Debating Water : Posthuman Watery Relationality as an Alter-Imaginary to Neoliberal Capitalist Individuality in Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy

In this thesis, I examine Ali Smith’s novel Girl Meets Boy ([2007] 2015). The novel is part of the Myths series, published by Canongate. The Myths series contains retellings of myths written by contemporary authors. Set in Scotland in 2007, Girl Meets Boy is a retelling of the myth of Iphis and Ianthe from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. I am interested in the critique of neoliberal capitalism in the novel, articulated through the material substance of (bottled) water. Following the socially conscious Modernist literary tradition and as part of the relational turn in literature, Girl Meets Boy utilises the contemporary debate surrounding water and its meanings to critique neoliberal capitalist ideology and practices. My approach is influenced by critique of neoliberalism and capitalism, and posthuman feminism. A theoretical framework for posthuman relationality and interconnection is provided by a consideration of Astrida Neimanis’s figuration ‘bodies of water,’ which I utilise to investigate the ethics of posthuman watery relationality in Girl Meets Boy. On the basis of my analysis, I argue that Girl Meets Boy focuses on the debate surrounding water and its meanings in order to critique neoliberal capitalism. Furthermore, I argue that the novel presents an ethics of posthuman watery relationality as an alter-imaginary to neoliberal capitalist individualism

Ali Smith’s Girl Meets Boy: Exploration of Homosexuality

The present research paper is the extensive analyses of Ali Smith’s seminal novel Girl Meets Boy by applying Queer Theory as a tool. As a qualitative research, this paper is the study of queer behavior of characters of the fiction which questions over the established heterosexual social conceptions. The authoritative concept of heterosexual bond has been challenged with the idea of queerness or homosexual bond. The character Anthea and Robin cross the social life of heterosexuality and got the freedom physically and sexually in their lesbian love. As revolutionary characters, they question over the dominant narrative of heterosexuality and create a new test for readers. This fiction portrays the myth of sexual minorities in a new way. Their sexual behavior portrays shifting notion of sexuality because of awareness of gender biasness. It also proves that the identity is cultural construct and the characters have created distinct identity going against the so called socially established sexual behaviours

Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy (2007)

Recommends Smith's novel, which rewrites classical myth through the love story of a modern-day lesbian couple, as challenging "conventional notions of identity on multiple levels," pointing to "the transformative potential of queer identity to embrace a clever reconciliation of local community and cosmopolitan mindset," and offering "a reading of Scottish identity that is culturally progressive and politically sound.

Ali Smith, Girl Meets Boy (2007)

Recommends Smith\u27s novel, which rewrites classical myth through the love story of a modern-day lesbian couple, as challenging conventional notions of identity on multiple levels, pointing to the transformative potential of queer identity to embrace a clever reconciliation of local community and cosmopolitan mindset, and offering a reading of Scottish identity that is culturally progressive and politically sound

"Reader, I married him/ her": Ali Smith, Ovid, and queer translation

This essay discusses Ali Smith's queer translation of Ovid Metamorphoses 9.666-797 in her 2007 novel Girl meets boy. I argue that Smith's presentation of a contemporary gender-queer Iphis and Ianthe not only fictionalizes the critical argument proposed by Judith Butler's Gender Trouble, but repoliticizes Ovid for our modern world. Building upon theories of feminist translation, I first draw upon Butler to propose a queer translation praxis. Reading Girl meets boy through this Butlerian lens, which foregrounds multiplicity and insists upon the politically subversive potential of repetition—that is, the production of queer copies that disrupt the original—I illuminate how Smith translates, re-translates, and re-writes Ovid’s text, making queer identities that are apparently made to disappear in the Latin original visible, or 'loosed' in translation. Second, I draw out the queer implications of Smith's use of repetition throughout the novel, in which three alternative translations of Ovid’s tale appear in the novel, in literal, dialogue, and creatively transformed forms. Finally, I draw out some of the political issues at play in Smith’s choice to translate Ovid's tale of Iphis and Ianthe in 2007 before same-sex marriages were legalized in the UK

“Girl meets boy”: postcyborg ethics, individual identity and collective rights in the posthuman age

Taking as a point of departure the novel’s setting in a world controlled by online networks and global corporations, together with human beings’ position as decoders of the excess of information in contemporary culture, this essay provides a posthuman interpretation of Ali Smith’s "Girl meets boy" (2007) under the lenses of Rosi Braidotti’s postulates on posthumanity and Heidi Campbell’s postcyborg ethics. Thus, I analyse the ways in which the novel probes into the limits of humanity and individual identity as related to virtual environments, body politics and sexuality. Attention is also paid to the novel’s raising of collective awareness and social struggle against injustice and the oppression of women, homosexuals and third-world citizens as a response to their invisible, naturalized dehumanization by the contemporary global politics of consumer culture

An intertextual analysis of the novel Girl Meets Boy and the use of feminist and queer theory by Ali Smith in her reception of the tale of Iphis from Ovid's Metamorphoses (9.666-797)

In this thesis I discuss Ali Smith’s reworking of Ovid’s tale of the girl-boy Iphis from his Metamorphoses (9.666-797) in her 2006 novel Girl meets boy. I examine how Smith has brought Ovid to life for twenty-first century readers, first through an exploration of feminist and queer critical readings of Ovid and the influence of those theories on Smith’s method of classical reception, and secondly through an analysis of intertextual references. My matrix of interpretation draws upon the theories and experimental writing of Julia Kristeva, Monique Wittig and Judith Butler, alongside an examination of intertextual allusions to Ovid himself, Virginia Woolf, John Lyly and William Shakespeare. I argue that Ovid readily lends himself to feminist readings of his work, and that by combining critical theory and creative writing, Smith establishes a new and liberating queer feminist model for classical reception

Down the Stream: The Evolution of Queer Stream-of-Consciousness Novels Through the Works of Virginia Woolf and Ali Smith

This thesis attempts to understand the evolution of the stream-of-consciousness genre as it applies to, is written by, or centers queer people. Through generous Marxist-feminist readings of the works of Virginia Woolf and Ali Smith—used in this project as exemplars of the genre—it attempts to understand the differences within both the formal and philosophical/political outlook of the two authors. Specifically looking at Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse and Smith’s Hotel World, The Accidental, and Girl Meets Boy, this project posits that Smith, intentionally or not, has effectively re-written the basic narratives and re-visited the same themes as Woolf, but with different philosophical/political outlooks and forms. Additionally, it posits that within the stream-of-consciousness genre form and philosophy/politic inform one another in counterintuitive ways and, furthermore, that the genre is uniquely capable of speaking to how members of the queer proletariat might understand themselves both as people and as political agents

GÊNERO-QUEER, AS METAMORFOSES DO HUMANO E O PÓS-HUMANO, EM GIRL MEETS BOY, DE ALI SMITH | GENDERQUEER, HUMAN METAMORPHOSES AND THE POSTHUMAN, IN ALI SMITH’S GIRL MEETS BOY

Resumo: Analiso aqui como Ali Smith, em Girl Meets Boy (2007), aborda questões relevantes nos dias de hoje, trazidas tanto pelos Estudos de Gênero, como pela Teoria Queer e pelos debates acerca do Pós-Humanismo. Por meio de uma narrativa que experimenta e brinca com a linguagem, Smith desenvolve uma espécie de tratado político-poético, em que reconta o mito de Iphis e Ianthe, para explorar diversas possibilidades de metamorfoses de gêneros, identidades e subjetividades. As transformações de Anthea permitem que Smith elabore e problematize um humano descentrado, sinestésico, pós-humano e pós-antropocêntrico, cuja subjetividade se constrói, como diria Rosi Braidotti (2015), na “interconexão do humano com o ambiente não humano”. A personagem usa seu corpo transgressor para marcar literalmente, por meio de performances, grafites e cartazes, seu protesto contra a indústria da água, o sexismo e a conformidade de gênero. É possível, então, estabelecer um diálogo com a forma em que Braidotti entende a subjetividade pós-humana como material, relacional, incorporada e “firmemente localizada” em um lugar específico com a construção de Anthea como conectada com a natureza e a cultura, ocupando um espaço de crítica contundente ao humanismo eurocêntrico, ao capitalismo global, à heteronormatividade e ao binarismo dos gêneros. Abstract: Here, I analyze how Ali Smith, in Girl Meets Boy (2007) deals with some very relevant contemporary issues raised by Gender Studies, Queer Theory and by the debates about the Posthuman.  In a quite experimental and playful narrative, Smith develops a sort of a poetic-political treatise in which she recasts the myth of Iphis and Ianthe in order to explore a plethora of possible metamorphoses of gendered bodies, identities and subjectivities. Anthea’s transformations allow Smith to problematize and elaborate on the existence of a synesthetic, decentered posthuman body, whose subjectivity is built upon the “inter-connection between the human and the non-human environment, as Rosi Braidotti would put it (2015, p. 40).  The character uses her transgressive body to literally inscribe her protest against the water industry, sexism and gender conformity, through performances, graffiti and posters all over the town. It is possible then to establish a dialogue between the way Braidotti undestands posthuman subjectivity as material, relational, embodied and “firmly located” in a specific place and Anthea as being connected with nature and culture, so as to occupy a space of compelling criticism of  Eurocentric Humanism, Global Capitalism, heteronormativity and gender binarism.Keywords: Gender; Queer; Metamorphoses; The Posthuman