The Politics of Community in Contemporary British Fiction Peter Matthew Kieran ELY a Thesis Submitted to Kingston University In
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1 The Politics of Community in Contemporary British Fiction Peter Matthew Kieran ELY A thesis submitted to Kingston University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy February 2019 2 Acknowledgements So many people have helped to make this thesis happen. My supervisor Sara Upstone has been a most constant, generous and challenging interlocutor. Also, I thank Tina Chanter and Peter Hallward for their help on some chapters, as well as the English and Philosophy departments at Kingston University, the students and staff of which have been a continual source of inspiration. Particular thanks are warranted for Alva Gotby, Chris Law, Iain Campbell, Isabell Dahms, Robert Kiely, Katie McCain and Michael Washington who have offered many useful insights for my project. The warmest thanks are due to my family who have been so generous in their support for this project. Abstract This thesis draws on the work of philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy to propose ‘community’ as a conceptual and hermeneutical figure that opens up productive possibilities in the study of contemporary British literature. Community is advanced as a form of political ontology, which moves beyond contingent appearance toward radical possibilities for transformation in the current political landscape. Particular attention is paid to the way in which community is ‘put to work’ as part of the operation of the capitalist state, where community emerges as a central site of political contestation. Community is demonstrated as offering ways of rethinking the figure of ‘politics’ itself, opening avenues for developing its meaning through emergent theories of ‘gender’, the ‘queer’ and ‘trans’. Community is addressed in the space of literature and representation, where Nancy’s figure of ‘myth interrupted’ is presented as an important dimension of communitarian thought. Through interrogating the representability of community, its mythic foundations are subjected to a process of radical openness that allows for a vibrant and dynamic form of community to emerge. Situating these capacities in the works of authors Jackie Kay, Jon McGregor and Ali Smith, literature is presented as a singular space through which communitarian possibility can be glimpsed. The conceptual figures of ‘death’, ‘gender transformation’ and ‘magic’ are proposed as offering new possibilities in our understanding of community, demonstrating how literature can offer productive and innovative ways of reimagining our understanding of community in the contemporary moment. In this way, this thesis contributes to ongoing debates about the significance of ‘community’ in contemporary thought, drawing on literature to propose the ‘politics of community’ as a productive avenue for addressing this. 3 Table of Contents Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 5 Why Community? ............................................................................................................................... 5 Philosophies of Community: The Problem of ‘Immanence’ ............................................................. 12 The Multiple Axes of Community...................................................................................................... 16 Structure and Method in Community ............................................................................................... 21 Chapter 1: The Politics of Community: Unworking, Work, Idleness ............................ 25 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 25 Political Ontology: Désœuvrement and Negativity .......................................................................... 29 Ontology and the ‘Ethical Turn’ ........................................................................................................ 34 Community Beyond the Subject ...................................................................................................... 39 There is No One Community: Pluralizing the Political ..................................................................... 42 Social Reproduction and the Politics of the Riot .............................................................................. 46 Community and the 2011 UK Riots .................................................................................................. 50 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 58 Chapter 2: Representing Community: On Myth and Form ............................................ 60 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 60 The Politics of Form in Contemporary Critique ................................................................................ 63 The Social Basis of Form: Towards an Ontology ............................................................................... 70 Community and Myth ....................................................................................................................... 74 Myth Interrupted: A New Mythology of Form ................................................................................. 79 Literary Form in Ali Smith.................................................................................................................. 84 The Collision of Forms: Literary Community .................................................................................... 91 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................................ 96 Chapter 3: Queer Community in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet ................................................ 98 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................... 98 Writing on the Margins of the Real ................................................................................................. 106 Writing ‘Trans’: A Non-Transcended Body ...................................................................................... 114 The Community of Gender .............................................................................................................. 127 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 132 Chapter 4: Community of the Dead: Mourning and Redemption in Jon McGregor ... 134 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 134 4 What Remains? .............................................................................................................................. 137 The Impossible Communication of Death ....................................................................................... 142 The Impossible ‘We’ as Impossible Community ............................................................................. 152 The Politics of Mourning ................................................................................................................. 158 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 170 Chapter 5: Magical Community in Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy .................................... 173 Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 173 Magic in Ali Smith ........................................................................................................................... 179 Magical Language: Claude Cahun’s Magic Mirror ........................................................................... 181 Ali Smith: Literature as Magic Community ..................................................................................... 192 Ali Smith: Magical Encounters ........................................................................................................ 202 Conclusion ...................................................................................................................................... 209 Thesis Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 212 Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 215 5 ‘The political domain that remains for us is the domain of the possible’1 (Georges Bataille, letter to Dionys Mascolo 1958) ‘There is no such thing as society’2 (Margaret Thatcher, ‘Interview for Woman’s Own’) Why Community? Shortly after winning a landslide electoral victory leading to her third term as UK Prime Minister in September 1987, Margaret Thatcher gave an interview with the magazine Woman’s Own in which she offered a broad and frank summation of her political vision and her plans for the future. Of all she said in the interview, however, one statement would gain widespread notoriety, becoming emblematic of perhaps her entire career. Responding to the hypothetical claim ‘I am homeless, the Government must house me!’, she argued there is no structure, be it government,