Contemporary British Fiction and the Cultural Politics of Disenfranchisement

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-vii

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2. Introduction: ‘What We Need Now…’

   1. Introduction: ‘What We Need Now…’

      • Alexander Beaumont

      Pages 1-25

3. Identifying the Cultural Politics of Disenfranchisement

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 27-27

      PDF

   2. Resistance and Rationalisation: Exile and the Inner Cities in Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion

      • Alexander Beaumont

      Pages 29-57

   3. Rave to the Grave: Hanif Kureishi and the Failure of Left Culturalism

      • Alexander Beaumont

      Pages 58-90

   4. Politics Is Over: Flexibility and Freedom in J.G. Ballard’s Late Dystopias

      • Alexander Beaumont

      Pages 91-127

4. Locating Urban Culture in Twenty-First-Century British Fiction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 129-129

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   2. The New Culture Wars: Neo/liberal Pedagogy in Ian McEwan’s Saturday and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go

      • Alexander Beaumont

      Pages 131-169

   3. Placing Politics: Home and the Right to Habitation in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and Zadie Smith’s NW

      • Alexander Beaumont

      Pages 170-211

   4. Coda: The Postcultural City and the Postculturalist Left

      • Alexander Beaumont

      Pages 212-219

5. Back Matter

   Pages 220-239

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By examining the representation of urban space in contemporary British fiction, this book argues that key to the political left's strategy was a model of action which folded politics into culture and elevated disenfranchisement to the status of a political principle.

• Contemporary Fiction
• Politics in Fiction
• Twenty-First Century Literature
• culture
• fiction
• space
• British and Irish Literature

“Beaumont ultimately provides a timely, accessible and highly engaging analysis of the battle between left culturalism and Thatcherism, and its subsequent influence on contemporary British literature. … The wide-ranging and interdisciplinary nature of the study ensures the work will be essential reading to cultural theorists and literary researchers alike.” (Kristian Shaw, English Studies, Vol. 97 (7), 2016)

• York St John University, York, UK

  Alexander Beaumont

Alexander Beaumont is Lecturer in English Literature at York St John University, UK.

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