ETHICAL DESIRE: BETRAYAL IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH FICTION A Dissertation by SOO YEON KIM Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2010 Major Subject: English ETHICAL DESIRE: BETRAYAL IN CONTEMPORARY BRITISH FICTION A Dissertation by SOO YEON KIM Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee David McWhirter Committee Members Mary Ann O’Farrell Theodore George Elizabeth Ho Head of Department M. Jimmie Killingsworth May 2010 Major Subject: English iii ABSTRACT Ethical Desire: Betrayal in Contemporary British Fiction. (May 2010) Soo Yeon Kim, B.A., Seoul National University; M.A., Seoul National University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. David McWhirter This dissertation investigates representations of betrayal in works by Hanif Kureishi, Salman Rushdie, Irvine Welsh, and Alan Hollinghurst. In rethinking “bad” acts of betrayal as embodying an ethical desire not for the good but for “the better,” this dissertation challenges the simplistic good/bad binary as mandated by neo-imperialist, late capitalist, and heteronormative society. In doing so, my project intervenes in the current paradigm of ethical literary criticism, whose focus on the canon and the universal Good gained from it runs a risk of underwriting moral majoritarianism and judgmentalism. I argue that some contemporary narratives of betrayal open up onto a new ethic, insofar as they reveal the unethical totalization assumed in ethical literary criticism’s pursuit of the normative Good. The first full chapter analyzes how Kureishi’s Intimacy portrays an ethical adultery as it breaks away from the tenacious authority of monogamy in portraying adult intimacy in literature, what I call the narrative of “coupledom.” Instead, Intimacy imagines a new narrative of “singledom” unconstrained by the marriage/adultery dyad. In the next chapter on Fury, a novel about Manhattan’s celebrity culture, I interrogate iv the current discourse of cosmopolitanism and propose that Rushdie’s novel exposes how both cosmopolitanism and nationalism are turned into political commodities by media- frenzied and celebrity-obsessed metropolitan cultural politics. In a world where an ethical choice between cosmopolitanism and nationalism is impossible to make, Fury achieves an ethical act of treason against both. The next chapter scrutinizes Mark Renton’s “ripping off” of his best mates and his critique of capitalism in Trainspotting and Porno . If Renton betrays his friends in order to leave the plan(e) of capitalism in the original novel, he satirizes the trustworthiness of trust in Porno by crushing his best mate’s blind trust in business “ethics” and by ripping him off again. The last full chapter updates the link between aesthetics and ethics in post-AIDS contexts in Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty . In portraying without judgment beautiful, dark-skinned, dying homosexual bodies, Hollinghurst’s novel “fleshes out” the traditional sphere of aesthetics that denies the low and impure pleasures frequently paired with gay sex. v DEDICATION To My Son Who Makes Me Laugh and Cry vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT .............................................................................................................. iii DEDICATION ........................................................................................................... v TABLE OF CONTENTS .......................................................................................... vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1 Ethical Literary Criticism and Its Discontents .............................. 3 Post-Moral Criticism and Contemporary British Fiction .............. 15 II AN ETHICAL ADULTERY: HANIF KUREISHI’S ITIMACY ....... 28 Adultery or, the Logic of Heterosexual Coupledom ..................... 33 Intimacy : Betrayal, Desire, Ethics .................................................. 41 III TREASON IN SALMAN RUSHDIE’S FURY ................................... 60 Cosmopolitanism Post-Festum ....................................................... 65 Radical Cosmopolitanism: On Abandoning Allegiance ................. 74 IV “RIPPING-OFF”: IRVINE WELSH’S TRAISPOTTIG AND PORO ..................................................................................... 105 Reading Welsh or, the Logic of Cultural Studies ........................... 105 Trainspotting ................................................................................. 119 Porno .............................................................................................. 137 V BETRAYED BY BEAUTY: ALAN HOLLINGHURST’S THE LIE OF BEAUTY ...................................................................... 161 “‘Aesthetic Value’ Is No More or Other Than Cultural Capital” ... 166 “Nothing Is More Urgent…Than a Destruction of Aesthetics” ..... 179 VI SUMMARY .......................................................................................... 205 vii Page NOTES ...................................................................................................................... 209 WORKS CITED ........................................................................................................ 227 VITA .......................................................................................................................... 255 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Robert: Oh…not much more to say on that subject, really, is there? Emma: What do you consider the subject to be? Robert: Betrayal. Harold Pinter, Betrayal (1977) Despite Robert’s savvy remark, conveyed in the slightly feigned tone of disinterest, there is no denying the attraction of the theme of betrayal in western literature. Transhistorically, the theme of betrayal dates back to Greek tragedy and the Bible, constitutes a crucial motif in medieval court literature and the Shakespearean opus, gives birth to fiction, and pervades the modernist novels of James Joyce, Henry James, and many others. Transcending any categorizing principles such as genre, style, and the high art/mass culture distinction, plots of political treason and marital infidelity have been avidly narrated in every venue from serious literary canons and independent films to popular contemporary cultural products, such as novels by Dan Brown, chick lit and lad lit, and Hollywood films. The keen exploration of various forms and meanings of betrayal in numerous texts may well have resulted in a better understanding of the topic. Yet in the words of Leszek Kołakowski, betrayal “excludes the possibility that [it] can be a good thing…it entails disapproval” (72). Judith Shklar wonders why we never lose interest in betrayal for all its “ordinariness and frequency” (138). To the contrary, our responses to being betrayed or witnessing an act of betrayal occur to others are ____________ This dissertation follows the MLA style as specified in MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers . 2 “sharp and intense” (Ibid.), even though who has betrayed whom for what reason is often left unclear and debatable: ergo the title of Shklar’s book chapter, “The Ambiguities of Betrayal.” In either case, betrayal remains a deeply stigmatized behavior, all the more despicable for the fact that we know that it is bad, but we cannot do without it. This dissertation, then, is an attempt to create a new positive literacy of betrayal by investigating representations of “bad” betrayal in contemporary British fiction: Hanif Kureishi’s Intimacy (1998), Salman Rushdie’s Fury (2001), Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting (1993) and its long-awaited sequel, Porno (2002), and Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty (2004). By redeeming the value of betrayal, I do not mean to justify apologetically the use of betrayal as a narrational necessity, which provides the novel an antithesis to be overcome on its way to a happy ending. Nor does this dissertation wish to argue the universal goodness of perfidy portrayed in any novel. Rather, I am interested in the ways that acts of betrayal call into question the simplistic binary division between good and bad stipulated by late capitalist, neo-imperialist, and heteronormative society. In other words, by shifting focus from the Good—the ultimatum of moral philosophy—to morally branded desires triggering betrayal, my dissertation illuminates a space of irony in which a breach of trust or allegiance reveals the unethical totalization of normative or consensual ethics, what Alain Badiou condemns as “ethical ideologies” (2001; 58). In this space lies a new ethical possibility opened up by betrayal. I call this treacherous yet transvaluating desire an “ethical desire” for its continuous crossing over boundaries in search of the “better” beyond good 3 and evil. Accordingly, my dissertation intervenes in the current paradigm of ethical literary criticism, whose focus on the canon and the general Good gained from it runs a risk of underwriting moral majoritarianism and judgmentalism. What follows outlines the development of ethical literary criticism. In adding the value of “wicked” betrayal to the realm of ethics, I hope to enlarge the discourse of ethical literary criticism which, constrained by the good and bad bifurcation, cannot fully comprehend the popularity and significance of post-1945 narratives of betrayal in Britain. Ethical Literary