Will Spook You For Real. Inspiring Societal Anxieties in Popular Forms of Fiction

This study examines a wide range of strategies used in fiction to trigger a specific feeling or mood in the reader, i.e. anxiety regarding the social constructs they live in, and their specific positions within these constructs. For this purpose, the focus is on popular fiction - "those books that everyone reads" (Glover and McCracken 2012:1). In addition, internet-based forms of popular fiction have been included in order to appropriately represent the scope of the field of popular reading material in the 21st century. This encompasses web-based contemporary legends, which share a number of characteristics - above all, conventional genres or themes - with what has traditionally been referred to as popular fiction. All these texts are treated as fiction, and analysed in regard to their designs of leaving recipients in a state of societal unease. On a broad basis consisting of not only literary theory but also philosophical history, folklore theory and socio-political concepts, a basic recipe is formulated and consequently substantiated in analyses of a range of texts from the core genres of popular fiction

Elasticity and Hegemony: A Brief History of Addiction Narrative in the Postwar United States

The 20th century has demonstrated a great diversity of thought when it comes to defining addiction: a phenomenon that has been supposed to be everything from a chronic brain disease to a moral failing. Given that range, literary studies of addiction are often led to define addiction in narrow ways rather than examine the dynamic character of addiction over time. While previous works offer insight into specific forms of addiction at specific times, there is currently no study in literary and cultural studies that addresses the ongoing history of addictions meaning(s) in detail. Building on the work of scholars from diverse fieldsincluding cultural studies, literary theory, Marxism, psychoanalysis, the social sciences, medical science and public policythe following dissertation proposes a novel methodology for examining addiction literature that is not limited to any single perspective. Its analysis proceeds by way of what I call addictive realism: a combination of social, historical, chemical, and aesthetic forces that work in tandem to produce plausible, compelling and engaging versions of addiction. Every narrative renders addiction according to certain conventionsplot, character, conflict, climax, conclusion, etc.and in so doing creates a stylized, edited, selected version of something real. Broadly, the work of this dissertation attempts to understand those styles historically, as they adapt and mutate given new ideological and aesthetic paradigms. Put simply, this dissertation attempts to understand the why of how America has told the story of addiction. It examines cultural works dating from roughly 1950, focusing largely on heroin memoirs and novels. Each chapter sets up a dynamic analysis between at least two literary texts, examining them in light of key political, social, and scientific paradigms relevant to their publication and reception. Ultimately, it elucidates several key dynamics that are common to literary productions of addiction in America, finding that literature has had a unique influence on the ongoing history of addictive thought. Due to narratives ability to capture and transmit the first-hand experience of users in a meaningful way, it has been, and continues to be, a valuable compliment and counterpoint to political, philosophical, and empirical theories of addiction

The neo-historical aesthetic: mediations of historical narrative in post-postmodern fiction

This thesis defines the neo-historical aesthetic: a post-postmodern literary response to postmodern theories about the limitations of narrative for accessing the past. Variably present in each of the fictional texts considered here, I argue that the neo-historical aesthetic embraces the radical flexibility of postmodernism’s deconstructions of narrative and maintains a commitment to coherent narrative (after historiographic metafiction). My identification of the neo-historical aesthetic is a substantial, original contribution to knowledge, establishing the ongoing development of post-postmodernism in contemporary culture and diagnosing a contemporary relationship to history, fiction, and narrative. Chapter one defines post-postmodernism as self-contradictory, the product of neoliberal consumer capitalism, via theorists such as Jeffrey T. Nealon, Fredric Jameson, and Peter Boxall. Redefining ‘authenticity’, through #liveauthentic on Instagram, further discerns a changed relationship to ‘truth’ in post-postmodern culture. I demonstrate the neo-historical manifestation of this with analyses of anachronisms and narrative in Emma Donoghue’s Life Mask (2004), Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016), and Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall (2009). Chapter two recognises the longstanding significance of women’s historical fiction, via Diana Wallace, arguing that Sarah Waters’s middlebrowness is (problematically) imbricated within her invention of neo-historical, post-postmodern histories for those marginalised from canonical history. Defining the middlebrow, alongside Beth Driscoll and Nicola Humble, and analysing representations of class in accessible novels The Night Watch (2006) and The Paying Guests (2014) positions that middlebrow as both influenced by and resistant to postmodernism. Chapter three analyses historical fictions about ghosts—novel Dark Matter (2010), and films The Others (2001) and The Awakening (2011)—connecting the neo-historical aesthetic to neo-Victorianism and the Gothic. Using Jacques Derrida’s and Peter Buse and Andrew Stott’s works, I explore how the logic of haunted spectrality, which is ontologically uncertain and combines temporalities, encourages this coexistence of postmodern and pre-postmodern relationships to narrative. This is visible in Derridean spectral, trace meanings (e.g. Waters’s use of ‘queer’) and haunted proleptic ironies in Wolf Hall. Via Buse and Stott, in the fourth chapter I explore how contemporary literary steampunk seeks to resolve this; its solid technologies and bodies effectively de-spectralise those real/not-real neo-historical ontologies. This thesis articulates a post-postmodern, self-contradictory relationship to history and narrative as manifested in the previously unrecognised neo-historical aesthetic. Haunted and ontologically uncertain, but accessibly middlebrow, the neo-historical aesthetic’s anachronisms, proleptic ironies, and non-chronological temporalities do history in fiction

Mapping Planet Auschwitz: Non-Mimetic Writing and the Holocaust in Anglo-American Fiction

The discourse surrounding the Holocaust is one of the unapproachable, the unknowable, and the unimaginable. Over the last seventy years the Holocaust has been compared to an earthquake, another planet, another universe, a rupture, or void. It has been said to be beyond language, or else have its own incomprehensible tongue, beyond art, and beyond thought. In fact, though the terminology differs, it has consistently been rendered as Other. Thus it seems peculiar that very few studies have been conducted on Holocaust literature which is non-mimetic in nature; that is, the impulse of literature which is not concerned with mimicking reality but which routinely engages the Other, the uncanny, the grotesque, and the inhuman. Certainly there is no shortage of primary material. This thesis will establish a foundation for future discussion of the non-mimetic and the Holocaust, surveying a wide range of common themes and approaches to the genocide in Anglo-American fiction. By analysing this fiction, this thesis aims to examine contemporary relationships and attitudes to the Holocaust, revealing how the writers (and perhaps their societies) comprehend the incomprehensible, and in what ways Holocaust memory has changed and is changing, particularly in the modern era. The texts in this thesis are drawn from a wide range of authors and hierarchies within the literary sphere, as such in order to impose a structure of sometimes disparate narratives, I have proposed several themes. A number of theoretical readings have been consolidated into the thesis from mainstream Holocaust studies, trauma studies, science fiction studies, and more; with some texts receiving their first in depth critical analysis. Ultimately, this thesis aims to prove that non-mimetic fiction can relativise the traumatic occurrences without normalising them. Thus, though a vastly understudied body of work in this context, non-mimetic fiction is in fact a crucial component in our understanding our relationship to the Holocaust, and perhaps to traumatic events more generally

Origins and Departures: Childhood in the Liberal Order

Central to most forms of liberal social and political philosophy is the idea of the free and equal, self-governing person. And yet we do not come into the world as autonomous and accountable individuals; at best, this is the outcome of a long process of development and education which (in many societies) now extends throughout the first quarter of the average life. During this period of childhood, moreover, we are governed, not by ourselves, but by others. This dissertation examines the paradoxical position of children in liberal theory, who (as Locke put it) though not born in a state of freedom and equality, are born to it. In particular, the dissertation's three parts examine three interrelated questions. First, what is the basis of the paternalistic authority that is exercised over children? Second, what is the moral basis of the special rights of parents over particular children? And third, when, if ever, are inequalities of education and opportunity justified, when these emerge from decentralized authority over children in families and local communities? Part I: On what grounds do we deny children the personal freedom we accord to adults? The standard liberal view is that we are "born free as we are born rational" (Locke). That is, we are only born with the potential for freedom and rationality. Others ought to respect our liberty once we have, with age, become sufficiently reasonable to govern ourselves. On this view, a person's age matters only insofar as it is correlated with reason. I, on the contrary, argue that we should recognize age to have independent moral significance. This is because the educational paternalism at the beginning of a life does not impede our ability to carry out our life plans in the same way as would similar interference in the middle of a life. This explains why it is appropriate for parents and educators to aspire to more than fostering the minimal competence necessary for just getting by in life. Part II: What is the moral basis and extent of parental rights? Typically, liberals assume that governmental authority is only justified insofar as it serves the interests of the governed. Is parental authority the same, or is it partly justified by the interests of the "governors" as well (e.g., the interest parents have in passing on their values to another generation)? While many contemporary philosophers have followed Locke in describing parental authority as a fiduciary power, I suggest that Hegel provides a richer account in two respects. First, because Hegel has a more nuanced account of the differences between natural right, personal morality, and social ethics, he has the resources for a more sophisticated philosophy of moral education than Locke. From this we can derive a more detailed account of parental duties, as well as see why, without the help of schools, individual families are not generally well-suited to educate children for the modern world. Second, Hegel's conceptions of love and of social roles help illuminate the interests that adults have in rearing their children. Part III: When, if ever, are inequalities in the provision of education justified? While parents have traditionally been responsible for providing for their children's education, this role has increasingly been taken on by the state. In Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court held that public education must be made available "on equal terms" to all. But how is this to be understood? Does it require that the state spend roughly the same amount on educating every child? Or does it require that the state attempt to compensate children who have fewer educational advantages in the home to even out life chances? Or should educational equality be understood in a more modest way: an equal opportunity for a decent or adequate education? I claim that, assuming a rich and multi-faceted conception of adequate outcomes, educational inequalities above the adequacy threshold that emerge from differences in native ability or family background are not necessarily unjust. However, a norm of equal treatment establishes a defeasible presumption of resource equality in the public school system, once the adequacy threshold is met. I allow that inequalities between local communities may be justifiable if communities have chosen to tax themselves at different rates, but not if the school-finance system permits some communities to draw on significantly larger revenue bases than others