‘I must climb inside the skin of the girl’: becoming posthuman in British fiction 1950-1980

This thesis responds to a question Alexander Weheliye poses in Habeas Viscus: ‘what different modalities of the human come to light if we do not take the liberal humanist figure of Man as the master-subject but focus on how humanity has been imagined and lived by those subjects excluded from this domain?’. Concentrating on fiction published in Britain between 1950 and 1980, a point in history in which that ‘master-subject’ comes under scrutiny and under pressure, this thesis reads mid-century literature through the lens of the posthuman. In doing so, the chapters that follow offer a fresh perspective on texts by Angela Carter, Barbara Comyns, Kamala Markandaya, Barbara Pym, and Muriel Spark, developing an approach to reading those texts that embraces the diversity of form and style in post-war fiction. This approach draws on posthuman and posthuman adjacent theory to show how mid-century literature critiques what Weheliye calls the master-subject and what I call the Human, a hierarchical way of organising the world predicated on bounded, agential subjectivity. Anticipating what is now termed critical posthumanism, British post-war fiction makes connections between acts of violence and the hierarchical Human to link racism and misogyny in post-war society with the dominance of Weheliye’s master-subject. Going beyond that systemic critique, the texts I focus on in this thesis also explore other ways of being and knowing. Invoking a fluid poetics that turns improbable and impossible bodies into posthuman ‘bodyings’, these novels invite attention to a mutable, affective ontology ‘outside the world of Man’

The snakes and ladders of legal participation: litigants in person and the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights

This article reviews the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights for litigants in person (LIPs). LIPs operate in a system that was not designed for them and so challenge the norm of fully represented parties that the system has evolved to expect, creating potential risks for their Article 6 rights. The jurisprudence on Article 6 reveals the centrality of effective participation as a requirement for fulfilling the right to a fair trial. The article views the jurisprudential interpretation against original and significant empirical research data on how LIPs participate in civil and family court processes. It applies a conceptual analysis of legal participation to consider what might constitute effective participation in court proceedings and, through the empirical evidence, categorizes the intellectual, practical, emotional, and attitudinal barriers that LIPs face in their legal proceedings, which can constitute risks to their rights under Article 6

Exploring sustainable scenarios in debt-based social-ecological systems: The case for palm oil production in Indonesia

A debt-based economy requires the accumulation of more and more debt to finance economic growth, while future economic growth is needed to repay the debt, and so the cycle continues. Despite global debt reaching unprecedented levels, little research has been done to understand the impacts of debt dynamics on environmental sustainability. Here, we explore the environmental impacts of the debt-growth cycle in Indonesia, the world's largest debt-based producer of palm oil. Our empirical Agent-Based Model analyses the future effects (2018-2050) of power (im)balance scenarios between debt-driven economic forces (i.e. banks, firms), and conservation forces, on two ecosystem services (food production, climate regulation) and biodiversity. The model shows the trade-offs and synergies among these indicators for Business As Usual as compared to alternative scenarios. Results show that debt-driven economic forces can partially support environmental conservation, provided the state's role in protecting the environment is reinforced. Our analysis provides a lesson for developing countries that are highly dependent on debt-based production systems: sustainable development pathways can be achievable in the short and medium terms; however, reaching long-term sustainability requires reduced dependency on external financial powers, as well as further government intervention to protect the environment from the rough edges of the market economy

Aquilegia, Vol. 13 No. 3, May-June 1989: Newsletter of the Colorado Native Plant Society

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