For my thesis, I intend to examine the treatment of disability in fin de siècle British and Irish Gothic literature. I aim to take an interdisciplinary approach, factoring in research in the fields of the Medical Humanities and Disability Studies to better understand the social and historical contexts which informed the stigmatisation of disabled individuals in the late 19th century. I will examine how attitudes surrounding disability and mental illness are reflected in my selected texts and how common 19th century Gothic tropes (including the double, the deformed villain and the corrupted body) can be interpreted as representations of these. I intend to focus on a variety of texts, primarily R.L. Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, as all texts feature a figure whose body has been somehow deformed or corrupted.
I will draw upon definitions of disability and accounts of historical ableism in order to contextualise my writing. Texts including Freakery: Cultural Spectacles of the Extraordinary Body (NYU Press, 1996) by Rosemarie Garland Thomson, “The Victorian Freak Show: The Significance of Disability and Physical Differences in 19th-Century Fiction” (Indiana University Press, 2011) by Marlene Tromp, “Romantic Disease Discourse: Disability, Immunity, and Literature” (Nineteenth Century Contexts, 2011) by Fuson Wang, “”Foul Things of the Night”: Dread in the Victorian Body” (Modern Humanities Research Association, 1998) and Disability and the Victorians: Attitudes, interventions, legacies (Manchester University Press, 2022) by Martin Atherton, Iain Hutchison and Jaipreet Virdi will serve to assist in my investigation of historical treatment of disability.
I will refer to Julia Kristeva’s theories as expressed in Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection (Columbia University Press, 1982), to examine how the abject is presented in my chosen texts and how the figures in my chosen texts can fall into definitions of abjection. This idea is explored in Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability (New York University Press, 2006) by Robert McRuer. I will draw upon his discussion of the intersections between Disability Studies and Queer Theory and the othering of marginalised individuals and ‘othered’ bodies. Deformity within Gothic texts tends to present in tandem with a disturbance of gender expectations, so I believe it will be valuable to examine my chosen texts through a Queer Theory lens also. Josh Dohman’s essay “Disability as Abject: Kristeva, Disability and Resistance” (Wiley,2016) expands upon Kristeva’s theories to examine how abjection relates to social models of disability, and the fears and prejudices surrounding disabled individuals. I will also refer to Freud’s “The Uncanny” (1919) in my analysis of deformity in Gothic texts.
When discussing the character of Mr. Hyde, I will refer to “Mysterious Bodies: Solving and De-Solving Disability in the Fin-de-Siècle Mystery” from Articulating Bodies: The Narrative Form of Disability and Illness in Victorian Fiction (Liverpool University Press, 2019) by Kylee-Anne Hingston. Hingston touches on various interpretations of Jekyll’s duality—as representing epilepsy, homosexuality and mental illness—and how these correlate with evolving theories around the human brain. She argues that Hyde is disabled not due to the nature of his body itself but because of the other characters’ reactions to him, fitting in with the Social Model of Disability in which scholars argue that disabilities are socially and culturally constructed.
When discussing disability within Frankenstein, I will refer to more specific writing, including “Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Disability, and the Injustice of Misrecognition” (Disability Studies Quarterly, 2020) by Amber Knight and several chapters from the John Hopkins University Press vol. 36 from 2018 which covers different aspects of Frankenstein, particularly the chapters “Walk This Way: Frankenstein’s Monster, Disability Performance, and Zombie Ambulation” by Angela Smith and “Born This Way: Reading Frankenstein with Disability” by Martha Stoddard Holmes. I have also found some valuable texts examining disability and illness in Dracula and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, discussing the social construction of disability and the relationship between disability and moral deformity in these texts, including “Deadly Nausea and Monstrous Ingestion: Moral-Medical Fantasies in Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (Ohio State University Press, 2019) by Lin Young, “Carrying On Like a Madman: Insanity and Responsibility in Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (University of California Press, 2015) by Melissa J. Ganz, “Hyding the Subject?: The Antinomies of Masculinity in The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” (Duke University Press, 2004), “A Parasite for Sore Eyes: Re-reading Infection Metaphors in Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (Cambridge University Press, 2016) by Robert G. Forman, “Bacillophobia: Man and Microbes in “Dracula, The War of the Worlds”, and “The N*gger of the “Narcissus”” (Critical Survey, 2015) by Jens Lohfert Jorgensen, “Purity and Danger: Dracula, the Urban Gothic and the Late Victorian Degeneracy Crisis” (John Hopkins University Press, 1992) by Kathleen L. Spencer,“Vampires and Medical Science” (Wiley, 2015) by Mary Hallab, “The Invisible Giant, Dracula and Disease” (John Hopkins University Press, 2007) by Martin Willis.
I intend to look more closely at the contexts of industrialisation and scientific advancement and how they influence my selected texts. I am particularly interested in examining how increased fears around moral degeneracy and criminality could be linked to changes in perceptions of masculinity. As more individuals began to work in factories during the nineteenth century, individuals’ worth was increasingly tied to their ability to engage in physical labour, while public and private spaces became increasingly gendered. I will consider my chosen texts through the interdisciplinary lens of disability studies and queer theory, examining the relationships between disability and disturbances in gender roles in my selected texts and how they relate to nineteenth century scientific advancements.
As my classes end and the last few deadlines draw ever closer, I am tasked with confronting the intimidating task of compiling a portfolio of excerpts from my scholarly blog. Creating this blog and keeping it updated has been a challenge, but a welcome one nonetheless, and I have genuinely enjoyed the freedom and growth afforded to me in doing so. Being able to discuss topics with a more relaxed tone and contemporary angle has broadened my understanding of research in the Internet age. Settling on a research topic has been my biggest challenge during my MA, and this is certainly evident in the eclectic mix of topics discussed in the blog, including Irish writing, contemporary horror, music and transhumanism. I have thoroughly enjoyed being given the opportunity to cover these weird and wonderful topics and relate them to current events and contemporary media. My primary interests and eagerness to examine a wide range of topics and perspectives is evident from the beginning of this blog.
From one of my very first entries, on the 2nd of November 2022:
“Graduating has definitely brought me to reflect upon my last three years at University College Cork. I was always encouraged to experiment and investigate new methods of research during my time as an undergraduate student. Some of my favourite projects include a presentation I gave on “Sirens”, an episode of Ulysses where the narrative structure is based on musical forms (combining my two passions!), a group project I participated in where we recorded a podcast on vampires in literature from the 18th century to the present day, and a project where I investigated the disparity in gender representation in Irish music and how DIY collectives, events and initiatives can uplift women in the music industry.
I have always enjoyed taking a more multi-faceted approach to different projects, and I love challenging myself to think outside of the box when answering the question. However, with my first deadline approaching, I do feel under slightly more pressure to contribute to the academic field with more original ideas. I have chosen to write about how different 19th century thinkers represent the relationship between humans and technology. I found the seminar covering 19th century representations of modernity to be extremely engaging and I felt like the class group worked really well to collaborate and build off of our ideas and interpretations together. What I found most striking about these texts was the tendency of these authors to identify the worker with the machine, and their not-so-subtle reliance on essentialist ideas of gender. I found the presence of these essentialist ideas most interesting considering that these thinkers tend to praise technological advancement as it allows society to progress forward and for humans to work beyond their natural limitations. However, it is clear that the benefits of scientific and technological advancements were never intended to be divided out equally when we consider the issues of classism and sexism in 19th century society. Ure praises a particular employer for maximising profits “by substituting the industry of women and children for that of men; or that of ordinary labourers for trained artisans” (2). Even the more progressive Martineau often fails to meaningfully distinguish between man and machine in her admiration of the industrial process (Fielding and Smith, 419-20). When this idea popped up in our seminar discussions, I knew that I wanted to investigate this line of thinking even further in my essay”.
I remember finding the Theories of Modernity module particularly difficult, so it was gratifying to have this outlet where I could express the ideas I had encountered in my seminars in a less formal online space. The ideas I encountered in the Martineau text partially influenced my decision to look at how scientific and technological advancements informed perceptions of disability in literature, as I was struck by how Martineau addressed workers in his writing. Looking back on this early post, I do feel (and hope!) that my writing has become less robotic in tone since the beginning of the term! My interest in horror and the Gothic is reflected in this next excerpt:
3rd November, 2022 “Some Thoughts on the Public, Private and Pandemic in Pearl (2022)”:
“The film presents several contrasts to the audience throughout; public and private, repression and sexuality, tradition and progression. Pearl desires to move past her humble origins, desperate to be seen for what she believes she is: a star. She becomes fixated on “the pictures”, fascinated by the dancers she sees in her local cinema. The resident projectionist introduces Pearl to pornography, assuring her that it is soon to become legal and that she, too, could be on screen someday. In one of the more unsettling scenes of the film, Pearl goes home and simulates intercourse with a scarecrow, all the while fantasising about the projectionist. This is not the first time the protagonist is seen engaging in unusual and disturbing behaviours in private, speaking to her farm animals as if they were human and killing them when she feels they have insulted her or misbehaved. When Pearl’s controlling mother confronts her for leaving the house, Pearl murders her, showing her new, disturbingly defiant character.
It would be impossible to mention the backdrop of the influenza pandemic presents without relating it to the ongoing Covid pandemic. Pearl’s mother withholds food once she discovers that she has been to town, putting her father at risk. There is a feeling of isolation present throughout; the cinema is sparsely attended, and background characters are seen walking alone with their faces covered. One particular shot, where Pearl is watching a film, alone, and slips down her mask to eat, feels so mundane, but so unnervingly relevant to today, that it honestly caught me off-guard.”
I have always found epidemiology to be absolutely fascinating. While the influenza pandemic is only present as a backdrop to the disturbing events of Pearl, the frequent shots of characters donning masks and the sense of isolation (present in shots of sprawling, empty fields, Pearl’s silent, repressive home, the empty cinema in which she escapes her troubled household and her speech at the end of the film where she discusses her depression and loneliness) feel all too familiar to the contemporary viewer, three years into a global pandemic. I was similarly able to connect current understandings of the climate crisis to Mary Robinson’s Romantic poetry:
10th November, 2022 “Climate, Class, Contrasts and Complacency in Mary Robinson’s “The Wintry Day” and Now”:
“…I analysed the poetry of Mary Robinson, particularly “The Wintry Day” for my Romanticism and Modernity seminar. She contrasts mansions, silky chambers, people gathering around fires, singing, drinking, enjoying one another’s company, protected from the harsh conditions outside. Meanwhile, the poverty-stricken are left to freeze in “barren” hearths, braving the cruel force of nature. She paints comforting, joyful, domestic images before abruptbly ending these stanzas with “Ah! No!” and juxtaposing the wealthy’s celebrations with the grief and misery of the poor. The poor are isolated “in a cheerless nak’d room…where a fond mother famish’d dies” while the wealthy gather around “their shining heaps of wealth…sporting their senseless hours away”. Robinson exposes the massive disparity between classes as she describes how different members of society would experience the same day in Winter. The wealthy seem to possess little awareness of the conditions the poor are forced to face as they are exposed to the harshest conditions with little food or shelter. The oppositions between nature and culture, rich and poor, excess and barrenness are extremely striking and surprisingly relevant to today.
This poem written in the nineteenth century feels unsettlingly close to our current reality. It definitely brought me to wonder about my own role in all of this. Am I, like the wealthy citizens in Robinson’s poem, “senseless”? We are, of course, undeniably privileged in our ability to tune out negative news by switching off the television and deleting Twitter. What about those in the global South who are affected most, while the worst perpetrators–our friends Musk and Bezos, for example–propose ways to escape the planet that they helped to destroy? Transhumanism was another topic we discussed in class, but it feels so disturbingly cynical that our newfound ability to prolong our lives, play with the idea of consciousness, or explore new worlds, is being harnessed by the ultra-wealthy to transcend the consequences of their own actions.”
I found a bit of a groove in connecting my classwork to different current events and contemporary media. The next excerpt is from my favourite post, where I compared the music of the post-punk revival (often termed ‘post-Brexit music’) to the Dada art and writing we had been discussing for the Literary and Cultural Modernisms Module. I do feel like I really developed my voice here, and writing about a topic so close to my heart definitely assisted in this. There is definitely something to be said for the tendency to create absurdist and seemingly nonsensical art as a response to a world that can feel equally bizarre.
18th January, 2023 “I’ll Be Okay, I Just Need to Be Weird and Hide for a Bit: Modern Post-Punk and Dada”
“Dry Cleaning’s most popular song, “Scratchcard Lanyard”, involves a string of seemingly unrelated statements spoken by a seemingly disconnected Florence Shaw. In live performances, her apathetic delivery is amplified as she tends to stand almost entirely static, sighing into the microphone, almost rolling her eyes. I absolutely adore this song, most of all for the main hook: “Wristband, theme park, scratchcard, lanyard/Do everything and feel nothing/Do everything and feel nothing”. The line feels like a moment of clarity in a sea of lyrics that bear seemingly little meaning: “I think of myself as a hearty banana/With that waxy surface”. But, others interspersed in verses of nonsense reveal a sense of weariness, or a sort of existential angst: “I’ll be okay, I just need to be weird and hide for a bit/And eat an old sandwich from my bag” “You can’t save the world on your own/I guess”. The music video depicts Shaw wearing a dollhouse on her head and drinking from a tiny glass, singing into a tiny microphone, remaining relatively expressionless all the while. The contrast between the driving, more lively instrumental and the unenthusiastic vocals is reflected as the camera zooms out and we see Shaw standing static, staring right at the viewer with her head trapped in the house, while her bandmates are free to move as they please. The closest ‘canonical’ group I could compare them to would be Talking Heads, due to the warm, prominent basslines and funky guitar tones, but it’s difficult to describe the band in simple terms. The lyrics could be providing an insight into the neuroses of a struggling idealist, driven to near-madness by a monotonous but unrelenting life. The listing of different cities and products, conjures up an image of an individual who is simply going through the motions, doing everything, feeling nothing.
It likely goes without saying that the song resonated with me a lot. When I googled the lyrics for the first time, I discovered that the hook I had become so fixated on had been lifted from a tampon advertisement.
Source: Twitter
I was reminded again of this song while studying 20th century art movements (including Futurism, Surrealism and, most importantly, Dada) when I came across this quote by Francis Picabia:
“Dada is like your hopes: nothing like your paradise: nothing like your idols: nothing like your heroes: nothing like your artists: nothing like your religions: nothing”
This felt like a perfect summation of the movement’s very core; the anger and hopelessness underpinning the amusing and nonsensical works being created. Nihilistic humour from a generation who felt totally disempowered during a time when the upper class acted as the gatekeepers of culture. Studying the writings of Marcel Duchamp and Tristan Tzara (for me) rendered conspicuous the prevalence of their ideas in contemporary art and music in the present day.”
Although this post is slightly different from the others on this blog, I wanted to include it as an example of one with a more interdisciplinary angle. I had begun to feel like there was a cyclical nature to art and literature after seeing how relevant the writings of the Romantic poets on the environment were to contemporary climate discourse. Studying Dada and reading about the artists who created absurd works out of anger at the circumstances of the First World War immediately reminded me of the bizarre “Scratchcard Lanyard”. I was able to draw upon my own passion for music here. As I began to refine my research during semester two, I wanted to focus more on medicine and disease in different texts, as I chose to examine a contemporary text that I adored:
1st February, 2023 “The Other Side: Pessimistic Humanism in Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go“:
“Francis Fukuyama describes the transhumanist movement as one where humans “must wrest their biological destiny from evolution’s blind process of random variation and adaptation and move to the next stage as a species”. Transhumanists believe in the employment of technology to allow humans to transcend our anatomical limitations, allowing us to reach the next stage of evolution.
(…) Ishiguro follows Kathy and her friends Ruth and Tommy as they navigate friendship and romance as they come of age in Halisham. It is not until the end of the novel that the characters realise that their circumstances are inescapable; that the art that they were made to create at Hailsham as children was not some key to their escaping, but rather was being collected as part of a protest by their mentors and different human rights activists to demonstrate that the students possessed souls and that the practice that had benefitted humanity so greatly had been actively violating the rights of a manufactured outgroup. The process of donation is treated with an unusual sense of honour by the end of the novel, after Kathy is left to care for her friend and romantic interest, Tommy. As Tommy draws closer to being summoned for his fourth donation, Kathy describes the way in which ‘completion’ (a euphemism for death used throughout the text) is treated by those who face it:
“I’ve known donors to react in all ways to their fourth donation. Some want to talk about it all the time, endlessly and pointlessly. Others will only joke about it, while others refuse to discuss it at all. And then there’s this odd tendency among donors to treat a fourth donation as something worthy of congratulations. (…) Even the doctors and nurses play up to this: a donor on a fourth will go in for a check and be greeted by whitecoats smiling and shaking their hand”.
The novel ends after Tommy’s ‘completion’, as Kathy faces a future having outlived the vast majority of her peers. Ishiguro’s choice to examine the outgroup of a supposedly utopian society brings the reader to reflect upon the ramifications of this accelerated technological development. The miraculous medical advancements that have come about as a result of the cloning are often mentioned, yet it is difficult to feel optimistic about these changes when the primary characters actively suffer as a result. The new medical treatments are not seen directly in the text, only alluded to, rendering them all the more difficult to believe.”
In this last excerpt, I reviewed a research seminar where Dr Tina O’Toole of the University of Limerick spoke on the New Woman in Rosamund Jacob’s The Troubled House, examining the role of avant garde art in twentieth century politics and the role of women in Ireland during the Civil War. Irish writing is, admittedly, something of a blind spot of mine, and the New Woman writers of the twentieth century have been unfortunately often overlooked, often facing controversy for representing women’s sexuality and Queer relationships. This seminar inspired me to further consider the role of different artistic mediums in texts and to examine a wider variety of perspectives.
15th April, 2023 “Dr Tina O’Toole on Avant Garde Feminism in Early Twentieth Century Ireland”:
“Dr O’Toole focused on Rosamund Jacob’s The Troubled House as an example of Irish New Woman literature. Jacob encountered great difficulty in securing a publisher for the book, which focuses on the breakdown of Irish domestic life during the Civil War and the limited public spaces afforded to women in the Free State and counterculture in twentieth century Dublin. The narrator, Margaret Cullen, is an example of the more traditional ‘womanly woman’, while her husband represents the older nationalist generation. She encounters two New Women who live and work together, in contrast with her more traditional values. Nix, an artist, is sexually liberated and has a love for Modernism. Margaret’s home life is troubled when one of her sons joins the army, causing his father to reject him. The novel also plays around with men’s gender roles, as Margaret teaches her sons how to sew to be independent of women in her absence. Her son Liam also dresses as a woman to avoid capture after assassinating a British soldier.
In having Margaret occupy the role of an outsider (having returned after spending several years in Australia caring for her sister) Jacob captures several different perspectives of the Irish Civil War. She acknowledges the rapidly evolution of Avant Garde art, including movements like Cubism which often featured androgynous subjects. O’Toole posed that although Jacob’s contributions to the New Woman writing movement and uncovering of Irish counterculture have only recently been rediscovered, her connecting of politics and art and her accounts of gendered spaces in Ireland render it relevant and valuable to contemporary readers. Dr O’Toole’s talk was incredibly engaging and enlightening, covering a topic of which I admittedly do not have much knowledge. Her focus on the various gender perspectives and political views in twentieth century Ireland was fascinating and certainly inspired me to examine such differences in the texts I will focus on in my own research”.
While I encountered difficulty grappling with the blog at first–particularly in finding a balanced tone, engaging subject matter and contributing original content–it has been a refreshing exercise that I hope to maintain even after finishing my course! It has served as a creative outlet of sorts where I have been able to test out new ideas, draw unexpected parallels and write endlessly about the topics I am passionate about. It has also assisted in the challenge of writing consistently, making the task of writing feel far more approachable. I feel that my writing style has developed and my ability to find new perspectives has become more refined since creating it and I hope that is evident in this portfolio of my work over the last few months.
In February I attended a talk given by Tina O’Toole of the University of Limerick on Avant Garde Feminism in a selection of early twentieth century texts. I was interested in attending as twentieth century literature and women’s writing are interests of mine, and O’Toole’s research is focused on authors who would previously have been unknown to me. The New Woman writers she focuses on, such as Rosamund Jacob, George Egerton, Sarah Grand and L.T. Meade, were often overlooked and several have only recently piqued scholars’ interest for their representations of women’s intimate lives, often focusing on queer relationships and gender roles within the domestic space.
Dr O’Toole focused on Rosamund Jacob’s The Troubled House as an example of Irish New Woman literature. Jacob encountered great difficulty in securing a publisher for the book, which focuses on the breakdown of Irish domestic life during the Civil War and the limited public spaces afforded to women in the Free State and counterculture in twentieth century Dublin. The narrator, Margaret Cullen, is an example of the more traditional ‘womanly woman’, while her husband represents the older nationalist generation. She encounters two New Women who live and work together, in contrast with her more traditional values. Nix, an artist, is sexually liberated and has a love for Modernism. Margaret’s home life is troubled when one of her sons joins the army, causing his father to reject him. The novel also plays around with men’s gender roles, as Margaret teaches her sons how to sew to be independent of women in her absence. Her son Liam also dresses as a woman to avoid capture after assassinating a British soldier.
In having Margaret occupy the role of an outsider (having returned after spending several years in Australia caring for her sister) Jacob captures several different perspectives of the Irish Civil War. She acknowledges the rapidly evolution of Avant Garde art, including movements like Cubism which often featured androgynous subjects. O’Toole posed that although Jacob’s contributions to the New Woman writing movement and uncovering of Irish counterculture have only recently been rediscovered, her connecting of politics and art and her accounts of gendered spaces in Ireland render it relevant and valuable to contemporary readers. Dr O’Toole’s talk was incredibly engaging and enlightening, covering a topic of which I admittedly do not have much knowledge. Her focus on the various gender perspectives and political views in twentieth century Ireland was fascinating and certainly inspired me to examine such differences in the texts I will focus on in my own research.
My rants have been heard, the dust has settled and I have organised my thoughts enough to be able to reflect on last week’s Textualities Conference. I was lucky enough to witness a truly eclectic mix of presentations covering topics that were completely different from my own areas of interest. While the lineup had been split into four panels covering Character and Identity, Gender Rules and Expectations, Nature, Space and Place and Traces of the Gothic in History, there was huge variation even within these categories.
I initially decided to examine attitudes towards disability as reflected in 19th century horror and contemporary film. My main obstacle was choosing a focus and narrowing my topic down to fit the snappy ‘Pecha Kucha’ presentation format. I also have a tendency to ramble a bit because I find the topic so fascinating! I started by researching ableism in the Victorian era and relating my findings to the main text I had chosen, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by R.L. Stevenson. The presence of the scientific in this novel and the implications of Mr Hyde’s corrupted form had always been striking to me since I first studied it in a Gothic Literature seminar during my undergraduate. In my presentation I linked the rise of Darwinist theory and increases in industrialisation to negative attitudes around disability in the 19th century. Disability scholars have highlighted Mr Hyde’s intangible deformity and “mark of decay” as he physically changes to reflect his alternate, evil personality, linking this to the Moral Model of Disability wherein physical disability is viewed as reflecting inner corruption. In the end I opted to compare this text to “Split”, dir. M. Night Shyamalan. In choosing two texts focusing on multiple personalities, I hoped to highlight how attitudes towards disability and mental illness have changed over time, although they may not necessarily have entirely improved. I had already done a considerable amount of reading into ableism in modern horror, so I encouraged the audience to ask about this as I had a lot more to say than could be fit into a six minute talk!
During the day, I learned about the grotesque in short stories, the greenhouse and colonialism in Romantic texts, Arthur Conan Doyle as a Naturalist and Murakami’s love of ears. There was a real sense of pride at the end of the day, having seen the culmination of my peers’ research condensed into short talks that were infomative, fascinating, hilarious and even shocking. The Pecha Kucha style was a daunting but welcome challenge and the ideas I encountered in preparation will doubtlessly help in my thesis research. I have a lovely sense of accomplishment and the day has certainly set the pace as we brace to begin writing for our theses.
A few weeks ago, I was required to come together with my fellow MA English students, as we were to edit a Wikipedia page of our choosing. The requirements were broad, so long as our chosen pages were tangentially related to our respective research interests.
One of my main research interests is portrayals of disability and illness in literature. While I would usually gravitate towards more Gothic texts, I wanted to edit the page for Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021). The novel features some transhumanist themes, as Klara, an Artificial Friend (an android that serves as a child’s companion in a more isolated future) is assigned to Josie, a young girl who has fallen ill. Over the course of the text it is revealed that Josie’s illness is a result of a ‘lifting’ procedure (where children are genetically modified in order to enhance their intelligence) gone awry. Klara discovers that she has been chosen by Josie’s family due to her remarkable ability to observe her surroundings and mimic those around her, rendering her the perfect candidate to ‘continue’ Josie’s life if she should succumb to her illness. As the novel was published fairly recently, the Wikipedia page lacked certain sections, so I decided to do some general housekeeping before adding two new sections.
My first challenge was adapting to Wikipedia’s style guidelines. I decided to model my writing off of the closest article I could find, so I opted to use the page for another Ishiguro novel, Never Let Me Go (2015) as a reference. This page was noticeably more fleshed out due to the novel’s age and success and served as a useful ‘control’. In comparing these two articles I was able to take note of what my chosen one lacked. This was how I decided to add a character list which was noticeably missing from the page I had chosen. I decided to create an External Links section after finding some information which had not been included in the original article.
It felt strange to be contributing such a large chunk of text to a pre-existing article. My uncertainty about Wikipedia’s style was definitely an obstacle, as I tried to strike a balance between maintaining a style that was impassive but adequately descriptive. I also found it difficult to balance the amount of text dedicated to each character–despite the fact that Klara is the narrator, I found that there was little to say about her compared to the other characters.
I found that, while some reference had been made to the novel’s critical reception, there was no section linking to reviews, which can be seen on the page for Never Let Me Go. I added this external links section to make it easier for readers to find these.
Lastly, I edited the tags to include Transhumanism and Speculative Fiction, although, admittedly the Transhumanism tag was later removed! Although this was slightly embarrassing, it is always interesting to watch Wikipedia’s mass collaboration play out in real time. I had expected to make one or two mistakes or to encounter disagreements so I was delighted to see my character list and links sections had been untouched even weeks after their addition.
This exercise was an unconventional look at contemporary scholarship, and the atmosphere in class coupled with the requirement to live Tweet our edits was a welcome deviation. It certainly caused me to examine my preconceptions of research and to appreciate the Internet as a collaborative tool. It was enlightening to watch my coursemates Tweeting about their diverse interests and using their unique skills and knowledge to alter, improve and translate these pages. While certain corners of the Internet are fraught with misinformation, it is encouraging to realise that knowledge is more accessible than ever due to the combined efforts of countless individuals with their own specialised interests and skills. I would say that our class that day was a microcosm of this.
Winter is ending, and I am slowly but surely making my way through the pile of books I have bought and been gifted over the Christmas period. This month, outside of my studies, I have managed to read Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer (four women attempt to investigate a mysterious expanding zone that has caused catastrophic outcomes for every human that has previously crossed its borders), Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (brief but beautiful novel about the compassion of a father who confronts the truth of the Magdalene Laundries) and Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro.
I had only previously read one of Ishiguro’s novels, Never Let Me Go, during the first lockdown. And yes, a tear or two were shed. I fell in love with the tenderness and humanity with which he described his characters, and his ability to create a world in which the dark underbelly is omnipresent but still difficult to properly grasp until the story’s conclusion. Ishiguro looks at the consequences of technological advancement for those who do not enjoy the privilege of its benefits, as the main characters’ suffering and eventual deaths are legitimised as they benefit the lives of the majority.
Still from Never Let Me Go (2010) Dir. Mark Romanek
Francis Fukuyama describes the transhumanist movement as one where humans “must wrest their biological destiny from evolution’s blind process of random variation and adaptation and move to the next stage as a species”. Transhumanists believe in the employment of technology to allow humans to transcend our anatomical limitations, allowing us to reach the next stage of evolution. In popular media, the first two examples that came to mind when I stumbled upon this concept would have been the replicants in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? along with “Be Right Back”, the first episode of the second season of Black Mirror, in which a widow is able to almost re-animate her late husband by algorithmically scanning his text messages, emails and social media posts to re-create his mannerisms before having this new ‘consciousness’ uploaded into an android copy of his body.
Ishiguro’s speculative fiction Never Let Me Go observes the impact of the advancement of the human race on a hidden underclass of clones that have been sterilised and raised to function solely as organ donors to benefit the rest of humanity. In this world, man has discovered cures for almost all disease and extended human life expectancy greatly through the raising of these clones, as they are raised in Hailsham School for the sole purpose of growing defectless organs (hence they are forbidden from smoking or otherwise engaging in risky behaviours and are unable to reproduce) and fulfilling care duties for their peers who have already donated tissues or organs. However, this disturbing practice is only implied for a large chunk of the novel, with the eventuality that the main characters are to face some unsettling but as of yet intangible fate hanging over the text’s earlier chapters. Ishiguro follows Kathy and her friends Ruth and Tommy as they navigate friendship and romance as they come of age in Halisham. It is not until the end of the novel that the characters realise that their circumstances are inescapable; that the art that they were made to create at Hailsham as children was not some key to their escaping, but rather was being collected as part of a protest by their mentors and different human rights activists to demonstrate that the students possessed souls and that the practice that had benefitted humanity so greatly had been actively violating the rights of a manufactured outgroup. The process of donation is treated with an unusual sense of honour by the end of the novel, after Kathy is left to care for her friend and romantic interest, Tommy. As Tommy draws closer to being summoned for his fourth donation, Kathy describes the way in which ‘completion’ (a euphemism for death used throughout the text) is treated by those who face it:
“I’ve known donors to react in all ways to their fourth donation. Some want to talk about it all the time, endlessly and pointlessly. Others will only joke about it, while others refuse to discuss it at all. And then there’s this odd tendency among donors to treat a fourth donation as something worthy of congratulations. (…) Even the doctors and nurses play up to this: a donor on a fourth will go in for a check and be greeted by whitecoats smiling and shaking their hand”.
The novel ends after Tommy’s ‘completion’, as Kathy faces a future having outlived the vast majority of her peers. Ishiguro’s choice to examine the outgroup of a supposedly utopian society brings the reader to reflect upon the ramifications of this accelerated technological development. The miraculous medical advancements that have come about as a result of the cloning are often mentioned, yet it is difficult to feel optimistic about these changes when the primary characters actively suffer as a result. The new medical treatments are not seen directly in the text, only alluded to, rendering them all the more difficult to believe.
In recent years, post punk (especially in the UK and Ireland) has seen a revival of sorts. Notable releases including Gilla Band’s “Holding Hands with Jamie” (2015), Black Midi’s “Schlagenheim” (2019) and Dry Cleaning’s “New Long Leg” (2021) have all provided newer, more abstract perspectives to the genre–Gilla Band frontman Dara Kiely’s accounts of chicken fillet rolls and bleached moustaches certainly feel a world away from the emotive (and occasionally melodramatic) lyrics one would find on a record like “Disintegration” or “The Queen is Dead”. I have certainly found it intriguing to observe these newer bands’ tendency to shirk sentimentality in their work altogether, but, to me, this reads like a reflection of the neurotic political conditions of the last ten years.
Dry Cleaning’s most popular song, “Scratchcard Lanyard”, involves a string of seemingly unrelated statements spoken by a seemingly disconnected Florence Shaw. In live performances, her apathetic delivery is amplified as she tends to stand almost entirely static, sighing into the microphone, almost rolling her eyes. I absolutely adore this song, most of all for the main hook: “Wristband, theme park, scratchcard, lanyard/Do everything and feel nothing/Do everything and feel nothing”. The line feels like a moment of clarity in a sea of lyrics that bear seemingly little meaning: “I think of myself as a hearty banana/With that waxy surface”. But, others interspersed in verses of nonsense reveal a sense of weariness, or a sort of existential angst: “I’ll be okay, I just need to be weird and hide for a bit/And eat an old sandwich from my bag” “You can’t save the world on your own/I guess”. The music video depicts Shaw wearing a dollhouse on her head and drinking from a tiny glass, singing into a tiny microphone, remaining relatively expressionless all the while. The contrast between the driving, more lively instrumental and the unenthusiastic vocals is reflected as the camera zooms out and we see Shaw standing static, staring right at the viewer with her head trapped in the house, while her bandmates are free to move as they please. The closest ‘canonical’ group I could compare them to would be Talking Heads, due to the warm, prominent basslines and funky guitar tones, but it’s difficult to describe the band in simple terms. The lyrics could be providing an insight into the neuroses of a struggling idealist, driven to near-madness by a monotonous but unrelenting life. The listing of different cities and products, conjures up an image of an individual who is simply going through the motions, doing everything, feeling nothing.
It likely goes without saying that the song resonated with me a lot. When I googled the lyrics for the first time, I discovered that the hook I had become so fixated on had been lifted from a tampon advertisement.
Source: Twitter
I was reminded again of this song while studying 20th century art movements (including Futurism, Surrealism and, most importantly, Dada) when I came across this quote by Francis Picabia:
“Dada is like your hopes: nothing like your paradise: nothing like your idols: nothing like your heroes: nothing like your artists: nothing like your religions: nothing”
This felt like a perfect summation of the movement’s very core; the anger and hopelessness underpinning the amusing and nonsensical works being created. Nihilistic humour from a generation who felt totally disempowered during a time when the upper class acted as the gatekeepers of culture. Studying the writings of Marcel Duchamp and Tristan Tzara (for me) rendered conspicuous the prevalence of their ideas in contemporary art and music in the present day. Of course, the particular genre I’m examining has always been political and often satirical (Morrissey singing “I say, Charles, don’t you ever crave/ To appear on the front of the Daily Mail/Dressed in your Mother’s bridal veil?” immediately springs to mind) but the more cacophonous soundscapes and unusual vocal deliveries of the other bands I have mentioned does seem like a more recent trend in post punk.
Dr Michael G. Cronin is a lecturer at Maynooth University whose research centres around twentieth century and contemporary Irish writing along with sexuality studies. Yesterday, I attended a talk he gave on “Hopeful and Homoerotic Spaces in Irish Writing”, wherein Cronin distinguished between Irish Gay and Lesbian novels that focus on time, and those that focus on space. I lacked a certain context going into this seminar, as my studies in Irish literature have been admittedly limited. While I did touch on writers including Joyce, Beckett, Heaney and Friel during my studies as an undergraduate, Irish writing, not to mind Queer Irish literature, is not a research area that I would be hugely informed on. However, for me, this rendered the seminar all the more illuminating, and I would absolutely be open to researching further the issues and texts Cronin discussed.
Dr Cronin first provided some context to his research, discussing the Gay and Lesbian novel’s rise in popularity in Ireland in the nineties. He outlined the background of the Gay Liberation movement in the seventies as well as examples of queer Irish literature released prior to the nineties, pointing to the work of Kate O’Brien and Oscar Wilde. The post-Stonewall movement provided Queer communities with new visibility and forms of expression, as different sub-cultural identities and spaces took form. Spaces such as Gay saunas and bars allowed for freedom of expression and the exploration of identity, while Gay and Lesbian sections began to appear in book shops, acting, as Cronin put it, as the “literary form of a historically distinct formation”. This was the time when Catholic values were rendered residual, as Neoliberalism rose as the dominant ideology in Irish society. He also highlighted the de-criminalisation of sex between men in 1993 as an indicator of social progression and acceptance in Ireland. The context Cronin provided was equally engaging and informative, and was immensely valuable in my understanding of his research. Most intriguing, I felt, was his argument that changes in Gay and Lesbian Irish writing can be mapped along the route of Ireland’s economic boom and recession.
Cronin went on to discuss the work of authors including Jamie O’Neill, Michael O Conghaile and Barry McCrea. While the most popular forms of Gay and Lesbian writing would be the ‘coming-out romance’ and the historical romance, McCrea’s The First Verse and O Conghaile’s Sna Fir work to subvert standard tropes and expectations in Queer writing. Both novels centre around space rather than time, and follow unusual, disjointed structures. Both novels are more comparable to the adventure tale, with little focus on the act of coming out itself, which Cronin argued may be a critique of the significance placed on this rite of passage. McCrea’s novel utilises the inherited form of the coming of age narrative (one central protagnonist, uses a first person narrator, focuses on a student moving away from home), but alters it. The central drama is not rooted in the protagonist’s self-discovery, rather, it follows his addiction to Bibliomancy, a form of divination. This process causes him to hallucinate, although the distinction between reality and illusion are not always immediately apparent to the reader. Time becomes distorted and the novel ends without a conclusion or resolution, with the main character in the same place as he was in the opening scene, on the bus. Similarly, Sna Fir follows an episodic and disjointed structure, subverting the expectations of the linear biographical narrative. The novel presents men operating in various homosocial spaces, including pubs and university spaces. The main character has several encounters with older partners, but, once more, there is little focus on the act of coming out itself. Mobility is also huge in this text, as the protagonist travels from rural Connemara, to university, Dublin and London.
Cronin argued that these novels present a Utopian perspective, and that the propagation of hope necessitates an alternate position on the current reality. Homoerotic desire is positioned as “a vector for Utopian possibilities”. This is epitomised by the presence of the Gay sauna in these texts, which is described in Sna Fir as a place of absolute freedom, and the one space where liberty is tangible. These novels that focus on space rather than time present a more Utopian view and, Cronin argues, possess fewer internalised Capitalist or consumerist hegemonic values. The shift of the narrative focus away from the act of coming out and towards the characters’ ‘adventures’ is certainly refreshing.
This seminar was highly engaging and valuable and I would absolutely consider reading further into contemporary Gay Irish writing after attending. The inheritance of modernist and surrealist tendencies by the authors discussed and their fusion of these styles of writing with the outlined biographical narratives make for literature that presents new perspectives. Despite the fact that I had not previously encountered the authors or texts discussed, I felt that I had a strong understanding of Cronin’s ideas coming away from the seminar, and I would be very eager to read the novels he discussed. Altogether, an extremely strong and original seminar.
Last night, I watched a viral clip of Phoebe Plummer, the climate activist who received international attention for throwing soup over Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’, confronting an interviewer for neglecting to report on the climate crisis. I had seen her been fairly widely labeled as a snowflake, as a performative activist, a virtue signaler, a member of the woke mob, and so on. Having seen the clip, I must commend her creativity. The painting was undamaged, and her actions certainly sparked conversation. At times, it feels as if we have become too accustomed to this worldwide decay–a constant, looming feeling of collapse. I remember checking my phone on a coffee break at my hotel job earlier this year to see that Roe V. Wade had been overturned, and that thousands of women were now at risk of having to carry unwanted pregnancies, no matter their circumstances. I woke up this morning to see that a man who passed away last month had won a seat in the US midterms. My news feed speaks of mass evictions in Dublin. Such and such a country is on fire. Cork is flooded. Somebody on my Facebook has opinions on vaccines and “Q”
There’s a certain fatigue that comes with this endless stream of misery, as well as the feelings of powerlessness that can come with it. It’s easy to fall into complacency when these anxieties become a part of everyday life. But, seeing Phoebe Plummer telling her interviewer that the news always makes time to show the sports highlights while downplaying impending catastrophe made me realise how easy it can be to tune it all out.
This was on my mind as I analysed the poetry of Mary Robinson, particularly “The Wintry Day” for my Romanticism and Modernity seminar. She contrasts mansions, silky chambers, people gathering around fires, singing, drinking, enjoying one another’s company, protected from the harsh conditions outside. Meanwhile, the poverty-stricken are left to freeze in “barren” hearths, braving the cruel force of nature. She paints comforting, joyful, domestic images before abruptbly ending these stanzas with “Ah! No!” and juxtaposing the wealthy’s celebrations with the grief and misery of the poor. The poor are isolated “in a cheerless nak’d room…where a fond mother famish’d dies” while the wealthy gather around “their shining heaps of wealth…sporting their senseless hours away”. Robinson exposes the massive disparity between classes as she describes how different members of society would experience the same day in Winter. The wealthy seem to possess little awareness of the conditions the poor are forced to face as they are exposed to the harshest conditions with little food or shelter. The oppositions between nature and culture, rich and poor, excess and barrenness are extremely striking and surprisingly relevant to today.
This poem written in the nineteenth century feels unsettlingly close to our current reality. It definitely brought me to wonder about my own role in all of this. Am I, like the wealthy citizens in Robinson’s poem, “senseless”? We are, of course, undeniably privileged in our ability to tune out negative news by switching off the television and deleting Twitter. What about those in the global South who are affected most, while the worst perpetrators–our friends Musk and Bezos, for example–propose ways to escape the planet that they helped to destroy? Transhumanism was another topic we discussed in class, but it feels so disturbingly cynical that our newfound ability to prolong our lives, play with the idea of consciousness, or explore new worlds, is being harnessed by the ultra-wealthy to transcend the consequences of their own actions.
October has come and gone, and it’s safe to say that I have consumed my fair share of horror films over the last week or so. I would like to say that I have developed a fairly strong stomach when it comes to horror–Midsommar and Silence of the Lambs are two of my favourite films of all time–but Ti West’s Pearl is unsettling in a different way. The Gothic has been one of my research interests from the very beginning of my academic journey; something about the macabre in literature has always been appealing to me.
The titular character is a young woman born to German immigrant parents, who must tend to their farm while her husband is overseas fighting in WWI. Pearl’s mother is controlling and repressive, and Pearl is limited by her duties of managing the farm and caring for her disabled father. The main character’s Southern drawl, modest personality and girlish appearance make her appear deceptively innocent. However, there is a disturbing disparity between her actions in public and the desires she exhibits when nobody is watching.
The film presents several contrasts to the audience throughout; public and private, repression and sexuality, tradition and progression. Pearl desires to move past her humble origins, desperate to be seen for what she believes she is: a star. She becomes fixated on “the pictures”, fascinated by the dancers she sees in her local cinema. The resident projectionist introduces Pearl to pornography, assuring her that it is soon to become legal and that she, too, could be on screen someday. In one of the more unsettling scenes of the film, Pearl goes home and simulates intercourse with a scarecrow, all the while fantasising about the projectionist. This is not the first time the protagonist is seen engaging in unusual and disturbing behaviours in private, speaking to her farm animals as if they were human and killing them when she feels they have insulted her or misbehaved. When Pearl’s controlling mother confronts her for leaving the house, Pearl murders her, showing her new, disturbingly defiant character.
It would be impossible to mention the backdrop of the influenza pandemic presents without relating it to the ongoing covid pandemic. Pearl’s mother witholds food once she discovers that she has been to town, putting her father at risk. There is a feeling of isolation present throughout; the cinema is sparsely attended, and background characters are seen walking alone with their faces covered. One particular shot, where Pearl is watching a film, alone, and slips down her mask to eat, feels so mundane, but so unnervingly relevant to today, that it honestly caught me off-guard.
The most memorable scene of the film occurs when Pearl attends an audition to join a dancing group. Her dream of moving beyond her isolated life on the farm finally feels within reach, and she obsesses over her routine in the hopes that she may become like the dancers she admires in the cinema. However, when Pearl is rejected, she suffers a breakdown, screaming at the judges that she is a star and having to be escorted away. Not only has she suffered the heartbreak of missing out on her dream of being on the screen, Pearl fears that this rejection has condemned her to waste away on the farm for the rest of her life. In a striking monologue, Pearl reveals to her sister-in-law, Mitsy, that she has always felt different from others due to her inner feelings and desires, and that she resents her husband so much for leaving her on the farm that she wishes he would die. It is the most clarity the audience sees from the protagonist, who is prone to fits of violent rage, which lead her to murder her parents and the projectionist. Mia Goth’s performance here feels honest and even sympathetic, with this monologue bringing a sense of depth to Pearl’s character. After revealing her despair, Pearl brutally murders Mitsy with an axe after becoming falsely convinced that the judges chose Mitsy over her.
The final scene, where Pearl’s husband returns home, feels like the ultimate defilement of the domestic space. He finds a feast of rotting food, with Pearl’s deceased parents seated at the table. The final image feels like a corruption of the traditional image of the nuclear family, perhaps as if to say that the old way of living has been done away with? Perhaps, in her disturbed mental state, the main character is finally attempting to perform the role of the housewife, but has become too detached from reality. Pearl comes to greet him, and the film ends on an extended close up shot of her strained, tortured smile.
I may revisit this film in my writings–it is still very fresh, so there is no doubt that there will be further discourse on the role of the domestic space, generational differences in early 20th century America and the role of sexual desire in the film. I know for sure that it’s a film I won’t be forgetting about anytime soon.
