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Theorising the collective in British estate literature

2023; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 38; Issue: 7 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/0950236x.2023.2243917

1470-1308

Bryan Yazell, Emily J. Hogg, Mathies G. Aarhus, Peter Simonsen, Jon Helt Haarder, Ella Fegitz,

Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research

ABSTRACTThis article attends to recent examples of British estate literature, a literary form which extends across disparate genres and media. In general, estate literature attempts to correct pernicious prejudices about communities centred on the council estate, stereotypes which align classist, racist, and sexist rhetoric to marginalise this population. In addition to locating recent examples of estate literature – Caleb Femi's, Poor (2020), Anders Lustgarten's The Seven Acts of Mercy (2016), and Guy Gunaratne's In Our Mad and Furious City (2018) – amidst this socio-economic context, this paper also identifies the various formal features these works draw upon to generate a collective voice which at once rejects the othering of the council estate while also resisting the temptation to substitute one reductive group identity label for another. In these texts, often-surprising connections are formed on the grounds of the estate between people, objects, ideas, art, music – and fade as suddenly as they appear. The essay spans media studies, literary criticism, and sociology to argue that the networks conjured by estate literature are not only corrective but generative, inasmuch as they indicate that more affirmative configurations of these networks are possible.KEYWORDS: British literaturecontemporary literatureprecaritycouncil estatewelfare Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 Lynsey Hanley, Estates: An Intimate History (London: Granta Books, 2012), p. 38.2 Hanley, Estates, p. 11.3 See, for example, Fish Tank (2009) and Dirty God (2019).4 For example, Benefits Street (2014) and This is England (2010).5 For example, Roy Williams' Fallout (2003) and Leo Butler's Redundant (2001).6 Examples include Monica Ali's Brick Lane (2003), Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English (2011), and Zadie Smith's NW (2012).7 For example, Cash Carraway's Skint Estate: Notes from the Poverty Line (2019).8 Susanne Cuevas, 'Societies Within': Council Estates as Cultural Enclaves in Recent Urban Fictions', in Lars Eckstein, Barbara Korte, Eva Ulrike Pirker, and Christoph Reinfandt (eds), Multi-Ethnic Britain 2000+: New Perspectives in Literature, Film and the Arts (Amsterdam: Rodopi Press, 2008), pp. 383–95 (385).9 Dominic Head, 'The Demise of Class Fiction', in James E. English (ed.), A Concise Companion to Contemporary British Fiction (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 229–47 (230).10 Katie Beswick, '"The Council Estate: Representation, Space and the Potential for Performance', Research in Drama Education: The Journal of Applied Theatre and Performance, 16.3 (2011), pp. 421–35.11 Emily Cuming, Housing, Class, and Gender in Modern British Writing, 1880–2012 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), p. 212.12 Manuel DeLanda, Assemblage Theory (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2016).13 Jon Helt Haarder, 'The Precariat as Place A Literary History of the Danish Ghetto', Scandinavica: An International Journal of Scandinavian Studies, 59.2 (2020), pp. 29–50 (33).14 The account of council estates as networks or assemblages in this essay builds on recent work putting these theories in dialogue with accounts of urban development. See also Urban Assemblages: How Actor-Network Theory Changes Urban Studies, eds Ignacio Farías and Thomas Bender (London: Routledge, 2009).15 Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network-Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 29.16 Rosemary Wakeman, Practicing Utopia An Intellectual History of the New Town Movement (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2016), p. 3.17 Anders Lustgarten, The Seven Acts of Mercy (Bloomsbury, 2016), p. 9.18 For literature on the stigmatisation of the working class in recent decades see for example: Lisa McKenzie, Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain (Bristol: Policy Press); Beverly Skeggs, Class, Self, Culture (London: Routledge, 2004); Gill Valentine and Harris Catherine, 'Strivers vs Skivers: Class Prejudice and the Demonisation of Dependency in Everyday Life', Geoforum, 53 (2014), pp. 84–92.19 John Boughton, Municipal Dreams: The Rise and Fall of Council Housing (London: Verso, 2019), pp. 169–77.20 Grenfell Tower Inquiry, 'Phase 1 Report Overview', October 2019, p. 5.21 Inquiry, 'Report Overview', 24.22 Boughton, Municipal Dreams, 1.23 Imogen Tyler, Revolting Subjects: Social Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), p. 162.24 See for instance: Sara DeBenedictis 'Feral Parents: Austerity Parenting Under Neoliberalism', Studies in the Maternal, 4.2 (2012), pp. 1–21; Beverly Skeggs, 'The Making of Class and Gender Through Visualizing Moral Subject Formation', Sociology, 39.5 (2005), pp. 965–82.25 According to Tyler, the figure of the 'chav mum' and her crossing of racial boundaries 'embodies historically familiar and contemporary anxieties about female sexuality, reproduction, fertility, and "racial mixing"' (p. 17). Imogen Tyler, 'Chav Mum Chav Scum', Feminist Media Studies, 8.1, pp. 149–62.26 Lynette Goddard, Contemporary Black British Playwrights: Margins to Mainstream (London: Palgrave, 2015), p. 12.27 Luke Harding, 'Woolwich Killing: Residents Reflect on Murder of Lee Rigby', The Guardian, 23 May 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/may/23/woolwich-attack-multicultural-multi-faith-community28 Audrey Gillan, 'Did Bad Parenting Really Turn these Boys Into Killers?' The Guardian, 1 November 2000. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2000/nov/01/bulger.familyandrelationships29 Alex Woloch, The One vs. the Many: Minor Characters and the Space of the Protagonist in the Novel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004), p. 13.30 See Woloch's distinction between 'character-space' and the 'character-world' of a literary work. Ibid., 14.31 Latour, Reassembling the Social, p. 248.32 Ibid., p. 247.33 Uri Margolin, 'Telling in the Plural: From Grammar to Ideology', Poetics Today, 21.3 (2000), pp. 591–618 (592, 591).34 Guy Gunaratne, In Our Mad and Furious City (London: Tinder), p. 4.35 Given the recent interest among contemporary novelists and literary scholars in first-person plural or 'we' narration, the question of how individual voices can uphold or disrupt the cohesion of a larger social group warrants further elaboration. For accounts which contribute to this scholarship, see Bekhta, Natalya, 'We-Narratives: The Distinctiveness of Collective Narration', Narrative, 25.2 (2017), pp. 164–81; Susan Sniader Lanser, Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); Brian Richardson, Unnatural Voices: Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction (Athens, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2006).36 Gunaratne, In Our Mad and Furious City, p. 29.37 Ibid., p. 30.38 Ibid., p. 31.39 Ibid., p. 30.40 Ibid., p. 9.41 Ibid., p. 11.42 Ibid.43 Ibid., p. 34.44 Ibid., p. 6445 Ibid., p. 67.46 Ibid., p. 34.47 Ibid., p. 61.48 Peter Simonsen and Mathies G. Aarhus, 'Theater of the Precariat: Staging Precarity in Alexander Zeldin's Love', Contemporary Literature, 61 (2021), pp. 335–36.49 Lustgarten, The Seven Acts of Mercy, p. 55.50 Ibid., np.51 Ibid., p. 32.52 Ibid., p. 10.53 Ibid., p. 14.54 On the 'bedroom tax', see Kelly Brogue, The Divisive State of Social Policy: The 'Bedroom Tax,' Austerity and Housing Insecurity (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2019).55 Ibid., p. 26.56 Ibid., p. 27.57 Ibid., p. 32.58 Ibid., p. 11.59 Ibid., p. 14.60 Ibid.61 Ibid., p. 20.62 Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003).63 Lustgarten, The Seven Acts of Mercy, p. 15.64 Ibid., p. 16.65 Ibid., p. 18.66 Ibid., p. 98.67 Ibid., p. 100.68 Claire Armistead, 'Caleb Femi: "Henceforth I'm Solely Preoccupied with Being a Merchant of Joy"', The Guardian 30 October 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/30/caleb-femi-henceforth-im-solely-preoccupied-with-being-a-merchant-of-joy69 Sarah Ozo-Irabor (host). Psychogeography: Poor with Caleb Femi. In Books and Rhymes: The Podcast (11 October 2020). https://shows.acast.com/booksandrhymes/episodes/psychogeography-poorwithcalebfemi70 Boughton, Municipal Dreams.71 Caleb Femi, Poor (Penguin UK, 2020), pp. 7–8.72 Ibid., p. 107.73 Ibid., p. 9.74 The depiction of concrete in Poor is also discussed in Mathies G. Aarhus, 'Psychogeography on the Council Estate,' in 'Dossier: Precarity and Public Housing,' eds Emily J. Hogg and Bryan Yazell, ASAP/Journal, 8.1 (2023), pp. 13–39 (27–32).75 Haarder, 'The Precariat as Place', p. 33.76 Caleb, Poor, p. 68.77 Ibid., p. 69.78 Ibid., p. 129.79 See also Woloch, The One vs. the Many, p. 17.