The Aesthetics and Hermeneutics of the Secret in Contemporary British Fiction, 1998-2018

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My monograph-length doctoral research project offers the first investigation of 'the secret' as a narrativeaesthetic in contemporary British fiction. I will argue that the secret, in its concealment and selectiveredistribution of knowledge, disrupts a neoliberal culture of secrecy key to neoliberalism's transformationof social relations. In this disruption, across different historical times for the registration of public secrecy,I argue that the secret comprises a changing battleground in fiction, where neoliberalism'stransformation of social relations is exposed and contested. My research extends on a conception ofneoliberalism as a global rationality producing certain social relations and forms of existence (Brown2005, Fisher 2009, Dardot and Laval 2011, Chandler and Reid 2016). My central claim is thatunderstanding changing approaches to the breaking and keeping of secrets is key to understandingcontemporary British fiction in an age of neoliberalism. I will analyse Jackie Kay's Trumpet (1998),Nadeem Aslam's Maps for Lost Lovers (2004), Anthony Joseph's The African Origins of UFOs (2006), ZadieSmith's N-W (2012), and Sally Rooney's Normal People (2018). Individually, these award-winning novelsand writers form an emerging body of scholarship but are yet to be studied comparatively via theiraesthetics of the secret.