Flows, Routes and Networks: The Global Dynamics of Lawrence Norfolk, Hari Kunzru and David Mitchell

摘要

The notion that we have entered a global age of human relations has been theuddriving force behind many of the most persuasive cultural inquiries published overudthe last few decades, including fictional ones, into the conditions of contemporaryudexistence, perhaps the most prominent of these being Michael Hardt and AntonioudNegri's Empire (2000). In the era of mass migrations, proliferating mediaudtechnologies and the deterritorialised movements of labour and capital, it hasudbecome increasingly necessary to speak of identity and citizenship in terms ofud'flows', 'routes' and 'networks' that cut across the traditional boundaries of theudnation-state. Though it is through various cultural productions that suchudtransformations are at once performed, symbolised and comprehended, discussionsudabout how these changes have impacted on modes of literary representation haveudlargely been framed by the older discourses of postmodernism and postcolonialism,udwhich anticipate present circumstances while arguably offering rather limitedudperspectives on them.udThis text-focused thesis explores in detail the narrative strategies andudthematic concerns of three British writers who have risen to prominence since 1990ud- Lawrence Norfolk, Hari Kunzru and David Mitchell - whose work announcesudliterary developments that may be attributed to the fluidity and multiplicity ofudmillennial relations and the phenomenon of globalisation. Informed by broaderuddebates about multinational capitalism, transnational culture, and the emergenceudof new cybernetic infrastructures, this research argues that recent novels such asudLempri6re's Dictionary (Lawrence Norfolk), Transmission (Hari Kunzru) andudGhostwritten (David Mitchell) demonstrate an aesthetic consciousness of newudpatterns of human Interaction and geo-historical interconnectedness that isudsubstantially different from the conceptual coordinates mapped in the fictions of audprevious generation. The work of these three important authors has yet to enterudfully into the mainstream of critical discussion, and the present study represents theudfirst sustained critical contextualisation of their fiction. Following an introductory chapter that, firstly, provides a wide-ranging analysis of globalisation understood asuda constellation of multidimensional processes and, secondly, considers how theseudmaterial transformations articulated themselves in the cultural context of Britain inudthe 1980s and '90's, this thesis engages in close readings of the selected authors'udcomplex fictions over three extensive chapters.