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Configurations of Power and Identities in Twenty-First Century Fiction Ng

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Configurations of Power and Identities in Twenty-First Century Fiction Ng (Re)Configurations of Power and Identities in Twenty-First Century Fiction Ng Soo Nee University of London, Goldsmiths College Degree for which work is submitted: PhD 1 I declare the work presented in this thesis is my own 2 Abstract: (Re)Configurations of Power and Identities in Twenty-First Century Fiction My dissertation is interested in exploring dialectical relations that reveal complex power (im)balances in recent fiction. In my close reading of five novels published since the year 2000, I reflect on the postmodern legacy in the twenty- first century, after the declaration of the death of metanarratives and the concomitant emergence of marginalized voices in late twentieth century. How has fiction in recent years engage with persistent macro narratives in the light of emergent voices? What are the new questions and/or positions that are opened up, recurring issues that are unsettled, or even promises unfulfilled, in these writings with regards to the ‘maturation’ of formerly disenfranchised identities? There are three main areas of contention that I will analyse in my reading of the novels: gender relations, diasporic and local identities, as well as the role of scientific thought in present-day representations of identities, particularly its narratives of Darwinism, genetics and reproduction. They are compelling issues as, despite the postmodern drive to collapse margins and center, they represent instances of recurring peripheral and dominating narratives; indeed, even as familiar power dynamics are challenged or undermined, new ones are born. I will examine in individual chapters the novels’ portrayal of both old and new structures of opposition and power within the discourse of two formerly disenfranchised voices: the female and the colonized/decolonized. Following this will be a chapter on the literary reflection on the hegemonic role of science in our society today. These chapters, as well as areas of overlap within and among them, reveal the ever-increasing complexity and interconnectedness of power relations that demand the intellectual skill, dexterity, and concentration akin to that of a 3 tightrope walker to achieve a nuanced understanding of individual and collective identities in the twenty-first century. 4 Table of Contents: Introduction --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 6 Section I: Identity and Power Relations in Feminist Fiction ------------------- 16 Chapter 1 Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army: Radical feminism in the twenty- first century -------------------------------------------------------------- 23 Chapter 2: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake: Capitalising on the female body ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 56 Section II: Ambiguous Identities in Fictional Narratives of Decolonised States ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 76 Chapter 3: Michele de Kretser’s The Hamilton Case: Who is the colonizer? Who is the colonized? -------------------------------------------------- 85 Chapter 4: Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost: Distance and gesture -------- 104 Section III: The Metanarrative of Science in Twenty-First Century Fiction -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------145 Chapter 5: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake: Interrogating nature, bodies and genre --------------------------------------------------------------- 154 Chapter 6: Ian McEwan’s Saturday: Medicine, literature and sympathy --- 193 Conclusion ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 237 Bibliography ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- 241 5 (Re)Configurations of Power and Identities in Twenty-First Century Fiction INTRODUCTION The arrival of the second millennium, as with any pronounced start of a time period, promised fresh beginnings and hopeful resolutions of past quarrels, arguments and debates. The long twentieth century has witnessed astounding technological, medical and scientific progress, the extension of human life span, improvement in living standards, and increased opportunities for education. Even so, it was also the century of two world wars and countless civil and regional conflicts right up to the dawning of the second millennium. Moreover, as the world shrinks with advancements in the arenas of telecommunication, travel and media, as we are forced to assimilate ever-increasing number of ideas and viewpoints from near and far, it is a constant effort to make sense of the old and new, the micro and the macro, the dominant and the marginalized. This might explain why, much as we have been told of the undesirability of thinking in polarity and antithesis, we have yet to successfully shed this penchant for such approaches and modes of thought, and this has implications for the ways in which former ideological constructs are viewed and negotiated today. From a literary point of view, I seek to offer, in this dissertation, a reply to Mary Romero’s questions about the millennium: How does the peculiar marker called the millennium highlight ideological constructs, uniting some communities and separating others? What does it reveal about individuals, communities, and nations within the world system and the emergent global economy? (2000:1013) In particular, with the last significant intellectual movement of postmodernism some thirty years behind us, and with no alternative yet to fill its big shoes, how do contemporary writers narrate issues such as identity, relationships and power structures in our world today? Postmodernist artists after the mid-twentieth century privileged multiplicity, pluralism and heterogeneity, sweeping aside traditional boundaries to allow for previously submerged voices to be heard. As much as this can be viewed as a positive step towards the erosion of hitherto unequal power relations and misogynistic practices, the inclusive stance of postmodernism appears to have lost steam in the last two decades of the twentieth century. A large part of this 6 state of development can be attributed to apparently unreconciled tenets within its approach: Dan Dervin observes that postmodernist agendas was headed towards ‘self-collision’ when it focuses on ‘a politics of identity’, even as it tends towards ‘disparaging essentialism as naïve fundamentalism (1997:6). Indeed, for Robyn Wiegman, ‘the discussion of identity throughout the 1990s’ has been characterised by ‘intellectual exhaustion’, with the main contributing factor being ‘the failure of any individual identity rubric – race, gender, sexuality, nation, or ethnicity – to function in isolation’ (2000:805). For my dissertation, my critical reading of five contemporary novels published from the year 2000 onwards encompasses these two critics’ views of the shift in our understanding of identity in the twilight of the twentieth century (and postmodernism itself) and the dawn of the twenty-first: the (still) insistent recourse to essentialism for feminist and postcolonial narratives in the face of a myriad of other forms of selves surfacing within and without these discourses, and especially complicated by how biotechnology and science/genetics in recent years have transformed the ways in which we see the human body at the most basic level. The exploration of dialectical relations that reveal complex power (im)balances in recent fiction will thus be my main concern here; I am interested in the imagining and portrayal of the ‘maturation’ of formerly disenfranchised identities, especially with respect to its unresolved tussle with dominant discourses such as scientific legitimacy, patriarchy as well as politically influential nations. The five novels to be discussed are: Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003), Sarah Hall’s The Carhullan Army (2007), Michelle de Kretser’s The Hamilton Case (2004), Ian McEwan’s Saturday (2005), and Michael Ondaatje’s Anil’s Ghost (2000). Specifically, I read these texts with the following questions in mind: How do these writers approach and re-imagine feminist and postcolonial ideologies: are they still marginalized discourses or do power relations within and without pose new questions, or even resurrect issues that hitherto were thought to have been laid to rest? How do these authors view the hegemonic scientific beliefs and practices prevalent in our lives today: who are those with authority and influence in the face of genetic and biotechnological ascendancy; conversely, who are those disempowered and cast aside? In what ways are major and minor identities on the local, regional and global scale (re)presented by these writers recently? 7 In dividing my dissertation into three major sections of Feminism, Decolonisation, and Science, I wish to impose a kind of order in my critique of the ways in which the five novels interrogate the issues of identity and power, although I am fully aware this is certainly an artificial demarcation as the authors address these big topics as interconnected and complexly structured. The common focus for all of them, however, can be said to involve the tensions, confrontations, and maneuvers resulting from the meeting and clashing of previously disempowered identities (women, racial minorities, lower economic class) with dominant and powerful presences (Euro-American Caucasian males, global institutions and influential economies/countries, scientific metanarratives, capitalism). In short, we can note that contemporary writers
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