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Coversheet for Thesis in Sussex Research Online A University of Sussex PhD thesis Available online via Sussex Research Online: http://sro.sussex.ac.uk/ This thesis is protected by copyright which belongs to the author. This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Please visit Sussex Research Online for more information and further details 1 UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX Alice Compton Ph.D Waste of a Nation: Photography, Abjection and Crisis in Thatcher’s Britain May 2016 2 ABSTRACT This examination of photography in Thatcher’s Britain explores the abject photographic responses to the discursive construction of ‘sick Britain’ promoted by the Conservative Party during the years of crisis from the late 1970s onwards. Through close visual analyses of photojournalist, press, and social documentary photographs, this Ph.D examines the visual responses to the Government’s advocation of a ‘healthy’ society and its programme of social and economic ‘waste-saving’. Drawing Imogen Tyler’s interpretation of ‘social abjection’ (the discursive mediation of subjects through exclusionary modes of ‘revolting aesthetics’) into the visual field, this Ph.D explores photography’s implication in bolstering the abject and exclusionary discourses of the era. Exploring the contexts in which photographs were created, utilised and disseminated to visually convey ‘waste’ as an expression of social abjection, this Ph.D exposes how the Right’s successful establishment of a neoliberal political economy was supported by an accelerated use and deployment of revolting photographic aesthetics. My substantial contribution to knowledge is in tracking the crises of Thatcher’s Britain through reference to an ‘abject structure of feeling’ in British photography by highlighting a photographic counter-narrative that emerged in response to the prevailing discourse of social sickness. By analysing the development and reframing the photographic languages of British documentary photographers such as Chris Killip, Tish Murtha, Martin Parr and Nick Waplington, I demonstrate how such photography was explicitly engaged in affirmative forms of social abjection and ‘grotesque realism’. This Ph.D examines how this renewed form of documentary embodied an insurgent photographic visual language which served to undercut the encompassing discourses of exclusionary social abjection so pervasive at the time. 3 I hereby declare that this thesis has not been and will not be, submitted in whole or in part to another University for the award of any other degree. Signature:...........Alice Compton............................................................ 4 Contents i. Acknowledgements.....................................................................................................................6 ii. List of illustrations.....................................................................................................................7 Section One: Introducing the Sick Man of Europe Introduction............................................................................................................................p. 11 i. Research Context and Questions...........................................................................................p. 11 ii. Approaching ‘Thatcher’s Britain’.........................................................................................p.16 iii. Photography and Social Abjection...................................................................................... p.19 Chapter 1: Is Britain Dying? Approaching Photography in Crisis and the Abject Structure of Feeling........................p. 26 i. Sick Britain and the Structure of Feeling..............................................................................p. 27 ii. Poverty is Beautiful: Documentary Photography in Crisis..................................................p. 29 iii. Defining Social Abjection...................................................................................................p. 35 iv. The Enemies Within and the Politics of Disgust.................................................................p. 40 v. Methods for Approaching British Photographies in the 1980s...........................................p. 43 Chapter 2: The British Disease: Queues, Crisis and Propaganda during the Winter of Discontent.....................................p. 46 i. Abject Analogies and the Winter of Discontent....................................................................p. 48 ii. Labour Isn’t Working...........................................................................................................p. 51 iii. Queuing and Discourses of Freedom..................................................................................p. 56 iv. Britain Isn’t Getting Any Better..........................................................................................p. 59 v. Cutting Loose the Shackles of Socialism............................................................................p. 63 Section Two: The Enemies Within Chapter 3: Sick Carnival: The Inner Cities in Ruins.............................................................................p. 66 i. Brixton, April, 1981..............................................................................................................p. 67 Chapter 4: Machine’s Don’t Strike: Technology, Redundancy and the Seacoal Gatherer, 1979-1984........................................p. 72 i. Technology and the Emerging Structure of Feeling.............................................................p. 75 ii. Like an Old Tin Can: Nostalgia and Obsolescence.............................................................p. 80 iii. Seacoal and the Economies of Waste..................................................................................p. 85 iv. Zones of the Written Off.....................................................................................................p. 87 Chapter 5: Like a Black and White Photograph: Youth Unemployment and the Aesthetics of Recession Culture........................................p. 94 i. Dramatising Britain’s Decline...............................................................................................p. 96 ii. The People’s March for Jobs................................................................................................p. 99 iii. Youth and the Scrapheap...................................................................................................p. 103 iv. Landscapes of Abjection in Tish Murtha’s Newcastle, 1981............................................p. 107 v. Documentary Authenticities...............................................................................................p. 113 5 Section Three: From Affluence to Effluence Chapter 6: Junk Bonds: The Ugliness of Deregulating Capitalism, 1984 to 1987....................................................p. 115 i. Financial futures..................................................................................................................p. 116 ii. Work Stations......................................................................................................................p.117 Chapter 7: Consuming Bodies: Colour, Heritage and Grotesque Realism, 1984–1988.......................................................p. 120 i. Walking in the wilderness...................................................................................................p. 122 ii. ‘Heady with the smell of success’......................................................................................p. 124 iii. Living in the Past..............................................................................................................p. 126 iv. The New Colour Epoch.....................................................................................................p. 128 v. Mourning Social Documentary Photography....................................................................p. 130 vi. The New Economy and Rhetorics of Ugliness.................................................................p. 132 vii. Tidy Britain and Grotesque Realism................................................................................p. 136 viii. Consuming on the Margins of Society............................................................................p. 140 Chapter 8: Dirty Old Blighty: Urban Abjection and the Underclass in the Early 1990s..................................................p. 145 i. ‘If you vote Conservative, don’t fall ill’..............................................................................p. 148 ii. Homelessness: A Visible Step Forward..............................................................................p. 151 iii. The Underclass in Dirty Ruins..........................................................................................p. 154 iv. Want to Live Like Common People: Art in the 1990s......................................................p. 158 v. Living Room......................................................................................................................p. 161 Conclusion.............................................................................................................................p. 167 i. Paving
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