Agency: the Entrepreneurial Self in Narratives of Transformation
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Jessica Fischer — Agency Jessica Fischer is a lecturer and researcher in Literary and Cultural Studies. She studied at the University of Freiburg, the Freie Universität Berlin, and the University College London. At Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, she wrote her PhD thesis AGENCY. Jessica Fischer Agency The Entrepreneurial Self in Narratives of Transformation: Debuting in the Literary Field at the Dawn of the Twenty-First-Century Königshausen & Neumann The publication of this work was supported by the Open Access Publication Fund of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (BY) license, which means that the text may be be remixed, transformed and built upon and be copied and re- distributed in any medium or format even commercially, provided credit is given to the author. For details go to http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Creative Commons license terms for re-use do not apply to any content (such as graphs, figures, photos, excerpts, etc.) not original to the Open Access publication and further permission may be required from the rights holder. The obligation to research and clear permission lies solely with the party re-using the material. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. D 11 (Zugl.: Berlin, Humboldt-Universität, Diss., 2019) Erschienen 2020 im Verlag Königshausen & Neumann GmbH Gedruckt auf säurefreiem, alterungsbeständigem Papier Umschlag: skh-softics / coverart Printed in Germany Print-ISBN 978-3-8260-7036-5 PDF-ISBN 978-3-8260-7206-2 https://doi.org/10.36202/9783826072062 ebook-ISBN 978-3-8260-8048-7 www.koenigshausen-neumann.de www.ebook.de www.buchhandel.de www.buchkatalog.de “Prior to being a generous life-style in the service of others, altruism is in- deed the foundational principle of a self that knows itself to be constituted by another: the necessary other.” Cavarero, Adriana. Relating Narratives. Storytelling and Selfhood. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. (Tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti, 1997, trans. Paul A. Kottmann.). 84. ‘Necessary others’ for this story were Gesa Stedman and Elahe Haschemi Yekani, my teachers, tutees and students from all over the world, the mem- bers of the AK Cultural Studies, of the Berlin Graduate School for British Studies and of the interdisciplinary Berlin-Britain Research Network, my colleagues at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, the numerous guest lectur- ers, visiting researchers as well as the student assistants at the Centre for British Studies, the team of Hard Times Magazine and of Tino Sehgal, In- grid Meyer-Legrand and Jeong Kwan, Ben, Ela, Patricia or everyone else who makes me breathe and dance, Andrea, Anna, Assiyeah, Clemens, Emil, Ilaria, Jacob, Jimmy, Jon, Lena, Leonie, Lucilla, Nadja, Reena, Sabina, Sara, Sophie, Stefan, Steffi, Svea and many more who nourish me with their col- ours, songs, tales, meals and smiles, the community in Weisestraße and of the Alte Sennerei, in particular Azra, Daniel, Janina, Johanna, Kilian, Matteo, Peter, Renate, Sajda, Sanela, Valentina, for being a home. Thank you Berlin, 21 December 2018 PER R. & P. tu che mi guardi, tu che mi racconti [L]e savoir n’est pas fait pour comprendre, il est fait pour trancher. Michel Foucault (1971) Contents 1 Introduction 9 2 Post-9/11 Britain and Neoliberalism 19 2.1 Representations of British Asians and the State of Postcolonial Studies after 9/11 19 2.2 Neoliberalism as a Hegemonic Discourse 30 2.3 Governmentality and the Entrepreneurial Self 40 3 Novels of Transformation and Categories of Analysis 47 3.1 Literary Fiction as a Discourse of Subjectification 47 3.2 Novels of Trans/Formation 57 3.3 Analytical Approach 66 3.4 The Concept of ‘Agency’ 71 4 The Ice skater: Monica Ali’s Brick Lane (2002) 83 4.1 Emancipation as Formation 85 4.2 Bangladesh in London, London in Bangladesh 94 4.3 Empowered to Have a Hobby 104 5 The Flâneur: Nirpal Singh Dhaliwal’s Tourism (2006) 111 5.1 From Mocking Multiculturalism to Colliding with Class 111 5.2 A Flâneur’s Floating through Spaces of Class 121 5.3 Picaresque Self-optimisation against Political Impotence 127 6 The Reformed Rudeboy: Gautam Malkani’s Londonstani (2006) 137 6.1 Wannabe Rudeboy Turns Good Man 138 6.2 A Rudeboy’s Identity Playgrounds 146 6.3 From Unethical to Ethical Enterprising Self 154 7 The Springsteen Fan: Sarfraz Manzoor’s Greetings from Bury Park. Race, Religion and Rock ’n’ Roll (2007) 162 7.1 The Formation of a Fan 163 7.2 Memories between Bury Park and Asbury Park 169 7.3 Rebel Without a Voice 176 8 Conclusion 184 Bibliography 189 7 1 Introduction This study analyses narratives at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I consider the narrative as “one of the most potent of all ideological forms”1 and the first decade of this century a key phase for an analysis of narratives. The events of 11 September 2001 and the financial crisis of 2007-8 affected lives globally. Great Britain, the regional focus of this study, is one of the countries that still struggles with the consequences. Scholars acknowledge these series of events as turning points in factual and fictional discourses, in world politics, daily practices, artistic works or cultural theory.2 The changes in public discourses involved questions of citizenship or social (in)equalities. When 9/11 and 7/7 put Muslim populations under the spot- light, British Asians experienced a rise in discrimination as many of them are associated with Islam. Not ‘race’ but ‘religion’ became a major motif for xenophobic attacks on them.3 The situation led to new forms of represent- ing British-Asian citizens in politics and media. Moreover, the post-9/11 situation allowed or called for a new generation of authors who produced literary texts about British-Asian identities and their relationship to a fic- tional British society. These texts portrayed processes of subject formation which ran counter to racist discourses and deconstructed prejudices caused by Islamophobia. For this study, I chose to concentrate on literary texts. Because literature can be “difficult, indirect, an allusive, because it mixes verisimilitude with imagination, the literal with the symbolic, it can express something of the complexity of 9/11.”4 Fictional narratives can have the potential to 1 Eagleton, Terry. “Ideology, Fiction, Narrative.” Social Text 2 (1979): 62-80. Quotation 71. 2 See, for example, Bentley, Nick, Nick Hubble and Leigh Wilson. “Introduction: Fiction of the 2000s: Political Contexts, Seeing the Contemporary, and the End(s) of Postmod- ernism.” The 2000s. A Decade of Contemporary British Fiction. Ed. Nick Bentley, Nick Hubble and Leigh Wilson. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2015. 1-26. Or Schüller, Thorsten. “Kulturtheorien nach 9/11.” Repräsentationen des 11. September 2001 in kul- turellen Diskursen, Literatur und visuellen Medien. Ed. Sandra Poppe, Thorsten Schüller and Sascha Seiler. Bielefeld: transcript, 2009. 21-38. Schüller considers 9/11 an “episte- mological caesura”. Quotation 21. [Translation by J. F.] 3 “[O]ver the last fifty years British discourse on racialised minorities has mutated from ‘colour’ in the 1950s and 1960s […] to ‘race’ in the 1960s-1980s […], ‘ethnicity’ in the 1990s […] and ‘religion’ in the present period […]. Within religion, Islam has had the highest profile.” Peach, Ceri. “Britain’s Muslim Population: an Overview.” Muslim Brit- ain. Communities under Pressure. Ed. Tahir Abbas. London and New York: Zed Books, 2005. 18-30. Quotation 18. 4 Keniston, Ann and Jeanne Follansbee Quinn. “Representing 9/11: Literature and Re- sistance.” Literature after 9/11. Ed. Ann Keniston and Jeanne Follansbee Quinn. London and New York: Routledge, 2008. 1-15. Quotation 14. 9 complicate normative discourses. The novel in particular addresses the re- lationship between individual and society. The novel addresses “the worlds in which we live, the symbolic forms by which we abide, the maturation of subjects, and the land and property on which they subsist.”5 Besides, the novel as a genre still features heavily in the range of narratives consumed on the contemporary media market.6 Quite a few authors that the literary field promoted strongly after 9/11 are British Asian with parents who had migrated to Britain. Being born in Britain, this younger generation of au- thors have a “particular relationship to citizenship which marks them out as distinct”7. They had to “negotiate feelings of racial or religious rejection against their own inherent sense of British citizenship as a birthright.”8 This sounds attractive for a market that was ripe for a redefinition of ‘British- ness’ after 9/11 but still fed on ideas of the ‘exotic other’9. The kind of postcolonial literature produced by these writers was assumed to give in- sight into British Asian communities and to “address the plight of the wretched of the earth”.10 I am interested in four of these ‘new’ novelists: 5 Johansen, Emily and Alissa G. Karl. “Introduction: Reading and Writing the Economic Present.” Textual Practice 29.2 (2015): 201-214. Quotation 202. 6 Nünning, Vera and Ansgar Nünning. “An Outline of the Objectives, Features and Challenges of the British Novel in the Twentieth Century.” The British Novel in the Twenty-First Century. Cultural Concerns – Literary Developments – Model Interpreta- tions. Ed. Vera Nünning and Ansgar Nünning. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2018. 3-20. Quotation 6. 7 Upstone, Sara. British Asian Fiction. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010. Quotation 4. 8 Upstone. British Asian Fiction. Quotation 7. Sara Upstone also explains how birth be- came essential to citizenship legislation in Britain. “Both the 1914 and 1948 British Na- tionality Acts gave commonwealth citizens the right of British citizenship.