A New Kind of Dignity: Novels of Self-Empowerment in the Neoliberal Age
Goh, Kelvin.
2016
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Abstract: In this dissertation I analyze the ideological effects of the
neoliberal discourse of "self-empowerment" in selected novels. I define neoliberalism as a
hegemonic ideological and political undertaking to transform society and the self according
to laissez-faire market principles. While often associated with neoconservative efforts to
reintroduce free market solutions to the world in ... read morethe 1980s, neoliberalism is now a
dominant political rationality and commonsense. It is the ideological basis upon which
mainstream politics, as well as socio-economic reforms, are animated. Within this
ascendency of neoliberal thought, discourses of freedom have increasingly focused on
empowerment as the main political objective. This turn towards empowerment, facilitated by
the "happiness industry" and the rise in psychotherapeutic counseling, has permeated the
literary realm. In my reading of four novels - The Remains of the Day, A Gesture Life,
Funny Boy and The Buddha of Suburbia - all published in the 1980s and 1990s, I demonstrate
how narratives of sexual liberation employ the idiom of psychotherapeutics to articulate a
politics of liberation. I argue that these novels reproduce hegemonic perspectives of self
and society. In my first chapter, I analyze Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day. I show
how the novel's political engagement with the issue of aristocratic subjugation is a thinly
disguised psychotherapeutic exercise, of which the objective is to diagnose emotional
self-restraint as a particular kind of political neurosis. This theme of emotional lack
reappears in the second chapter where I analyze Chang-rae Lee's novel, A Gesture Life. A
narrative about historical trauma, this novel addresses the psychological costs of living
one's life according to societal expectations. Like Remains, this novel is a
psychotherapeutic commentary about political alienation. The principal lesson in both these
novels is that one must get in touch with one's true self in order to be liberated from the
pressures of repressive ideologies. The third chapter is a reading of Shyam Selvadurai's
novel, Funny Boy. As a gay coming-of-age narrative that takes place in war-torn Sri Lanka,
the novel highlights the importance of sexual liberation to the project of national
reconciliation. The novel further seems to suggest that sexual liberation and
self-empowerment are key to Sri Lanka's national empowerment. A similar message of
empowerment resonates in Hanif Kureishi's The Buddha of Suburbia, a novel I discuss in the
last chapter of this dissertation. Against the backdrop of Thatcherite England which
oversaw the breakdown of the post-war consensus of the welfare state, the novel, I argue,
promotes the idea that self-discovery and self-fulfillment are synonymous with freedom.
Despite their differences - post-war or Thatcherite Britain, contemporary US, and Sri
Lanka; middle-aged Asian American or white British male or young Asian-British or Asian -
all four novels equate freedom to self-liberation. Freedom, in the novels, is now a
hegemonic injunction to empower ourselves, to stimulate the powers of the
self.
Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2016.
Submitted to the Dept. of English.
Advisor: Modhumita Roy.
Committee: John Lurz, Christina Sharpe, and Maria Koundoura.
Keyword: English literature.read less - ID:
- 9019sd74w
- Component ID:
- tufts:21217
- To Cite:
- TARC Citation Guide EndNote
