the ethical potential of “imaginative projection” in their embrace of “aesthetic pursuits.”26 This

 24

B. F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom & Dignity (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1971), 45. 25 Jacques Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign, Vol. I, trans. Geoffrey Bennington (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 57. 26 Black, “Ishiguro’s Inhuman Aesthetics,” 787.

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romantic connection—between our response to experiences outside ourselves and our creative imagination—continues to shape our notion of what it means to be human. Even in Foucault, a dissident from humanism, a trace of that tradition survived in the ironic guise of creativity. Deeming Sartre’s notion of “authenticity” philosophically admirable but ethically useless, Foucault wanted to see self-creativity take its place: “Sartre avoids the idea of the self as something that is given to us, but through the moral notion of authenticity, he turns back to the idea that we have to be ourselves—to be truly our true self. I think the only acceptable practical consequence of what Sartre has said is to link his theoretical insight to the practice of creativity—and not to that of authenticity. From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence, we have to create ourselves as a work of art.”27 Yet, creating ourselves as a work of art can only mean continually recreating, and one can speculate how this continuous enterprise fits within Foucault’s view that one cannot escape discursive power. Moreover, creativity as continuous recreation is also essential to resistance. One mainstream understanding of the concept is that, against the great many forms of domination, known or otherwise, “subordinate groups develop endless forms of resistance, in efforts to undermine, countervail, subvert, and challenge the actors and systems of oppression that they face. They dig in their heels, retreat to strongholds, strike back, or try to alter the rules of the game.”28 This view of resistance as continuous in nature, or that it should be, is also implicit in Walter Banjamin’s distinction between creative violence and stagnant violence, between the violence that creates a certain condition and the violence that preserves it: Both forms of violence are part of a circular schema: revolutionary, radical and creative violence becomes part of status quo-preserving violence. Benjamin exemplifies this lamentable circularity by referring to parliamentary politics: Representative bodies “present such a well-known, sad spectacle because they have not remained aware of the revolutionary forces to which they owe their existence…They lack a sense of the creative violence of law that is represented in them. One need not then be surprised that they do not arrive at decisions worthy of this violence, but instead oversee a course of political affairs that avoids violence through compromise.”29 Seen in this light, the

 27

Michel Foucault, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow, trans. Robert Hurley et. al. (New York: The New Press, 1998), 41. 28 Roger Karapin, “Editor’s Note: Resistance to Domination.” Polity 47, no. 4 (2015): 417. 29 Qtd. in Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 28.

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re- in resistance binds it to repetition, recurrence, revolution, and revenge. This circular creativity can be the thematic and formal basis of literature, tracing its history to Greek tragedy. Benjamin’s view of the law as “mythical violence like revenge and curse” was countered, for example, with reference to Aeschylus’s Oresteia and Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, by an argument that law actually “re-establishes” the mythical violence of revenge and curse “precisely by (way of its) breaking with” it.30 This is at least one admittedly abstract basis for suspicion about resistance and also about the practicality of Foucault’s notion of self-creativity, which might be tainted by revenge and a curse of mythic origins and proportions. Ironically, Foucault’s very legacy is grounds for approaching the idea of the creative self with caution. His intellectual heritage lies in his analysis that the constitution of the subject and the formation of the state are related and that technologies of the self and technologies of government are linked. He famously distinguished two meanings in the word subject: a person being “subject to someone else by control and dependence, and tied to his own identity by a conscience or self-knowledge. Both meanings suggest a form of power which subjugates and makes subject to.”31 Foucault attempted to demonstrate that the modern sovereign state and the modern autonomous individual facilitated each other’s emergence. Yet, there remains a gap in Foucault’s analysis, a gap that Agamben observed: “Foucault argues that the modern Western state has integrated techniques of subjective individuation with procedures of objective totalization…Yet the point at which these two faces of power converge remains strangely unclear in Foucault’s work, so much so that it has even been claimed that Foucault would have consistently refused to elaborate a unitary theory of power.”32 Agamben continued Foucault’s examination of the biopolitical state in an attempt to locate where individuation and totalization intersect and to expand and resolve Foucault’s unanswered question of why the modern state—which, in Agamben’s words, incorporated “bare life” or zoƝ (natural life) into bios (political life), made zoƝ its main concern by caring for the population’s health—did not protect zoƝ from destruction. Agamben attempts to correct or, at least, complete Foucault’s thesis that modern politics is characterized by including zoƝ into the polis and making it the object of state power by arguing that modern power brings “living man” (or woman) into the “polis” by separating him from “his bare life and,

 30

Christopher Menka, “Law and Violence.” Law and Literature 22, no. 1 (2010): 12. 31 Michel Foucault, “The Subject and Power.” Michel Foucault Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 212. 32 Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, 6.

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at the same time,” maintaining him “in relation to that bare life in an inclusive exclusion.”33 In other words, humans gain political rights and protection (bios), becoming political subjects, when they are rescued by the modern state from their zoƝ (their mere givenness), but since exclusion works only through inclusion, humans bring their zoƝ within them. Therefore, for Agamben, humans become the object of “sovereign violence” because of the kernel of zoƝ inside them that they have not really lost even though they took on political characters, and this zoƝ makes them the object of “sovereign violence.”34 Our “surviving zoƝ, in this formulation, trumps [our] political life and subjects [us] to power. [Our] zoƝ, in Agamben’s complex way, is the source of [our] woe.”35 Agamben argues that “the existence of this line of thinking seems to be logically implicit in Foucault’s work” but says that “it remains a blind spot to the eye of the researcher, or rather something like a vanishing point that the different lines of Foucault’s inquiry (and, more generally, of the entire Western reflection on power) converge toward without reaching.”36 Yet, using Ishiguro as an example, we might be able to correct or add to Agamben’s own diagnosis of the biopolitical subject-formation and subjection process. In more ways than one, the poetic notion of an unscripted or creative human response seems to be part of the process. Ishiguro’s novels highlight a possible cultural trap wherein, while the scientific instrumentalization of life is rightly demonised, the social instrumentalisation of life is wrongly celebrated: It is celebration in the name of poetic humanity, simply the injunction to possess creative responses. This is seemingly a reversal of Kant’s notion of “human dignity,” where the human should be treated as an end. Kant’s “practical imperative [was] as follows: So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only.”37 I only want to point out this one evident contradiction, admitting that Kant’s

 33

Ibid., 8. 34 Ibid., 18. 35 Malek Hardan Mohammad, The Discourse of Human Dignity and Techniques of Disempowerment: Giorgio Agamben, J. M. Coetzee and Kazuo Ishiguro. 2010. Texas A&M University, PhD dissertation. https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2010-12-8807, 20. 36 Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, 7. 37 Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1959), 57.

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founding concept is more nuanced than I make it out to be here and that it has been critiqued endlessly.38 First of all, in the Romantic tradition that continues to shape our conception of humans, the imaginative or creative potential is not restricted to the poets as the designated “creatives” of the community. Creativity is a measure of humanity at large. In this regard, one should suspiciously read Ishiguro’s comment that he was invited, as the “creative one” next to technology specialists, to attend a meeting on AI potential at DeepMind, the artificial intelligence company.39 The comment is obviously meant to poke self-deprecating fun at the assumption that writers are more “creative” than the average population (and that writers are really “creative” in the first place) and/or to mock the soulless-techy stereotype. Still, the remark hints at the foremost anxiety about AI, and that is how closely it can approximate creative response, which is the one attribute that sets the truly human in us apart from the non-human—animal and mechanical. More urgently for some, would not AI’s ultimate threat (as articulated in the vulgar conspiracism inside and outside our Benjamin-style creative parliaments) come from its creative potential, in the sense of having a mind of its own and overpowering its human creators? Yet, I believe the suspicious linking between technology, creativity, and power is more subtle than that, but before we pry open Capaldi’s black boxes, let’s sample the connection from Miss Emily’s test tubes. Even on the surface, NLMG exposes how institutionalized creativity as a craft can be easily coopted by power. Hailsham had introduced a ritual built on that ideal. Kathy recalls the quarterly “exhibition-cum-sale” of the art that the clones would regularly create: “For each thing you put in, you were paid in Exchange Tokens—the guardians decided how many your particular masterpiece merited—and then on the day of the Exchange you went along with your tokens and ‘bought’ the stuff you liked.”40 Kathy says that the system’s “subtle effect” was to bind the clones in a community: “If you think about it, being dependent on each other to produce the stuff that might become your private treasures—that’s bound to do things to your relationships…A lot of the time, how you were regarded at Hailsham, how much you were liked and respected, had to do with how good you were at

 38

For a good summary of the critique of Kantian dignity, see, for example, Ranjana Khana, “Indignity.” Positions 16, no. 1 (2008): 39-77. 39 Kazuo Ishiguro, “Kazuo Ishiguro on How His New Novel Klara and the Sun Is a Celebration of Humanity.” Interview with Dan Stewart Time, 2 Mar. 2021, www.time.com/5943376/kazuo-ishiguroͲinterview. 40 Ishiguro, NLMG, 15-16.

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‘creating’.”41 By promoting “creativity” as a value, Hailsham set in motion an unabated competition where the clones vied for the honor of having their artifacts selected for a “Gallery” they were not sure even existed. The Gallery was run by “Madame” [eventually Miss Emily’s minion-roommate in that Grendel’s lair of theirs], who would supposedly study collections for signs of the clones’ soul refinement. Ironically, Foucault’s “creativity” makes the clones willingly subject themselves to the hardships of prestige. Shameem Black rightly argues that creativity here engenders a reality that sharply contrasts with the freedom we associate with this value. With reference to the staff’s mantra, “art will reveal your inner selves,” Black infers from Ishiguro’s choice of words that the clones’ artistic production “prefigured the process of organ donation;” at an early stage, the young clones are indoctrinated into “the idea of handing over their ‘inner selves’ to figures of authority;” the staff “literally paid” the clones in “Tokens,” one of the novelist’s “most frightening word plays.”42 As Black succinctly puts it, “creativity” becomes “the opiate of the students.”43 She also suggests there might be a correlation between the four times a year Exchange and the four cycles of donations the clones would be (un/lucky) to complete. So, a merit system that promotes artistic creativity becomes a mask for the clone’s sacrifice. All that is fine and well. I said above that the novel on the surface exposes how institutionalised creativity is easily coopted by power, as you do not have to be a conspiracist to see wickedness in a clone colony holding “creativity” contest. That stares you in the face, and by the end of the novel, we are told that literally. Of course, it also dawns on us easily how our own merit institutions, artistic and otherwise, are also controlling us. We root for Tommy, who was evidently less indoctrinated, unable to meet the “creativity” standard, flagrantly bullied by his fellow clones for his underachievement, and is obviously a troubled teen. In an inspirational-teacher trope, Miss Lucy told him that it was fine if he “didn’t want to be creative,” and he found his way.44 However, Ishiguro’s fiction solicits continuous probing, and what we see is only the surface. The conspiracy between creativity and power here might be a lot more subtle than art sales being code for organ donations. Mystified by the sudden change in Tommy’s personality after his exemption from that creativity chore, Kathy recollects that “something in the way he carried himself, the way he looked people in the face and talked in his open, good-

 41

Ibid., 16. 42 Black, “Ishiguro’s Inhuman Aesthetics,” 794. 43 Ibid., 798. 44 Ishiguro, NLMG, 23.

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natured way…was different from before.”45 Actually, Tommy did not give up on creativity per se; his act was creative resistance to the non-creative art standards at Hailsham; he started to produce his own unique art, bizarre animal drawings, that Kathy describes as “so different from anything the guardians had taught…[She] did not know how to judge it [and] was becoming genuinely drawn to these fantastical creatures…[T]here was something sweet, even vulnerable about each one of them…Even so, for some reason [she] couldn’t fathom, something continued to stop [her] from coming out with praise.”46 It is this unfathomable, irreducible, and endless creativity that is the stuff of subjectification, but it is admittedly not easy to see how this magical quality can be collusive with power. In NLMG, continuous suspicion takes us down a rabbit hole with at least three levels. On the top, we see plainly the criminal instrumentalisation of humans in the medical industry of cloning; on the second but still obvious level, we witness the cruel instrumentalisation of humans in the cultural industry of merit; on the third and likely not last level, we begin to glimpse the debilitating instrumentalisation of humans in the discursive industry of creativity. Creativity is frustrating because of that interminable nature that it shares with resistance and conspiracism. One practical consequence of this new vision might be that, freed from the inherent angst in this poetic subjectification, human life becomes an instrument of its own survival. However, even deeper than the novel’s treatment of power-compromised creativity in relation to aesthetics is how subjectification reveals itself in the discourse of creative response. The defining quality of Tommy’s humanity that the novel invites us to approach with suspicion is not the unfathomable, irreducible creativity of his drawings; it is the creativity of his response. In their childhood, during football team picking, while the other boys were “pretending to ignore the picking process, pretending they didn’t care where they came in the order,” Kathy admits how “comical” and “daft” Tommy appeared, “looking eagerly at the Senior 3 boy.”47 The British slang “daft” is code in the novel for behaviour that falls short of or overdoes the social script. The annoying Ruth would then do her routine in anticipation of Tommy’s chaotic “tantrum” when he was not picked as usual: “I heard Ruth say: ‘It’s coming. Hold it. Seven seconds. Seven, six, fiv…”48 Ruth stands for script, and her countdown is an attempt to contain Tommy’s singular response within the predictable and controlled scientific script of a rocket launch. When allowed

 45

Ibid., 22. 46 Ibid., 185-6. 47 Ibid., 8. 48 Ibid., 9.

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to play, Tommy’s way of celebrating a goal was inscrutable to others: In their emotional final goodbye, he recalled that to Kathy: ‘You know, Kath, when I used to play football back at Hailsham. I had this secret thing I did. When I scored a goal, I’d turn round like this’—he raised both arms up in triumph—‘and I’d run back to my mates. I never went mad or anything, just ran back with my arms up, like this.’ He paused for a moment, his arms still in the air. Then he lowered them and smiled. ‘In my head, Kath, when I was running back, I always imagined I was splashing through water. Nothing deep, just up to the ankles at the most. That’s what I used to imagine, every time. Splash, splash, splash.’ He put his arms up again. ‘It felt really good. You’ve just scored, you turn, and then, splash, splash, splash.’ He looked at me and did another little laugh. ‘All this time, I never told a single soul.’ I laughed too and said: ‘You crazy kid, Tommy.’49

Kathy saw Tommy repeat the gesture in her final glimpse of him in the rearview mirror, as if this imaginative response defines him as the single soul in a creative wordplay. Kathy says that some clones copied from TV their “couples demeanor” [like touching each other on the arm or exchanging glances and smiles while talking to others in their the company], and that is why she criticised Ruth for modeling her behaviour with Tommy on those other couples—in a sense her behaviour is twice copied, and it is leaving singular Tommy confused: “Anyway that’s not how it works in real families…It looks daft, the way you copy everything they do…But you keep leaving Tommy in the lurch…You leave him stranded, looking like a spare part.”50 The spare part reference is a damning reminder of our blind spot, and it is probably one way to see how creativity can be complicit with power. Reading the book, one cannot help but feel irritated by scripted Ruth and lose sight of the bigger, criminal script wherein she and everyone else are lambs to the slaughter. Considering our bias for Tommy’s creative response and resistance to the script, to what extent is Ruth a victim of our poetic idea of humanity? If the title of the novel is any indication, NLMG is about both creative art and creative response, and it is about Kathy first and foremost, not Tommy. Kathy recalls that she was once listening to her favorite tape, swaying with a pillow as if it were a baby in her arms, and hypnotically singing along, “Never let me go. Oh, baby, baby. Never let me go…”51 It was evident to Kathy that the fictional American jazz singer was addressing

 49

Ibid., 279-80. 50 Ibid., 122. 51 Ibid., 266.

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a lover, but the thirteen-year-old had decided to respond to it differently. She awoke from her solitary trance to find Madame, who used to be very terrified of the clones, watching her and weeping. Years later, during that disappointing meeting about the deferrals, Kathy wanted to confirm whether she had interpreted Madame’s tears correctly as grief for clone Kathy’s inability to have the baby she obviously yearned for: ‘You say you’re not a mind-reader,’ I said. ‘But maybe you were that day. Maybe that’s why you started to cry when you saw me. Because whatever the song was really about, in my head, when I was dancing, I had my own version. You see, I imagined it was about this woman who’d been told she couldn’t have babies. But then she’d had one, and she was so pleased, and she was holding it ever so tightly to her breast, really afraid something might separate them, and she’s going baby, baby, never let me go. That’s not what the song’s about at all, but that’s what I had in my head that time. Maybe you read my mind, and that’s why you found it so sad. I didn’t think it was so sad at the time, but now, when I think back, it does feel a bit sad.’52

Kathy’s off-script response to the song exemplifies the Romantics’ imaginative projection that justified their aesthetic pursuits but also cemented the place of creative response as the very definition of humanity. Madame’s answer, while sympathetic, seems to indicate a failure of that ethical/aesthetic imperative: ‘That’s most interesting. But I was no more a mind-reader then than today. I was weeping for an altogether different reason. When I watched you dancing that day, I saw something else. I saw a new world coming rapidly. More scientific, efficient, yes. More cures for the old sicknesses. Very good. But a harsh, cruel world. And I saw a little girl, her eyes tightly closed, holding to her breast the old kind world, one that she knew in her heart could not remain, and she was holding it and pleading, never to let her go. That is what I saw. It wasn’t really you, what you were doing, I know that. But I saw you and it broke my heart. And I’ve never forgotten.’53

For one thing, both Kathy and Madame have their own creative responses, with Kathy projecting imaginatively on the song and Madame, in turn, projecting imaginatively on Kathy’s projection. What are we to do with the dissonance and failure of reciprocity resulting from that circularity? And is not Madame, as a figure of authority and hence a possible metaphor for power, coopting the language of creative response?

 52

Ibid. 53 Ibid., 266-7.

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As mentioned above, Derrida emphasizes the motif of “response,” which one finds at work in the exclusion of the “beast” from the social “convention” at the origin of the state; this exclusion leads Derrida to conclude that the “sovereign,” in a sense, is “like the beast” since he “does not respond, that in any case we cannot be assured of his acceptance, we cannot count on his response;” it is the absolute nature of sovereignty that “unbinds it from all duty of reciprocity. The sovereign…has the right to a certain irresponsibility.”54 In this light, the sovereign looks “stupid,” “even like the death he carries within him, like that death that Levinas says is not nothingness, nonbeing, but nonresponse.”55 It hardly warrants emphasising that the exclusion of bestial irresponsibility—an exclusion essential to the sovereign state—has culminated in modernity with our romantic vision of humanity. Of course, this irresponsible bestiality is eliminated from the citizen of the sovereign state, not from the sovereign state itself. In other words, a terminally irresponsive and non-creative power (the power that resembles death, according to Levinas and Derrida) condemns its subjects to interminable creativity and response. Derrida does not think that man can escape sovereign power, but were that to happen, were man to be really free, he speculates, “it would be so much like this expropriating ecstasy of irresponsibility, like this place of nonresponse that is commonly and dogmatically called bestiality, divinity, death.”56 One way to interpret Derrida in light of the chapter at large is that our poetic sense of humanity binds us to power through our creative response. Power works in such a way that what we value most (our unscripted humanity) is what makes us least sovereign; the mode of life that repels us most is the mode that is characteristic of absolute freedom and power. At this point, this chapter needs to start: 1) bringing creative response, conspiracism, fiction, and resistance together more definitely; and 2) clarifying whether Ishiguro’s fiction of suspicion resists the creativeresponse definition of humanity. What follows will only make it clear that the first task is easy and the second is very difficult.

Interminable: Fiction, Conspiracism, Resistance, Humanity Martha Nussbaum identified the literary, as opposed to the philosophical, as the right medium for exploring ethical possibilities and for participating

 54

Derrida, The Sovereign and the Beast, 56 (emphasis in the original). 55 Ibid, 57. 56 Ibid.

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“imaginatively” and “emotionally” in the “lives of distant others.”57 The ultimate question here is whether (Ishiguro’s) fiction, as literature, can help us grasp the limitations of a poetic vision of humanity and aid in our search for an alternative ethics. On the surface, this seems like an unreasonable expectation, like hoping for BP, Shell, and Chevron to cooperate in the transition away from fossil fuels. Having said that, one moment in KS can serve as a bridge over the abyss. The moment (involving Klara and Josie’s mother) seems deceptively marginal because the explicit thrust of the novel revolves around Klara’s relationship with Josie and what with her cavalier attempt to talk the Sun into saving her charge. Approaching Ishiguro with the expected caution, I want to look beyond the putative center of his novel and at one fleeting and seemingly innocuous moment whose depth becomes clear in a wider literary and critical context. Rebuffing Capaldi’s request to use this special AF Klara in his public awareness exhibit, Josie’s mother steps in between the two: “The Mother had stepped in front of me, as though to shield me from Mr Capaldi, and because in her anger she’d taken her position hurriedly, the rear of her shoulder was almost touching my face. As a result, I not only became very conscious of the smooth woven fabric of her dark sweater, but was reminded of the moment she’d reached forward and embraced me.”58 What does “very conscious of the smooth woven fabric” here mean? This is not an isolated moment in Ishiguro’s work; in NLMG, that book-defining, emotionally charged question and answer exchange between Kathy and Madame is interrupted by a sentence lodged between the question and the answer: “I could sense Tommy shifting next to me, and was aware of the texture of his clothes.”59 For a contrastive and wider context, Klara’s muted contact with the mother’s fabric should be examined next to arguably one of the most emotionally demonstrative articulations of what makes each human life unique. It is poetic in the sense that it creatively captures and celebrates an arbitrary, even erratic, response. The dying Ivan Ilych of Tolstoy’s novella rejects the mechanical view of human life that he recalls from a philosophy textbook example: The syllogism he had learnt from Kiesewetter’s Logic: “Caius is a man, men are mortal, therefore Caius is mortal,” had always seemed to him correct as applied to Caius, but certainly not as applied to himself. That Caius—man

 57

Martha C. Nussbaum, Poetic Justice: Literary Imagination and Public Life (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), xvi. 58 Ishiguro, KS, 294. 59 Ishiguro, NLMG, 266.

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in the abstract—was mortal, was perfectly correct, but he was not Caius, not an abstract man, but a creature quite separate from all others. He had been little Vanya, with a mamma and papa [named] Mitya and Volodya . . . What did Caius know of the smell of that striped leather ball Vanya had been so fond of? Had Caius kissed his mother’s hand like that, and did the silk of her dress rustle so for Caius?60

It is not vulgar historicism to assume that Ishiguro had The Death of Ivan Ilych on his radar while working on KS because Tolstoy’s novella is widely cited as the inspiration for Akira Kurosawa’s Ikiru (1952), a film that Ishiguro was at the same time adapting for a British version (Living 2022). The film reviewers, of course, were quick to note how, for a “universal story about finding meaning in the face of death,” the “low-key” British version by Ishiguro and director Oliver Hermanus loses the “emotional power” and “urgency” of the original film.61 As always, the emotional charge—in this case connected with the intimate feel of the mother’s fabric—is tightly controlled under the surface of Ishiguro’s prose. For Ilych, what makes his humanity irreducibly unique is the creativity of his emotional responses from the smell of his childhood leather ball to the touch of his mother’s fabric. The statement rejects the cold equation of the syllogism and makes a moving and emotional pronunciation about the meaning of life. Interestingly, the syllogism reads like a computational code. On the other hand, there is Klara, who has been coded, but can the code include a catalog of people or even objects to have feelings about, a catalog of shapes, textures, smells, etc.? Can we wire a robot to be fond of the smell of leather only when recalled from a childhood ball or the feel of someone’s sweater only when she is shielding you like a mother? Klara is “left to discern sensitivities she can sense but not entirely grasp.”62 So, after this contrast with Ilych, why does Klara not pierce through the figurative texture of the sweater, in order to utter an emotion or express a value? And what does the fact tell us about Ishiguro’s project? More specifically, what does it tell us about the connection between conspiracism, unscripted humanity, resistance, and Ishiguro’s fiction?

 60

Leo Tolstoy, The Death of Ivan Ilych, trans. Aylmer and Louise Maude (Santa Paula, CA: Hythloday Press, 2015), 29. 61 John Powers, “Sleekly Sentimental: ‘Living’ Plays Like an ‘Afterschool Special’ for Grownups.” Review of Living, by Oliver Hermanus, NPR, 3 Jan. 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/01/03/1146634819/living-review-bill-nighy-kazuoishiguro-kurosawa-ikiru. Accessed 5 Dec. 2023. 62 Charles, “In Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun,’ a Robot Tries to Make Sense of Humanity.”

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Seventy-five years ago, Lionel Trilling came very close to making the connection (or he probably did) among fiction, art, conspiracism, resistance, and a romantic idea of humanity as erratically creative and responsive. Generally, Trilling’s purpose in “Manners, Morals, and the Novel” (later included in The Liberal Imagination) is to argue the “creative” worth of “manners”—the “explicit statements” of culture, its “hum and buzz of implication”—as opposed to the deeper modes of culture usually deemed the proper realm of the novel.63 Relating the issue to the abiding literary concern with appearance versus reality, Trilling writes: “The greatest novelists knew that manners indicate the largest intentions of men’s souls as well as the smallest and they are perpetually concerned to catch the meaning of every dim implicit hint.”64 He surveys a number of such “great novelists,” but one particular example about Henry James brings together all the points I have explored in Ishiguro: In Henry James’s The Princess Casamassima there is a scene in which the heroine is told about the existence of a conspiratorial group of revolutionaries pledged to the destruction of all existing society. She has for some time been drawn by a desire for social responsibility; she has wanted to help “the people,” she has longed to discover just such a group as she now hears about, and she exclaims in joy, “Then it’s real, it’s solid!” We are intended to hear the Princess’s glad cry with the knowledge that she is a woman who despises herself, “that in the darkest hour of her life she sold herself for a title and a fortune. She regards her doing so as such a terrible piece of frivolity that she can never for the rest of her days be serious enough to make up for it.” She seeks out poverty, suffering, sacrifice and death because she believes that these things alone are real; she increasingly believes that art is contemptible; she more and more withdraws her awareness and love from the one person of her acquaintance who most deserves her awareness and love and she increasingly scorns all that suggests variety and modulation and is dissatisfied with the humanity of the present in her longing for the more perfect humanity of the future. It is one of the great points that the novel makes that with each step that she takes toward the real, the solid, she in fact moves further away from it.65

The conspiracy as a metaphor for the real here is not coincidental. From the beginning of it all, Oedipus’s reality—his fate—was plotting against him. And in the Shakespeare example, when “Malvolio’s daydreams of bettering his position present themselves to him as reality,” his foes “conspire to

 63

Lionel Trilling, “Manners, Morals and the Novel.” The Kenyon Review 10, no. 1 (1948): 12. 64 Ibid., 17. 65 Ibid., 23-4.

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convince him that he is literally mad and that the world is not as he sees it.”66 The “Jamesian quality” of Ishiguro’s fiction is noted, for example, by one reviewer in “the searching, deliberate portrayal of life in Josie’s remote house. Like Klara, Ishiguro attends closely to the way apparently innocuous conversations shift.”67 Those are Trilling’s manners, “the half uttered or unuttered, or unutterable expressions of value. They are hinted at by small actions, sometimes by the arts of dress or decoration, sometimes by tone, gesture, emphasis or rhythm, sometimes by the words that are used with a special frequency or a special meaning.”68 Therefore, Klara’s lingering on the line between manners and morals can be read as Ishiguro’s attempt not to abandon the real in the very act of pursuing it. Just like Watanabe in Ikiru and his later British avatar Williams, Klara ends up in the middle of a yard (though not on a swing) with a sense of having achieved some life-affirming deed in the face of death. She tells the AF store “Manager,” who happens to spot her at the junk yard, “I like this spot. And, I have my memories to go through and place in the right order” even though she now believes there would always “have remained something beyond [her] reach” in approximating people’s love for Josie.69 As the sympathetic manager walks away, this is Klara’s closing observation: “With each second step, she would lean to her left in a way that made me worry her long coat on that side might touch the dirty ground.”70 Ishiguro keeps us right on that line between manner and moral, between the frivolous and the solid in more than one way. And what is the solid in here? More accurately, what is the solid that we suspect Ishiguro is hiding underneath the manners of dress, gesture, and gait? Klara admits that her AI can never approximate what people “felt for Josie in their hearts,” but what do we feel for Klara in our hearts? Ishiguro’s adaptation of Kurosawa’s masterpiece tries to stay faithful to the original, but he makes some departures that show his attempt to reclaim some of its lost Tolstoian power. The final scene in Kurosawa had Watanabe on a swing at the children’s playground, which the bureaucrat made possible in an act of life affirmation before death. Now, apparently content and resigned to the terminal nature of his disease, he is humming “Gondola No Uta,” a romantic Japanese ballad with a carpe diem theme, roughly translated as “life is brief/Fall in love, maidens/Before the crimson

 66

Ibid., 16. 67 Charles, “In Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun,’ a Robot Tries to Make Sense of Humanity.” 68 Trilling, “Manners, Morals and the Nove,” 12. 69 Ishiguro, KS, 302. 70 Ibid., 303.

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bloom/Fades from your lips.”71 Ishiguro, on the other hand, has Williams in the same swing but singing a ballad that is romantic in a different way. The Scottish “O Rowan Tree” by Lady Nairn celebrates the rowan tree, nature and the value of memories, including those from childhood and family. In Ishiguro’s script, the literal “rowan tree” phrase is left out, and the original personification takes on an even more human character: “...How fair wert thou in summer time, Wi’ a’ thy clusters white, How rich and gay thy autumn dress, Wi’ berries red and bright. On thy fair stem were many names, Which now nae mair I see, But they’re engraven on my heart, Forgot they ne’ever can be...”72 Skipping the literal mention of the tree also places more emphasis on the next figure William (through the song) is yearning for: “My mother, Oh, I see her still, She smiled our sports to see.”73 I said before that Klara and the Sun’s emotional charge, what James called the real and I call “creative response”—in this case connected to the lost mother—is tightly controlled under the surface of Ishiguro’s prose, under the manners, under the fabric. It might also be concealed outside the text: Ishiguro in fact dedicates the novel to his late mother—“In memory of my mother”—who had passed away two years before publication.

References Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1998. Battersby, Doug. “Reading Ishiguro Today: Suspicion and Form.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 67, no. 1 (2021): 67-88. Black, Shameem. “Ishiguro’s Inhuman Aesthetics.” MFS Modern Fiction Studies 55, no. 4 (2009): 785-807. Charles, Ron. “In Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun,’ a Robot Tries to Make Sense of Humanity.” Review of Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro, The Spokesman-Review, 6 Mar. 2021, www.spokesman.com/stories/2021/mar/06/book-review-in-kazuoishiguros-klara-and-the-sun-a/. Accessed 2 Nov. 2023. Cusk, Rachel. “Rereading: Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro.” Review of Never Let Me Go, by Kazuo Ishiguro The Guardian, 29 Jan. 2011,

 71

“Ikiru (1952) – Full Transcript.” Subslikescript, https://subslikescript.com/movie/Ikiru-44741. Accessed 25 Nov. 2023. 72 Kazuo Ishiguro, Screenplay of Living. Deadline, https://deadline.com/2023/01/living-movie-script-kazuo-ishiguro-read-thescreenplay-1235219117/. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023, 106. 73 Ibid.

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www.theguardian.com/books/2011/jan/29/never-let-me-go-kazuoishiguro. Accessed 1 Dec. 2023. Davis, Ben. “Why Conspiracy Theories Have Become the Most Influential Art Form of Our Time.” Artnet, 11 May 2020, https://news.artnet.com/art-world-archives/why-conspiracy-theorieshave-become-the-most-influential-art-form-of-our-time-part-i1854738/amp-page. Accessed 15 Oct. 2023. Dean, Dominic. “Migration Crisis and Conspiracy in Kazuo Ishiguro.” English Studies 103, no. 7 (2022): 1116-34. Derrida, Jacques. The Beast and the Sovereign, Vol. I. Trans. Geoffrey Bennington. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. Foucault, Michel. Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth. Ed. Paul Rabinow. Trans. Robert Hurley et. al. New York: The New Press, 1998. Foucault, Michel. “The Subject and Power.” Michel Foucault Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982, pp. 208-26. “Ikiru (1952) – Full Transcript.” Subslikescript, https://subslikescript.com/movie/Ikiru-44741. Accessed 25 Nov. 2023. Ishiguro, Kazuo. Klara and the Sun. London: Faber and Faber, 2021. Ishiguro, Kazuo. “Kazuo Ishiguro on How His New Novel Klara and the Sun Is a Celebration of Humanity.” Interview with Dan Stewart. Time, 2 Mar. 2021, www.time.com/5943376/kazuo-ishiguro-interview. Accessed 15 Nov. 2023. Ishiguro, Kazuo. Screenplay of Living. Deadline, https://deadline.com/2023/01/living-movie-script-kazuo-ishiguro-readthe-screenplay-1235219117/. Accessed 20 Nov. 2023. Ishiguro, Kazuo. Never Let Me Go. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. Jameson, Frederic. The Geopolitical Aesthetic: Cinema and Space in the World System. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1992. Karapin, Roger. “Editor’s Note: Resistance to Domination.” Polity 47, no. 4 (2015): 417-19. Khana, Ranjana. “Indignity.” Positions 16, no. 1 (2008): 39-77. Mejia, Santiago and Dominique Nikolaidis. “Through New Eyes: Artificial Intelligence, Technological Unemployment, and Transhumanism in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun.” Journal of Business Ethics 178 (2022): 303-6. Menka, Christopher. “Law and Violence.” Law and Literature 22, no. 1 (2010): 1-17. Mohammad, Malek Hardan. The Discourse of Human Dignity and Techniques of Disempowerment: Giorgio Agamben, J. M. Coetzee and Kazuo Ishiguro. 2010. Texas A&M University, PhD dissertation.

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https://oaktrust.library.tamu.edu/handle/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2010-12-8807. Nussbaum, Martha C. Poetic Justice: Literary Imagination and Public Life. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996. Powers, John. “Sleekly Sentimental: ‘Living’ Plays Like an ‘Afterschool Special’ for Grownups.” Review of Living, by Oliver Hermanus, NPR, 3 Jan. 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/01/03/1146634819/living-review-bill-nighykazuo-ishiguro-kurosawa-ikiru. Accessed 5Dec. 2023. Siraki, Arby Ted and Malek H. Mohammad. “Bill Gates and the ‘New Normal’ Covid-19 Conspiracy Theories: ‘it’s a new thing’ or Nothing New under the Sun.” Journal for CulturalResearch 27, no. 2 (2023): 136-53. Skinner, B. F. Beyond Freedom & Dignity. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1971. Tolstoy, Leo. The Death of Ivan Ilych. Trans. Aylmer and Louise Maude. Santa Paula, CA: Hythloday Press, 2015. Trilling, Lionel. “Manners, Morals and the Novel.” The Kenyon Review 10, no. 1 (1948): 11-27. Wells, Colin. “‘Aristocracy’, Aaron Burr, and the Poetry of Conspiracy.” Early American Literature 39, no. 3 (2004): 553-76.

CHAPTER EIGHT THEATRICAL RENDITION OF TRAUMA AND RESISTANCE IN MARTIN CRIMP’S THE COUNTRY MUHAMMED METIN CAMELI

Introduction The British stage of the 2000s is known to have brought a novel dimension to the lives of audiences/readers by exposing them to the grim side of being a member of contemporary British society. In other words, the plays of the millennium age feed on the notion that people reading or watching a theatrical work must be struck by the deceptive nature of the period into which they are dragged as sufferers of a certain existential crisis. Considering that contemporary society seems to have fallen prey to the validity of the millennium’s being seen as a herald of a brighter future, playwrights can, therefore, be said to have set themselves the task of infiltrating covert cautionary tales into the plotting and structuring of their plays. What is believed to have transpired in the turbulent environment of the 1900s, defined by Taylor as a century “that began with utopian expectations every bit as grand as those nineteenth-century romantics,”1 underlining the fact that in this century “modernism ends and something other begins.”2, can be said to have taken place in the environment of the millennium age too. It is a period of chaos and unrest, and at this point, it would be fitting to argue that plays, especially those written in the aftermath of the Second World War, meet on common ground with the plays of the 2000s in terms of their concern with pushing people to contemplate meaning of what constitutes their sense of self in a world 1

Mark C. Taylor, Disfiguring: Art, Architecture, Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 46-47. 2 Ibid.

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characterised by late capitalism, commodification of everything and the compulsion to act in accordance with an oppressive regime. The utter insubstantiality of the vast majority of people, which stems from their terror of raising their suppressed voices against the perpetrators of mental and physical violence, is foregrounded by numerous plays of the century. The characters of postmodern theatre mostly come to the fore as traumatised individuals whose testimony serves the purpose of creating a sense of empathy and identification with what is witnessed on the part of audiences/readers. The characters’ personal and collective traumatisation precisely stands for that of contemporary society in reality that is engulfed by demanding expectations of a capitalist world order. Likewise, the language employed by the traumatised characters points towards an accentuation of the unspeakable through the integration of non-linear narrative, abrupt pauses or silence, and overlapping dialogues into the communicative aspects of such productions. Based on these characteristics of postmodern stage, it must be noted that theatre turns into fertile ground for the expression of the threat to human nature posed by the suffocating world order and for increasing the level of resistance to be demonstrated by the ones whose voices have been lowered. Relevant to the discussion pertaining to the function of theatre as a means of rendering the traumatised people more resistant against the treatment meted out to them, one of the most distinguished literary figures that springs to mind is Martin Crimp, who has proven his ability to resort to numerous theatrical techniques in line with his studies of resistance and trauma. Primarily known as one of the most influential pioneers of the theatrical movement titled “in-yer-face” with his Attempts on Her Life, written in 1997, Martin Crimp has his name carved into the confines of the postmodern theatrical arena thanks to his peculiar way of tackling the issues of globalization, capitalism, victimization, and memory and trauma in the design of his plays. From amongst the theatrical productions of Crimp, The Country, he wrote in 2000, can be regarded as the work whereby the playwright invites his audiences/readers to ponder the roles ascribed to them as occupants of the consumerist world and indoctrinated beings to act and think in compliance with the requirements of the unjust system. Drawing utmost attention to the superficiality of postmodern human relationships governed by the desire of one side to get the upper hand as evocative of the colonizer and the colonised, Crimp encourages his readers to take on the role of emphatical thinkers and to fill the void emanating from the insufficiency of the language to put into words the sorrow of oppressed people. The Country pivots around Corinne and Richard, a middle-aged couple, who give the impression that they have moved to the country by

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fostering a desire for rehabilitation after having spent many years in the bustling city. However, from the outset of the play, it becomes self-evident that the relationship between the husband and wife is not based on mutual emotional attachment since Richard takes his lover, Rebecca, home irrespective of the presence of Corinne. His disregard for the institution of marriage as a promised bond between two people is, later on, accompanied by the revelation of the fact that he has worked as a drug trafficker and Rebecca acts as an accomplice with him. Constructing his relationships with these two women in line with his own interests, Richard is seen as the embodiment of a man who has deeply internalized the complexities of a capitalist regime and he exerts a vast influence on both Corinne and Rebecca. As the events unfold, it is also seen that his colleague named Morris, as another male figure akin to Richard in certain aspects, puts a blanket over the dirty actions of Richard and their empowerment leads to the disempowerment of Corinne and Rebecca. Yet, the crux of the matter is that both of these women gradually deviate from the standardized behaviour equated with passivity and decide not to bow to the demands of a male-oriented order. Crimp himself underscored the play’s concern with the representation of women in an interview as follows: The woman is still seen as an object, but in a very different way, because the irony of it is much more extreme and it is precisely about how women are viewed within our culture. And of course, The Country is a play which goes too hard the other way. It’s a play in which a man is punished by two very strong women.3

The moments of collapse or mental breakdown of the women interposed into particular scenes of the play designate their traumatisation and more importantly, they begin to share their own traumatic experiences with one another and pass them on to the others. Their testimonies reverberate with their determination to develop strategies of resistance to their subjugation. Considering all these points, the ultimate purpose of this chapter is to explore in depth the ways in which Corinne and Rebecca become the theatrical symbols of female resistance to the mental and physical violence inflicted upon them and of emancipation. In conjunction with the referred purpose, the chapter will also address the dramatic strategies utilized by Crimp to bring the traumatisation of Corinne and Rebecca to the fore as a means of encouraging readers/audiences to 3

Enric Monforte, Hildegard Klein, Mireia Aragay and Pilar Zozaya. British Theatre of the 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 65.

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ruminate over their own memories of resistance and to do their best to make their voices more audible against the contradictions and constraints of capitalism.

Patriarchy and Capitalism as a Source of Trauma The opening scene of The Country, with the domestic dialogue of the couple, Richard and Corinne, albeit an ostensibly ordinary portrayal of what takes place in a middle-class household, is highly suggestive of Crimp’s linguistic prowess. From the outset of the play, the playwright infiltrates hidden nuances into the utterances of the characters professionally. What they say should not be merely regarded as expressive of an explicit meaning but should also be seen as conveyors of something implicit or unbeknownst to interpreters. As argued by Capitani, “language plays a crucial role in The Country. Crimp is a master of subtext. Strong sensual undercurrents trouble the characters’ seemingly banal and detached verbal exchanges.”4 This contention can be validated through the first conversation between the husband and wife, which is as follows: A large room, wooden chairs, an old table. Richard and Corinne. - What are you doing? - I am cutting. - What are you cutting? - I don’t know…I’m making something. Why are you looking at me like that? - You don’t normally cut. You don’t normally make things. What are you making? - I just thought I’d cut out some pictures to go round the cot. I thought they’d be stimulating.5

When the play begins, Corinne is busy cutting pictures while holding a pair of scissors, which is deeply symbolic and primarily redolent of the notion that “cutting (disfiguring and fragmenting) an object is an attempt to destroy the unity of its being.”6 To add, “the act becomes all the more 4

Maria Elena Capitani, “Dealing with Bodies: The Corporeal Dimension in Sarah Kane's 'Cleansed' and Martin Crimp's 'The Country’, JCDE: Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, vol.1, no. 1 (2013): 144. 5 Martin Crimp, Martin Crimp: Plays 2 (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 291. 6 Mamata Sengupta, “Knowing Not What It Seems: Re-Viewing Caryl Churchill’s Post Truth World in Glass, Kill, Bluebeard’s Friends, and Imp,” Theater in a PostTruth World: Text, Politics and Performance, ed. William C. Boles (Great Britain: Methuen Drama, 2022), 68.

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subversive when we remember that scissors are a phallic symbol.”7 Based on this presumption, this can be considered the first tacit allusion to female traumatisation by the heteropatriarchal and capitalist world order. The fact that Richard is greeted by Corinne holding the scissors to cut some pictures serves as a covert representation of the power the wife aspires to exert upon the husband. Corinne’s utilizing the object of phallic connotations under the pretext of ornamenting the cot is essentially marked by her tendency to take control of things. Even if what Corinne does could alternatively be deemed a means of alleviating her emotional distress, the deformed pictures around her symbolise the deformed reality of the age in which she lives. The actions and utterances of this middleclass, heterosexual and dutiful housewife are inherently compounded by her wrenching desire to deviate from the standardized behaviours associated with docile femininity. The hegemonic masculinity Corinne fights against is, therefore, initially represented through her cutting pictures as if she wishes to arouse a sense of castration on the part of her husband in a Freudian rendition of the symbolic value of this action. The relationship between Richard and Corinne is not based upon compassion and mutual trust, as is soon revealed in Act I when Corinne reckons with the husband pertaining to the presence of a mysterious young woman, Rebecca, taken from the road to home in the middle of the night. The referred conversation is as follows: -

Why ever did you bring her here? It’s my job to bring her here. What? Into our house? In the middle of the night? Yes. Is it? Yes. Your job? It’s your job to bring a strange woman into our house in the middle of the night? As I understand it.8

Since Richard works as a doctor, he chooses to explain the complexity of the situation, emphasising that it is his job to do so. Yet, Corinne’s suspicion is vehemently felt and she expects Richard to let Morris, his senior partner, know about everything. Corinne does not have the slightest opinion about Richard and Rebecca’s drug trafficking at this moment, but she keeps asking why the woman is with them by constantly interrupting

7 8

Ibid. Crimp, Martin Crimp: Plays 2, 292.

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Richard with the statement, “Lying there…Lying on the road.”9 ønan noted the importance of the word “lying” as follows: “Lying” here has a double-meaning. On one hand she wants to imply that she believes her husband’s story that she was just lying on the side of the country track “sprawled”, but on the other her choice of the word “lying there” demonstrates that she knows that her husband is lying and that she does not believe him.10

Richard is the embodiment of the patriarchal and capitalist society The Country projects in that he indoctrinates his wife to take his constructed reality as her own sense of reality. His determination to get the upper hand in their marriage resonates with the totalitarian system that compels individuals to form a certain perception of the world through the lenses of the ones in power. This culminates in the mental and physical traumatisation of the oppressed, like Corinne, who struggles to find an outlet in her world of entrapment. Furthermore, it can be noted that the strange woman lying motionless on the ground in Act I is the female counterpart to Corinne, inasmuch as her numbed body stands for the abused body of a helpless woman. In this part of the play, Corinne meditates holistically upon the origin of the perplexities of the circumstances and starts to give an account of how she spent her afternoon under a tree by daydreaming to distract Richard. She tells him that she suddenly saw Morris there, which is interpreted as a sort of Corinne’s deciphering of the code of violence perpetrated by the husband through this story, as Agustí underlined: Here she is attempting to make sense of Rebecca’s presence in their home. She intuits Richard is being unfaithful, and that there is something Morris and Richard are hiding away from her. By passing on to Richard her testimony of her afternoon with Morris, Corinne attempts to link both types of violence- the violence Richard has enacted on his elderly patient and the one he enacts on her through Rebecca- to late capitalism’s structural inequality.11

9

Ibid Dilek ønan, “Exploring Crimpland: A play is a game. At the end of each dialogue there is a winner and a loser”, Dil ve Tarih-Co÷rafya Fakültesi Dergisi 52, no.2 (2012): 108. 11 Clara Escoda Agustí, Martin Crimp’s Theatre: Collapse as Resistance to Late Capitalist Society (Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2013), 172. 10

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The insightful remarks of the literary critic while commenting upon Corinne’s narration of her afternoon experience help to corroborate the assumption that violence and trauma are inherent in The Country. Moreover, there is certainly a lot more to say about the significance of the story Corinne shares, as it is replete with symbols designating her traumatisation. The conversation between Richard and Corinne about her afternoon begins as follows: -

Well don’t you want to hear what I did with my afternoon? What did you do? I took one of these old chairs and I sat under a tree. Which tree was that? The one by the stream. The alder. Is that the alder? The one by the stream/ is, yes.12

Richard’s specification of the type of tree under which his wife sat as “the alder tree” stands out as a crucial symbol in mythological accounts. In spite of the fact that she seems to have been sitting under it unintentionally, in her own words, her daydreaming there can be aligned with her future efforts in The Country to turn upside down the power dynamics between the opposite sexes. The potentiality of Corinne to subdue Richard is transposed into the play by means of her symbolic presence under the alder tree, since this tree is evocative of devilish resistance, as explained by Franz below: The alder tree is a famous old magical tree apotropaic against witchcraft and the Devil. Its twigs are put into the fields and stables by the peasants as protection against the Devil; the tree itself is devilish. So, it is like the wolf against the giant: a devilish tree against the devil. It is devilish because it generally grows in dark places in the woods or in marshlands.13

The wolf addressed in Franz’s mythological account of the alder tree can be likened to Corinne, as she is not oblivious to the psychic pain inflicted upon her and she develops strategies of coping with her trauma to alleviate the pain. To add to that, the dark and gloomy places where the tree grows are akin to the late-capitalist, postmodern world where inequity, female subjugation, mental corruption and dysfunctional human 12

Crimp, Martin Crimp: Plays 2, 300-301. Marie-Louise von Franz, Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales (Colorado: Shambhala Publications, 1974), 267. 13

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bonds hold sway. Corinne is assuredly one of the traumatised women who has been subjected to all of these and she yearns to veer off in a new direction. The couple’s abandonment of bustling city life as the cradle of capitalism for the sake of leading a life characterised by inner peace in the countryside does not seem to have worked well. A life of independence, happiness and credibility still remains a fragment of Corinne’s imagination. Deprived of genuine love deep down, Corinne has a traumatised psyche, which becomes manifest in the rest of her afternoon story as the character speaks as follows: -

The land was lovely. I felt like that girl in the fairy tale. A goat-girl or something, only without the goats thankfully. And I thought of you driving, with your sense of humour, which I felt sure you would need, along all those country lanes to visit the sick and so on, and I can’t tell you how happy I felt, how good it all felt. Which is when Morris appeared.14

Corinne’s fantasizing about a lovely afternoon when she goes around as a goat girl in disguise primarily connotes the goat animal as an emblem of sacrifice in Greek mythology. As stressed by Davisson, “it is not only a source of food and nurture but also a sacrificial animal whose unwarranted punishment is intended to resolve the sins and guilt of the community.”12 Thus, the self-abnegation and subjugation of Corinne in the phallocentric and capitalist world can be said to resurge through the goat symbol in the theatrical realm. Richard’s anticipation of his wife as wholly committed to fostering a firm belief in the origin of his affair with Rebecca and as an individual financially dependent upon him perpetuates his phallocentric interests. Nevertheless, the gendered goat —basically, the goat-girl image here—concurrently evokes the first sacrificed goat clothed as a girl, which was named Artemis. Morford and Lenardon underlined the significance of Artemis in classical mythology as follows: Whatever the roots of her fertility connections, the dominant conception of Artemis is that of the virgin huntress. She becomes, as it were, the goddess of nature itself, not always in terms of its teeming procreation, but instead often reflecting its cool, pristine and virginal aspects. As a moon-goddess too, she can appear as a symbol, cold, white and chaste.15

14

Crimp, Martin Crimp: Plays 2, 301. Mark P. O. Morford and Robert J. Lenardon, Classical Mythology (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 149.

15

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When the role of Artemis in mythological accounts is ascribed to Corinne, the traumatised woman can be considered the one who relentlessly chases after purity and resilience despite the obstacles getting in her way. Corinne’s daydream can also be brought to the fore as a kind of mechanism that she uses to channel between her inner world and the outer world. Her perception of time and place is obviously distorted and she compensates for the insufficiency of verbal language to clearly narrate one’s trauma by means of her dreams that involve symbolic actions, objects and figures within. One of the most well-known literary trauma theorists of the 1990s, Cathy Caruth, pointed out that “the attempt to gain access to a traumatic history […] can only be perceived in inassimilable forms.”16 What Caruth means is that representation of trauma by integrating daily language into real life and the literary realm is not an efficient way; rather, employing a figural language fraught with varying denotations helps to surmount the obstacle of the unspeakability of trauma. This is, indeed, what The Country foregrounds through Corinne’s fairytale-like story-telling as a kind of record of psychic trauma, which demonstrates the testimonial power of such dramaturgical strategies in the Caruthian approach. To convey the unnarratable, Crimp employs figural language characterised by pauses, ambivalence, implicit messages and symbolic components. As has been previously stated, the language of Corinne operates in this literary realm, where her trauma is represented in the form of story-telling and daydreaming to do justice to the gravity of her repressed wishes. Corinne’s story-telling is followed by her interrogation of Richard which is interrupted when she accidentally cuts her finger. The reaction she gives to this accident by sucking her blood rather than treating it and wrapping it up condones the contention that such a scene is a theatrical rendition of trauma. Blood-sucking, here, can be seen as a means of coping with trauma, as underlined by Hyman as follows: Some women refer explicitly to the life-giving effect of cutting and seeing blood as a release from dissociation: “I feel my life come back into me”; I make myself feel something”; “I could see that I was real.” The amount of blood may sometimes signify that a cut was severe enough to bring relief. Some women also need to do something with their blood, such as taste or

16

Cathy Caruth, Trauma: Explorations in Memory (Baltimore/London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995), 156.

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Chapter Eight suck it, preserve it in bottles, or let it “speak” by writing or painting with it.17

The verbal combat between Richard and Corinne continues in Act II since Corinne holds Rebecca’s wristwatch firmly in her hand. Though Richard seems to be determined to take it back, Corinne never gives up and squeezes the object inside her palm. The watch shows the phases of the moon, which implies that The Country represents the issue of traumatisation with powerful symbols on the part of two female characters. Each single phase of the moon is known to be associated with changing relationship dynamics between the opposite sexes from the perspective of women, as noted by Neumann: For the world of the dawn of time, every phase of the moon is essential; it manifests the essence of the moon, just as each phase of life manifests the nature of human being. The changing psychic constellations that are characteristic of woman, or in which woman experiences her relationship to men, are projected onto the moon.18

Corinne’s firm grasp of the watch showing the phases of the moon can, thus, be said to stand for her crave to fully control the flow of all phases of her life without the stifling regulations of the phallocentric world order. Given that the watch belongs to Rebecca, it can be noted that she harbours the same desire to control her own life; however, both of these women suffer a lot due to the unfair treatment meted out to them by Richard. Escoda emphasised their traumatic experiences as exposed in the play, as follows: Richard classifies individuals according to the profit he can extract from them. At work, his instrumental rationality leads to the death of the old patient. At home, it makes the women feel victims of a totalitarian type of violence, which prompts them to deliver their testimony to one another and spectators.19

When Act III begins, Rebecca awakens and the referred testimony of the young woman gives Corinne the opportunity to find out more about the 17 Jane Wegscheider Hyman, Women Living with Self-Injury (USA: Temple University Press, 1999), 40. 18 Erich Neumann, The Fear of the Feminine and Other Essays on Feminine Psychology (UK: Princeton University Press, 1994), 69. 19 Clara Escoda, “Violence, Testimony and Ethics in Martin Crimp’s The Country and The City,’’ Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre, ed. by Mireia Aragay and Enric Monforte (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 35.

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secrets of her husband. More importantly, the communication between the two women indicates that the seeds of empowerment are sown and women’s solidarity and the path to emancipation become central concerns.

The Defence against Trauma by Corinne and Rebecca The resistance of Corinne against Richard’s oppression is embedded in The Country in Act I, especially with the reappearance of the symbolic object “scissors” as a final word inscribed onto the last page. As has been emphasised, the discussion of the play as the dramatic enactment of trauma pivots around Corinne’s act of cutting with the scissors that serves as the starting point for the present study. Similarly, the scissors symbol, with its renewed function, contributes to the discussion of how Corinne and Rebecca develop strategies for coping with their traumas as well. Crimp finalizes Act I and Act IV with the word “scissors,” since this word alludes to the triumph of women over Richard, whose power is substantially subdued. This idea originates from Crimp’s having been inspired by the children’s game “paper, scissors, stone” as a counterpart to the power struggle amongst Richard, Corinne and Rebecca. When each scene ends with a word redolent of the name of the children’s game, it sheds light on the progression of resistance on the part of the victimised women, as explicated by Agustí in further details as follows: When the scenes end in “scissors” it is implied that both Rebecca and Corinne have taken a step forward, that is, they have achieved a small victory over Richard. If the scene in question ends in “paper”, it metaphorically signifies that they have begun writing their own life-story as distinct from the one Richard wants to inscribe on their bodies. Finally, if the scene ends in “stone” it points both to the women’s realization, which they attain through their respective testimonies.20

The first act, which is made up of non-verbal symbolic components of Corinne’s traumatisation, is, therefore, also the act in which she displays acts of resistance to her husband. The threatening aspect of the woman’s statements and actions becomes manifest through her communication with Richard, as Yakut stressed: “In the first scene, Corinne explains how she has been interrogated by Morris in the afternoon, with an ulterior motive

20 Agustí, Martin Crimp’s Theatre: Collapse as Resistance to Late Capitalist Society, 177.

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to threaten the bond of complicity between Richard and Morris.”21 Corinne takes the initiative to demonstrate that perpetrators can become victimised, as will be seen for the rest of the play. When Rebecca wakes up and begins to speak, she shares a dream-like story with Corinne, who is confounded by what she hears. The first time they communicate with each other, the language of Rebecca sounds like that of a traumatised individual because it is rife with clues that imply her addiction to drugs given by Richard. The story she narrates starts as follows: The sun was shining. The trees were green. And I’d found the stone. Yes. This...outpost...of the empire. Only it wasn’t just a stone because it had arms, like a chair. And I rested my arms along them. I rested my arms along the arms of stone. And there was a kind of congruence.22

This odd account of a stone with arms upon which Rebecca claims she rested is essentially not unfamiliar to Corinne, whose goat-girl story in the first act has similar assonances. Thus, as Rebecca speaks more, “Corinne experiences a moment of recognition since, in between Rebecca’s words, she is able to read her own experience.”23 The testimony of Rebecca, marked by reiteration of the word “stone,” alludes to the capitalist world order vastly shaped by masculine hegemony and “it is a system Rebecca feels is made of stone- that is, it is by no means humane enough.”24 The representative character of such a system, as has been stated, is Richard, who is not attuned to the needs of women in her life by solely making them suffer and “Richard, like the capitalist system itself, is violent, and this causes Rebecca to feel her arms to be vulnerable arms of flesh in comparison.”25 Corinne takes on the role of an emphatical listener at this moment, which can be explained from a psychoanalytical perspective by Laub as given below: The task of the listener is to be unobtrusively present, throughout the testimony; even when and if at moments the narrator becomes absent, reaches an almost detached state. The listener has to respond very subtly to

21

Ayúe Didem Yakut, Language and Power Relations in Martin Crimp’s The Country, (Master’s thesis, Balkesir University, 2016), 39. 22 Crimp, Martin Crimp: Plays 2, 316. 23 Agustí, Martin Crimp’s Theatre: Collapse as Resistance to Late Capitalist Society, 205. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid.

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cues the narrator is giving that s/he wants to come back, to resume contact, or that s/he wishes to remain alone.26

The final scene of Act III is marked by Rebecca’s confession of reality and Corinne’s decision to abandon Richard. The story with the dreamy effect Rebecca narrates when the act starts turns into an accurate account of why Richard brought her home when she says, “He came to the country to be with me. Because of his longing to be with me because of his greed to be with me.”27 The confession creates a therapeutic effect on Rebecca since she finds herself much stronger to cope with Richard’s domineering attitude. She extricates herself from the restrictions imposed on her life. Similarly, Corinne feels empowered and summons up the courage to leave behind her husband, whose authority has been an impediment to her freedom. Both women give the impression that, from now on, they are motivated by a newly awakened desire to write their own stories which are dissimilar to the stories, Richard pushes them to write. In other words, they have grown more resistant to what traumatised them before and have come much closer to recovery, as Herman noted that “[r]ecovery is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections. Recovery can take place only within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation.”28 There is a sense of cleansing that emanates from Rebecca’s testimony on the part of both of the victimised women. Act IV begins with the encounter between Richard and Rebecca in the absence of Corinne. Rebecca goes on to prove her resistance against the man’s manipulations to a great extent. The roles ascribed to them are subverted in that Rebecca acts and speaks like Richard, who once deceived her and dragged her into a state of drug addiction. Hiding the fact that she has already told all about their relationship to his wife, Rebecca threatens Richard and perpetrates violence on his body, which reminds readers of her empowerment. She holds the scissors and intentionally cuts his hand, which can be read in the lines as follows: He pulls his hand out of her grip. The tiny scissors drop to the floor. You’ve cut my hand. - I’ve what? - You’ve made a hole in my hand. - A hole in your hand?

26

Dori Laub, Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub (London: Routledge, 1992), 71. 27 Crimp, Martin Crimp: Plays 2, 329. 28 Judith Herman, Trauma and Recovery (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 137.

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Yes.29

This scene vividly shows that Rebecca is intent on making Richard sympathise with her and Corinne through an act of violence. She wants him to understand what it feels like to be in pain. Even if the man as the object of the woman’s destruction reawakens a sense of terror, the underlying importance of Rebecca’s violence is that it is like acting out of and working through her trauma caused by Richard. The scene brings to mind that theatre is an apt forum for the representation of the unspeakable. Bartleet underscored this aspect of the theatrical realm as follows: Theatre’s visceral and live nature allows the unspeakable to be articulated and the inhuman to be embodied. Theatre opens up the potential for the ritualized encounter with the powers of horror a presentation of scenes of disgust. Its power of simulation as aural, visual and visceral offers the scene of disgust as a political, didactic or even emotional message.30

The confrontation between the characters can also be identified with a sense of repugnance, for Rebecca sucks his wound instead of treating it differently. The rest of the scene reveals this when Rebecca says that - Let me squeeze it. - Don’t touch me. He allows her to take his hand. - It’s only the flesh. - There is only flesh. She sucks the wound, releases his hand. He looks at her, smiles.31

The act of sucking blood, which has been performed in Act I by Corinne here, not only serves as a sign of her traumatisation, but also of her resistance to it as the act is catalyzed in the aftermath of her testimony. When she sucks the wound caused by her own destructive attempt on Richard’s body, it strengthens the woman because “by stabbing the scissors into his palm, Rebecca reasserts the importance of the body, which Richard denies from his position of lofty superiority.”32 Rebecca 29

Crimp, Martin Crimp: Plays 2, 339. Carina Bartleet, “The Scene of Disgust: Realism and its Malcontents The Audience and The Abject,” Theatres of Thought: Theatre, Performance and Philosophy (UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007), 28. 31 Crimp, Martin Crimp: Plays 2, 339-340. 32 Agustí, Martin Crimp’s Theatre: Collapse as Resistance to Late Capitalist Society, 191 30

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passes her testimony on to Richard this way and conditions him to be empathetic towards the abused women, thereby reconfirming her power. The final act of The Country presents the reunion of Richard and Corinne after two months have passed. Corinne’s visit of the house coincides with her birthday, so Richard is seen more affectionate towards his wife by offering her a pair of new high-heeled shoes to endear himself. Even though the scene makes readers assume that time has come for their reconciliation, it becomes clear that “Corinne realizes that her body is the first reality that must step out of the late capitalist, patriarchal, symbolic mapping or mode of interpretation.”33 She rejects the idea of being seen as a sexual object with her shoes on by not succumbing to Richard’s temptation. If she goes around with the high-heeled shoes, which appeal to Richard’s interest, she knows that she will have to go back to her previously abandoned position of docile femininity. In counterpoint to the capitalist and patriarchal expectations of Richard, she seems to be persistent in defying the ravenous effects of contemporary consumerism. Resistance to victimisation does not allow any room for acknowledgment of male-dominance and Corinne represents the model of the self reconstructed in line with her own inner drives and motivation. Soon after she harshly reacts to the gift of Richard, “[s]he talks about her trip where she has discovered the needle or a piece of brick but could find nothing.”34 The account of her trip resonates with that of Rebecca in Act III, which shows that Corinne spiritually allies with her so as to render Richard weaker. An important part of her narration of the trip is as follows: You should’ve seen me stepping the way a child steps from one clump to the next until I reached the stone. Well I say “the stone”, but the stone had arms, like a chair. So you could sit...within the stone. You could rest your arms along the arms of the stone, and from within the stone, look out at the land.35

Given that the stone here again reminds us of the thrall of vacuous capitalism, it can be noted that Corinne passes on this story to Richard with a view to implying that she goes against the system that ratifies precepts of consumerism and solipsistic individualism. The idea of resting her arms along the arms of the stone implicitly points to her heightened

33 Agustí, Martin Crimp’s Theatre: Collapse as Resistance to Late Capitalist Society, 212. 34 Dilek ønan, “Exploring Crimpland: A play is a game. At the end of each dialogue there is a winner and a loser”, 110. 35 Crimp, Martin Crimp: Plays 2, 364-65.

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awareness of insidious aspects of the world order, along with her wilful exclusion from the mainstream of such a practice. The story of the stone with the arms repeated by Corinne in the final act is followed by her saying that “she remembers seeing Morris, who has brought her a golden watch. She tells Morris that the stone devours her heart and that she dislikes the idea of simulating love.”36 It is significant to dwell on the last dialogue between the couple, which is as follows: And Morris said, “I’m sure you simulate love very well. I’m sure the two of you will simulate love immaculately.” (faint laugh) He’s a character. - Am I not, then? - Not what? - Am I not a character? - Oh yes- you’re a character- very definitely a character- but quite a different character. Kiss me. The phone continues to ring. - I have kissed you. - Then kiss me again.37

Although the acts that have hitherto been committed by Corinne, together with her articulations, can be considered to result from her genuine interest in building up her strength against phallocentrism and capitalism, her expression of the wish of being kissed certifies her being a lovelorn character deep down. Crimp makes the anguished character, Corinne, speak in a way that “invites spectators to fill in her indeterminate language with concrete fragments of their own memories of having experienced the subjectifying and coercive effects of power.”38 That is to say, by so doing, the playwright presents Corinne as the embodiment of a woman who is not deprived of the means to rebel against the ideologies of the oppressive system anymore but as the woman who is still struggling to compensate for the void created by the absence of love in her relationship with Richard. The act’s ending with the word “stone” also reaffirms the claim that “the play can be read both as a narrative of testimony leading to female empowerment and self-awareness, or as the narrative of Richard’s attempt to write his identity on the bodies of the women he has seduced.”39

36 Dilek ønan, “Exploring Crimpland: A play is a game. At the end of each dialogue there is a winner and a loser”, 110. 37 Crimp, Martin Crimp: Plays 2, 366. 38 Agustí, Martin Crimp’s Theatre: Collapse as Resistance to Late Capitalist Society, 223. 39 Ibid.

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Conclusion The Country by Crimp exposes the dangers posed by the patriarchal and late-capitalist world in the 21st century. A critical reading of the play helps to invalidate the undeniably strict rules imposed upon the lives of the women because of the socially constructed norms in favour of male authority and upon all people because of consumerist tendencies of the age. All the characters stand for individuals living in a postmodern age characterised by ephemeral relationships, victimisation of the totalitarian system and hierarchy, struggling hard with pressure and indoctrination. More specifically, Crimp demonstrates that trauma and resistance can find different means of expression through the empowerment stories of Corinne and Rebecca. Corinne’s husband and Rebecca’s lover, Richard, symbolises the coercion, duplicity and compelled thinking perpetuated by the late-capitalist order. The remarkable struggle of Corinne and Rebecca against Richard throughout the work makes the inhabitants of the postmodern world, basically us, see the extent of the influence of capitalism and violence on women’s lives. In other words, the theatrical world created by Crimp facilitates the task of readers or audiences to come to notice that humanity is about to get lost and values and perspectives of the past are replaced by disrupted, decayed and unconscious states of mind. Both women are traumatised figures who endeavor to stand on their own feet following the horrors of the near past and it can be said that the audience of the play witnesses their personal traumas, which represents the collective plea of all women in the clutches of male hegemony and a capitalism-stricken world. In the context of the theatrical enactment of trauma, Crimp also attaches importance to the issue of resistance and both female characters are shown as developing their own methods of dealing with their soul-shattering lives. Their testimonies, bodily reactions and accentuations of what they feel in certain scenes of the play come together to fight against the deficiencies of the system. They turn out to be more cognisant of the power they possess to rebel against the alleged merits of heteropatriarchal ideologies that crumble, thereby pointing to female empowerment. The boundaries of femininity are redefined and the compulsion to use language that agrees with subjugation is deconstructed. When all this happens, audiences/readers are encouraged to think beyond what Rebecca and Corinne narrates through their testimonies in order to complete the missing lines and relate the women’s stories to their own for the construction of an emphatical bond and increased understanding of the value of their efforts.

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References Agustí, Clara Escoda. Martin Crimp’s Theatre: Collapse as Resistance to Late Capitalist Society. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2013. Aragay, Mireia, Enric Monforte, Hildegard Klein, and Pilar Zozaya. British Theatre of the 1990s: Interviews with Directors, Playwrights, Critics and Academics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Bartleet, Carina. “The Scene of Disgust: Realism and its Malcontents The Audience and The Abject.” Theatres of Thought: Theatre, Performance and Philosophy. Edited by Daniel Watt and Daniel Meyer-Dinkgrafe. UK, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2007, pp.13-31. Capitani, Maria Elena. “Dealing with Bodies: The Corporeal Dimension in Sarah Kane's 'Cleansed and Martin Crimp's 'The Country.’’ JCDE: Journal of Contemporary Drama in English, vol.1, no. 1 (2013): 137148. Caruth, Cathy. Trauma: Explorations in Memory. Baltimore/London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995. Crimp, Martin. Martin Crimp: Plays 2. London: Faber and Faber, 2005. Escoda, Clara. “Violence, Testimony and Ethics in Martin Crimp’s The Country and The City.’’ Ethical Speculations in Contemporary British Theatre, ed. by Mireia Aragay and Enric Monforte. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, pp.25-42. Felman, Shoshana and Dori Laub. Testimony: Crises of Witnessing in Literature, Psychoanalysis, and History, London: Routledge, 1992. Franz von, Marie-Louise. Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales. Colorado: Shambhala Publications, 1974. Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books, 1992. Hyman, Jane Wegscheider. Women Living with Self-Injury. USA: Temple University Press, 1999. ønan, Dilek. “Exploring Crimpland: A play is a game. At the end of each dialogue there is a winner and a loser”, Dil ve Tarih-Co÷rafya Fakültesi Dergisi 52, no.2 (2012): 103-115. Lenardon, Robert J. and Mark P. O. Morford Classical Mythology. New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Neumann, Erich. The Fear of the Feminine and Other Essays on Feminine Psychology.UK: Princeton University Press, 1994. Sengupta, Mamata. “Knowing Not What It Seems: Re-Viewing Caryl Churchill’s Post Truth World in Glass, Kill, Bluebeard’s Friends, and Imp.” Theater in a Post-Truth World: Text, Politics and Performance, ed. William C. Boles. Great Britain: Methuen Drama, 2022, pp. 58-77.

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Taylor, Mark C. Disfiguring: Art, Architecture, Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Yakut, Ayúe Didem. Language and Power Relations in Martin Crimp’s The Country, Master’s thesis, Balkesir University, 2016.

CHAPTER NINE HOLES AND THE WHOLE: WHICH IS WHICH WITCH? NIKOLINA NEDELJKOV

Introduction Is your sense of history a hindrance to imagining the future? Is your image indistinguishable from your self? Do you ignore your childlike sense of morality? Are you desensitized to being unshakably resilient? Can you say “NO”? The twenty-first-century cultural realities reveal the aspects of the world that threaten individual and communal integrity. It is noise enabled by oppressive mechanisms of social and political control. Yet, there are hidden channels through which responses to coercion can be generated. Vibrant voices of oppositional thinking are rooted in the belief in the power of resistance. In this study, it is perceived as a vehicle for the remix and it includes refashioning the current troublesome situation into good living and working conditions for the thriving community of human beings. Stewart Home’s rebellious vernacular has for decades been a prominent oppositional voice in the realm of literature in the British Isles, delineating the potential for resistance to oppression and for the recuperation of marginalized social voices. This chapter focuses on his novel She’s My Witch (2020) while exploring the questions of identity, self, continuity, and boundaries. The perspective casts light on the critical reading of the juxtaposition of the relationship between the monolithic subject and a random sense of self. Further, it looks at the subversive vocabulary of resistance in Home’s novel The 9 Lives of Ray the Cat Jones (2014) within the narrative that follows the life trajectory of the protagonist. It tracks his background of a bleak Welsh working-class

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childhood in a coal mine community of hard-working, gloomy characters through the experiences of borstal, incarceration, and recovery. This chapter also provides insights into the shadow of Home’s previously published novels Tainted Love (2005) and Memphis Underground (2007). Haunted by the ghostly, albeit somewhat disguised and modified, presence of the characters and themes from these books, both The 9 Lives of Ray the Cat Jones and She’s My Witch accentuate some of the key issues that characterize the bewildering socioscape of the modern world. These include the capacity to sustain resistance to oppression manifested in the form of social fragmentation and a threat to individual autonomy, notably the impositions of patterns of living and being based on the dictum of profit-making, speed, efficiency, cutthroat rivalry, hostility, and alienation. Those are instances of the politics of distraction tending to prevent communal cohesion and individual space alike. The enduring presence of the subversive punk rock attitude of Home’s prose leads to the theoretical framework based on the reading of Fredric Jameson’s ideas from Valences of the Dialectic (2009), especially the notion of negative potentiation enabling the change of valences as part of the revolutionary-utopian method, rather than a program or political platform, enabling reconfiguration of both communal and individual realms. Accordingly, the chapter proposes a shift in the perception of postmodernism as solely the logic of late capitalism and oppressive mechanisms of political supremacy based on dominance-subordination toward the potential of the polyphony of pluralist discourse in the key of grassroots resistance, solidarity, and play. The thematic is situated within the potential of the wholesome voices of resistance to noise, and in the service of the remix. Originating in music, the remix is perceived and deployed as a hybrid expressive mode combining textual, audio, and visual components. The remix focuses on the fusion of quest narratives, social activism, and peaceful/peaceable resistance to oppression. Pivotal to the remix is reciprocity. Reflecting some of the permeating modernist and postmodernist concerns, it contextualizes contemporary idiosyncrasies historically. Rather than radically abandoning tradition, it exposes its remixable nature and galvanizes the change-preservation nexus. Transforming the threat of “no future” into vibrant critical and creative responses, it invokes the punk attitude as the countercultural and subcultural voices of resistance and reverence. The vitality of the remix is demonstrated in reconfiguring the alternating cycles of noise and silence in the communication channel as a basis for the disambiguation of the

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misconception about the totality of discourse. The approach delineates a vision of refacement: rebirth of the human face through subtonic solidarity of selfless, yet re-individualized, fellow humans engaged in enduring the hindrances to the patient, persistent creation of a free culture based on trust and love.

Through the Hole—and Back In Jeff Noon’s novel Automated Alice (1997), adventures are partly taking place in the future year of 1998—as imagined in 1996 when the novel was first published—partly in 1860 before they are forwarded back into the future. In this remix of Lewis Carroll’s world, the closing scene shows Alice at her Great Aunt’s house. She has returned to the boredom of the mundane everyday after the mind-boggling journey through the rabbit hole into the reimagined wonderland. She suspects that she might have been confused with Celia, her other—so to speak. She is not sure whether she or Automated Alice returned to Manchester. She might not know that she would not have such doubts if she were Celia. Hence, she might be simply wondering whether she has changed. The answer is yes and no. She might know it, just as the writer does, and just as the reader does—embarking on the journey through the world of Noon’s fiction, yet being fully aware of their presence on this side of the book, on this side of the screen. Wandering through the world newly shaped by his partner’s death, Martin Cooper, the protagonist of Home’s novel She’s My Witch, might be wrestling with a similar dilemma: the question of identity, the question of self, and the constitutive quirkiness of continuity and boundaries. The challenge is characterized by the paradoxical interplay of fluidity, playfulness, and spontaneity on the one hand, and, on the other, accuracy, distinctions, and depth. This conundrum is probably one of the historicizable ahistorical characteristics that humans have known for ages, yet nowadays they are differently manifested. In the contemporary world portrayed in Home’s novel, it is presented through the bewildering jigsaw puzzle of tarot reading, drug addiction, perversity, and love. Such a concoction is the fabric providing coherence to the peculiarly woven narrative and ensuring the specific tone as part of the implicit message the novel delivers. The narrative features a minimalist plot as well as the repetitiveness of motifs suggestive of ritualistic loops, while encapsulating both the boredom of everyday worldly matters and the magic of simple things. The tone is manifested in the submerged voice that mirrors sparse characterization and the message is interlaced with the narrative mode.

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Maria Remedios, a Spanish immigrant living in London, is committed to witchcraft, her coven, and magic. Her past as a chemically-fueled clubbing enthusiast and a sex experimenter is still lingering and keeping her in the shadow of bondage. She is an editor of porn movies and a drug addict, mostly struggling with the intake of heroin, yet also welcoming other mind-altering substances. Martin is a fitness coach dedicated to his call, expertly providing service to wealthy clients pursuing wellbeing. His past as a decadent punk rocker is behind him. However, the sound of the rocking era is still with him resonating with his defiance. Maria and Martin meet online. Their offline encounters follow. Their relationship develops into a tight-knit passion, deep affection, and a certain kind of bonding and bondage that can hardly be undone. They are tied figuratively and also literally in the form of BDSM games within their sex-magic exploration of the mystic realms of the bodily and the occult. Maria falls prey to the power of heroin. Martin remains in this world. Cheryl, the witch from Maria’s coven, welcomes him. Their encounter concerns the triangulated question of identity, continuity, and self, simultaneously addressing the problem of distinctions. Namely, Cheryl confesses that her coven asked her to be a mediator between the late Maria and this world, primarily Martin: “A dead person doesn’t have to be reborn, they can occupy a living person’s body if the host agrees to vacate their physical frame.”1 She declines the offer, yet agrees to take care of Martin for Maria until their reunion in the next life. Cheryl, Martin’s girlfriend now, takes him home. He agrees:” What Maria wants, I want.”2 Martin might be asking himself a similar question Alice is asking. Has he been confused with Maria? Is he her reincarnation? Is Cheryl? Who was Maria? Who is Cheryl? Who is he? The quizzical situation invokes a dubious world of bewildering, drugimbued identities from Home’s novel Memphis Underground, investigating the notion of spatiotemporality and the everyday threatened by the colonizing strategies of the military-entertainment complex. Depicting the characters drifting from one entrepreneurial enterprise to another in the hope of recuperating life and regaining human dignity, it is remapping the path from the old-school northern soul, rhythm and blues, and funk tracks to the contemporary DJ sound. Home presents a critique of commoditized arts and a sketch of a countercultural practice by refiguring modernist and avantgarde legacies on the one hand and, on the other, postmodernist cacophony. Challenging the idea of the hegemonic subject in the kaleidoscopic

1 2

Stewart Home, She’s My Witch (London: London Books, 2020), 330. Ibid., 331.

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socioscape while simultaneously invoking individual autonomy and integrity, the novel inspires thinking in terms of the distinction between uniformity and unity, between individualism and individuality. It creates the space for the manifestation of invigorating, recuperative responses against noise, and in the service of the remix. Tony Cheam, the artist-in-residence in Scapa Loch on the island of Hoy in Orkney off the Scottish north coast, is a talented artist unable to advance his career. Therefore, he offers John Johnson to impersonate him and take over his post in the demilitarized U.S. Naval Intelligence base, where the real estate developer Retro Americana (Suburban) Homes has already begun renovation works. The DJ-turned-entrepreneur John Johnson—broke and homeless after unsuccessful dot.com merchandising, government welfare cuts, and aggressive gentrification—accepts the offer. His art is used in Retro Americana (Suburban) Homes’ attempt to attract buyers to The Scapa Loch Housing Estate. Spiraling down the labyrinth of blurry identities and the indiscriminate intake of heroin, cocaine, and LSD, he proclaims: “We’re all Americans now, or at least we’re all a product of the Black Atlantic, we all have a stake in modernity and America is the Utopia of modernity.”3 The legacy of the troubling history of colonialism and slavery merges with the threatened experience of freedom in contemporary cultural realities. The amalgamated characters of Tony Cheam and John Johnson epitomize the crux of a dislocated sense of self as one of the salient streaks that the narrative investigates in such a context: “Who am I?” I repeated. “Surely such a question lost any meaning it may have possessed once modernism went into decline. Who am I? Tell me that and you’ve solved the riddle of the sphinx. I am that I am. I am a man. And as for me, I’ve no interest in issues and debates that revolve around completely arbitrary notions of identity. As a proletarian post-modernist I’m engaged in continuous becoming, and I’ve no time for nonsense about centred subjects.”4

The riddle of the modern sphynx requires a careful approach to both the monolithic hegemonic subject premised on dominance-subordination relations and a random sense of self. It calls for a balanced perceptual apparatus, critical thinking, and humility. Solving the modern sphynx riddle demands imagining a world in which equality reigns and

3 4

Stewart Home, Memphis Underground (London: Snowbooks, 2007), 31. Ibid., 140.

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individuality is distinguished from individualism, just as unity can be differentiated from uniformity. Some aspects of the problematic are addressed in She’s My Witch through the social imagination based on the idea and practice of communist sex-magic witchcraft: “We find the spiritual by realising ourselves as simultaneously physical, emotional and rational beings. That’s what real witchcraft is all about.”5 The occult approach to the integrity of the individual relies on the analogy with the totality of the universe, as depicted in a tarot card: “Man is a microcosm of the universe, so man must also be a woman and a hermaphrodite.”6 This is the goal and result of the process of reintegration through spiritual development. Polymorphous sexuality that encapsulates the integrity of the human resonates with Paul Preciado’s rebellious transitioning outside the medical system of prescribed therapies and proscribed procedures, as described in his experimental book Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era (2013). It plays with fiction, memoir, autofiction, and critical writing, all the while sustaining the low theory mode. The book tracks the period when Beatriz Preciado was becoming Paul Preciado through a self-administered testosterone treatment. Rejecting official medical guidance is the transitioning person’s statement against oppression, proscribed identity, and coercive discursive models that impose on human beings entrenched discriminatory perceptions of themselves and others, as well as normativity that implies sexual taboos and stigma attached to sexuality. In the subversive key that guides Preciado’s experiment, redescriptions are suggested in the realm of theorizing that parallel the reconfiguration on the personal level and in the social tissue alike. Rather than the ruling strata, the social margins are to voice the generation of discourse. Preciado’s leftist take on the question of labor is inclusive, egalitarian, and streetwise. The theory of that newly conceptualized labor is now generated by diverse contributors, including dealers, porn stars, and junkies.7 Preciado’s portrayal of the transition is suggestive of the view of subjectivity under capitalism, where we are all junkie-whores being reborn through resistance. Home’s oeuvre resonates with some issues raised in Preciado. The concerns about the other, recognition, and empathy can be tracked through 5

Home, She’s My Witch, 114. Ibid., 131. 7 Paul Preciado, Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era, transl. Bruce Benderson (New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2013), 275-276. 6

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the project Becoming (M)other (2004), coauthored with Chris DorleyBrown, as a series of photographs featuring Home mimicking the modeling poses of his (m)other Julia Callan Thompson. She constitutes the basis for the character of Jilly O’Sullivan in Home’s novel Tainted Love as a mother, junkie, escort, and human being whose life tragically ends in the murky waters of an unresolved case between suicide and murder. The violent turn of the enchantment in the whirlpool of drugs and trafficking is also accounted for in Simon A. Morrison’s portrayal of the Manchester electronic dance music scene and the related literature, especially casting light on it via Jeff Noon’s (now Brighton native) remarks about his former hometown: “MADchester was morphing into GUNchester, gravity’s rainbow tracing its entropic, downward trajectory.”8 The erosion into the darkening shades of addiction, violence, and blockages of the vision of the future is quite vividly epitomized in the actual demolition of the Hacienda club in 2000. Echoes of the problematic are found in Martin’s telling his witch Maria about the death of his mother. He shares his deepest emotions while revealing that she died of an overdose, just as Maria does toward the end of the novel. One might as well ask who Maria is, just as a similar question can be posed about Jilly and her counterpart Julia Callan Thompson. These characters can be read in the key of symbolic characterization reflecting the social level, notably the problems of injustice, abuse, discrimination, and inhumaneness. In his novel Dead Men’s Trousers (2018), Irvine Welsh makes a point related to the knot in question. The book portrays the protagonists of the junkie whoredom from Trainspotting (1994) thirty years later. It features a prominent thematic layer considering paid sex work, which resonates with Preciado’s perception of the new labor subjectivity of junkie whores under capitalism. The novel also elucidates the complicity in allowing the perpetuation of oppression by not opposing it. The character of Maria addresses the broader picture: “And that’s our task in this world, to realise ourselves in the union of opposites.”9 That’s how we thrive through the journey in the known and unknown, mundane and unfathomable, as Martin notes later on in the novel: “That unconditional love you feel is worth more than anything else you could have in life, so even if life is hard, remember it’s also very worthwhile. I know I’m writing platitudes, but what else can I do when they are so

8

Simon A. Morrison, Dancefloor-Driven Literature: The Rave Scene in Fiction (New York: Bloomsbury, 2020), 32. 9 Home, She’s My Witch, 79.

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true.”10 There are platitudes and platitudes. By living out platitudes, one rises above platitudes as well. That is how we thrive through the trajectories of light amidst darkness. That is also how continuity is generated and sustained: through the rebirth in resistance and the guidance of trust and love.

Hidden Treasure Alongside The 9 Lives of Ray the Cat Jones, She’s My Witch is told in a rather traditional narrative style following linear chronology. It seemingly differs from Home’s previous novels, mainly characterized by the highoctane narration, graphic depictions of sex and violence, obscene language, shocking content, provocative ideas, and subversive tactics at the level of structure, aiming at disrupting linearity and other conventional literary norms and social stereotypes. Although the blatant description of sex games might be provocative, the focus in this novel is not sexual perversity, dildo-devised annal defloration, dominatrix equipment, and the roughness of the pleasure derived from bizarre inclinations. They are not described with the passion of a salivating enthusiast. Rather, they assume the form and role of repetitive rites similar to drug intake or ritualized sexual games that accompany ritualistic patterns of witchcraft. Pertinent to Martin’s and Maria’s routine is meeting at the Masque Haunt pub on Old Street, mainly because its interior design enables them to secretly conduct sexual experiments in public. This inspires thinking about the significance and role of distinctions, notably that between the object level and the metalevel. As a depiction of a scene in a book, sex games in public spaces might sound trivial rather than a shocking challenge nowadays in a culture oversaturated with sexual content. The perception of it as a reality, however, might be different. Part of the predicament is also the distinction between the what and the how—between what is told and how it is told. This is again related to the distinction between the object level and the metalevel. A rigid divide between them is challenged through the reader’s active role in the interpretation of the text and the generation of meaning. On the one hand, it is commonplace in the world of letters; here, it is quite specifically contextualized within the imagery of tarot reading. Each chapter is titled after a particular tarot card. Every time Martin and Maria meet, she takes a deck out of her bag and offers to pick a card. He does as he is told. She follows. In addition to sex games, this is the most frequently repeated 10

Ibid., 291.

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motif. Interestingly, the sex-magic rituals in this book have no mystical allure. Rather, they feel drab and pedestrian, just as any other transient, dreary, repetitive thing is. Also, they stand in stark contrast to the delicacy of the affection between the partners. Ecstasy is elsewhere. Excitement is in the simplicity of the everyday and the small things that constitute it. Joy is underneath the subdued tone, in the voice telling the story through the magic of simplicity. It permeates the book and is infused in Martin’s description of the evolution of their relationship: “On the surface during the months that followed everything seemed the same, but underneath they [his feelings] changed.”11 Pleasure is in the NO attitude: resistance as an integral part of the narrative where storytelling in the context of tarot reading addresses the distinction between the literal and metaphorical meaning, primarily concerning the literal and metaphorical meanings of the word reading, but also generally the distinction between these realms as the vital tool for navigating the challenges of the modern world. The fully-fledged awareness invokes the significance of the (self)consciousness-imagination nexus that Jameson celebrates in Valences of the Dialectic, enabling the revolutionary-utopian method and negative potentiation as the basis for the change of valences, thereby ensuring finetuning of both communal and individual realms. Balancing between change and preservation, one may seek and find that what endures in a constant flow: the historicizable ahistorical. That is how we can also obtain insight into and experience continuity, thus positioning ourselves in the world and within the community of human beings. In the parlance of this study, it is called the remix.

The Fall of the Monolithic Subject and the Rise of the Polyphony of Voices The potential in question can also be explored through the moral dilemmas, as well as the perception of the self and the world presented in The 9 Lives of Ray the Cat Jones. They reverberate with the themes from Home’s ghost-written autobiography of his (m)other Tainted Love, portraying swinging London’s countercultures, experiments, and investigations of the occult as ways of testing the levels, kinds, and boundaries of realities. Those might be part of the quest for something that

11

Ibid., 45.

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Jameson depicts in the encounter with the Alps, where the human ego dissolves in the experience of awe.12 This kind of poise is disputably part of the strategy espoused by Ray the Cat, the protagonist of Home’s novel. Raymond Jones is an intricate character coming from an economically challenged working-class background in the coal mine town of Nantyglo in south Wales that endowed him with a keen eye for injustice: “Every man, woman and child has a right to life and thus a right to the things that are necessary to sustain that life…”13 The characterization can be perceived as the channel through which a rebellious message is delivered, addressing the problem of enslavement by commoditization and darkness. From an early age, Ray would occasionally resort to stealing, which later brought him to borstal reform school and prison. The experience exposed the falsity of the legal system, or, perhaps even the system by and large steeped in untrustworthiness and fraudulence, failing to ensure justice and order: “the system’s defenders would invert the real nature of property relations by claiming that it was people like me rather than capitalist social relations that were violent.”14 According to McKenzie Wark’s account in Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century (2020), Kodwo Eshun’s accelerationist exploration of sonic fiction in More Brilliant Than the Sun (1998) provides a platform for thinking race, the human, and sound outside the traditional boundaries that define and confine them: “DJ-producers like to say that Machine Music comes from fucking with the rule book, freaking with the formula. New music gives the finger to the system. Here you hear the wistful residues of punk-era resistance—for new sonar systems don’t emerge from misusing the machines.”15 Just as Eshun reimagines the historical burden, so does Home offer the trope of prison to address the question of freedom. It both calls for and allows for the demonstration of the punk attitude, the belief in the potential for/of the change of valences, and sustaining the balance within the agency-practice nexus: “You’ve got to make some kind of life inside because you’re not dead, but you can never forget you’re in jail and that

12 Ian Buchanan, ed. Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2007), 46. 13 Home, The 9 Lives of Ray the Cat Jones, 18. 14 Ibid., 133. 15 Kodwo Eshun, More Brilliant Than the Sun (London: Quarter Books Limited, 1998), 20, italics original.

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it’s totally abnormal and anti-life.”16 Paradoxically, the punk attitude also lurks in Ray’s peculiar nuptial commitment and love for his wife. The widely spread perception of the notion of the underground masks its overground presence and its vocabulary, which is infiltrated and happily embraced by the legal business of politics and social institutions, as Ray suggests: “when it came to bending the truth the straight-goers were worse than those of us who worked the other side of the law.”17 The absurdity of the situation is also captured in Ian McEwan’s novel Machines Like Me (2019), which plays with chronology, cultural paradigms, history, and perception, thereby creating a world where artificial intelligence, Margaret Thatcher, and Alan Turing are contemporaries weaving the labyrinth pregnant with puzzles, many of which reverberate with the dilemmas a human being encounters dwelling on this planet in the twenty-first century. The character Charles Friend ponders his unfulfilling and disheartening existential predicament of a insignificant online player on the stock market: “I wasn’t a worker. I made or invented or serviced nothing and gave nothing to the common good. Moving figures around on my screen, looking for quick gains, I contributed as much as the chain-smoking fellows outside the betting shop on the corner of my street.”18 Charles’s professional profile addresses the question of the precariat. He rightly notes that he isn’t a worker. He belongs to the precariat. Guy Standing defines it in “The Precariat and Class Struggle” (2015) as “a class-in-the-making.”19 It concerns the modern-day social stratum characterized by uncertain employment, temporary employment, unemployment, freelancing, gig economy-governed employment, or zeropaid-working-hours employment, no-or-scarce benefits, insecurity, 24/7 availability, paradoxical commitment in the no commitment context, or…just gambling and manipulating one’s way through what Douglas Rushkoff in his novel Exit Strategy (2002) calls the “business of business,”20 later in a theoretical vernacular in Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back (2009), dubbed “Business

16

Home, The 9 Lives of Ray the Cat Jones, 135-136. Ibid., 250. 18 Ian McEwan, Machines Like Me (London: Penguin, Random House UK, 2019), 114. 19 Guy Standing “The Precariat and Class Struggle,” RCCS Annual Review no.7 (2015): 5. 20 Douglas Rushkoff, Exit Strategy (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2002), 22. 17

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for business’s sake.”21 Standing sees the precariat as a potential class for itself. As such, its main asset, so to speak, would be its transformative capacity, which would direct the class struggle toward “socio-economic security, control of time, quality space, knowledge (or education), financial knowledge and financial capital.”22 United in the recuperation of dignity. Although Ray’s trajectory predates the precariat in the form we know now, some resemblances are detectable. He discovers a passion for boxing. His talent is widely recognized. Yet, the careers of a successful sportsman and a successful criminal seem to be inherently conflicting concepts. He abandons the former and commits to the life of a burglar— the teetotal modern-day Robin Hood with a fierce passion for gambling and a weird sense of commitment to family. He dearly loves his mother, Julia, and is trying to financially support her. She rejected it. She died as she lived—a poor, dignified, fierce woman. Ray is also deeply affected by the death of his brother Dai, who was murdered in the Blitz on his way back home after visiting Ray in prison. In a dream, Dai urges Ray to take action and avenge him through combat against those who are the source of inhumaneness and dispossession.23 He accepts the challenge, yet finds himself behind bars again as a result. Ray falls prey to an inauthentic voice. He ignored the distinction between the different realms and the nebulous logic of the proposal; he was supposed to prove what he was not by being that very thing. To rehack the abstraction, resistance is needed. One of the ways to do it is by challenging the normativity of storytelling. Home’s subversive approach to the question of the genre particularly addresses the problem of autobiography. The ghostly appearance of the character of Julie is the connection between the two novels that feature such defiant literary streaks. Ray refers to her as his cousin Julie, a bohemian experimentator who came to the Smoke as an adolescent and started getting involved in the underground world of swinging London. She worked as a hostess in prestigious bars, being paid for escorting respected, famed, powerful, and wealthy gentlemen. He also notes the differences between their respective antisocial affinities. Julie visited Ray on more than one occasion when he was in jail and supplied business contact information. The character of Julie has a particular symbolic role and is central to the narrative technique in Home’s writing.

21

Douglas Rushkoff, Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back (New York: Random House), 5. 22 Standing, “The Precariat and Class Struggle,” 12. 23 Home, The 9 Lives of Ray the Cat Jones, 49.

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Diverse references and names figure as the signposts in the portrayal of this mysterious, esoteric character, larger than herself. Ray mentions the outcome of one of Julie’s encounters with her clients that resulted in her pregnancy and the enigma related to the identity of the mysterious son of the wild child Julie and an unknown father. This is, in a way, the continuation of the message delivered in Tainted Love, where the character is presented under the name of Jilly O’Sullivan. Her son, Lloyd O’Sullivan, was born under the circumstances depicted in Ray’s portrayal of his cousin. Lloyd O’Sullivan makes her ghostwritten autobiography available to the public. So is Ray the Cat’s voice made audible and perceivable when the manuscript of his autobiography reaches the ghostwriter of this “authorless” book. The voice becomes clearly articulated in the closing portion of the novel: “I’m very pleased that in The 9 Lives of Ray The Cat Jones my first cousin once removed is at last able to speak ‘in his own voice’.”24 Home perseveres in challenging autobiography as a literary means of an egomaniacal trip and self-aggrandizement. It mirrors the role of the monolithic subject in the social and political realms, notably in authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, thereby addressing the problems of injustice and inequality. Subverting that genre, muted voices are being heard carrying the message about human suffering, distorted human relationships, dissolved empathy, and waning sensitivity to metaphor in a society that is sacrificing its flourishing potential to the altar of mindless profitability: the totality of a power trip as self-dissolving noise. It is the voice of humbleness, a dialectical response to the cultural climate of delusional omnipotence in which we live—opposite of the mainstream expectations of junkless junk.

Mountains in the Interstices of Void: Re-Hacking Play Through the rebellious voice of anti-autobiography, Home’s writing communicates a double message, reflecting the duality of the phenomena that inhabit the world. Just as it opposes the idea of the monolithic subject, so does it object to the distorted version of dismantling the subject, as Terry Eagleton also addresses it in Against the Grain (1986): As postmodernist culture attests, the contemporary subject may be less the strenuous monadic agent of an earlier phase of capitalist ideology than a dispersed, decentred network of libidinal attachments, emptied of ethical

24

Ibid., 261.

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substance and psychical interiority, the ephemeral function of this or that act of consumption, media experience, sexual relationship, trend or fashion.25

Such cacophony mutes and blinds. The character of Lloyd O’Sullivan finds himself in its midst in Home’s novel Tainted Love, confronted with the mystery of his mother Jilly O’Sullivan’s death, who officially died of heart failure. While a heroin overdose and murder were competing causes, the former was denied by the authorities, probably to disguise their own involvement in drug trafficking and other illicit businesses. They were reluctant to accept the latter for the same reason. The chapter “The Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Oedipus Complex,” paralleling the script of the movie of the same title, addresses the question of subjectivity through the provocative elusiveness and fluidity of the characters named Voice-consecutively-numbered. Alongside The 9 Lives of Ray the Cat Jones, it thus casts light on some aspects of the intricate connection between Julie, Jilly O’Sullivan, and Julia Callan Thompson. In “Afterword by Lloyd O’Sullivan: The Signifying Junkie,” the son confesses: “As for me, I realised some time ago that in order to be myself I first had to become my (m)other, and to complete this process I still need the information that will enable me to fully outlive her death.”26 The kinship drama of Home’s is evocative of the potential for/of the change of valences and the shift from postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism onto the logic of grassroots playfulness. Yet, one wonders where playfulness is to be found when “[t]he modernist reification—the art work as isolated fetish—is therefore exchanged for the reification of everyday life in the capitalist marketplace.”27 Its apolitical tendency has been distorted through aestheticization that stripped it of the resistance against the vocabulary of mainstream culture. The avant-garde demands for the dissolution of art into the social are nowadays manifested in a perverted form by blending into corporate vocabulary: “utopian desire for a fusion of art and social praxis is seized, distorted and jeeringly turned back upon them as dystopian reality.”28 Free time and work have merged by virtue of the latter’s conquest of the former.

25 Terry Eagleton, Against the Grain: Essays 1975-1985 (London: Verso, 1986), 145. 26 Home, Tainted Love, 247. 27 Eagleton, Against the Grain, 141. 28 Ibid., 131-132.

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The commoditization of the everyday is not the realization of the fierce dreams of modernism and the avant-garde. Rather, it is the result of yet another historical instance of reification. This time, it is postmodernism that has been reified. Now is the time to recuperate. Hence, one should constantly be reminded of the potential of the play suggested by Jameson. It hides underneath the pile of forgotten dreams, the banality of the everyday, and dominant paradigms. Those interstices offer the possibility of the redescription of postmodernism as the logic of late capitalism into grassroots playfulness and enable the rediscovery of refacement through resistance—against noise, and in the service of the remix.

References Buchanan, Ian, ed. Jameson on Jameson: Conversations on Cultural Marxism. Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Eagleton, Terry. Against the Grain: Essays 1975-1985. London: Verso, 1986. Eshun, Kodwo. More Brilliant Than the Sun. London: Quarter Books Limited, 1998. Home, Stewart and Chris Dorley-Brown. Becoming (M)other. Stewart Home Society. A series of photographs originally displayed at Artspace, London December 2004-January 2005. https://www.stewarthomesociety.org/sex/other.htm Home, Stewart. Eclipse and Re-Emergence of the Oedipus Complex. Dir. Home, Stewart. The Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne, 2004. Home, Stewart. Memphis Underground. London: Snowbooks, 2007. Home, Stewart. She’s My Witch. London: London Books, 2020. Home, Stewart. Tainted Love. London: Virgin Books, 2005. Home, Stewart. The 9 Lives of Ray the Cat Jones. London: Test Centre, 2014. Jameson, Fredric. Valences of the Dialectic. London: Verso, 2009. McEwan, Ian. Machines Like Me. London: Penguin, Random House UK, 2019. Morrison, Simon A. Dancefloor-Driven Literature: The Rave Scene in Fiction. New York: Bloomsbury, 2020. Noon, Jeff. Automated Alice. 1996. London: Corgi Books, 1997. Preciado, Paul B. Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era. Translated by Bruce Benderson. New York: The Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 2013. Rushkoff, Douglas. Exit Strategy. New York: Soft Skull Press, 2002.

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Rushkoff, Douglas. Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back. New York: Random House, 2009. Standing, Guy. “The Precariat and Class Struggle.” RCCS Annual Review, No.7 (2015): 3-16. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/rccsar/585; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/rccsar.585e Wark, McKenzie. Sensoria: Thinkers for the Twenty-First Century. London: Verso, 2020. Welsh, Irvine. Dead Men’s Trousers. London: Jonathan Cape, 2018. Welsh, Irvine. Trainspotting. 1993. London: Minerva, 1994.

CHAPTER TEN RESISTANCE AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN THE ICKABOG OF JOANNE KATHLEEN ROWLING SELIN TURAN

Introduction Joanne K. Rowling wrote a delightful fairy tale for children. The Ickabog was introduced to readers during the pandemic lockdown. It has all the characteristics of a classic fairy tale, with imaginative ideas throughout. It contains magic and supernatural beings, but also some messages to help young readers prepare for real life. As Bruno Bettelheim notes, “Each fairy tale is a magic mirror which reflects some aspects of our inner world and the steps required by our evolution from immaturity to maturity.”1 The Ickabog is a good example of the transformation of characters from immaturity to maturity. The protagonists are brave characters who are mostly children. They challenge the inequalities in their kingdom. The young characters overcome difficulties, and instead of just fighting against a monster, they save the kingdom with their courage and wisdom. Rowling’s fairy tale carries many meaningful messages for its young readers. These are based on contrary concepts: goodness and wickedness, equality and inequality, poor and rich and powerful and powerless. These opposing concepts provide a structurally perfect storyline. As the characters search for justice in a magical world, young readers follow their quest to embrace the absolute truth. The synthesis of these concepts leads readers to understand the consequences of these contradictory ideas. Rowling’s objective is to show both sides of the coin. Real ‘goodness’ can

 1

Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales (New York: Vintage Books, 1977), 309.

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be best understood through the elimination of badness. This opposition generates a collective perception. In The Ickabog, Rowling outlines a radical strategy for resistance. Powerful figures, such as the king, the commanders, and the monster, are crucially significant in precipitating resistance among powerless characters. The weak protagonists encounter negative attitudes, unjust punishments, and deadly attacks. These cause them to search for love and kindness. Because of their quest for truth, the weak prevail over their oppressors. As Foucault notes, “Where there is power, there is resistance.” 2 Power is used to dominate the weaker characters, who unconsciously protect the stronger. Only when powerless figures gain consciousness of their oppression can resilience and, finally, resistance be developed. Daisy is the first child to recognise the dominance of powerful figures and their negative effects on other less powerful characters. Martha, Lady Eslanda and Bertha Beamish are also rebellious characters who realise the imbalance between 'dominant' and 'dominated', and back up Daisy to eliminate this power imbalance. Social change appears as an outcome of resistance in society. In The Ickabog, Daisy and her friends struggle to change the view of the Cornucopians when they begin to live with the Ickabog babies, who were once considered invincible monsters. Thus, Cornucopia folk are liberated through this social innovation. The transformation happens because of the courageous attempts by Daisy and other female characters. Thereafter, the kingdom's social structure is constructed of equal and peaceful rights dedicated to public honour. In the first part of the chapter, the characters and their role in the resistance process will be explained. It will introduce how their characteristics lead them to resist the dogmatic beliefs of society. Social stability is subject to fluctuations which, nevertheless, do not have structurally damaging consequences for the system. However, these fluctuations resulted in a new way of thinking and lifestyle among the Cornucopians. In the second part of the work, female characters and their successful attempts at social change will be analysed. This will also examine the concepts of femininity and masculinity within the power relations in Cornucopia. In the third part, how resistance emerges will be explained. In The Ickabog, resistance amongst the characters appears in various ways: resistance to their gender, resistance to masculine characters, resistance to social rules, and resistance to authority. In the last

 2

Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), 95.

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part of the chapter, social change and its relationship with these resistance factors will be evaluated. The positive and negative effects of social transformation will be described.

Female Characters in The Ickabog In The Ickabog, female characters are particularly important in the transformation of the social structure. Daisy Dovetail and Martha are little girls who look after other children in Ma Grunter’s orphanage. Lady Eslanda and Bertha Beamish are also brave female characters who challenge the authorities. Daisy and Bertha act as leaders in their community and even fight for justice, though there is a risk of the death penalty. Daisy grows up all through the story. Daisy is a little child until her mother passes away. She then faces difficulties while living with her father, Dan, who tries to train his daughter differently from other girls. After she is kidnapped and left at Ma Grunter's orphanage, she becomes mature and begins to act just like a mother. Daisy's maternal attitudes are very similar to Peter Pan's Wendy. Both of them are not old enough to be mothers; however, due to their responsibilities, they behave as mothers of other children. Daisy's orphanage period is her passage from childhood to girlhood. Martha is another significant character in the construction of social change. Martha always backs up Daisy and helps her feed other smaller children. They even share hunger, which is explicit in these words:“They went hungry themselves to make sure the little ones got enough to eat.”3 Martha's Sisterhood is a good example of how women support each other. Martha, as Daisy's friend, takes on all the responsibilities required of a loyal friend. This female companionship helps them reach their goals, such as breaking out of the orphanage and persuading the Cornucopians about the Ickabog. Lady Eslanda is of high social class. She is in love with Captain Goodfellow, who is not as noble as the lady. Because of her higher status, she does not actively support Daisy and Mrs Beamish’s fight. However, she refuses to marry Lord Spittleworth, who then shuts her in his library. Lady Eslanda never gives up being kind-hearted and protecting poor people in severe conditions. Her fight is, in fact, political. Although she is a member of the royal family, she fights against the rules of the nobility to protect lower-class people.

 3

Joanne Rowling, The Ickabog (New York: Scholastic Inc.,2021), 178.

Resistance and Social Change in The Ickabog of Joanne Kathleen Rowling 175

Bertha Beamish is the king’s pastry chef and a very powerful woman. After her husband, Major Beamish, is killed, she continues to be a head pastry chef and never leaves the responsibilities of motherhood. Before she is kidnapped by Flapoon and his soldiers, she warns her son to leave the house if she does not return home. Thanks to her insights, Bert could be rescued from the raid of soldiers. Beamish also protects prisoners who are close to death from malnutrition. She cleverly persuades Flapoon and Spittleworth of the need for a pastry chef. She says, “If you kill me, the king will know. He’ll notice I’m not making his pastries. He can taste the difference.” 4 Her importance to the King keeps her, and so do the prisoners, alive. She never abrogates her duties or abandons the prisoners. How she manages to save the prisoners is clear in the following description: The heat from the stove dried out the damp walls. Delicious smells replaced the stench of mold and dank water. Mrs. Beamish insisted that each of the prisoners had to taste a finished cake, so that they understood the results of their efforts. Slowly, the dungeon started to be a place of activity, even of cheerfulness, and prisoners who’d been weak and starving before Mrs. Beamish arrived were gradually fattening up.5

Bertha Beamish becomes a heroine in the dungeon thanks to her culinary skills. She does what she can in such bad conditions. She provides not only food but also hope for the prisoners. In brief, all female characters protect one another. This is the outcome of trust. Daisy looks after little orphans because they believe in her innocent goodness. The Ickabog also trusts her when she comes to Cornucopia to give birth. Martha never rejects those who need her assistance. Her patience becomes a vital virtue for the abandoned children at the orphanage. Lady Eslanda is a noble figure who battles for the equality of Cornucopians. She resists immorality as she witnesses murders, imprisonments, and kidnaps. Mrs. Beamish builds a new world for the hopeless. Her belief in honesty becomes a shelter for others, and, through this, she becomes a leader of outsiders.

Resilience and Resistance In The Ickabog, Rowling tells the story of resistance and freedom. Silence matters in understanding the women’s resistance movement. Because of

 4

Ibid., 164. 5 Ibid., 174.

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social configurations in the norms of society, women are silenced. They are prevented from speaking for themselves by social pressure. In The Ickabog, female figures are also repressed. Nevertheless, despite all this, they do manage to raise their voices, even in an orphanage or a dungeon. Daisy nearly forgets her name as she stays in Ma Grunder's orphanage. In the orphanage, the children are renamed to break all ties with their heritage. Yet Martha and Daisy never give up whispering their names inwardly. This is a symbolic reference to silence female figures. Luce Irigaray posits that the masculine imaginary reduces females “to silence, to muteness or mimicry.”6 Daisy is incarcerated by Lord Spittleworth in the orphanage. She is renamed Jane, just like other girls. Daisy and Martha are introduced to each other whisperingly, as follows: “What’s your name?” Daisy whispered. “Your real name?” The girl considered Daisy with those huge, forget-me-not eyes. “We’re not allowed to say.” “I promise I won’t tell,” whispered Daisy. The girl stared at her. Just when Daisy thought she wasn’t going to answer, the girl whispered: “Martha.” “Pleased to meet you, Martha,” whispered Daisy. “I’m Daisy Dovetail and my father’s still alive.”7

Daisy and Martha never forget their identities, even though their souls fade away year after year. Their silence and secrecy lead them to try to recapture themselves. They encourage all the little children to remember their names. This is a major refusal to “keep quiet.”8 Daisy and Martha escape from the orphanage with Roderick and Bert. This is their resistance. Resistance emerges in various ways throughout the story: resistance to their gender, resistance to masculinity, resistance to social manners and resistance to authority. Firstly, resistance to their gender is encountered in the relationships of female characters in The Ickabog. Ma Grunter is fond of wealth; therefore, womanhood is not a virtue for her. Hence, she does not serve her gender and does not even remember her femininity. She has no female identity. On the other hand, Daisy strives to live with her identity as a young girl. She challenges Ma Grunter, forcing her to embrace her new name, ‘Jane.’

 6

Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), 164. 7 Joanne Rowling, The Ickabog (New York: Scholastic Inc., 2021), 113. 8 Luce Irigaray, This Sex Which Is Not One (New York: Cornell University Press, 1985), 128.

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Daisy insists, “My name is Daisy Dovetail” and adds “I was named after my mother’s favourite flower.”9 She opposes being like the other children who are obliged to forget their names and family memories. In addition, Lady Eslanda differs from other young ladies. She spends most of her time reading. Captain Goodfellow is rescued by Eslanda as he is about to be executed. She is a brave woman but is not supported by the high-born ladies at the palace. After Lady Eslanda is kidnapped by Spittleworth, none of the noble ladies search for her. They gossip about her disappearance and even neglect Eslanda's maid, who is imprisoned. Their unconcerned attitudes are set out in the following description: Lady Eslanda’s friends were all shocked by this news. She’d never mentioned wanting to become a nun to any of them. In fact, several of them were suspicious that Lord Spittleworth had had something to do with her sudden disappearance. However, I’m sad to tell you that Spittleworth was now so widely feared, that apart from whispering their suspicions to one another, Eslanda’s friends did nothing to either find her, or ask Spittleworth what he knew. Perhaps even worse was the fact that none of them tried to help Millicent, who was caught by soldiers trying to flee the City-Within-The-City, and imprisoned in the dungeons.10

Lady Eslanda is ignored by her friends. Partly, this is caused by fear and can be considered resistance to their gender. However, such muteness does not bring victory. As Sylvia Plath writes in her poem “The Applicant,” “It can sew, it can look, it can talk, talk, talk.”11 Eslanda defies all crimes and refuses to obey Spittleworth’s rules. She is the only noblewoman who ‘talks’ as she exposes his lies. Hence, Lady Eslanda has resisted the other ladies by not remaining silent and obedient. Resistance to masculinity is clearly described in Rowling’s tale. Otherness and inferiority are the most recognisable themes in male-female relationships throughout the story. Simone de Beauvoir describes this relationship as “he is the Absolute – she is the Other.”12 She asserts that women have no identity. They are men’s others. In The Ickabog, women figures are otherised because of male dominance in the social structure. Lord Spittleworth is a powerful antagonist who uses his status to engage in wicked activities. He demeans women and treats them as ‘others.’ For

 9

Joanne Rowling, The Ickabog (New York: Scholastic Inc., 2021), 111. 10 Ibid., 114. 11 Sylvia Plath, Collected Poems (Great Britain: Faber and Faber Limited,1981), 221. 12 Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, Volume 2 (Great Britain: Lowe and Brydone Ltd., 1956), 16.

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instance, Mrs. Beamish bursts into tears when she hears the news of her husband’s death. Spittleworth’s reaction is directly to her gender. He refers to her as “the widow.” Her title changes with the loss of her husband and this expresses his hatred for women. He mutters, “The widow, Beamish’s widow!”13 She finds herself in an inferior position after her husband dies in this patriarchal society. Kate Millett interrogates female inferiority in Sexual Politics: “What forces in her experience, her society and socialisation have led her to see herself as an inferior being? The answer would seem to lie in the conditions of patriarchal society and the inferior position of women within this society?” 14 Widowhood and motherhood are not considered worthy attributes. Instead, they are seen as reasons to be considered inferior. Her weakness is particularly highlighted when Spittleworth threatens to kill her son. As a cook, mother and widow, she is insulted, yet she never retreats. Her trust in Bert is implicit in her following words: “Doesn’t it alarm you, madam, to think that you and your child will soon be dead?” “Oh, if there’s one thing you learn at cookery school,” said Mrs. Beamish, with a shrug, “burned crusts and soggy bases happen to the best of us. Roll up your sleeves and start something else, I say. No point moaning over what you can’t fix!”15

In addition to her motherhood, her professional experience helps her be stronger in the dungeon. Spittleworth is astonished when he notices the similarity between Mrs. Beamish and Lady Eslanda. “Spittleworth was reminded of Lady Eslanda, who was still shut up in his library and still refusing to marry him. He’d never imagined a cook could look as haughty as a lady.”16Just like Lady Estaban, Mrs. Beamish never surrenders. Lady Eslanda never agrees to get married to the lord. Until she is rescued, she is locked in the library. The social structure in Cornucopia is based on a peculiar class system. The Cornucopians are divided according to the places where they live. King Fred and all his servants live in the City-Within-The-City, which is part of the capital, Chouxville. This place is surrounded by a high white wall. The rest of the Cornucopians are settled outside this wall. Unfortunately, citizens do not all have equal living conditions. Poverty is

 13

Joanne Rowling, The Ickabog (New York: Scholastic Inc., 2021), 63. 14 Kate Millett, Sexual Politics. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 180. 15 Joanne Rowling, The Ickabog (New York: Scholastic Inc., 2021), 165. 16 Ibid., 164.

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the biggest problem for most people outside the white wall. However, even if they endure poor living conditions, they maintain their loyalty to the king's authority. Resistance to the king is considered a negative thing. However, Daisy persuades the people to change because none of the citizens deserves to live in such conditions. Her actions help modify some social perceptions. Firstly, Daisy draws the attention of the king when he hears rumours about her saying, “He’s selfish, vain, and cruel!” 17 She blames the king for her mother's death. She shouts in the palace courtyard, “If he hadn’t worked my mother so hard, she’d still be alive.”18 Although Bert warns her to be silent, she continues to yell about his selfishness. King Fred cannot disregard such a challenge, even if it comes from a child. Her words, “selfish, vain, and cruel,” echo in his head until he decides to hunt the Ickabog. Secondly, she was raised by her father as a free child. She wore coveralls and helped her father in his carpentry workshop. With the help of her father, she can stand against other girls who wear dresses, as required by social regulations. She finds herself at odds with “the daughter of the new Head Seamstress, who was wearing a beautiful dress of rose pink brocade.” 19 This contrast disturbs the masculine structure too. For example, “Roderick Roach... often jeered at Daisy for wearing coveralls instead of a dress.”20 As Millett emphasises, “the image of women...is an image created by men and fashioned to suit their needs." 21 However, Daisy's coveralls become a symbol of her identity. She resists being an ordinary girl and wears what she wants. Later on, her much-patched and much-washed coveralls symbolise her. Spittleworth and Bert even recognize her from her coveralls in Ma Grunder’s orphanage. Lord Spittleworth thinks, “There was something about the girl that set her apart from the other children.”22Through her clothes, Daisy distinguishes herself from other girls and achieves social change. Resistance to authority is realised in Daisy’s challenge to the king and Ma Grudge. Daisy describes how she feels after her mother's death. She hates the king because her mum died of overwork. King Fred ordered that the head seamstress make his purple suit despite her illness. At that point, Daisy loses her respect for the king. She clearly shows this when she shouts out her wish. As the children are in the palace courtyard, the

 17

Ibid., 26. 18 Ibid., 26. 19 Ibid., 26. 20 Ibid., 40. 21 Kate Millett, Sexual Politics. (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000), 46. 22 Joanne Rowling, The Ickabog (New York: Scholastic Inc., 2021), 145.

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daughter of the new head seamstress wishes, “Oh, I do hope the king waves at us today!”, Daisy answers, “Well, I don’t.”23 She knows how dangerous it is to utter such words in the palace. If it is heard by any of the commanders, she could be punished. Daisy also quarrels with Bert, who will be honoured with a medallion by the king. Moreover, Daisy’s own house is not decorated with flags and signs to welcome the Ickabog tax. She does not join the neighbour’s children as the Ickabog Defense Brigade rides past. The absence of flags is not appreciated. Spittleworth interprets this as ‘treasonous’ behaviour. Furthermore, Daisy does not defer to Ma Grudge’s rules in the orphanage. She and her friend, Martha, encourage other children, especially the little ones, to recall their real names. Daisy even chooses a date for the youngest orphans, who do not know their birthdays and tries to celebrate them by stealing some food from the kitchen. In addition to Ma Grudge and King Fred, Daisy comes up against the Cornucopians, who are armed to kill the Ickabog. Her resistance to social authority is supported by many people who have suffered greatly under Lord Spittleworth's rule. Daisy and her friends protest that the Ickabog is harmless and Spittleworth is the real guilty party as they march through the city with the Ickabog. This is a rebellion that is carried out by four children, headed by Daisy. There are also prisoners who “seem to realise the time has come to act.” 24 They wait for such a rebellious moment to move against the king. Daisy succeeds in saving the Ickabog and the orphans from Spittleworth.

Social Change in Cornucopia Resilience triggers resistance. Resisting injustice brings about social change. Resistance occurs because everyone strives for “no more than justice.” 25 This belief grows in search of an egalitarian system because “ideas can spread like pollen on the breeze.”26 As more people believe in the need for equality, new rights and regulations reconstruct Cornucopia. Social transformation is not achieved quickly. Instead, it matures within an atmosphere of repression, rejection, provocation, and submission. The most remarkable change in the history of Cornucopia is witnessed in their administrative system. They elect their prime minister, Gordon Goodfellow, who has always been an honest man. Thereafter, the

 23

Ibid., 25. 24 Ibid., 223. 25 Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2013), 130. 26 Joanne Rowling, The Ickabog (New York: Scholastic Inc., 2021), 223.

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Cornucopians and the Ickaboggles begin to live together. The emergence of social consciousness, the details of this social transformation, and the consequences of social change will be delineated, shedding light on Cornucopian female cognition. Social consciousness is a social awareness based on mindful relations shared by individuals in society. According to Charles Cooley, social consciousness involves using ideas for the benefit of society and oneself. Social awareness is the outcome of interchangeable ideas which are developed for the benefit of not only ourselves but also society. The progress in the relationship between Ickabog and Daisy is a good example of the arousal of social awareness. In The Ickabog, social consciousness appears because of the influences of the self on the group and from the group to the community. Daisy initially examines the monster’s manners and determines her trustworthy friendship. She persuades Martha, Roderick, and Bert about her goodness when they are kept in the cave. After they are persuaded, they prepare placards all together to support the Ickabog. Their endeavour to gain social awareness can be seen in the following: The Ickabog pulled the wagon, which was loaded up with the last of the frozen food, and with baskets of mushrooms. In front of the Ickabog walked Bert and Roderick, who were each carrying a sign. Bert’s read: THE ICKABOG IS HARMLESS. Roderick’s said: SPITTLEWORTH HAS LIED TO YOU. Daisy was riding on the Ickabog’s shoulders. Her sign read: THE ICKABOG EATS ONLY MUSHROOMS. Martha rode in the wagon along with the food, and a large bunch of snowdrops, which were part of Daisy’s plan. Martha’s sign read: UP WITH THE ICKABOG! DOWN WITH LORD SPITTLEWORTH!27

These signs are so impressive that many Cornucopians join them on their voyage to the south. However, when the people encounter the giant monster with the four little children, they scream, flee, or try to find a weapon. Nevertheless, Daisy, Martha, Bert and Roderick prevent any violence. Meanwhile, the Ickabog is offering snowdrops to people. Soon after, "a little crowd of people was clustered around the monster, taking snowdrops from its paw and laughing. And the Ickabog was starting to smile too. It had never expected to be cheered or thanked by people."28 The Ickabog is a symbol of this social transformation. Daisy and her friends prove that the legend of the monster is not real. It is wholly madeup. The Ickabog is not an enemy who kills people and eats them.

 27

Joanne Rowling, The Ickabog (New York: Scholastic Inc., 2021), 217. 28 Ibid., 221-222.

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Instead, it is a kind creature with a good heart. This is a passage from individual consciousness to social consciousness. As Connor discusses,“ ‘I’-consciousness is a part of all consciousness.” 29 Daisy is in ‘I’ consciousness; Cornucopian folk pass to social consciousness after they understand the true nature of the Ickabog. However, this social transformation does not happen immediately. The children’s innocence helps change the minds of the public. During the protest, the people believe them easily. They are children, the Ickabog is with them, and they are in an open-air battle. As a result, a sense of unity in the public mind appears. “The unity of public opinion” is defined as “one of organisation, of interaction and mutual influence.”30 As more Cornucopians believe in these young group members, public opinion unifies to fight for their cause. When the Ickabog is ‘bornded,’ the followers do not harm the babies because Daisy says, “If you’re cruel to them, they’ll have babies who are born even crueller!... But if they’re bornded in kindness, they will be kind! They eat only mushrooms and they want to be our friends!”31 The crowd silently listens and acts together when they decide to go to the king. The dead body of the Ickabog is carried; Daisy, Martha and the kind Ickaboggle enter the palace arm in arm. In the palace, their power is reinforced by Mrs. Beamish, who is “clutching an enormous saucepan”32 and Lady Eslanda who is “smiling and holding a second gun.”33 Female solidarity and co-operation have contributed to this social transformation. The general structure of society changes with the eradication of inequalities in Cornucopian territory. With the unification of man and woman, of monsters and humans, and of the poor and rich, a new Cornucopia rises. As soon as a ‘We’ consciousness is established, social change is accomplished. This is also connected with the political and economic systems. The Cornucopians are ruled by a team of advisors and a prime minister thereafter. Cheese shops and bakeries, dairies and pig farms, butcher’s shops and vineyards begin to work and produce Cornucopian food and wine. The second-born Ickaboggle teaches them how to farm mushrooms. Ickaby becomes a city with its mushrooms, salmon, and wool. In addition to economic growth, social consciousness

 29

Charles H. Cooley. "Social Consciousness," American Journal of Sociology 12, no. 5 (1907): 677. 30 Charles H. Cooley. "Social Consciousness,"American Journal of Sociology 12, no. 5 (1907): 679. 31 Joanne Rowling. The Ickabog (New York: Scholastic Inc., 2021), 235. 32 Ibid., 238. 33 Ibid., 240.

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also improves with the production of people’s own stories and the teaching of their true history to future generations.

Conclusion Joanne Rowling writes a fairy tale that includes references to political, economic and social life. These references attract young readers so much because The Ickabog is fictionalised in such an engaging style that it is not only easily understandable but also deeply thought-provoking. Since it is a children’s novel, thematic issues like goodness and badness and life and death are kept in a stable balance. Owing to this contextual construction, children are neither disturbed nor lost while navigating the main ideas throughout the story. This fairy tale is the legend of a girl. Daisy resists injustice courageously because she defends equality. She tries to help the smaller children in the orphanage and protect them against the brutality of Basher John. Her female identity plays an important role in her resistance. As a powerful figure among a group of her friends, she leads them to eradicate prejudices about the Ickabog. In addition to Daisy, Martha is a strong character. She proves the value of friendship. Martha never ceases to back up her friend. Their relationship is a good example of sisterhood from a feminist perspective. Lady Eslanda is the only noblewoman who prefers to defy nobility and the authority of the king. She never approves of cruel behaviour towards poor people. Eslanda is locked in the library because she does not accept marriage to Lord Spittleworth. Her honour gives her strength, even in the face of authority. Mrs. Beamish is a pastry chef who is sent to the dungeon to reveal secrets to the king. However, her real fight starts when she is in prison. Mrs. Beamish feeds all the prisoners in her underground kitchen. Lastly and most significantly, for all female characters, ‘hope’ is the strongest value. The Ickabog is a story of resistance. The characters are forced to resist justice. Hardships lead them to a psychological or physical fight. Resistance can be evaluated within three concepts: resistance to gender, resistance to masculinity, and resistance to social structure and authority. Resistance emerges through both silence and uproar. Female silence can be interpreted as a psychological reaction to unjust treatment. Communal uproar, which is an outcome of social unity, manifests itself as physical resilience. King Fred is overthrown by innocent prisoners imprisoned because they defied authority. Daisy and her friends join this resistance movement with the Ickabog. Especially, Daisy struggles for people to show kindness to the monster. She persuades the crowd that Spittleworth

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and his commanders have told lies. Daisy’s bravery becomes a symbol of female power. For that reason, she is chosen as a leading character who carries people to social collectivity. Social change does not occur without significant effort. The Cornucopians have to endure oppression, kidnaps, murders, and many other crimes. These prompt them eventually to challenge the ruler and his advisors. When Ickabog comes to their country and is friendly to everyone, the Cornucopians understand that she is no monster. Instead, they are enduring an unbearable life just for the sake of the king and the nobility. This development forces them to start to resist injustice, which leads to a revolution. They abolish the monarchy and replace it with democracy. After these political upheavals, incredible changes in the social structure emerge. The first-born and second-born Ickaboggles live with the Cornucopians. Society becomes a mixture of humans and Ickaboggles. The Cornucopians learn who is the real ‘monster’, inside and outside their land.

References Armitt, Lucie. Fantasy Fiction: an Introduction. New York: The Continuum International Publishing Group Inc., 2005. Ayyldz, Nilay Erdem. The Exercise of Biopower through Race and Class in the Harry Potter Series. The United Kingdom: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020. Beauvoir, Simone. The Second Sex, Volume 2. Great Britain: Lowe and Brydone Ltd., 1956. Bettelheim, Bruno. The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales. New York: Vintage Books, 1977. Blackford, Holly Virginia. The Myth of Persephone in Girl's Fantasy Literature. New York: Routhledge, 2012. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984. Bressler, Charles E. Literary Criticism: An Introduction to Theory and Practice. Boston: Pearson Education, 2011. Caygill, Howard. On Resistance. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. Clareson, Thomas D., SF: The Other Side of Realism. Ohio: Bowling Green University Popular Press, 1971. Conrad, Joseph, Heart of Darkness. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2013. Cooley, H. Charles. “Social Consciousness.”American Journal of Sociology 12, no. 5 (1907): 675-694. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2762377

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Day, Gary. Class. London: Routledge, 2001. Eagleton, Mary. Feminist Literary Theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, Inc.,1986. Eagleton, Terry. Criticism & Ideology. Great Britain: Lowe & Brydone Printers Limited, 1978. Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Gamble, Sarah. The Routledge Companion to Feminism and Postfeminism. New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, 1998. Georgiou, Constantine. Children and Their Literature. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1969. Hunt, Peter. An Introduction to Children’s Literature. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Hunt, Peter. Children’s Literature: An Illustrated History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Irigaray, Luce. This Sex Which Is Not One. New York: Cornell University Press, 1985. Kelleghan, Fiona, ed. Classics of Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature. California: Salem Press, 2002. Lukács, Georg. History and Class Consciousness. Great Britain, The Merlin Press Ltd, 1971. Marshall, Henry R. Consciousness. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1909. Marx, Karl. The Eastern Question. London: Frank Cass & Co Ltd., 1897. Millett, Kate. Sexual Politics. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000. Moruzi, Kristine, Michelle J. Smith and Elizabeth Bullen, eds. Affect, Emotion, and Children's Literature. New York:Taylor & Francis, 2018. Nodelman, Perry. "Children's Literature as Women's Writing." Children's Literature Association Quarterly, 13, No 1, (1988): 31-34. Nodelman, Perry. The Pleasures of Children’s Literature. New York: Longman Publishers, 1996. Plath, Sylvia. Collected Poems. Great Britain: Faber and Faber Limited, 1981. Reynolds, Kimberley. Children’s Literature in the 1890s and the 1990s. Plymouth: Northcote House Publishers, 1994. Rowling, Joanne. The Ickabog. New York: Scholastic Inc., 2021. Russell, David L. Literature for Children: A Short Introduction. New York: Longman, 1997.

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Rutherford, Jonathan, ed. Identity: Community, Culture, Difference. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990. Showalter, Elaine. A Literature of Their Own. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1977. Skeggs, Beverley. Class, Self, Culture. New York: Routledge, 2004.

CHAPTER ELEVEN SCATTERED SUBALTERNITIES: ECOLOGICAL RESISTANCE IN INDRA SINHA’S ANIMAL’S PEOPLE SEZGI ÖZTOP HANER

Introduction Postcolonial ecologies have already become victims of an uneven level of global development. As a result, such ecologies at peripheral sites change unevenly due to “the extreme unevenness of capitalist development in the postcolony.”1 Postcolonialism, according to Mukherjee, comes to be a particular pattern in the history of global capitalism that unequally acts upon diverse locations around the world. Likewise, in his 2012 essay “Postcolonial Remains,” Robert J. C. Young presents the postcolonial as a “wide-ranging political project [...] concerned with interrogating the interrelated histories of violence, domination, inequality, and injustice.”2 For Young, what’s required is not new theoretic frameworks, but rather “shifting conceptualisations” so as to be able “to locate the hidden rhizomes of colonialism’s historical reach, of what remains invisible, unseen, silent, or unspoken.”3 It seems that “shifting conceptualisations” refer to attaining new ways of knowing and new knowledge about the ongoing repercussions of nineteenth- and twentieth- century imperialism and colonialism in order to make critical and political reflections. Here, Young

1

Upamanyu Pablo Mukherjee, Postcolonial Environments: Nature, Culture and the Contemporary Indian Novel in English (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 13. 2 Robert J. C. Young, “Postcolonial Remains”, New Literary History no. 43 (2012): 20. 3 Ibid., 21-22.

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impels postcolonial studies to make the suppressed, invisible or unsanctioned knowledge of the past visible in order to redress injustice.4 In a period of economic globalisation, transnational corporations in postcolonial locations with little attachment or responsibility to peripheral places and communities they deal with progressively join forces with the local elites in an attempt to chart an environment for control and misuse in the name of consideration or examination. In this regard, it becomes an easy task for these corporations to victimize the peripheral postcolonial countries and their subaltern people. As an example, the leak of poisonous gas from Union Carbide Corporation’s pesticide factory in the densely populated city of Bhopal, India, in 1984 killed thousands of people almost immediately. In the nearly 40 years since this industrial disaster, countless people have been deformed to different extents as a result of ongoing contamination. Novelists and ecocritics thoroughly examine the ecological transformation of their environments and can generate awareness and change policy, or incite a revolution among many subaltern people by presenting dependable representations of local ecologies. At the same time, the writers of ecological narratives can capture specific occurances or phenomena since they are completely preoccupied by diverse forms of exploitation, injustice, and violence. In this respect, this study explores one of the striking examples of such specific incidents from an ecological narrative, which contains Indra Sinha’s depiction of lived experiences in Animal’s People (2007) while involving the reader in the reconsideration of the question of justice for the subaltern people and their toxic environment.

Postcolonial Disaster as an Ecological Rupture in Animal’s People Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People is a fictionalisation of the aftermath of the 1984 Bhopal gas disaster and its devastating effects. Set in the fictional city of Khaufpur, Bhopal’s fictional counterpart, Sinha, depicts how the disaster has transformed Khaufpur into a toxic environment and converted Animal, the narrator of the novel, into a nonhuman figure with his disfigured body, a liminal entity between human and animal. Animal’s eccentric physical form restages the slow transformation that happens as a result of breathing in poisonous gases from a factory explosion. On the night the of explosion, Animal comes to be a nineteen-year-old orphaned 4

Ibid., 21.

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boy who is disfigured in a violent manner, curved and forced to move on all fours due to his bodily transformation. However, Animal’s unusually deformed embodiment establishes a path of individual development as a metaphor for postcolonial or peripheral resistance and self-identification. The discriminatory environmental catastrophe in postcolonial areas seems to be the result of “ecological imperialism,” to borrow the notion from Alfred Crosby, which states that such destruction of indigenous ecologies occurred in the course of European colonization. The resource extraction born of British desire for economic progress under the guise of humanitarian and developmental aid has progressively become more and more intense lately due to the increase in “material demands, and therefore the pressures for resource extraction” deriving from the industrial centres.5 More precisely, the post-colonial period in South Asia witnessed a rapid growth of industrialism furthered by the open market operation of neoliberal capitalism. The 1980s saw the merciless operations and vast investments of transnational corporations in the newly independent nation states which were forced to open their borders due to the burden of financial debts to the IMF and the World Bank. The progression of global corporatism has climbed to such a stage that the establishment of risky corporate projects that cause ecological crises has become part of the practice of capital concentration. The corporate globalization of neoliberal capitalism works through the discriminatory and selective logic of globalization, in which ecological challenges are unevenly distributed around the world. In an age of uneven globalization, the local and global nexus of power transform human and nonhuman entities of postcolonial areas into exploitable, extractable and manageable resources and maintain the constitution of postcolonial ecologies as more targeted areas for material extraction. In Animal’s People, Animal, one of these poisoned indigenous dwellers of Khaufpur, appears both as the novel’s protagonist and the first person narrator and as a victim taking a stand against such ecological degradation. What is remarkable about Animal’s People is that both the novelist and the protagonist are impelled by a strong feeling of injustice and the difficult task of having people recognise, see and admit “them”--the sufferings or experiences of indignities of Khaufpur’s poor. To this end, the narrator frequently states that the disaster has changed the suffering poor of Khaufpur including him, into storytellers. Accordingly, Animal’s mangled spine continually attracts the attention of white

5 Peter Christoff and Eckersley Robyn, Globalization and the Environment (Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013), 42.

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reporters and journalists, who regularly try to collect and narrate the experiences of the local people affected by Kampani’s toxicity. For the spectacle-hungry, self-interested journalist, then, Animal’s deformed body is a prize in the sense that Animal recounts the journalist’s discovery of his body in the explicit form of consumption: “With what greed you looked about this place. I could feel your hunger. You’d devour everything.”6 Conscious of the hypocrisy that infiltrates their facile attempts, Animal refuses to let his narrative of pain and misery be removed by their hollow “talk of rights, law, justice.”7 At this point, Animal becomes so outraged by the careless use of such consequential concepts that he equates it to the real disaster: “On that night it was poison, now it’s words that are choking us.”8 Indeed, Animal has knowledge of how such a dehumanising aspect of the seemingly humanitarian discourse has been appropriated by the Kampani and the local authority to secure that the dispossessed local people have no legal option. Although white journalists and humanitarians assure that justice will one day come, Animal has discovered that those promises are just a meaningless future. As David Harvey states, “Like space, time, and nature, ‘justice’ is a socially constituted set of beliefs, discourses, and institutionalizations expressive of social relations and contested configurations of power that have everything to do with regulating and ordering material social practices within places for a time.”9 Embedded in the privileged discourse, justice is blind to the people and places it requires most to see. Apparently, Bhopal and Sinha’s fictional counterpart, Khaufpur is actually invisible to those who appear to gain the power to accomplish justice, redress, and restitution. Throughout his narrative, Animal constantly blames the journalists and other Westerners for not feeling empathy towards victims like him but for following him in favour of his value as a spectacle and as an authentic storyteller with an unusual lived experience. Fittingly, the narrator of Sinha’s fictional reconfiguration of the disaster, Animal’s People gives a bodily form to spectacle: he must now walk on all fours, his spine curved by remaining toxins from that night, earning the epithet of “Animal.” His curved posture makes him physically worthy of notice, especially for being unusual. Symbolically, he suffers the burden of the event that local people refer to merely as “that night”. He is considered a passive spectacle, a concentrated figure of destitute poverty, no stranger to the 6

Indra Sinha, Animal’s People (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 4. Ibid., 3. 8 Ibid. 9 David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996), 130. 7

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global “eyes.” Under the weight of current globalisation, Animal and his people are only seen through poverty as the embodiment of disempowering others. The Bhopal chemical disaster emphasises the capitalist force embedded in the neoliberal discourse of development and progress, which characterises the complicated networks of economic, geopolitical and racist relations between powerful states of the global north and the vulnerable areas of the global South. Employing liberal humanitarian claims to increase the productivity or the socioeconomic conditions of the global South, neoliberal corporations like Union Carbide exploit both local economic instability and resources and the labour of the global south to increase their capitalist profit. If human beings are Union Carbide’s most valuable resources, then these questions come to mind: Who regards them as someone worthy of investing in and what determines the usefulness and worthiness of those human beings on the global market? Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People examines these neoliberal exchanges of human value and human capital, reworking the Bhopal explosion. In the neoliberal world order, the biological materiality of local people deemed less valuable becomes subject to the status of nonhuman. In the context of Sinha’s novel, such a valuation brings to mind the preservation of white western superiority over the global South citizen of colour, exemplified by Animal, whose deletion from humanness is manifested materially and discursively. At the same time, beyond the boundary of a biological body, Animal’s bodily materiality occurs as a result of a forced, toxic transformation that connects him with the nonhuman world. Animal’s materiality foregrounds the alternative material conceptualisation promoted by the concept of Monique Allewaert’s “parahuman”. In Ariel’s Ecology, Allewaert recognizes this “ecologically inflected form of personhood” as parahuman, thereby referring to the double connotation of para as “besides” and “perversion” of the human, to disrupt the “hierarchical organization of life-forms” in the postcolonial locations10. What is important here is that such a blending of human and nonhuman offers, for Animal, an occasion for self-actualization that, while not permanent and not altogether liberatory, is worthy of careful scrutiny because it suggests an alternative to and breaks open human-nonhuman, subject-object binaries that lie at the root of dehumanisation. Similar to the “parahuman,” Animal clings to the materiality of his body and protects his

10 Monique Allewaert, Ariel’s Ecology: Plantations, Personhood, and Colonialism in the American Tropics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 147.

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agency against the counternarratives that refuse to recognize his body as not being fully embodied. The injection of poisonous chemical into Animal’s body results in the extensive toxicity of the disaster and reformulates his bodily materiality into a threshold level or a liminal formation. The profound effects of the disaster are exposed severely later. Animal expresses: The pain gripped my neck and forced it down […] a devil rode my back and chafed me with red hot thongs. The burning in the muscles became a fever […] after that my back began to twist […] When the smelting in my spine stopped the bones had twisted like a hairpin, the highest part of me was my arse11.

Subsequently, Animal’s legs become weaker and he begins to move on all fours similar to a real animal. The infusion of toxicity into Animal’s body causes his bodily materiality to ultimately rupture, which characterises the process of replacing the essential components of the body through the release of toxicity. Animal’s deformed material body poses a challenge or an alternative to the normalizing aspects of the materiality of the human self. From a material-ecocritical perspective, Animal’s toxified body is in fact represented by agency and dynamism. Iovina and Oppermann, material ecocritics, state the idea of the materiality of human and nonhuman bodies in complicated, agentical and dynamic engagements with each other and explain the concept of agency as follows: Agency, therefore, is not to be necessarily and exclusively associated with human beings and with human intentionality, but it is pervasive and inbuilt property of matter, as part and parcel of its generative dynamism. From this dynamism, reality emerges as an intertwined flux of material and discursive forces, rather than as complex of hierarchically organized individual players.12

Here, Animal’s agency agrees with their description. The material turn of ecocriticism asserts that agency is not a static phenomenon in relation to human conditions and terms; on the contrary, it is distinguished by an infinite state of becoming and the production of realities and meanings. Animal’s materiality occurs in connection with the precarious material 11

Sinha, op. cit., 15. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann, “Stories Come to Matter,” Material Ecocriticism, ed. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014), 3. 12

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reality of Bhopal/Khaufpur. In the net of a continuous materialisation of the universe, Animal’s body participates in the vital alliance with nonhuman entities, sharing the dynamic and material energy with them in an uninterrupted state of interactivity. Animal’s materially self-sustaining capacity as an agency presents a powerful representation of local people and their agency against the capitalists’ wholesale handling of Khaufpur and its people as a disposable commodity. However, Animal’s narrative portrays the victims of the disaster as having a unique sense of agentic potential and active force, resisting the Kampani’s attempts to reduce all human and nonhuman entities to a disposable other.

Neoliberal Humanitarian Fiction of Care and Solidarity The subaltern characters in Animal’s People indicate how corporate capitalists manage their ecologically damaging projects from a distance to escape responsibility for disasters. In such a system of material extraction, privileged elites hold the corporate body behind the stage and employ the local authority for the undisturbed operation of the project. In the novel, avoiding any type of legal or state control, the Kampani has become a sovereign enterprise in itself, scattering its faulty system throughout the global South so as to colonize Khaufpur’s ecology and its people’s bodies through its ongoing leaking toxins. Rob Nixon calls this system “absentee corporate colonialism, whereby transnational companies internalize profits and externalize risks, particularly in impoverished regions of the global South.”13 Nixon asserts that the system helps corporate capitalists guarantee the protected flow of profit for themselves and transmit the risk to another part of the world. Graham Huggan and Helen Tiffin contend that this sort of “strategic altruism” is meant “to address the persistence of poverty, environmental degradation and the violation of human freedom in the contemporary globalized world.”14 In this respect, the neocolonial rhetoric of progress and development seems to be disguised as humanitarian aid and relief. Under the mask of progress and solidarity, humanitarian discourse and action turn out to be questionable acts or crimes similar to the global North’s neocolonial practices of past violent acts. As an agent of altruism,

13 Rob Nixon, Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (London: Harvard University Press, 2011), 52. 14 Graham Huggan and Tiffin Helen, Postcolonial Ecocriticism (London: Routledge, 2015), 31.

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Elli Barber, an American doctor, and her clinic suddenly enter the heart of Khaufpur to treat the victims. While Elli’s institutional independence seems to identify her as a sympathetic representative from the global North, her status as a foreign humanitarian agent works to emphasize the power discrepancy between the damaged local people and her privileged status as western, white and affluent. The narrative is very obvious on the point that Elli holds the burden of acting for America, suspiciously considered by the Khaufpuri community both as a potential ally of the Kampani and as an “Amrikan” who “decide what’s to be said about this place.”15 Reflected in this suspicion is a particular distrust of Elli’s humanitarian aid, which engages in the formation of infrastructure as a “promise” for a better future. Elli clings to the belief that “things work when we keep our promises to each other and to ourselves, when we don’t keep our promises, things fall apart.”16 Such an assumption is sarcastic given that Khaufpur is tangible evidence of broken promises by both the local state and the Kampani. In fact, the Khaufpur’s people’s suspicion is not a foolish fear, but rather a sharp observation that associates the relatedness of humanitarian aid and relief attempts with the western “development” and “progress” practices that created the precarious conditions for chemical disaster. Elli’s ambiguous status reveals the bias in the nature of the humanitarian agent in relation to the western trappings of development, aid, and relief. Even though the humanitarian subject may be wellintentioned and motivated, their agential act is everlastingly attached to their sense of humanitarian superiority over the “developing,” the feeling of pity and sadness for the subaltern people who cannot ever gain that individuation. Elli fails to recognize how and why the subaltern inhabitants of Khaufpur suspect her involvement in the humanitarian action. Elli is incapable of empathizing with their fear and suffering. The novel’s representation of suffering as “real” within a narrative framework is key to its care for the way in which transnational incursion into the shattered landscape of the global South tends to belittle the “reality” of suffering in Bhopal. In her account of the impediment to communicating pain, Elaine Scarry notes in The Body in Pain that the lived experience of pain is simultaneously irrefutable to its sufferer but unverifiable to its witness, thus producing “the absolute split between one’s sense of one’s own reality and the reality of other persons.”17 Pursuing Scarry’s mindset 15

Sinha, op. cit., 219. Ibid., 204. 17 Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World (New York: Oxford UP, 1985), 4. 16

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is what makes the unique experience of pain “real”, what detaches one’s unique individuality from being classified as faceless abstraction. In contrast to Elli’s mental picture of passive suffering in Khaufpur, Elli arrives to come upon a well-organised, illegal, local activist network, made up of, and operating as the representative of the victims of the disaster. As the leader of the activist community, Zafar speaks at length about his “new theory”: “[Y]es, we have nothing, and this makes us strong. Not just strong, but invincible. Having nothing, we can never be defeated.”18 This activist community’s protest fuelled by “the power of nothing” invokes the tricky practice of resistance in which Zafar recurrently states that local people must gain strength from having nothing. Zafar conducts the local fight against the American “Kampani” to pay compensation. The novel portrays him as an idealized activist with no personal ties to Khaufpur, self-sacrificing and charismatic. Zafar insists that there are activists like him around the world: Is Khaufpur the only poisoned city? It is not. There are others and each one of has its own Zafar. There’ll be a Zafar in Mexico City and others in Hanoi and Manila and Halabja and there are the Zafars of Minamata and Seveso, of Sao Paulo and Toulouse and I wonder if all those weary bastards are as fucked as I am’.19

In a feverish manner, Zafar begins delineating a “nother world”20 of political movements, where the transnational grasp of global poisons might be confronted by a transnational circle of resistance. Significantly, these “poisoned cities” have created a community of “weary bastards” that have been forsaken by paternalistic humanism. The toxins that move along the body and city distribute slowly and widely. Naturally, a question comes to mind: whether the Khaufpur people would gain from abstract activism that tends to unite their motives for fight and schemes with other local movements. Here, the undead cause the victims to become awake or conscious of a “nother world”21 where they can listen to the reflection of Fanon’s request: “[W]e must find something different […] we must grow a new skin, we must develop new thinking, and try to set afoot a new man.”22 Here, the vision of the future comes to the fore. The conflict

18

Sinha, op. cit., 54. Ibid., 296. 20 Ibid., 2. 21 Ibid. 22 Sinha, op. cit., 312. 19

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between western civilisation and the societies of the Third World would create a new man and a new opportunity for humanity. Initially, Zafar organises the protest against Elli and seems to understand the local people well. Because these people live somewhere that appears to be thrown into violence by an earthquake, it does not imply that they do not have the ability required for agency. Zafar notices that part of the reason why the local people make a strenuous effort to coordinate themselves for the challenging transformations is that in Khaufpur it is always “now o’clock”23, a permanent present removed from a historical past and deprived of the future as victims. For this reason, Animal tells, “[H]ope dies in places like this…how can you think about tomorrow when all your strength is used up trying to get through today”24. In this respect, insecurity about food, shelter, and equality in water and sanitation services might restrict the poor to immediateness without mediating agency. Zafar occupies an unusual position in terms of the novel’s humanitarian landscape because his type of activism comes to be altruistic and driven by the wish to be concerned with the people of Khaufpur; he is only capable of to take a turn for the better on their behalf. Like Elli, he emerges as not one of them in the middle of the aftermath of the disaster, keeping a safe distance from the local people because of his social class, and mobility. In guiding the people of Khaufpur towards recognition and justice, Zafar brings to light how much he does not really like them. In guiding the people of Khaufpur towards recognition and justice, Zafar brings to light how much he does really not like them. This generates a significant representational matter: having kept away from the toxic trauma of the disaster, how well can Zafar really assert himself to speak for local people? Zafar tends to enforce another codified discourse; his legitimate narrative of the victims’ pain corresponds with Elli in a similar version of postcolonial humanitarianism. Significantly, among the circle of activists at the heart of the novel, only Animal truly and systematically questions the humanist framework of their activism. This is evident in the first tense exchange between Animal and Zafar, which enables the reader to examine a deep postcolonial conflict regarding the humanist discourse of activism. Initially, viewing Animal as one “of the disabled”25, Zafar maintains [Y]ou should not allow yourself to be called Animal. You are a human being, entitled to dignity and respect. If you haven’t a name then this is a 23

Sinha, op. cit., 185. Ibid. 25 Ibid., 23. 24

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great opportunity for you. You can choose your own. Jatta for example or Jamil, go ahead pick one, whatever you like, we’ll call you that henceforth.26

This conversation between Zafar and Animal about what it means to be human illustrates Zafar’s fluctuation between Animal’s agency and power over his identity and his attempt to determine that identity through a discriminatory and inequitable definition of what it means to be human. Zafar’s definition of humanity contains both Animal’s exclusion from and inclusion in humanity. Then, Zafar’s humanist discourse entraps Animal within an authoritarian mechanism rather than empowering him. Then, Animal defiantly reponds: ‘My name is Animal,’ I say. ‘I’m not a fucking human being, I’ve no wish to be one.’ This was my mantra, what I told everyone. Never did I mention my yearning to walk upright. It was the start of a long argument between Zafar and me about what was an animal and what it meant to be human.27

Such a disagreement opens Animal up to other paths of engaging in the category of human which he notices, and he moves toward his own already existing solidarity with his local people. Thus, Animal ends up being regarded with much love and tenderness as a member of a local community for which he feels responsible and which itself has undergone gradual change to accept him on his own terms. Animal envisions himself as an agent, and he generates great fulfillment and contentment from serving for the common good of the community. Animal’s way of life ends up being complicated as a connecting point towards a collective human-nonhuman reality or network. Animal deeply gets himself tangled up with the human condition of being placed in Khaufpur and the factory within it, the target of disaster and creation of the “People of the Apokalis”28, the embodiment of what Kevin Bale calls “disposable people” in the neoliberal global blame on “vulnerable ecosystems.”29 This significant move toward a relational network, or human-nonhuman relational capacity enables the community to reconceptualise the future, transforming common views of national postcolonial improvement into a new appreciation of local identity formation and the inclusion of nonhuman components. In addition, Animal’s deformed body and its situatedness are significant symbols for 26

Ibid. Ibid., 23-24. 28 Ibid., 63. 29 Nixon, op. cit., 4. 27

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Khaufpur’s post-disaster ecology. In her article “Resilient Virtue,” Susie O’Brien points to Animal’s struggles for “resilience” in ecological terms: A resilient system is not one that maintains a stable state in the face of external challenges; rather, it is one that subsists by undergoing constant processes of change and adaptation. Key to resilience science is the recognition that living systems shift between periods of growth and conservation, and release and reorganization.30

The fluctuation between stability and change is key to an ecological understanding of social mechanisms. Thus, the restlessness or resistance the novel locates in Animal’s subjectivity together with the tensions between humans and nonhumans, stubbornness and dullness, singular and collective, are interrelated with Khaufpur, which is both chaotic and stable. Reading Animal’s fateful hallucination within the forest lying near Khaufpur can therefore be considered in ecosystemic terms. The act of reading his journey turns out to be one of interconnectedness becoming so as to highlight both a collective, relational form of reading the Indian ecology and a relational responsibility to ecological others. At the ame time, this hallucinatory aspect falls under the promise of mindfulness which has the function of transformation and spiritual or intellectual enlightenment. It is, after all, a refusal of the sharp categorisation of both humans and nonhumans that grants Animal “paradise,” where he can spiritually be reborn or converted.

Conclusion As an instance of rupture, the disaster is an occurrence that generates a crisis of meaning in which existing alliances and solidarities are challenged and new narratives need to be constructed. This sort of disaster comes to be a distinguishing symbol of a time frame, employed especially for occurrences that basically transform the environmental landscape of everyday life, as in the example of the 1984 Bhopal disaster. It is also important to note that disasters should not be diminishingly understood as singular occurrences, but rather should be inserted as an integral part of historical processes of colonialism and social interactions. Regarded as a singular occurrence, the disaster is clearly disregarded as abnormal, and completely unrepresentative of larger phenomena. Narrative reactions to

30 Susi Obrien, “Resilient Virtue and the Virtues of Resilience: Post-Bhopal Ecology in Animal’s People”, Kunapipi no. 34 (2012): 26.

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disaster can thus integrate these occurrences into larger illuminating stories that build connections. As one of the examples of postcolonial disaster narratives, Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People disrupts, engages, and reconsiders the dominant mode of representational conflict that emerges from the Bhopal disaster’s position of global prominence by providing a basis for this destructive event within history and power structures. This narrative intervention also examines disaster’s capability to both destruct and create community. If the disaster exhibits the ability to push a wide range of survivors and to gain the attention of outsiders, this mode of disaster representation investigates alternative ways of engaging the community. The representations of postcolonial disaster demonstrate an overwhelming level of inequality formulated by the presence of industrial production and its consequent versions of uneven development and inequality across the globe. Such policy and ethic of capital centralisation at the expense of the material ecology progressively deteriorated during the postcolonial period. Global economic organizations such as IMF and World Bank and the local elites maintain their cooperation to both extract and commodify natural resources and put an end to many of the ecological gains of the past in a gradual systematic way by means of the splitting of essential elements or the disposal of waste and toxic materials. Such forms of ecological ruptures illustrate the derangement of the material ecologies of postcolonial settings through the displacement of human and nonhuman inhabitants. This study attempts to demonstrate how the ecological realities of postcolonial locations can point to global realities. The representation of ecological ruptures in fiction conveys individual examples of ruptures as lived experiences, in opposition to ecocritical theories which generally obstruct certain subaltern realities by thinking of ecological realities of the world as only truths. In this respect, not only does Animal’s People portray how subaltern people mediate the continual, toxic impacts of ecological ruptures caused by corporate capitalists, but the novel also embraces a subaltern form of environmentalism through Animal’s vibrant form of resistance, an assertion of indigenous agency or subjectivity and retrieval of lost history. Indeed, it is Animal who turns out to be a real subaltern representative who argues in favour of Zafar’s nonviolent movement towards Kampani and presents his own agency and activism. Animal and other people of Khaufpur suffer from the effects of toxicity, which indicates the postcolonial inclination towards discriminatory and inequal violence against the subaltern ecology and the bodies of the poor. Animal’s subversion of outsiders’ humanitarian efforts

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reflects how the subaltern can tell the truth and show justice to the colonial power. Apparently, Indria Sinha produces an ecological narrative with Animal’s People, which brings plural voices and varied perceptions together from the subalternity. Such an ecological narrative of resistance from subaltern perspectives demonstrates that the transformation and complexity of postcolonial ecosystems can enhance global environmentalism and draw attention to the question of justice for subaltern people and their environments.

References Allewaert, Monique. Ariel’s Ecology: Plantations, Personhood, and Colonialism in the American Tropics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Christoff, Peter and Robyn Eckersley. Globalization and the Environment. Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013. Crosby, Alfred W. Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe. London: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Fanon, Franz. Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press, 1963. Harvey, David. Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference. Cambridge MA: Blackwell Publishers, 1996. Huggan, Graham and Helen Tiffin. Postcolonial Ecocriticism. London: Routledge, 2015. Iovino, Serenella and Oppermann Serpil. “Stories Come to Matter.” Material Ecocriticism. ed. Serenella Iovino and Serpil Oppermann Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014. Mukherjee, Upamanyu Pablo. Postcolonial Environments: Nature, Culture and the Contemporary Indian Novel in English. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Nixon, Rob. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. London: Harvard University Press, 2011. Obrien, Susi, “Resilient Virtue and the Virtues of Resilience: Post-Bhopal Ecology in Animal’s People,” Kunapipi, no. 34 (2012): 26. Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York: Oxford UP, 1985. Sinha, Indra. Animal’s People. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007. Young, Robert J. C. “Postcolonial Remains.” New Literary History no. 43 (2012): 20-22.

CONTRIBUTORS

Amy Lee has a background in comparative literary studies and Buddhist studies, and has published in a range of topics including feminine autobiographies, witchcraft and witchery, experiences of solitude, teenage literature of magic, marginalized experiences by female writers, and popular film and fiction. Recent research projects include using Playback Theatre to cultivate self-understanding, self-care, and building connection among diverse groups of participants. She has been an associate professor at the Department of Humanities and Creative Writing at Hong Kong Baptist University. She is now a professor at the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Hong Kong Metropolitan University. Anastasia Logotheti, PhD, is Professor of English at Deree College, the American College of Greece (https://www.acg.edu/faculty/anastasialogotheti/). She has published thirty-five articles in The Literary Encyclopedia on contemporary works by Kazuo Ishiguro, Graham Swift, and Ian McEwan. Recent publications include the articles “Alterity in E M Forster’s The Other Boat” in Language and Literary Studies of Warsaw (2021) and “Digital Encounters with Shakespeare” in Research in Drama Education (2020) as well as chapters contributed to these edited volumes: Crossing Borders in Gender and Culture (2018), Reading Graham Swift (2019), Apocalyptic Visions in the Anthropocene and the Rise of Climate Fiction (2021), Women Writing Trauma in Literature (2022), and Depictions of Pestilence in Literature, Media, and Art (2023). Logotheti is also the editor of the essay collection Crisis in Contemporary British Fiction (2023). Belgin Ba÷rlar. As an associate professor, she is employed in the Department of English Language Teaching at Aydn Adnan Menderes University. She obtained her Ph.D. in English Literature from Istanbul Aydn University in 2015. Her primary areas of interest include Contemporary British, Canadian, and Turkish theatre, along with gender studies. She authored the book "Socio-Political and Ethical Issues in Martin Crimp’s Major Staged Plays" and co-authored "Anthony Neilson ve Perde."

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Farah Ali, Assistant professor of English at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). Previously, A Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Hull (UK). My area of interest is Post-War British Theatre in which I focus on identity politics, power, oppression, and gender issues. My thesis was based on the identity predicament in selected works of Harold Pinter which was then published as book with Routledge titled: ‘Eroding the Language of Freedom: Identity Predicament in Selected Works of Harold Pinter’ 2017. Currently working on a second manuscript in which I discuss the theme of the female figure and diaspora fiction in Europe. Kai Qing Tan (fluid) is an independent researcher and associate of the Aachen Center for Cognitive and Empirical Literary Studies (ACCELS). She contributed chapters on cognition and narrative space to Introduction to Cognitive Narratology (co-authored with Judith Eckenhoff, 2021) and ZELTForum (2023). Her forthcoming publications in 2024 will appear in the journal Ekphrasis and the edited collection Cities Under Stress by Palgrave Macmillan. She is currently preparing her monograph, Encountering Psychogeographical Literary Moments: Readers’ Affective Enactment in Contemporary British Novels (2000-). She conducts drifts for her project “Psychogeography in Aachen” to insert inventiveness into everyday and peripheral spaces. Leman Demirbaú is a PhD candidate from Atilim University, Turkiye. Her dissertation examines representation of space and place in contemporary British fiction, more specifically in the works of Angela Carter, Julian Barnes, and Ali Smith. She has been working as a research assistant at Gazi University since 2013. Her research interests are spatial literary criticism, postcolonial criticism, contemporary English literature, Irish literature, and comparative literature. Dr. Malek Hardan Mohammad earned his Ph.D. in English from Texas A&M University in 2010 and joined the English Department at the American University of Kuwait as an assistant professor in 2011. His research interests include ethics, humanism and fiction, with special focus on Dostoevsky, Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, Coetzee and Ishiguro. He has also researched conspiracist narratives and is currently working on a project examining forms of suspicion and the grotesque in Dostoevsky, Faulkner, O’Connor and Coetzee. His teaching has mostly focused on writing, public speaking, literary theory, American southern literature, the Victorian novel, Anglophone literature and 19th-ceuntry Russian writers.

Critical Perspectives on Resistance in 21st-Century British Literature

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Muhammed Metin Çameli got his bachelor’s in English Language and Literature Department with full scholarship at Beykent University in 2010. He got his master’s degree in English Language and Literature Department at Istanbul Aydn University in 2014. He completed his PhD studies at Istanbul University in 2022. He worked as a full-time lecturer at Istanbul Aydn University English Preparatory School for ten years (from 2011 to 2021). He was officially appointed as Assistant Professor at Istanbul Aydn University in the Department of English Language and Literature in November, 2022. He published one book entitled as “The Theatrical Representations of Traumatized Psyche: Beside Herself, The Skriker and Crave” in 2023. He also published several articles and attended international conferences about philology with his presentations. Nikolina Nedeljkov is a reader / writer / scholar focusing on the creationremix nexus as a source of critical/creative remapping of cultural realities and peaceful/peaceable resistance to oppression: postfuturist hi-fi response against noise, and in the service of disambiguated communication. PhD in English obtained from the City University of New York. Critical/creative pieces appear in LIES/ISLE; kill author; 3:AM; Cultural Studies, Education, and Youth: Beyond Schools; Genero; Pennsylvania Literary Journal; Anamesa; Polja; Cultural Transfer Europe-Serbia. Novels Wridding, HC4HY, and Storystyling. Currently teaching academic writing at ICB, CAU. Her scholarship is anchored in the idea and the practice of the remix. Selin Turan graduated from the Department of American Culture and Literature, Ege University in 2001 and completed her M.A. in 2007 at the same department. She completed her Ph.D. at the Department of English Language and Literature, Istanbul Yeniyuzyil University, in 2022. Her doctorate dissertation is Class Consciousness in the Novels of Jack London and George Gissing. She published "Anlarmzdaki Bçak øzleri" and "Yarm" in Unlem Journal. She has reviews on various books. Her interests include the modern eras in English and American Literature. Sezgi Öztop Haner, PhD, is an assistant professor of English Literature at Dumlupnar University in Kütahya, Türkiye. She got her M.A degree from Dumlupnar University, the department of English Language and Literature. She holds a doctoral degree from English Culture and Literature, Atlm University, in 2020, with her dissertation entitled “Beyond Sexuality: Transgender Bodies in the Novels of Virginia Woolf, Angela Carter and Jeanette Winterson.” Dr. Öztop Haner has participated in many international and national conferences and published original articles in the

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Contributors

area of her studies. Her published work appears in a variety of refereed journals and edited collections. Her research interests include sexuality and gender studies, transgender theory, cultural studies, critical theory and women’s writing.