Thesis Final

Historicising Neoliberal Britain: Remembering the End of History A thesis submitted to The University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2018 Christopher R Vardy School of Arts, Languages and Cultures List of Contents Abstract 4 Declaration and Copyright Statement 5 Acknowledgements 6 Introduction – Remembering the End of History Historicising neoliberal Britain 8 ‘Maggie’, periodisation and collective memory of the 1980s 15 Thatcherism and Neoliberalism 23 The End of History 28 Historical fictions, historicisation and historicity 34 Thesis structure 37 Chapter One – The End of History Introduction: Origin Myth 40 Histories 44 Fictions 52 Historicising the End of History 59 Struggle and inevitability 66 A War of Ghosts / History from Below 72 Conclusion: Historicity without futurity 83 Chapter Two – No Future Introduction: ‘Our little systems have their day; They have their day and cease to be’ 86 Bodily permeabilities 94 The financialised imaginary 97 Shaping the 1980s: reprise and the ‘light of the moment’ 104 Cocaine economics 110 Embodied crises of futurity 115 Conclusion: Dissonance 121 Chapter Three – Thatcher’s Children: Neoliberal Adolescence Introduction: Genesis or Preface? 123 2 Retro-memory 126 ‘You’ve obviously forgotten what it’s like’ 132 The nuclear 1980s 137 A brutal childhood 142 Adolescence and critique 147 Conclusion: Perpetual Adolescence 156 Chapter Four – Thatcher’s Children: Abusive Historicity Introduction: ‘Lost Boys’ and the arrested bildungsroman 158 The historical child: uses and abuses 162 Precarious Futures: Death of a Murderer 171 Re-writing the James Bulger murder: ‘faultline narratives’ and The Field of Blood 175 Cycles of abuse: Nineteen Eighty Three 183 Conclusion: Abusive historicity 188 Conclusion – Dissonance and Critique 189 Works cited 195 Word count: 72,506 3 Abstract This thesis argues that a range of twenty-first-century British historical fictions historicise contemporary neoliberal politics, economics and subject-formation through a return to the Thatcherite past. These texts, in their very different ways, enact and interrogate the status of the 1980s within British cultural production as a decisive and determining End of History, which continues to define the futures available to contemporary subjects and collectives. The thesis focuses on contemporary forms of historicity – understood not just as a text’s narration or representation of the past but its specific figuration of history as a process. It evaluates the extent to which contemporary historicisations of neoliberal Britain present the early years of British neoliberalism as a futureless past, and the ways in which models of subjectivity and agency are posited and circumscribed within these historical fictions. Chapter One analyses the status of the 1984-85 miners’ strike as an overdetermined ‘End of History’, through a close analysis of David Peace’s GB84. I argue that the text is defined by critically significant contradictions: it presents the miners’ defeat as a futureless ‘Year Zero’ but historicises that ending, and historicises the conflict through a paradoxically dehistoricised thousand-year longue durée of violence. I close by suggesting that this novel articulates a sense of historicity without futurity but is nevertheless rich in critical potential. Chapter Two explores the ways in which neoliberal financialisation is figured through the futureless queer male body. It argues that Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty juxtaposes financial crisis and the AIDS crisis to present an economic atmosphere haunted by the spectre of its own imminent dissolution. The unproductive and unreproductive signification of cocaine and queer sex function as metaphors for an economic dispensation that sits uneasily with the heteronormative futures of the Conservative elite. Chapters Three and Four explore the figuration of Thatcher’s Children in twenty-first- century historical fictions and outline the dialectical relationship between accounts of childhood that emphasise its determining power and those that see it as an origin myth perpetually being rewritten to suit the needs of the present. Chapter Three analyses nostalgic narratives of neoliberal adolescence and explores the ways in which materialistic and apolitical retro-memory of the 1980s is both enacted and interrogated in David Mitchell’s Black Swan Green. It also argues that the adolescent point-of-view is used to denaturalise ideological change but that the infantilised models of the subject that it produces are politically problematic. Chapter Four analyses the ways in which the Thatcherite 1980s, and its relationship to the neoliberal present, are figured through metaphors of child sexual abuse. Through readings of Denise Mina’s The Field of Blood and Peace’s Nineteen Eighty Three, this chapter argues that while these narratives can offer a stark vehicle for criticism of neoliberal economics, they can also act to elide complex historical and political relationships, and often present deterministic models of subjectivity that circumscribe contemporary agency and historicity. 4 Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning. Copyright Statement i. The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. ii. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance iii. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. iv. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=2442 0), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses 5 Acknowledgements Many thanks are due to Kaye Mitchell – I had never imagined doing a PhD before her exceptional teaching. As the years have passed, she has shown patience with me and consistent faith in the project, and emphasised lucidity, precision and nuance, always leading by example. What follows wouldn’t exist without her support and supervision. I am also very grateful to Jerome de Groot, for contagious intellectual excitement, always seeing the bigger picture and for asking generatively brilliant awkward questions. Thanks too to Robert Spencer for his inspiration and rigour, keeping me on my Marxist toes, and for sharing a strange admiration for that wily Yorkshireman Harold Wilson. I would like to thank the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures for their Studentship Award, without which the PhD would have been impossible, and the SALC Graduate School, Humboldt University and ACLA for travel and conference funding. I owe a lot to my teachers. Rosie Fletcher and Richard Brown were inspiring and never allowed me to rest on illusory laurels; Sarah Fitzsimmons did all of that and became a friend. Thanks to the University of Sheffield English department, particularly Bill McDonnell and Dominic Shellard for encouraging me to pursue independent research early on. The Manchester department has been inspiring – particular thanks to David Alderson, Liam Harte, David Matthews, Anastasia Valassopoulos, and to Anke Bernau, who might not realise the impact her friendship and wise counsel has had. The thesis has benefitted immeasurably from many conversations with Alex Beaumont, Veronica Barnsley, Rose Deller, Michael Durrant, Kristin Gifford, James Leach, Rena Jackson, Caroline Magennis, Jade Munslow-Ong, Jane Stedman, Matt Whittle and Poppy Vardy. I’ve benefitted immeasurably too. 6 Special thanks to Clara Bradbury-Rance for SNL, critique and encouragement, too often from afar; to Jonny Rodgers for asking big existential questions late in to the evening; to Phil O’Brien for wry humour and shared enthusiasm for Gordon Burn; to John Roache for long discourses, cheering and challenging me. I am very grateful to Iain Bailey for consistent kindness and good advice; and to Rebecca Pohl for incisive thinking, staunch co-editorship and stauncher friendship. Laurence Potts and Edward Lewis are brilliant and have provided me with vital meals and wine. Samantha Fitch, Gemma Hyslop, David Miller, Eleanor Carter, Gabby Best and Sophie Alderson deserve medals for unstinting support, fun and roundabout conversations over many

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