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DOCTOR of PHILOSOPHY Our Best Selves: J. G. Ballard, Jennifer Egan

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DOCTOR of PHILOSOPHY Our Best Selves: J. G. Ballard, Jennifer Egan DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Our Best Selves: J. G. Ballard, Jennifer Egan, and Conceptions of Happiness Under Neoliberalism Malone, Patricia Award date: 2018 Awarding institution: Queen's University Belfast Link to publication Terms of use All those accessing thesis content in Queen’s University Belfast Research Portal are subject to the following terms and conditions of use • Copyright is subject to the Copyright, Designs and Patent Act 1988, or as modified by any successor legislation • Copyright and moral rights for thesis content are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners • A copy of a thesis may be downloaded for personal non-commercial research/study without the need for permission or charge • Distribution or reproduction of thesis content in any format is not permitted without the permission of the copyright holder • When citing this work, full bibliographic details should be supplied, including the author, title, awarding institution and date of thesis Take down policy A thesis can be removed from the Research Portal if there has been a breach of copyright, or a similarly robust reason. If you believe this document breaches copyright, or there is sufficient cause to take down, please contact us, citing details. Email: [email protected] Supplementary materials Where possible, we endeavour to provide supplementary materials to theses. This may include video, audio and other types of files. We endeavour to capture all content and upload as part of the Pure record for each thesis. Note, it may not be possible in all instances to convert analogue formats to usable digital formats for some supplementary materials. We exercise best efforts on our behalf and, in such instances, encourage the individual to consult the physical thesis for further information. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 PATRICIA MALONE BA, MA ‘Our Best Selves: J. G. Ballard, Jennifer Egan, and ConCeptions of Happiness Under Neoliberalism.’ SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 14/09/2017 ABSTRACT In this thesis, I seek to explore conceptions of happiness under neoliberalism through an investigation of contemporary literature, looking at the work of J. G. Ballard and Jennifer Egan. I have sought to offer a loosely Foucauldian reading of the way in which happiness has come to operate as a form of neoliberal governmentality. I build on existing accounts of how a form of neoliberal ‘common sense’ comes to institute processes of self-management and self- maximisation and pay significant attention to an under-represented area of enquiry in exploring how neoliberal happiness discourse permits and regulates unhappiness as part of its programme. My reading of Ballard moves away from the psychoanalytic context in which he is usually situated to offer an account of his work that recognises its emphasis on the material conditions of life, and highlights a political shift in his late work not yet much commented on. The second half of my thesis, which looks at Jennifer Egan’s work, substantially expands existing scholarship, examining all four of her novels published to date and seeking to offer a comprehensive overview of her current critical position. The comparison between these authors is part of a wider exploration of the function of literature, through which I assess how literature can repeat, resist, and reveal the insidious nature of neoliberal power, and the conceptions of happiness that go with it. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis is dedicated to my father, after a difficult year; to my husband Danny, who has done more for me than any person should reasonably be expected to do, and is better than anyone could hope to be; to my sister, who provided the endless free coffee that allowed me to think I might actually finish it. To my mother, for understanding why I never had time to Skype, and to all my friends, particularly Kimberley O’Brien, my constant companion in misery, and Grace Loughrey, whose own experiences of the precarity of life provided much inspiration. My sincerest thanks to Paul Michael for managing to proofread work that at times even I did not understand. Finally, to my supervisor, Andrew Pepper, who somehow managed to pull me through, against all odds (and reason). May we all continue to struggle on together, in the hopes of beating back the ceaseless tides. With a tip of the hat to Egan, this thesis has a theme tune. At first, after Ballard, I thought it was ‘Death or Glory,’ by The Clash. As all Clash fans know, the future is unwritten. However, I have since realised that it is actually ‘Anthem’ by Leonard Cohen, to whose music I was introduced by my father. “Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in.” 3 Introduction . 2 What We Talk About When We Talk About Neoliberalism: FouCault, Governmentality, and Self-Regulating SubjeCts . 10 Working SubjeCts and Working on the Self . 23 Distress and DissonanCe . 32 Happiness, AffeCt and the PolitiCal ImpliCations of Feeling. 35 On the ‘Productive Imperative’ . 42 What’s Literature Got To Do With It?: Explaining mY approaCh . 43 Looking at Ballard: SYstems and Selfhood . 48 Exploring Egan: Who Are We Now? . 53 In Summation . 58 Chapter 2 BALLARD On Ballard . 66 The PolitiCs of PsyChopathology? . .74 ‘Inner SpaCe’: Ballard, SCienCe FiCtion and the ‘Psy’ SCienCes . 80 Better Off Together: Leisure, CriminalitY, and the ConstruCtion of Community in Cocaine Nights . 85 All Work and No PlaY: Global Elites and the Happiness Imperative in Super- Cannes (An Eden Full of Snakes) . 101 Millennium People: The Culture IndustrY, Class and PreCaritY. 123 Kingdom Come: ‘Lost in the Supermarket’ . 142 CHAPTER 3 EGAN On Egan . .165 ContemporarY AmeriCan LiterarY Culture: New Times, New Selves, New SinCerity? . 171 The Invisible Circus: Promises We Couldn’t Keep . 179 Look at Me: “Let Be Be Finale of Seem” . 200 The Keep: Do Neoliberals Dream of EleCtriC Sheep? . 235 A Visit From the Goon Squad: The DaY the MusiC Died . 256 CONCLUSION . 289 4 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION Introduction In this thesis, I aim to explore the function of literature in the prevailing neoliberal framework of the contemporary moment. The route I have taken into this is the exploration of how conceptualisations of happiness figure in contemporary literature, seeking to identify what is distinct about such conceptions under neoliberalism. By ‘neoliberalism,’ I mean the broad process of the marketisation of all parts of life, and the resultant ‘business ontology’ that proliferates under the guise of common sense in the contemporary moment. The term ‘ business ontology’ is taken from Mark Fisher’s work. It is mentioned briefly in Capitalist Realism, and elaborated on in a 2009 interview, where Fisher said, Business ontology as I understood it was simply the idea that everything is folded inside a business reality system, that the only goals and purposes which count are those that are translatable into business terms. The problem is that Business Ontology has no place for anything like ‘the public.’ It’s time to reinvent the concept of the public; and also for workers in public services to start to drive out business interests and business methods. Up until the [2008] credit crisis, we bought the idea that business people somehow have a better handle on reality than the rest of us can muster. But, after the credit crisis, that’s no longer tenable. And as I say in the book, if businesses can’t be run as businesses, why should public services?1 Of course, this is not what happened after the credit crisis, which was used instead to usher in a period of austerity, with cuts to public services, and to institute a rhetoric of scarcity that has allowed employment to become increasingly destabilised, most notable in the rise of zero hours or causualised contracts.2 Underlying all of this is the fact that these moves are not actually or necessarily “good business practice” unless this practice is defined only by keeping costs low and extracting maximum labour value from workers. What else might “good business practice” look like? Henry Ford famously paid his 1 ‘Questioning Capitalist Realism,” Mark Fisher interviewed by Matthew Fuller, Mute, December 2009. http://www.metamute.org/community/your-posts/questioning-capitalist-realism 2 This is discussed in detail throughout this thesis. 2 workers above the standard rate in order to increase morale and reduce the levels of turnover in his factories; this was a good business practice that also improved the lives of workers. The underlying rationale was economic, but there was also an implicit recognition that the conditions in which people work affect their lives beyond work - this extended to Ford’s paternalistic Socialization Organization, which looked at the type of person a worker was, a paternalistic practice with significant implications for today’s job market.3 The turnover at Ford’s factories was caused by workers taking their labour elsewhere - a core aspect of freedom and check on power built into the market, according to neoliberal economist Milton Friedman – but while the fear of job scarcity pervades, workers are increasingly unlikely to do this, and so become subject to ever worsening conditions under the logic of being “lucky” to have a job.4 This also affects morale and, given that affective or emotional labour is a larger part of work than ever before (as I will explore later), the worker may be too exhausted - physically, mentally, emotionally - to exercise this ‘right’ anyway.5 This framework gestures to the way in which the political dimension of neoliberalism posited by theorists such as Friedman and Friedrich Hayek has been evacuated in the contemporary practice of neoliberalism, which I discuss in more detail below.
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