Man as Animal: Overcoming Ego and Navigating the Wilderness of Jack London in Isolation

This thesis juxtaposes three of Jack London’s novels – The Call of the Wild, The Sea-Wolf, and White Fang, written proximately and early in his career – to trace his developing thoughts on philosophy, morality, and human identity through the lens of animalism in the context of certain environmental influences. By analyzing the similarities between the settings of the three novels, namely their isolation and wilderness, in conjunction with the adaptive and evolutionary changes that its characters undergo (or fail to), one can see how London’s own ambivalence towards the nature of society is addressed and, ultimately, resolved.

The relationship between animal and human is not only limited to being present in London’s work, but rather is metatextually necessary to understand prior to engaging with it; the reader him-/herself takes on the role of the human and cultivates a relationship with the animal protagonist. This thesis establishes that any attempt to distance oneself from London’s canine protagonists stem from a psychological egocentrism that indulges the belief of human exceptionalism and supremacy. 

In his first novel, London deconstructs this prejudice by aligning his audience with a domesticated dog thrust into the brutal world of the Yukon, which he adapts to by growing stronger, abandoning his morals, and achieving independence. His trajectory traces that of London’s idealized Darwinism, wherein the emasculating shackles of cultivated society are cast off in favour of atavism. This character arc is complicated by London’s human characterization of the same trope in The Sea-Wolf, wherein the protagonist is held back from succumbing to the primitive, nihilistic, Social Darwinist beliefs of his brutal counterpart by the feminizing influence of his romantic interest. The anomalous presence of a female character represents London’s concession to the intellectual aspects and indelible traces of civilized society. In White Fang, London incorporates both the dangers of domestication with his newfound appreciation for the camaraderie and inescapability of society, reconciling the two by settling his feral Northern wolf in a comfortable Californian home, yet tempering his subordination with a reminder of the necessity for physical strength and self-sufficiency. 

Taken together, these novels lay out London’s intellectual journey through denunciation of the weakness of societal men, philosophical attempts at justification of Social Darwinism and nihilism, and resultant amalgamated acceptance of civilized life with the necessary experience and abilities rendered by a difficult adaptation to a primitive lifestyle for a time.

Interfering Flesh and the Disappearing Woman: The Clarissa Effect

The eponymous heroine of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa is forever memorialized in her improbably spotless white nightgown. She also famously starves herself over the hundreds of pages leading up to her death at the end of the novel. In this thesis, I work through the entanglements of her self-starvation and her sartorial presence. Including brief commentary on pieces of visual art as well as just literature, I argue that Clarissa is a founding model of a culturally pervasive figure of the disappearing women; through her reliance on the enchanting exteriority of the garment to mask her interior project, the disappearing women is thus able to pursue the zero state of the body in secrecy. Through engagement with various sartorial theories, feminist writings, and as a number of eighteenth century conduct manuals, I explain how Clarissa’s resistance to synecdochal fragmentation and, in turn, capitalization on the blinding effects of sprezzatura, allows her to engage in a horrifyng and deeply interiorized project of feasting, feeding, and disintegration within her body.
In my discussion of the contemporary novel An Experiment in Love, I demonstrate how the figure of the disappearing woman has persevered and evolved across centuries. Finally, bringing in the theories of feminist poststructuralists Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva, I propose a potential site, or rather state, of refuge for the vanishing woman, which is a place of selfless sororal love and shared unruly meaning making.

All That We Don’t Know:’ Narrative, History, and Other Minds in Philip Roth’s American Trilogy

How do we understand the mind of another person? This (perhaps unanswerable) question is one central to all fiction writing, but is particularly relevant to the later work of Philip Roth, in which the epistemological “problem of other minds” is not only a chief thematic concern, but is the very impetus for Roth’s narratives themselves. Roth’s explicit interest in the problem of other minds arose at the close of the 20th century, when the aging writer turned his narrative lens toward his country, and penned three novels – American Pastoral (1997), I Married a Communist (1998), and The Human Stain (2000) – that explore three pivotal moments in postwar American history. Roth’s “American Trilogy,” as it soon came to be known, is unique within his oeuvre for its tethering of the “private drama” of the individual subject to the “public drama” of American history (BBC). Roth’s subjects are, in other words, “fettered to history” (Pastoral 5). This historical determinism, however, is complicated by a narrative subjectivity inserted into the texts through the mediating consciousness of Roth’s frequent authorial avatar, Nathan Zuckerman. Zuckerman “reimagines” the lives of his subjects, to borrow Derek Royal’s phrase, as a means to understand their inner experience. It is in this tension between the real and the imagined that I examine the structures of these three texts through the lens of the problem of other minds. My thesis considers to what extent Zuckerman attains knowledge of his subjects’ minds through the act of fictional reconstruction; as each of the three texts relies on a different sort of narrative to gain this knowledge, Zuckerman’s results vary. I begin with the deceptively complex structuring of the imagined “realistic chronicle” that comprises American Pastoral (88). I then consider Pastoral alongside the dialogically reconstructed narrative of I Married a Communist and the visionary bildungsroman sequence in the second chapter of The Human Stain, examining how the structures of the texts themselves are not only products of Zuckerman’s desire to understand other minds, but are also reflective of how that understanding can (or cannot) be attained through narrative.

Masculinity, Morality, and Mobility in Harry Potter

This thesis analyzes all seven books of J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, focusing on five secondary male characters and their relationships with masculinity, morality, and character development. Engaging with feminist, queer, and narrative theory, this paper examines how male characters in the series are afforded complex character development and internal negotiations with morality in a way that the female characters are not. To understand this discrepancy, I concentrate on the characters of Draco Malfoy, Dudley Dursley, Sirius Black, Severus Snape, and Albus Dumbledore and analyze how they challenge binaries in the series, such as good and evil, as well as conventional gender norms. I further argue that their isolation from others, race, and status inform how they either abide by or break from standards prescribed by hegemonic masculinity.
Each section covers a different character, in which I break down their initial and final descriptions, overall character arcs, deviation from or adherence to traditional masculinity, and character-defining decisions related to morality. I argue that in all five characters, there appears to be a trend in which they are unable to fit into boxes of normativity and are isolated from others—conflicts which result in the necessity to choose between good and evil. Additionally, each of them begins as an antagonistic figure—with the exception of Dumbledore, whose darker past is revealed later—and despite choosing good in these climactic moments, they end up in a middle ground between the two, with neither justification for their villainous acts nor full redemption for their goodness. I include a criticism of Rowling’s representation of race and lack of a more complete spectrum of masculinities. I conclude with the importance of representation and identity in children’s literature and how both the male and female characters in a series as influential as Harry Potter illustrate the values of nonconformity.

‘Eternal Passion! / Eternal Pain!’: Sex and Suffering in T. S. Eliot and Beyond

The image of the nightingale has been infused into art, and especially poetry, for thousands of years. This thesis, driven by the persistence of the nightingale today, delves into five poems by T. S. Eliot that contain implicit and explicit references to the nightingale and the woman she symbolizes. The mythic Philomela, raped and mutilated by her brother-in-law, is most notably present in Eliot’s The Waste Land. But what poetic theorist Allen Grossman calls the “founding myth”—a narrative motif that has transcended time—of poetic pain pervades Eliot’s earlier poems as well as his personal life. With this framework, I assess Eliot’s use and misuse of suffering as represented by the nightingale, and ultimately argue that Philomela’s pain is not his to appropriate and aestheticize for the sake of his own art.
My first chapter examines Eliot’s personal life and the poems he wrote throughout his first marriage. Self-diagnosed sexual anxiety plagues his works written before the war, and I analyze how his relationship, sexual and otherwise, with his first wife Vivien impacted four such poems. Chapter Two confronts and unpacks the varied, and largely feminine, allusions Eliot makes in The Waste Land. He often employs narratives of feminized sexuality, power (lessness), and pain to discuss both his own suffering and collective trauma in the aftermath of World War I. His ultimate focus, however, is on the mythic Philomela’s beauty of voice rather than that voice’s violent origin. My third and final chapter delves into the modern urban sphere’s cultural malaise—exposed in The Waste Land through an inability to properly interpret the nightingale’s song—contrasted with the passion encouraged by traditional texts according to Eliot.
I include in my conclusion excerpts from and close readings of Paisley Rekdal’s 2019 Nightingale, a poetic retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses that focuses on narratives of sexual trauma and recovery. Rekdal’s is a raw look at the suffering the Philomela myth activates, and it serves as a reminder that the image of the nightingale remains a powerful, unaestheticizable one in the twenty-first century.

The Rise of the Absent Father in Japanese Shōnen Manga

Why are absent fathers so prevalent in Japanese shōnen manga, and what role does the protagonist’s father play in these sorts of narratives? This thesis serves as an investigation of several prominent shōnen manga that feature protagonists with absent fathers, analyzing how the father’s absence plays a distinct role in the narrative. Throughout the likes of Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball, Masashi Kishimoto’s Naruto, or Yoshihiro Togashi’s Hunter × Hunter, the protagonist is in pursuit of a goal that is directly tied to the accomplishments and expectations of the absent father.
These are coming of age stories, but unlike those that feature orphan protagonists in western literary canon, the protagonist’s metric for success has been largely determined by the generation that came before him. This is personified through the protagonist’s father, who’s renown gives the protagonist a potential path to follow on their own quest to define themselves. Critical for these narratives to work is that the protagonist has the capability of meeting the father when the narrative requires it.
The father’s ability to be present in these narratives is just as pivotal as their general absence, as a major narrative moment across these manga is the eventual confrontation between the father and the son. The father often represents both what the son is seeking to achieve for themselves, as well as amplifying a critical aspect of themselves that they must overcome. Over the course of this thesis, I hope to elucidate the core purpose of these types of narratives, as well illustrate how this trope has evolved over time.
In the introduction, I open up the topic of my thesis, as well provide a brief history of how manga came to be. In the first chapter, I analyze the early elements of absent father narratives established by two famous and influential shōnen manga from the late eighties. In chapter two, I use “The Big Three” to explore how the elements presented by the manga in chapter one can be expanded upon, as well as the effects of removing these elements form the narrative. I round out my argument in chapter three by analyzing two manga that not only feature all of the elements of absent father narratives present in the prior manga, but satisfyingly resolve these themes by providing a rich narrative lesson through the absent father.
 

Ballads Behind Bars: ‘Barbara Allen’ as a Case Study for Ballad Preservation and Imprisonment

This paper explores the English and Scottish popular ballad canon as an integral element of the African-American oral tradition, and interrogates the nature of the perceived “purity” of the folk tradition as articulated by figures like Charles Seeger, John Lomax, and Alan Lomax. I propose and analyze Derrida’s “belonging” paradox as a framework for evaluating communal claims to the traditional ballad canon, and propose theories about the crystallization of racialized genres, the lexicon of ballad virginity and sexuality, the historical relationship between balladeering and incarceration, literary indigeneity, and the role of “The Rub” in producing the American ballad tradition. Guided partly by the question “to whom do the ballads matter, and why?” I trace the moving locus of the traditional ballads at several points in history to communities that have historically been outcast, persecuted, and/or imprisoned, concluding that the ballads reside at any given time with whoever needs them the most.
I take as my core case the traditional ballad “Barbara Allen.” I primarily focus my exploration on two versions of the ballad sung by Mose “Clear Rock” Platt and Hule Hines - two early 20th century African-Americans - and collected in the 1930’s by the noted (white) folklorist family, the Lomaxes. My analysis goes beyond the specifics of these cases (which I put in conversation with other “Barbara Allen” variants) to raise critical questions about texts that change over time, the nature of those changes, and the value – or even the possibility – of maintaining the texts’ “integrity.”
My first chapter contextualizes and describes the recorded variants around which this case study centers, as well as the circumstances of their discovery and their scholarly and commercial presentation. I then move into a chapter where I analyze the tenets and structures of genre theory in relation to these cases, addressing claims of “belonging,” and the ballads’ transition from orality to literacy. My third section continues with a discussion of transcription as both a tool for and an obstacle to ballad continuity, a paradox which I tie to the historical phenomenon of incarcerated balladeers. I conclude with a section analyzing the prevalence of the geopolitical “fringe” and “The Rub” in ballad proliferation and lyric evolution. Throughout this work, I challenge the terminology of “purity” and “authenticity” so often used to evaluate this canon and present the competing but convergent narratives of preservation and imprisonment that pervade both scholarship and social realities.
Ultimately, I argue for the adaptability and variability of the traditional ballads, not only as a precedented literary and musical practice, but as a process that is necessary to the ballads’ primary social function: alleviating the difficult and ever-changing realities of balladeering communities.
 

The Elegance of Quiet Certainties: The Resolution of Long-form Trauma in David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas

This thesis explores the multifaceted cultural and literary significance of David Mitchell’s 2004 novel Cloud Atlas. I begin by explicating the novel’s unique nested plot structure, investigating the narratology of this unconventional format and how its effect shifts in adaptation, putting the novel into conversation with its 2012 film adaptation of the same name. I then proceed to explore the purpose this narrative structure serves in the novel’s representation of trauma, both on an individual and collective, multigenerational scope. I reference Franco Moretti’s work on “distant reading” to get at the importance of comprehending literature that operates on a universal scale. In addition, I explore the effect of musicality on the text.
To illustrate the trauma themes in the novel, I reference and put into conversation the research of Cathy Caruth and Marianne Hirsch, whose work discusses trauma in the individual and collective senses, respectively. Caruth’s literarily-inclined definition states trauma as that which remains unowned and unincorporated within one’s own life narrative. I examine the traumas of Cloud Atlas’s characters through the lens of Caruth’s work, before analyzing the progressions of the characters’ reincarnations holistically as they move through eras and generations. With Hirsch, I examine the idea of postmemory, or the trauma of the past which subsequent generations bear, and how the long expanses of time in Cloud Atlas illustrate these principles as they are depicted on both an individual and global scale. My thesis argues that Cloud Atlas makes an important intervention into our understanding of trauma since 9/11; I accomplish this by delving into the tension between these two magnitudes of trauma, and how they inform one another.
I also consider the historical implications of Cloud Atlas as a post-9/11 work of fiction, and how the novel works to bear the weight of that historical context. I assert that the themes of Cloud Atlas, given its historical backdrop and the time periods, real and speculated, on which it chooses to focus, serve to evoke emotions of comfort and security for readers, in the interest of leading them to new places of holistic cultural awareness, temporal understanding, and self-healing. I engage with Rob Nixon’s concept of “slow violence” to highlight the task of slow healing that Cloud Atlas accomplishes. I argue that the novel’s outlining of these certainties, derived from the aggregate of the uncertainties, provide reassurances to readers that audiences in times of global conflict seek out, and even crave, in their media. This thesis aims to show how the novel’s blending of past and future settings and genres helps to make its speculative examples of long-term trauma healing, and the confidence it instills in eventual resolution, plausible.
Even as trauma and conflict stemming from global issues manifest themselves on the personal scale, I claim that Cloud Atlas professes the belief that one’s personal traumas, while not always able to be owned or reconciled within the span of individual lives, are able to conclude in resolution and greater meaning across long durées of time. It is my conclusion that Cloud Atlas helps us to hold this reassurance in our minds, and to conceptualize it, even as our limited perceptions of time resist these distant, expansive frames of thought.

The Collective, The Individual and Political Action in Samuel Beckett’s Molloy

Initially, Samuel Beckett’s Trilogy inspired a critical assessment of its alien narrative as apolitical and impotent in its abstraction. This gave way to readings finding political potency applicable to exigent and local political questions of the day. This essay attempts to establish a political reading of Beckett’s Molloy outside of the previous axis critics have located it upon; Rather than privileging one side of the resistance/complacency dichotomy. By looking to Beckett’s presentations of the potential for agency presented to the characters in Molloy and the connection of law and transgression. Molloy and Moran, with their subjectivity reduced in Beckett’s debilitating aesthetic, present limited capability to affect their surroundings but do so nonetheless, blind to consequence. A vision of power in line with political realism emerges, that of perpetual reconstitution of state and nation, the balancing and redrawing of institutions and relationships of subjugation. Molloy and Moran offer opposing characterizations of this effect. Molloy begins as a character of incertitude and along his journey reveals his ability to participate and resist, while Moran presents an individual confident in his agency before the limits of his surroundings restrain the satiation of his desires.
Drawing on Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political—one centered around the categorization of entities into friend/enemy—I find that the Beckett character’s process of self-determination is one which mirrors that of the community and so the difficulties of Molloy and Moran are transferable to a bleak vision for society. Finally the narrators attempt to lodge power in static, monolithic, unified symbolic entities of the mother and Youdi, but these only mask the unidentifiable principles and process by which the individual is both subjected to and a part of power’s instantiation.
 

Law & Literature: Legal Fiction Set in the Civil Rights Era

Centered around the Civil Rights Movement of the early to mid-1900’s in America, this thesis delves into the subject through the perspective of law and literature. Focusing on four legal fiction novels, the thesis is primarily comprised of Richard Wright’s Native Son as it introduces the reader to 1930’s Chicago, Harper Lee’s perennial classic To Kill a Mockingbird since it takes us to Depression Era Deep South, William Faulkner’s Intruder in the Dust to showcase racial aspects and a murder mystery in 1940’s Mississippi, and, finally, a recently published novel, The Secret of Magic by Deborah Johnson, to further demonstrate racial tensions in 1946 Mississippi. Given the nature of this literary field, all stories selected had to be fictions grounded in the legal issues. Each neatly fits in with the theme of the thesis in terms of both genre and chronology. The first two stories in particular contain in depth and climatic courtroom scenes which epitomize legal fiction, while the latter two lack this feature. However, both Intruder in the Dust and The Secret of Magic make up for it in other thematic ways. Altogether, these novels are analyzed in such a manner that reveals how each author created their specific fictional tale in order to promote African American rights and social change.
Interjected amongst the analysis of such novels is critical and legal literary theory. Primarily presented in the introduction, the various understandings of the law and its intersections and relationship with literature are given a thorough overview with specific mention of how they apply to the selected stories. Moreover, background knowledge of the Civil Rights Era and what laws African Americans were up against in the 19th and 20th centuries are also provided. Together, these theories and legal underpinnings provide the backbone of the thesis and are used when writing about each novel in order to explain how they all both reflect reality and attempt to change the Black plight in this time period. Additionally, relevant ideas of mimesis and Critical Race Theory are included to further enhance the thesis’s assessment.
Ultimately, this thesis aims to show exactly how law and literature is a unique field of study and how these two aspects of society intersect as each works off of and in conjunction with the other. Utilizing the specific era of American history that dramatizes the Civil Rights period, all four novels present keen examples of fictional stories where the law is a main proponent and the authors can be shown to have been actively influenced by the legal reality of the time in which they were writing. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how through their novels, each author desired to positively combat systemic racism.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Angela Carter: On Actively Reading Pain and Language in The Bloody Chamber

In her Foreword to the 2018 edition of Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women Writing Jessa Crispin dismisses Angela Carter as a writer who “we know what to do with.” Contemporary rejection of Carter as a complex and subtle writer who we do not, in fact, know “what to do with” is widespread. When she is not simplified into a fairy godmother figure, she is flattened into an aggressively erotic writer. Pushing against this binary view of Carter as either archetypical or sensational, I argue that The Bloody Chamber is hostile toward binaries and is filled with localized contradictions that insist on an active, and sometimes even tangible, relationship with its reader.
In the first chapter I use Christina Bacchilega’s rejection of the third person narrative as objective, Merja Makinen’s idea of an “active reader,” and Carter’s own The Sadeian Woman to unsettle narrative construction of “The Courtship of Mr Lyon.” Through multiple close readings, I demonstrate how the story’s external focalizer constructs the narrative and masks Beauty’s profound self-alienation. I pay close attention to Beauty’s intense physical discomfort with the Beast’s touch and, drawing on the #MeToo movement, argue that the narrator’s sentimental language enables abuse. I conclude the chapter with a discussion of irony in Carter’s tale and its title. In the second chapter I employ Cemre Mimoza Bartu’s idea of “latent sexual consciousness” as well as Caroline Webb and Helen Hopcroft’s term “conventional rationality” and read “The Tiger’s Bride” as a narrative of gradual separation from binary thinking. I emphasize bodily and linguistic aspects of this process, as well as the great pain that it brings to Carter’s protagonist and connect it with the self-alienation that Beauty experiences in “The Courtship of Mr Lyon.” In the third chapter I zoom in on the process of separation from conventionally rational linguistics in “The Erl-King.” Using Harriet Linkin’s identifications of allusions to nineteenth-century lyric poetry and Kimberly Lau’s discussion of phallocentric language, I draw attention to linguistic pain that the narrator of the story experiences. I then suggest that this pain, evident in the narrative shifts of the story, insists on a tangible relationship with the reader. I conclude with a short coda in which I, inspired by Carter’s hostility to binary thinking, raise questions about contemporary language and its adequacy.

Are We There Yet: Architecture, Migration, and Hybridity in Portrait of a Lady

Focusing on Portrait of a Lady, this thesis explores the spatial logics of the late 1800s in the context of American expatriates and emigrants traveling in the rapidly evolving cultural sphere of continental Europe.
In the first chapter, this paper examines the existing architectural structures that serve as representations of American, English, and continental European institutions and social structures in order to support a reciprocal relationship between environment and identity. The notion of consciousness is taken in both a general and philosophical context, used interchangeably to refer to a general self-concept, as well as a function by which subjective experience contributes to the widening of the mental sphere. The second chapter introduces the heroine’s own comparative homelessness; her inconstancy serves to disrupt spatial stability and echo the rising mode of vagrancy and increasing occupation of interstitial spaces. The paper goes on to reject the notion of dislocation as facilitating the fragmentation of a coherent sense of self, and posits instead that the removal of identities and psychologies from conventional structures allows for the creation of a fluid, hybrid identity built upon the imagined geography of the migratory path. In so doing, it argues for an emerging notion of the migrant as mutable, adaptive, and untethered by pernicious establishments. Instead, institutional structures are shown to be far more damaging to personhood and identity in their unyielding rigidity. The final section of the paper traces the heroine’s own geographical and psychological journey to illustrate how the act of movement introduces productive conflict and permits the transgression of restrictive boundaries. The last chapter is split into four sections, each corresponding to a ‘degree’ of hybridity, and features scenes in which the heroine engages with a social or spatial threshold and is thus forced to recontextualize her sense of self.
Centering on these spatial logics between character and geographic sensibility, this paper offers a new look at the narrative of migrant identity, while uncovering tensions between cultural institutions and between the private and public sphere.

'Self-Depositing’ and Urban Consolation in Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

This thesis introduces the concept of ‘self-depositing’ and identifies it as prevalent in a number of Virginia Woolf’s works, specifically her novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925). The thesis demonstrates how self-depositing can be understood as an integral part of what urban theorist Kevin Lynch calls ‘the image of the city.’ Using the concepts proposed by Lynch as a framework, the thesis examines Woolf’s representation of the urban experiences of characters Clarissa Dalloway and Septimus Smith to further understand the mechanism of self-depositing and its function to provide urban consolation in the period following the First World War. Chapter 1 establishes that Woolf portrays the character Clarissa as engaging in the act of image-construction and demonstrates how Clarissa’s perception of London affords the character a sense of consolation as she reflects on the consequences of war. Chapter 2 examines Woolf’s portrayal of the urban experiences of war veteran Septimus and shows how trauma, as well as the responses to trauma by the characters around him, disrupts the process of image-construction and deprives the character of urban consolation. In doing so, the chapter also suggests that the ability to self-deposit and to construct an image is a privilege. The conclusion of the thesis examines Woolf’s portrayal of a particular form of self-depositing on other individuals, specifically strangers, by taking a close look at a scene that shows the character Peter Walsh engaging in the act. The thesis concludes by suggesting an answer to the question: what good is self-depositing?

Deconstruction in Jacques Derrida’s Archive Fever

‘Deconstruction’ is a theory developed by the French philosopher and literary critic Jacques Derrida and has been the subject of much debate for decades. Derrida’s writing is known for being difficult to follow, and Deconstruction, a theory difficult to fathom. This paper attempts to perform the insurmountable task of explaining Deconstruction, specifically in the context of Jacques Derrida’s text Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression. It walks the reader through a brief background on Deconstruction as well as Derrida himself, and then follows with a series of close-text analyses of Archive Fever to explain key Derridian ideas. Ideas that throw into question our current conceptions of writing and even reality.
Much of Derrida’s key work focuses on what a ‘text’ is, and this paper shows that Derrida considers a ‘text’ to be more than just writing on paper. It explains how a text shows the interconnectivity of human thought and is therefore a manifestation of the Derridian “trace”.
The paper then focuses on Archive Fever and shows the reader the ways in which Derrida further expands on key ideas of Deconstruction in the context of the Freudian Archive. This paper attempts to dismantle our current assumptions surrounding the Archive, which are rooted in our current assumptions surrounding institutions and institutionalization, and our concept of the ‘concept’. It starts by showing that the Archive has no set origin, does not operate within the metaphysical concepts of space and time, and is a constantly evolving manifestation of the Derridian trace. This paper shows how Derrida questions key metaphysical concepts and how his analysis eventually forces the reader to question what a ‘text’ is, what a ‘concept’ is, and what ‘reality’ is.
The implications of this study are radical in that by changing our conception of the Archive, we are forced to change our conception of how information is stored, expanded, and even what information actually is. When we change the face of human information and ‘texts’ then we change what we think of human communication. Since the implications that Deconstruction has on our reality are so massive, they can be difficult to comprehend or even respond to, but even in the face of this difficulty, I attempt to show the reader why it is still important and rewarding to engage with Derrida, his texts, and Deconstruction.
 

Not Who You Think I Am: Identity Fragmentation and Disillusion in Zadie Smith’s NW

Focusing on NW, Zadie Smith’s second Northwest London based novel, this thesis examines the relationship between socio-political inequality and individual emotional affect in modern city life. Unlike the London of Smith’s debut novel, White Teeth, NW is notably a more severe social commentary upon the contemporary changes and conflicts prevalent in early 21st century Austerity Britain. The novel focuses on the lives of London’s second generation immigrant population, specifically the characters of Leah, Natalie, Felix, and Nathan, for whom the marks of postcolonialism and institutionalized racism result in experiences of dislocation and disillusion. NW’s modern and turbulent political sphere instigates a new space of ambiguity and uncertainty, prompting the rise of a new social stasis–a state of being that I term “slow-cooked catharsis,” representing the slew of negative feelings arising from factors of prolonged racial and gendered injustices. The eventual eruption from the pressures of these marginalizing experiences leave the characters and their surroundings in a simultaneously shell-shocked yet stupefied state, and ultimately deny them of a true feeling of improved freedom or clarity.
With Sianne Ngai’s emotional affect theory providing a provisional framework, I explore how NW’s diverse set of characters handle the effects of slow-cooked catharsis. My thesis, also engaging with critical work in postcolonialism, affective theory, and cosmopolitanism within British contemporary literature, offers an interdisciplinary foundation which attempts to connect the political and emotional disruptions of slow-cooked catharsis to periods and characters of stagnancy within Smith’s London. Ultimately, I argue that NW challenges our conventional views on individuality versus society, of the capabilities and limits of human empathy, and to rethink the parameters of connection and relatability. Smith’s soberingly realistic novel thus provides a glimpse into the rapidly increasing need to create a new definition of what it means to be an individual and a part of a “multicultural” and “global” society.

Across the Sea and Into the Alleys: the Representation and Function of Space in Homosexual Encounters in The Swimming Pool Library

Holland Park, St Paul’s, Bethnal Green, Lancaster Gate, Marble Arch, Tottenham Court Road…William Beckwith, the protagonist of The Swimming Pool Library, is constantly naming the places he passes throughout the story. Space is an important factor in this novel of sexual adventures in London and the West Indies, and this thesis focuses on the representation and function of both urban and colonial space in homoerotic encounters.
Homoerotic relationships and encounters are extremely complex in The Swimming Pool Library, as they are interweaved with class, race, and age. In this thesis, I examine how space both reflects this complicated web of power relations that seeps into homoerotic encounters, as well as how it space utilized by gay men of different class, race and age groups to create queer spaces of their own. In Chapter 1 of this thesis, I demonstrate how characters in the novel shape and are shaped by the spaces they inhabit, and use Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space as the basic theoretical framework to analyse how gay men blur the line between public and private space through specific queer spatial practices, turning existing space into an integral part of clandestine gay life. In Chapter 2, I use Michel de Certeau’s The Practice of Everyday Life to study how mobility within space determines gay men’s vulnerability in homoerotic encounters, and show lower mobility is connected with lower social class and higher possibility of being sexually exploited. In Chapter 3, I look towards Edward Said’s Orientalism and Culture and Imperialism to analyse the connection between colonial space and white men’s fetishization of male black bodies in the novel, and argue such fetishization goes back to Britain’s colonial history, and is a manifestation of the English imagination of an “Africa” that exists in fantasy space. I also apply Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze to the analysis of homoerotic relationships, establishing “looking” as a key means for rich white men to exert sexual dominance on lower-class or black bodies.