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Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 43 (2018) Heft 1 Inhaltsverzeichnis Artikel : Nikola Dobrić Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing - Historical Discussion and Contemporary Consensus................................................................................. 3 Allan James Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism: Challenging Welsh Language Identities via Selective Syncretism with English................................................... 27 Julia Zeppenfeld Zora Neale Hurston‟s Moses, Man of the Mountain. Rewriting the Biblical Exodus Narrative from an African American Perspective ................................................. 45 Johannes Wally The Return of Political Fiction? An Analysis of Howard Jacobson‟s Pussy (2017) and Ali Smith‟s Autumn (2016) as First Reactions to the Phenomena „Donald Trump‟ and „Brexit‟ in Contemporary British Literature ....................................... 63 Rezensionen : André Otto Hans H. Hiebel, Samuel Beckett: Das Spiel mit der Selbstbezüglichkeit. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2016. ....................................................... 87 Johannes Scherling Claudia Lillge, Arbeit - Eine Literatur- und Mediengeschichte Großbritanniens. Paderborn: Willhelm Fink, 2016........................................................................... 93 Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Der gesamte Inhalt der AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik, Band 1, 1976 - Band 40, 2015 ist nach AutorInnen alphabetisch geordnet abrufbar unter http: / / wwwgewi.uni-graz.at/ staff/ kettemann This journal is abstracted in: ESSE (Norwich), MLA Bibliography (New York, NY), C doc du CNRS (Paris), CCL (Frankfurt), NCELL (Göttingen), JSJ (Philadelphia, PA), ERIC Clearinghouse on Lang and Ling (Washington, DC), LLBA (San Diego), ABELL (London). Gefördert von der Geisteswissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz. 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Printed in Germany ISSN 0171-5410 Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing — Historical Discussion and Contemporary Consensus Nikola Dobrić There are few testing and assessment notions that have been so much written about as validity. Seen as the central psychometric issue, it has had a long history of theoretical and practical development and has stirred up quite a controversy within academic and non-academic ranks over time. The present paper traces this development within educational (and psychological) testing and presents the current cutting edge. 1. Introduction When it comes to any scientific endeavor, validity is, next to reliability, replicability, and generalizability (Sigott 2004: 43) one of most important components of its academic and logical viability. Focusing on educational (and psychological) testing, it is also arguably the core component of psychometrics (Sigott 1994: 287). However, despite its apparent centrality, the concept of validity is hotly debated in terms of what it should entail and how it can be achieved and demonstrated when it comes to tests. The fact that after some seven decades of intensive development in the field of test validation we still cannot offer a clear, commonly agreedupon, account of validity of educational test creates distrust and apprehension when it comes to the application of validation research outside of the expert community. Hence, it is important to unpack what precisely validity in educational (and psychological) testing entails and to define the scientific steps that have led us to the accounts we consider as cutting-edge today. To start off with a general definition, validity in educational testing is essentially meant to indicate that the results obtained from a certain mea- AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 43 (2018) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Nikola Dobrić 4 surement procedure do in fact objectively reflect the phenomenon it is intended to measure (and are not due to any measurement-irrelevant variables or chance). Whereas reliability concerns itself with the question of how much variance is due to measurement error and other unrelated factors, validity focuses on the question of which specific abilities being measured account for the attested reliable variance of measurement (Bachman, 1990: 239). Seen this way, validity then depends on the extent to which quantified measurements of presumptive behavior or ability are clearly distinguishable (Sigott 2004: 44). In other words, reliability can be understood as the quality of the data collected, while validity is the quality of the inferences (and decisions) we make subsequent to the measurement (Chan 2014: 9). In this sense validity also depends on the degree to which aspects of the said behavior or ability the test is supposed to measure are covered by the given test (Sigott 2004: 44). Validation is the process in which we gather and evaluate evidence to support the said appropriateness, meaningfulness, and usefulness of the inferences and decisions we make based on measurement scores (Zumbo 2007; 2009). Adapting this rather abstract and general idea of scientific evaluation of measurement procedures to the area of educational (and closely related psychological) testing has required a great effort on part of the academic community, has represented a winding developmental journey, and is still, to a certain extent, fraught with disagreement and controversy. Historically, or rather prehistorically (prescientifically), we can see the roots of the contemporary outline of validity within psychological testing in the concept of criterion correlation with test scores (Scott 1917; Spolsky 1977; Spolsky 1985; Thorndike 1918; von Mayrhauser 1992), whereby the criterion was understood as the intended domain performance for which the test was just a proxy (Shepard 1993: 409). Validity was in essence seen as this single correlation coefficient, and the argumentation was to the effect that the test is valid for everything it correlates with (Guilford 1946: 429). The biggest problem for the applicability of this kind of approach was that the validity of the criterion seen in this way had to be taken for granted as there was nothing available to validate it against. While this is less of an issue for natural sciences, when it comes to social sciences and humanities it is not difficult to realize that there is a serious lack of well-defined criteria in this sense (Kane 2001: 320). In educational settings, we mostly - if at all - only have partly completed formulations - consider the issues behind defining language competence, for example, and all they entail. The way out of this conundrum was seen in employing a criterion measure which would reflect some kind of desired behavior or performance. This marked the addition of one more component to validity - namely content (Ruch 1929; Tyler 1934). Content-based validity can be traced to achievement tests and their inherent emphasis on actual knowledge and/ or skills. In essence, it relates to the representativeness of the content of the test in relation to the Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing 5 content of the domain of reference (Bachman 1990; Canale and Swain 1980; Lado 1961). The domain of reference (often terminologically interchangeable with universe) represents the „real world‟ performance or behavior that is ultimately the object of the measurement. The representativeness of the content is most commonly observed through the prism of expert judgments (Alderson et al. 1995: 174; Angoff 1988: 22). As a validation procedure, it comes with a strong confirmatory bias as is usually conducted by the test developers themselves (Guion 1977: 2). Hence, up to the 1950s, what we have had was a veritable toolbox of validation efforts, from which test developers and publishers could freely pick and choose - the criterion-based model was normally employed for validation of selection and placement tests, while the content-based model was most commonly employed to justify the validity of achievement tests (Kane 2001: 322). The realization soon came that both of these models could only be considered puzzle pieces, albeit important ones, making up the overall validity of the test. In terms of organized efforts to resolve this, the American Psychological Association (APA) and their contracting of Paul Meehl and Robert Challman in the early 1950s (Cronbach 1989) are particularly noteworthy. 2. Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing of 1955 and 1966 True to their times, Mehl and Challman quite naturally adopted the thenpopular but highly academically ambitious hypothetico-deductive (HD) model (Betti 1990; Bowers 1936; Hanson 1958; Popper 1935; Suppe 1977) of accounting for scientific results. The model described the functioning of a scientific theory by referring to a complex axiomatic system (Kane 2001: 321). This nomological network at its core has a set of implicitly defined terms which are connected by a set of axiomatic claims, a collection of which in effect represents the construct or the core of a theory. The implicitly defined terms are based on observable variables and as such defined using systems of corresponding rules (Messick 1987: 7). The axioms can then be used to make predictions relating to the observable variables and the relationships among them which are then accounted for empirically and explained away using the theoretical construct (Hempel 1965). The validity of any proposed interpretations of the scores is then evaluated by means of how the scores satisfy the theory (Kane 2001: 321). Cronbach and Meehl summed it up and indicated a new kind of validity - construct validity - originally intended as an alternative to the more practically-orientated criterion-related validity and content validity, and in fact intended to be used in cases where a measurement of an attribute or quality is not operationally defined, though potentially applicable to any test (1955: 282). Seen as leaning too much Nikola Dobrić 6 towards the theoretical side, it was recommended as a path to take when no other, more solid evidence (such as score-criterion correlations) was available. It was originally imagined as the application of scientific rigor to the process of interpretation of test scores by focusing both on rational argument and empirical evidence (Cronbach 1949; Cronbach and Meehl 1955). Despite being actually seen as the weakest form of the validity argument at the time, this „type‟ of validity was to take center stage in the decades to follow. Building on these developments, the APA and the National Council on Measurement in Education issued their notable Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (henceforth, the Standards) in 1955 and in it we can find the first properly comprehensive and scientifically grounded account of test validity related to educational settings. The section dealing with validity was originally meant to be drawn from the contribution received from Edward Cuerton who, following from the established tradition, operationalized validity as the relationship between test scores and criterion scores which represented the actual task (1951: 622). Luckily, the 1955 Standards took it a bit further and included the previously commissioned work done by Challman, Cronbach, and Meehl. The Standards of 1955 put forward a system of four types of validity corresponding to, as they saw it, four different general aims of testing, namely content validity (related to the representativeness of the test content in respect to the target test-external domain), concurrent validity (the relationship between the scores and other existing related measurements), predictive validity (the ability of the scores to predict future measurements), and the then novel feature of construct validity (which related to the question of how the test as a measurement relates to the theoretical conceptualization of the target domain it is a representation of). The second edition of the Standards published in 1966 brought limited novelty to the conception of validity as it only joined the concurrent and predictive validity under the umbrella of criterion-related validity, arguing that they were both operationally and logically related. Construct validity was not acknowledged as more significant until the third edition in 1974. Prompted by Cronbach (1970; 1971), the 1974 Standards for the first time elaborated on the conceptual interrelatedness of the three established types of validity. Cronbach in essence pointed out that due to the lack of any well-defined criterion any kind of a measurement referring to the person‟s internal processes by definition required construct validation (1971: 451). In addition to that, the problem of a veritable medley of validation methods and the opportunistic approach to validating tests this caused was discussed (Guion 1977). Finally, as early as 1957 Loevinger suggested that since predictive, concurrent, and content validity were all ad hoc, construct validity indeed represented validity as a whole from an academic point of view (1957: 636). These realizations paved the way Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing 7 towards the unification of the concept of validity, most strongly voiced at the time by Samuel Messick (1975; 1980; 1987; 1989). 3. Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing of 1971 and 1985 By the 1980s three principles of construct validity had been specified (Cronbach, 1980; Embretson, 1983) and had come to be understood as the three general principles of any validation effort (Kane, 2001: 323): 1) the extended effort of including a theoretical background meant that the validation process ended up being more comprehensive and thorough; 2) more emphasis was put on the need to define the proposed interpretation prior to test implementation and subsequent evaluation; and 3) additional prominence was given to exploring possible competing theories and reasons behind alternative interpretations. Based on these tenets, Messick outlined a new unified view of validity as a combination of all experimental, statistical, and philosophical means normally found in evaluation of scientific theories and hypotheses applied to the framework of testing (1989: 14). In his view, validity integrated the judgment to the extent to which empirical evidence and theoretical rationale support the adequacy of subsequent actions based on test scores (Moss et al. 2006: 115). Messick further argued that since content and criterion-related validity do not have a clear link either to the construct of a given test or to its scores (including their subsequent interpretation), they should not be seen as types of validity. Instead, the argumentation is that there cannot be any types of validity; rather it is a holistic feature of a test (and its score). We only can have different aspects of the concept or different dimensions or different steps of test validation. This is based on the claim that the methodological principles of construct validation extend to all validation efforts (the need for explicit statement of proposed interpretation; the need for theoretically extended analysis within the process of validation, and the obligation to consider alternative hypotheses). At long last the concept of validity became unified, though under a somewhat terminologically problematic umbrella of “construct validity”. The issue was (and still somewhat is) that the unified approach imagined as such transcends the theory-based validation which the term originally marked upon its conception in the 1950s (Kane 2001: 324). In addition to that, Messick (1989: 13) raises the issue of consequential validity which basically refers to the social consequences of the inferences we make Nikola Dobrić 8 based on test scores and the actions we take subsequently, which should by extent likewise be taken under the umbrella of unified validity. The assertion of this unification was also that rarely, if ever, we can consider evidence related to the content or the criterion as sufficient and removed from other sources of validity evidence (Sigott 2004: 44). They all contribute to the overall validity argument. This kind of united view of validity was adopted by the Standards published in 1985 and was to become the dominant paradigm within the following decade or more. Nevertheless, Messick (1988: 42) went on to criticize the 1985 Standards, because they continued to refer to “types of evidence” for validity as well, for all intents and purposes harkening back to the separatist modeling of the previous decades. Indeed, we will see that this continuing tendency of constantly referring to subdivisions within validity, despite the relative general consensus regarding its unified nature (at least conceptually) actually results from the need to have an account which is as adaptable and applicable as the every-day validation practice demands. True to that statement, this unitary model of validity was already subjected to criticism in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The criticism was, in essence, again targeted at the academic opaqueness and the lack of applicability, especially in educational settings. For example, Shepard argued that viewing test validation as a never-ending process of gathering evidence and arguing only the highest possible degree of (construct) validity left many test makers fearful of their ability to meet such high academic standards, particularly among the non-academic (educational) practitioners (1993: 428). Not only that, but the open-endedness of the procedure itself left the validation process vulnerable to the „give what you have‟ approaches which revolve around the idea that any amount of evidence towards validation is enough since it can never be entirely provided scientifically (Shepard 1993: 429). Reminiscent of the circularity one often finds in academic development in general, an argument was now made for a more practically orientated account of validity, one which would provide the testing community with a concrete set of tools to run successful and resource-friendly validation procedures, essentially asking for segmentation of the only just unified validity. The case was further strengthened by the fact that the nomological network and the hypothetico-deductive modeling put too much strain on the validation efforts within the social sciences in general as they include few, if any, tightly connected axioms in their constructs and work at best with crude and halfexplicit designs (Kane 2001: 325). The community started to realize that there was room for both a theoretical and a practical account of validity. Hence, Cronbach (1988: 14) proposed a distinction between a strong program of validation (as the one outlined by Cronbach and Meehl (1955)) and a weak program of construct validation (as described essentially in Meehl and Golden (1982)). The weak program implied explanatory empiricism, where any correlation is welcome, while the strong pro- Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing 9 gram included an outline of the theoretical background and a series of deliberate validation challenges (Kane 2001: 326). The problem with this kind of division was that the weak program pulled too much into the academic opportunism the unified theory in fact aimed to avoid. Since the validation efforts are usually conducted by the test developers themselves, there is a strong and quite expected conformational bias, which is another reason why the proposed weak program of construct validity can be problematic (Kane 2001: 327). Any entirely unified view of validity comes with additional serious downsides: eliminating any type of subdivision makes the whole process much more opaque. Also, since each validation effort is in many ways unique due to the context dependency of each testing situation, it is hard to suggest that “unified” should also mean “uniform” in terms of validation processes. Constructing a system in which all variables depend on the theory is likewise problematic because it must suppose the validity of the theory as a given. Again, these are the reasons why terms such as “construct validity” or “content validity” still persevere - certain patterns of evidence do contribute to certain distinctive aspects of overall validity and are extremely useful in practice (Kane 2001: 332). The emergence of this kind of discussion, a push and pull towards and away from unified (construct) validity conceptualization indicated that even after some 30 years of formal deliberation on the nature of validity of tests, no clear criteria or solid guiding principles commonly agreed on still existed. In the 1990s and early 2000s this resulted in several new, mostly practically-orientated, accounts of validity, most notably the one by Bachman (1990), Kane (1990; 1992; 1994; 2006; 2012), and Weir (1993; 2005). All three approaches generally view validity as a unitary concept, two of them shying away from terming it construct validation though. They all also find merit in dividing the largely academically grounded unitary representation into smaller constituents in order to facilitate easier practical implementation, which will further influence the developments within the Standards of 1999 and 2014 and the contemporary consensus regarding validity and validation. 4. Bachman’s model of Validity — Evidential and Consequential Validity The earliest validity accounts within language testing as an important dimension of educational assessment came from authors such as Lado (1961) and Davies (1968), who espoused validity as focusing on face values of the test (validity by assumption), on its content, on control of extraneous factors, on conditions required to answer test items, and on empirical insight (D‟Este 2012: 63). Then, Campbell and Fiske (1959) saw validity as having a convergent dimension (measures that should be re- Nikola Dobrić 10 lated are found to be related) and a discriminate dimension (measures that should not be related are found to be not related). Campbell and Stanley (1966) referred to the concepts of internal and external validity. Bachman embraced the unified theory of validation put forward by Messick and considered validity of a given use of a test as an outcome of a complex process that must include several crucial features (1990: 237): evidence supporting a particular interpretation and use, ethical values which are the basis of the given interpretation, and the test taker‟s performance. In addition to that, Bachman also argued for the stronger inclusion of the concept of reliability within the validity considerations since when it comes to language testing, it is not easy to distinguish between effects of different test methods nor between traits and test method (1990: 239). In all other ways, his account entirely follows the focus on construct validity prevalent in the late 1980s, together with an emphasis on considering value implications of score interpretation and the consequences of their use (D‟Este 2012: 63). Specifically, Bachman thinks that two general types of evidence need to be collected in any serious validation effort as supporting two major bases of (construct) validity: evidential and consequential. Evidential basis of validity, according to Bachman (1990: 248), is grounded in evidence that supports the relationship between test scores and their interpretations and subsequent use. There are three tributaries that feed into this evidential basis, all supporting overall validity (D‟Este 2012: 67): ‣ content relevance and content coverage (what is known as content validity); ‣ criterion relatedness (i.e. criterion validity); and ‣ meaningfulness of construct (construct validity). Content validity refers to the domain specifications which underlie the test, criterion relatedness refers to a meaningful relationship between test scores and other indicative criteria, while construct validity means the extent as to which performance of the test is consistent with the predictions we make on the basis of the theory of abilities (Bachman 1990: 246- 269). In addition, the consequential (or ethical) basis of validity refers to the fact that tests have not been designed to be used in an academic vacuum but rather have real-life applications and are influenced by society as a whole. Following Cronbach (1984: 5) and the claim that tests are supposed to be an impartial way of performing a political function of determining who gets what, a lot of emphasis needs to be put on the consequential dimension of language tests (Bachman 1990: 280). Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing 11 4.1 Evidential Validity Looking at Bachman‟s view of the evidential basis of validity in more detail, the first aspect of content relevance is already problematic to validate because domains of language ability are difficult to define in a finite and clear-cut way (even if we focus on the ones we see as inherently simple, such as for example vocabulary). Evidence of content coverage and relevance is further problematic as it tends to focus on what a test taker can do rather than on what he cannot do, because evidence of inability implies the consideration of competing hypotheses (Bachman 1990: 246). Criterion validity is described by Bachman in terms of the traditional division into concurrent and predictive relatedness. Validation of the concurrent criterion relatedness involves one of the two commonly employed procedures: examining differences in test performance among individuals at different levels of proficiency and/ or examining correlations among different measurements of the given ability (Bachman 1990: 248). Predictive criterion relatedness focuses on demonstrating a link between test scores and some future performance where the test scores predict the criterion behavior of interest - for example having a writing test as a predictor of place allocations in writing courses of different levels. Finally, construct validation is related to the basic question of what is the nature of that something that an individual possesses or displays which is the object of our measurement (Messick 1975: 957. Constructs can then be seen as definitions of people‟s attributes assumed to be reflected in their performance (Cronbach and Meehl 1955: 283). By postulating constructs as a way of classifying behavior, we can argue that construct validity then must incorporate all of the evidence supporting the validity of a test, including its content and its degree of integrity (Bachman 1990: 256). Understood in this general sense, construct validity resembles a standard procedure of verifying or falsifying a scientific theory and as such is seen as divisible into two parts: logical analysis and empirical investigation (D‟Este 2012: 68). The logical part of the procedure involves the process of defining the construct theoretically and operationally, which provides us with the means of linking scores to the actual ability of interest and with the means of postulating the hypotheses we subsequently want to test. The empirical analysis focuses on finding empirical evidence (in terms of correlations and experimentation) in order to confirm or disprove a particular interpretation of the obtained test scores (Bachman 1990: 258-266). 4.2 Consequential Validity Bachman talks about the ethical basis of validity as incorporating considerations which are neither scientific nor technical and which focus on the influence of a particular (educational) system on the interpretation of a Nikola Dobrić 12 test as well as on the washback effect that test use has on that particular system in reverse (1990: 279). The issues behind this commonly termed consequential validity aspect are complex and involve looking into the rights of the test takers (secrecy, confidentiality, privacy), the values inherent in test developers and raters, the values inherent in the particular social system, background knowledge, cognitive characteristics of the test taker, and influence on teaching and learning (Bachman, 1990: 280-284), 5. Kane’s model of Validity — the Interpretative Argument Kane‟s (1992) conception of validation stems basically from the proposed view of the process as a series of arguments (Cronbach 1980; House 1980) which House termed “the logic of evaluation argument” (1977: 47) and Cronbach referred to as an “evaluative argument” (1988: 4). Kane called it an “interpretative argument” (1992: 529) and saw it as stemming first from a clear and sound statement regarding the claims included in the interpretation of a test. In this way we would end up with a network of inferences which would in the end present a credible account of the validity of a particular test (Chapelle 2012: 19). The whole interpretative argument revolves around a series of inferences starting with the universe of generalization and ending with a decision taken based on generalized scores. The model as such involves five general interpretative/ argumentation steps Kane (1992): 1. eliciting a student performance (in essence task design); 2. scoring the performance; 3. attesting the typicality of the score (basically looking at the reliability and generalizability of the score); 4. interpreting the score; and 5. using the score to make decisions. By following these five steps and the four suggested inferences linking them, one is supposed to make a rationale for regarding observed performances and the conclusions and decisions stemming from them as being plausible to the relevant stakeholders (Kane 2012: 13). 5.1 Universe of generalization and the sample of observations — step 1 Found at every stage of the historical discussion of validity, the universe of generalization (UG) is parallel to the target (criterion) domain, though within this framework it is meant to represent a small subset of the overall domain. The given subset seen as the UG is to be more precisely defined than the overall domain and is intended as the basis for sampling Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing 13 for subsequent test construction. It is meant to be a more practicallyorientated response to the problems of properly defining the domain in order to make it more transparent for succeeding content-related inferences (Chapelle 2012: 22). The procedure also encroaches on the standard process of modelling the construct as comprising the assumed features of the nontest performance (Messick 1989: 55). Ultimately, it is equivalent to any practical test design we can commonly find (Bachman 1990; Bachman 2002). 5.2 Scoring and observed score — step 2 The next set of inferences the model focuses on is scoring following from the test created from the obtained sample of observations representative of the UG. In this step we are supposed to ascertain the degree of the observed score representativeness regarding the observed (and sampled) behavior or performance. As such, it again follows the pattern of all previously presented models, falling in essence within both criterion-related and, ultimately, construct-related validity or within scoring validity seen later in Weir‟s (2005) modeling. 5.3 Generalization and expected universe score — step 3 Step three of the whole process basically involves making the second relevant inference and that is comparing the obtained score to what Kane (2006: 38) calls the universe score. Essentially what this means is that the expectation is on providing evidence that the scores obtained are consistent across tasks, raters, and particular testing instances. This inferencing procedure is mainly used in reliability studies (whether through generalizability theory, item response modeling, or other methods). 5.4 Expected score, theory-based interpretation, and the construct — step 4 Step four, again echoing construct validation, is the third inference that needs to be made. It basically focuses on linking the now-established reliable scores to the nontest behavior via a theoretical model. The procedure involves gathering all available evidence that can relate the said reliable scores to the UG. The only discernable difference from the commonly viewed construct validation is the fact that Kane (1992) does not view constructs as an a priori existing formulation, but as an interface between prior work, conceptual possibilities, and pragmatic needs (Chapelle 2012: 24). Nikola Dobrić 14 5.5 Implications and the decision The final inference and step five of the whole argumentation procedure has to do with what is known in various models (Messic 1989; Weir 2005) as consequential validity or the assessment use argument (Bachman and Palmer 2010). As expected, the emphasis is on the consequences the test scores have in terms of final decisions based on them and their social implications (Bachman 2005; Chapelle 2012; Shohamy 2001). The major advantage of conceiving a validation effort as a set of arguments in this was the guidance it provides to practitioners. It offers a clear inventory of the evidence that needs to be gathered in order to satisfy each of the steps in the argumentation structure (Kane 2001: 331). The overall approach of segmenting the validation procedure and structuring it in terms of argued interpretations is currently very influential (and also generally adopted as the methodology by the Standards published in 1999 and in 2014). 6. Weir’s model of Validity — Evidence-based Test Validation Given the extensive discussion on the nature and underpinnings of validity, it is hardly surprising that another model - elaborated fully by Weir in 2005 and also aimed predominantly at educational (language) testing - is by definition one part of a reformulation. The model itself presents overall test validity as an interplay between 5 different types: jointly influenced by test-taker characteristics as a separate piece of the validity puzzle we have cognitive validity, context validity, scoring validity, consequential validity, and criterion validity. The two former types are mostly imagined as being attested a priori to the test implementation (though an a posteriori validation of cognitive validity is possible as well) and the latter three types a posteriori, with context validity straddling both and being related to pre and post evaluation. 6.1 Test-Taker Characteristics As a novel concept which cannot formally be found within any of the outlined (previous or subsequent) models of validity, it is significant because while other models consider this aspect of the testing process as given, Weir strongly emphasizes the need to actively consider the testtaker. He distinguishes between three classes of test-taker characteristics (Shaw and Weir 2007: 5): ‣ physical/ physiological characteristics, which include any special needs on the side of the test-taker, such as ones stemming from dyslexia or eyesight impairment; Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing 15 ‣ psychological characteristics, including test-taker motivation, personality type, learning styles, and more; and ‣ experiential characteristics, incorporating for example the degree of test-taker familiarity with the test format or content. These individual characteristics can then be viewed as systematic, if they affect a test-taker‟s performance consistently (such as dyslexia or personality traits) or unsystematic, when they have a random, perhaps one-off effect (for example motivation or test format familiarity). 6.2 Cognitive Validity This proposed type of validity focuses on the determination of the cognitive processes to be used as models for designing test items and represents another partially novel concept put forward by Weir (2005) and introduced by Bachman (1990). Validation in these terms is meant to be mostly a priori, where the focus is on piloting and trialing work in order to ascertain the relevant cognitive representations which need to be exemplified in the test content. Post-test validation is also imagined and should function as a correlational analysis that can be used to attest the link between scores and „real life‟ performance. For instance, in terms of writing assessment, Shaw and Weir (2007: 34) recognize six different aspects of cognition behind writing ability: 1. macro-planning: gathering ideas and identifying major constraints such as genre, readership, and goals; 2. organization: ordering the ideas and identifying relationships between them; 3. micro-planning: focusing on individual parts of the text and considering issues such as the goal of the paragraph in question, including both its alignment with the rest of the text and the ideas and the sentence and content structure within the paragraph itself; 4. translation: the content previously held in a propositional form is transferred into text; 5. monitoring: focusing on the surface linguistic representation of the text, the content and the argumentation presented in it, and its alignment with the planned intentions and ideas; and 6. revising: results from the monitoring activity and involves fixing the issues found to be unsatisfactory. 6.3 Context Validity Context validity is to a large extent parallel to the better known concept of content validity, where the idea is that, in terms of language testing for Nikola Dobrić 16 example, we move away from the sole focus on the linguistic representation and also include the social and cultural dimension within which the writing has been produced (Weir 2005), adding a layer of novelty as well. Seen this way, context validity is then split into: 1. setting: it consists of the task (response format, purpose, knowledge of criteria, weighing, text length, time constrains, and writer-reader relationship) and the administration (physical conditions, uniformity of administration, and security); and 2. linguistic demands: they include lexical resources, structural resources, discourse mode, functional mode, and content knowledge. It is clear that the suggested model significantly builds on the previously espoused and conceptually related content validity, both in theoretical and in practical terms. 6.4 Scoring Validity Focusing on the interplay between validity and reliability and the argument of how the two are in fact complementary aspects of identifying, estimating and interpreting different sources of variance in test scores (Bachman 1990: 239), Wier (2005) goes on to propose a formal aspect of validity which would address this issue even more directly. Generally, scoring validity is concerned with all aspects of the testing process that can have an impact on the scores, or more precisely an impact on score attribution. This includes (Shaw and Weir 2007: 146): ‣ criteria and type of the rating scale; ‣ rater characteristics and variability (incorporating both ratercandidate and rater-item interactions); ‣ rating process; ‣ rating conditions; ‣ rater training; ‣ post-exam adjustments; and ‣ grading and awarding. In conceptual terms, the importance of scoring validity has often been emphasized as almost central as it both represents the culmination of other (mostly a priori) validation and the only firm link to all of the inferences and ensuing decisions (Messick 1989). In this way it is conceptually linked both to criterion-related validity and, ultimately, to construct validity as conventionally depicted. More specifically, the presented organization of this type of validity stems, among others, from Milanovic and Saville (1994), Pollitt and Murray (1996), O‟Sullivan (2000), Shaw Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing 17 (2002), Weir and Milanovic (2003), Falvey and Shaw (2005), and more, as listed in Shaw and Weir (2007: 144). 6.5 Consequential Validity First raised by Messick (1987; 1989), it conceptually deals with the social impact a test and its inferences can have. More precisely, Weir (2005) outlines consequential validity as engaged with: ‣ washback (or backwash) on individuals in, for example, a classroom or workplace; ‣ impact on institutions and society; and ‣ avoidance of test bias, which essentially includes making sure that the test use and interpretations serve the intended testing purpose (Cole and Moss 1989). Apart from being conceptually linked to prior validity developments, the division stems from a wide set of publications including Burrows (1998), Hamp-Lyons (2000), McNamara (2000), Hughes (2003), Shohamy (2001), Hawkey (2006), and others. 6.6 Criterion-related Validity Here, Weir (2005) again reimagines - for practical purposes and while focusing in particular on assessing language - one traditional concept, namely that of criterion-related validity. The focus is the same: comparisons to external measurements such as different test scores, ratings coming from teachers or other expert informants, or even self-assessment (all measurements usually being expressed in correlation coefficients). However, recognizing the issues behind test comparability, Weir keeps the standard division into predictive and concurrent aspects of the criterionrelated validity, more concretely instantiated as: ‣ cross-test comparability: looking at ways of correlating different existing tests designed to measure the same; ‣ comparison with different versions of the test: having different versions of one test applied to the same candidates under the same conditions; and ‣ comparison with external standards: comparison with different established frameworks, such as the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (2003). Additionally, even though Weir, just like Kane, reluctantly uses the term “construct validity”, he does recognize that it can be considered to conceptually relate cognitive, context, and scoring validity. Furthermore, in Weir‟s model (similary to Kane‟s, 1999) we can see a conception of validi- Nikola Dobrić 18 ty in terms of a subdivision and in terms of consecutive steps of validation. Instead of calling them arguments, Weir, however, opts for more traditional labels. We can see context validity as parallel to the first step of sampling the observations in Kane (1992); scoring validity as equivalent to scoring and generalization steps; criterion-related validity parallel to extrapolation; and consequential validity as similar to Kane‟s (1992) dual step of implications resulting in a decision. A novel focus introcued, in principle, by Weir, is the insistence on looking into the test-taker characteristics and into the cognitive processes involved (cognitive validity), which was strongly implied by Bachman in 1990. This is also considered in the contemporary view of validity to be further discussed below. 7. Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing of 1999 and 2014 — the current consensus The first thing that would have to be discussed is the terminological question of whether we should refer to unified validity as “construct validity” or just simply as “validity”. We have seen that authors such as Messick (1987; 1989), Cronbach (1971; 1980; 1988), and others (i.e. Loevinger 1957; Fitzpatrick 1983) have presented an extremely solid case for why validity should be conceptually considered as a single notion, a single plausibility value that the use of a test may have. However, while that may be undisputable from a conceptual point of view, we could also see a strong argument for why “construct validation” is not a suitable term to represent unified validity. The term was coined in the 1950s and was meant to strictly refer to the then-adopted hypothetico-deductive modeling and the nomological network approach to theory construction. Not only has it been shown to be essentially inapplicable to social sciences, but “construct validity” has moved away from this constrained reference to theory to include referencing the test takers, cognitive processes, content and context, criterion, and consequences. As such, unified validity has outgrown the term “construct validity” in its original meaning, which now misrepresents what validity actually entails. In addition to that, referring to a theoretical background as the sole underpinning of a test‟s validity makes the whole concept very difficult to explain to nonacademic practitioners, with terms such as “content validity” being much more convenient (Sireci 2007: 478). Validity can easily be unified without referencing the term “construct” itself and many of the more contemporary views of validation do just that. The second important point that needs to be addressed is whether there should be any subdivision within the unified conceptualization of validity, either in terms of „types‟ of validity, „aspects‟ of validity, or „types of evidence‟ for validity. If we review the previous discussion, it is not difficult to reach a conclusion that even though in purely theoretical Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing 19 terms validity is indeed best seen as unified, in practical terms it is much better to consider it segmented. Having subcategories or steps allows us to have a more manageable tool (or more manageable tools) to perform validation, allows us to more easily define the types of evidence required to complete the whole picture, and makes the whole concept more approachable in general. Emerging from the seven decades of scientific discussion of validity, we can see several fundaments (Chan 2014: 10; Kane 2001: 328; Sireci 2007: 477): ‣ validity is not a property of a test, but it refers to the use of a test for a particular purpose - it is the interpretation, not the test, that is being evaluated; ‣ to evaluate the appropriateness of the intended test use requires us to pursue multiple sources of evidence; ‣ validity can never be fully achieved, so we need to consider sufficient evidence to defend every intended purpose of a test; ‣ the validation procedure must be implemented both during the test design (a priori) and after the test (a posteriori); ‣ the validation effort should include an extended analysis including the relevant theory and a consideration of possible competing interpretations; ‣ is extremely important to include the consequential dimension of each test in the evaluation; ‣ evaluation of validity is not a one-time static activity, but rather an ongoing process; and ‣ validity is a unified evaluation of the test‟s interpretation as a whole, but is in practice more manageable when parsed out into pattern-defined parts. Hence, the contemporary view of validity and validation (as propounded by the Standards published in 1999 and in 2014, and supported by most of the psychometric community today) avoids much terminological reference and focuses on the aspects of validity that should be covered, sources of evidence that we can tap, and steps to be taken within any serious validation effort. The Standards (1999: 9) define validity first as “the degree to which evidence and theory support the interpretation of test scores entailed by the proposed uses of a test.” Further, the Standards adopt Kane‟s (1992) focus on the validation argument as a methodological framework to be completed in steps, incorporate Bachman‟s (1990) differentiation of the evidential and consequential validity, and incorporate several Weir‟s (2005) developments as well. We can, in fact, see five relevant sources of validity listed: ‣ test content: is imagined as comprised of items, format and wording, response options, and administration and scoring. The evi- Nikola Dobrić 20 dence is meant to be obtained by examining the relationship between the content of an instrument and the construct being measured (Chan 2014: 12); ‣ response process: gathering evidence involves looking into the cognitive processes involved when people do tests and should derive from procedures such as think-aloud protocols and qualitative interviews; ‣ internal structure: evidence is based on statistical relationship between the test items and their organization and the construct in terms of representativeness (Chan 2014: 13); ‣ relation to other variables: dictates comparing instrument scores and external variables; and ‣ consequences of use: evidence derives from looking into issues such as washback effects. If we look at the summary of the cutting-edge in terms of understanding the history of validity research within the setting of educational tests, as suggested by the presented discussion and given in the latest editions of the Standards (1999 and 2014), we can see that while the field has indeed managed to make certain big steps in terms of development, it has not, in many ways, considerably moved away from certain seminal advances made between the 1950s and the 1980s. What we can observe as the major development is that the field has generally moved away from terminological issues which often caused problems in terms of controversy, disagreement, and opaqueness. While it is a fact that most researchers refer to concepts such as “content validity” or “construct validity” by default because of tradition and because of their usefulness in describing certain aspects of validity as a whole, most of them also generally agree with the post-methodological divisions such as Kane‟s (1992), which basically outline the steps to be taken in validation efforts and the kind of evidence you would need to collect in order to provide an plausible argument as to the validity of a particular use of a test. However, in this way the validation research has basically only managed to throw away the shackles of the strict theoretical and terminological tenants of the 1950s. It has not brought about too much novelty in terms of the actual substance of a serious validation effort. We can easily see that the traditional concepts „content validity‟, „criterion validity‟, and overall „construct validity‟ are still relevant. „Consequential validity‟, brought about by Messick (1989), is also still there. Weir‟s (2005) „cognitive validity‟ is basically the only novel conceptual aspect included from beyond the 1980s (and, as mentioned, this aspect was also influenced by Bachman‟s (1990) considerations). Finally, regardless of terminological or theoretical preferences, validity in a contemporary and practically-orientated sense must be ultimately Conceptualization of Validity in Educational Testing 21 seen as a holistic value of a particular use of a test and is to be evaluated via a series of steps, involving stating certain presumptions and gathering evidence to defend them (Kane 2001: 330): 1. first we need to state the planned use and interpretation of the test as clearly as possible; 2. then we develop the entire validation argument - this includes defining the target domain, the representative content, the scoring procedure, how the scores relate to the outside criterion, how the scores relate to any underlying theory, how the scores will be interpreted and with which consequences, together with the criteria and evidence supporting the plausibility of these assumptions; 3. next, we evaluate both logically and empirically all of the previously proposed assumptions, focusing on the most problematic ones, and adjust any interpretations or the procedure accordingly; and 4. at the end we restate the whole interpretative and validity argument and repeat the previous step 3 until the entire argument is plausible in its validity or rejected. 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Nikola Dobrić English Department Alpen-Adria-University Klagenfurt Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism: Challenging Welsh Language Identities via Selective Syncretism with English Allan James The article examines the linguistic expression of different forms of nonmainstream Welsh language identity, Cymreictod, and for this purpose analyses a number of „transgressive‟ scripted texts from medieval and modern literature, a TV sports interview and sweatshirt design. Each of the texts is shown to be socioculturally provocative in different ways, the key to this being the selective syncretism of the Welsh with English, where the latter actually verbalises the essence of the „cambrophone‟ transgression. These texts-fordisplay are further shown to constitute prime examples of late modern bilingual practices in a sociolinguistic perspective. “…there‟s more ways than one of bein‟ Welsh.” Dai Dando, in Meic Stephens Yeah, Dai Dando (2008: 211) “…syncretism is the normal condition of codes in contact.” (Coupland 2012: 21) 1. Introduction The linguistic expression of Welshness (Welsh Cymreictod) in Wales has traditionally been formulated in terms of the strict binary categories of Welsh-speaking (bilingual) or English-speaking (monolingual), and personal identity thereby defined as Cymro or „Taffy‟, respectively. Indeed, this clear separation of the two languages of Wales (i.e. “The Dragon Speaks Two Tongues” (Jones 1968)) permeates the whole of Welsh society, reflected as much in official language policy (notably displayed for instance in the „parallel-text bilingualism‟ of public signage (Coupland 2012: 9-13)) as in the general public perception (for further discussion, AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 43 (2018) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Allan James 28 cf. Pietikäinen et al. 2016: 7-9, 20-22; Coupland 2012: 6-7). It is manifested too, geographically, in the well accepted division of Wales into its Welsh-speaking areas (broadly, the north and west, i.e. Y Fro Cymraeg) and English-speaking areas (broadly, the south and east). And while there is understanding for these radical classifications from a language protection point of view, with significant political initiatives since devolution (1997) promoting and supporting yr hen iaith („the ancient tongue‟) in education and beyond, which itself reflects a noticeably heightened awareness of the cultural and educational value of the Welsh language, the realities of language use „on the ground‟ in Wales present, not surprisingly, a considerably more differentiated picture. With regard to Welsh, beyond the more rarefied spheres of literary language use, there continue to be degrees of linguistic borrowing (established and ad hoc) and code-switching involving English, i.e. „non-traditional forms‟, in daily cambrophone practice (Robert 2009: 97). With regard to English, regional forms of Welsh English, perhaps most notably the prominent „Wenglish‟ (Lewis 2008) or „Valleys Voice‟ of South Wales (James 2011), in any case show substantial lexical borrowing and phonetic and phonological influence from Welsh (e.g. see further Penhallurick 2008; Walters 2003). Returning to Welsh, while regional dialects (northern and southern, within the latter e.g. Gwenhwyseg) are still valued for their relative linguistic „purity‟ (i.e. showing some resistance to ad hoc anglophone borrowing and code-switching), there has evolved in addition in the capital, Cardiff, an urban form of the language which manifests acceptable forms of the colloquial, i.e. non-literary standard, language, while at the same evidencing a frequent almost stylised code-switching into English (e.g. as amply represented in the fictional works of Llwyd Owen (e.g. 2006)). Regarding attitudes of acceptability and prestige to these „mixed‟ Welshes, Robert (2009), in research studying the perception of L2 learner Welsh by L1 Welsh speakers, confirms that “There is a strong purist element among Welsh speakers, and notions of standardness and correctness are closely linked with the influence of English, whether through calques, loanwords, convergence, rule simplification, or restricted lexicon in many speakers” (2009: 97). Such negatively evaluated speech is often dismissively labelled bratiaith („broken language‟). With Welsh Englishes, largescale sociolinguistic research has shown that on a scale of acceptability for the factors „Welshness‟ and „social prestige‟ it is the English of southwest Wales (i.e. Carmarthen and region) which scores highest (Garrett et al., 2003: 135-136). Perhaps tellingly, this English shows almost complete phonetic overlap with the Welsh of the region itself (Mayr et al. 2015). By contrast, north-east English (i.e. of Wrexham and region) and Cardiff English, as the anglophone dialects manifesting far less phonetic influence of Welsh score lowest values on „Welshness‟ and „social prestige‟ (Garrett et al., 2003: 203-204). At the same time, Valleys Voice as the Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 29 English of the former industrialised South Wales upland area to the north-west and north-east of Cardiff is seen as a heritage dialect from an immediately past age, strong on „pleasantness‟, „warmth‟, „friendliness‟ and other socially positive factors but is considered weak on „prestige‟ (Garrett et al. 2003: 120-121). It is interesting to note that in more recent years Valleys Voice has been accorded a new social semiotics via the hugely popular daily BBC Wales radio Chris Needs Show (2002-) such that: ...Chris Needs himself re-valorises the „ordinariness‟ of Valleys Voice by displaying as an „ordinary celebrity‟ his homosexuality, his love of bling, disco, sun-worshipping and camp as being consistent with his use of Wenglish, a variety in industrial „Old Wales‟ strongly associated with traditional manual work-based masculinities. (James 2011: 58) The presenter “deauthenticates himself relative to old certainties of class and gender” (Coupland 2010a: 110) and in doing so subverts the social significance of a well established and stable regional dialect to express an individual‟s sexual and lifestyle preferences. It is the wholescale appropriation of a historically formed syncretic Welsh English dialect that constitutes the „transgressive‟ language use here. In variety terms, a dialect is converted to a register, reinforced by the cultivation in discourse with his listeners of a strong horticultural metaphor of belonging and sharing in “The Chris Needs Friendly Garden Association”. In the following, while attention will be given to re-semiotisation processes involving sexuality and lifestyle as well as other social referents, the main focus, in contrast, will be on how both languages of Wales in combination are linguistically (not just sociolinguistically) subverted. This, it will be shown, takes the form of scripted syncretism to project alternative verbal (and visual) social identities. 2. Scripted code-mixing in Wales and identity as late modern sociolinguistic practice The recognition of late modern language practices in sociolinguistic analysis and how they challenge the foundations on which a „modern‟ linguistic interpretation of language use is based is relevant to the consideration of mixed-code social language behaviour in Wales. Such practices, which from a discourse perspective are seen as in the first place - selectively - drawing on the semiotic resources rather than per se on the structural properties of available linguistic codes (languages, but also dialects, registers, etc.) for their expressivity challenge the traditional compartmentalisation of language production as the bringing forth of strictly separate „whole‟ language codes (which may situationally and Allan James 30 „challengingly‟ mix). Late modern language practices involve „heightened levels of reflexivity‟ (Pietikäinen et al. 2016: 449), manifest an „artful use of speech in expressive performance‟ (Rampton 2006: 16), and a whole score of „meta‟-processes such as „performance and performativity, style and stylisation, stance and positionality, parody and irony, transgression, metadiscursive practices, and so on” (Pietikäinen et al. 2016: 450). Relating these observations to the present texts under consideration, it would appear that literary practices of language mixing in particular would seem to link in well with these posited discourse practices of the late modern sociocultural era. Literary text construction is by definition reflexive and „artful‟ and it scripts for performance (whether for being read or directly vocalised), while critical syncretic texts can provide the „cultural hybridity‟ and „exclusive sites of authenticity‟ that Bohata (2004) calls for from Welsh writing in English (2004: 27). Similarly, the „metadiscursive‟ non-literary practices of late modernity also script for local performance and in (sub-) culturally hybrid verbal interaction have been identified as increasingly bior multilingual in nature: after all, in a „language as practice‟ ontology as opposed to „language as system‟ one, “Languages don‟t just exist alongside each other, but merge, blend, mesh, coalesce into a symbiosis where traditional labels struggle to find a place” (Saraceni 2015: xi). They do so in local multilingual discourses in practices labelled „languaging‟ (Jørgensen 2008), „metrolingualism‟ (Otsuji and Pennycook 2010) or „code-meshing‟ (Canagarajah 2006), which capture the fluid use of complementary linguistic substance from more than one source code in expressing the local social meanings within one linguistic repertoire (cf. also James 2014, 2016). These meanings are, to a greater of lesser degree, also meanings of the kind of „voluntary‟ or „selfconsciously constructed‟ Welsh identity referred to by Bohata (2004: 27) in the context of mixed-language writing in Wales, and indeed may project locally „transgressive‟ forms of a personal national or ethnic identity. Pursuing the issue of Welsh identities, the use of syncretic or mixed language cambrophone-anglophone codes has been confirmed above as very present in Wales, being, as has been noted, diachronically motivated via considerable structural borrowing from Welsh into the English of the country (and also vice versa specifically on a lexical level) and synchronically presenting both ad hoc borrowing and code-switching (in both directions). In a late modern perspective on language use, this „use‟ is of cambrophone and anglophone semiotic resources to signal local social meanings, prominently of personal identity, in contextually defined discourses. To the extent that ethnic or „national‟ identity is a prominent part of personal identity and can be linguistically constructed, i.e. scripted, projected and performed (at varying levels of reflexivity) in discourse in various ways, then mixed-language Welsh identities can of course equally be realised as such and co-define a speaker‟s late modern „style‟ (Coupland 2007: 29-30). For example, in this connection James Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 31 (2016) offers a detailed sociolinguistic analysis of the Welsh-English mixing in the digital communication of two Welsh-speaking 13 year old girls via Instant Messaging, in which the “casual interplay of cambrophone and anglophone linguistic substance as well as the casual ‟truncated‟ written form that both languages are partly represented in”, i.e. the nonstandard and reduced spellings typical of the social media (2016: 271), create a locally „transgressive‟ bilingual identity (relative to the prevailing sociolinguistic norms of cambrophone north-west Wales), one of, e.g., youthful playfulness and digital „cool‟. For illustration, the first four lines of the “convo” are included here in original form, Welsh standard spelling and English word-for-word translation, where “part.” stands for “particle” (James 2016: 272): Speaker 1: so be t bd n neud hddw so beth ti bod yn wneud heddiw so what you be part. do today Speaker 2: went 2 einirs bday party lst night aye you went to Einir‟s birthday party last night and you Speaker 1: v d bd i Bangor fi wedi bod i Bangor I part. Be to Bangor Speaker 2: kl cool An examination of the whole transcript with relation to the predominant semantics expressed by the identifiably more cambrophone and more anglophone sections of the text leads to the conclusion that whereas the „Welsh‟ conveys largely factual meanings, the „English‟ carries largely social and affective meanings (a similar conclusion having been reached, for example, with regard to the Serbian-English digital „chat‟ of female teenagers by Talibrk and Tosić (2012), indicating a similar register differentiation between the two languages involved). However, since “The Dragon Speaks Two Tongues” (see above) and (Welsh) English is in practice the majority language of Wales in any case, its frequent ascriptions in sociolinguistic analysis as standing for its worldwide users‟ projected identities of social attractiveness, verbal sophistication and wit, personal dynamism, youthfulness (of spirit), individuality etc., etc. do not necessarily apply for its Welsh users. Nonetheless, as will be demonstrated in the following analyses, anglophony in particular co-occurrences in particular cambrophone texts can be ascribed a significant role in facilitating the social acceptance of personal identities which in the first instance would not be expressible by cambrophony Allan James 32 alone. Specifically, it will be shown below how particular „transgressive‟ types of Welshness are projected by a particular mixing of the cambrophone and anglophone in scripted texts for performed bilingual discourse. 3. Scripted bilingualism for transgressive Cymreictod 3.1. Syncretic texts: medieval and modern An early „transgressive‟ cambrophone-anglophone scripting was produced by the medieval Oxford scholar and poet Ieuan ap Hywel Swrdwal in his Hymn to the Virgin of around 1480. It is an ode addressed to God via the Virgin Mary, composed according to traditional Welsh cynghanedd, specifically awdl metre, written in a version of late Middle English, but in Welsh orthography in order to ensure the correct alliterations, assonances and rhymes required by the Welsh metre. This is the first verse (of thirteen): O michdi ladi, owr leding / tw haf at hefn owr abeiding yntw ddy ffest efrlesting i set a braents ws tw bring. A transliteration into Modern English would be: O mighty lady, our leading / to have At heaven our abiding Into the feast everlasting Ye set a branch us to bring In the prologue to the poem, Swrdwal, countering the dismissive comments of his fellow English students at Oxford that the Welsh were poor scholars and poets, challenges his distractors thus: “I shall compose a poem in English, in your own tongue; and if all the English men in England compose such a poem or equal it, revile the Welsh. If you cannot compose it, leave the Welsh the privilege which God has given them. And recognize yourselves that you cannot compete with the Welsh” (translation, Dobson 1954: 112). And naturally no English scholar or poet was in a position to compose in cynghanedd metre. Clearly, the poem constitutes linguistic „transgression‟ on two levels: writing English in Welsh orthography and writing „English‟ verse in cynghanedd, and as German (2009 ) concludes “it is perhaps the earliest example of an extended text in which Welsh-influenced English is used by a Welshman for the purposes of underscoring Welsh national identity” (2009: 33). As such, imbuing the English with Welsh, Swrdwal achieves a Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 33 written synthesis of the languages as an act of well-reflected sociolinguistic non-conformity avant la lettre. 3.2. Poem as syncretic text: Partisan by Peter Finch (1997) Peter Finch is an avant-garde poet, critic and author based in Cardiff, whose poem Partisan appears in his twenty-first collection entitled Useful (1997). He has been humorously referred to Wales‟ literary Dadaist, with his poetry dense and heavily absurdist. He regularly mixes Welsh and English in his work for ironic and parodic effect, often in the service of intense lampooning of salient (and revered) sociocultural and sociopolitical reference points of past and present Wales with its prominent national icons. This is radically the case in his poem Partisan: PARTISAN rydw i am fod blydi I am rydyn ni rydw i rody i rodney rodney I am rhydyn am fod I am I am I am rydw i yn Pantycelyn Rhydcymerau Pwllheli yes I am bicupping mainly cym sticker aardvark the dictionary cymro hirsuit weirdo on fire arrested finger-pointed rhydych chi imperialist long-nosed pinky cottagers roeddwn i‟n fine yn y bore oherwydd y heddlu not able anyway little zippo lager considerable influence tried to burn it not enough alcoalcohol corner shop four-pack Diamond White Red Stripe brns your heart out rudin wedi dysgu hen ddigon ol‟ mouldering Welsh Saunders Mabinignog crap nasty blydi books we‟re a digidol neishyn smot superbod sam tan brilliant example ac yn nawr? bod ar y satellite no defense carchar poms yn saesneg dim yn gallu handlo‟r cymraeg ril traditional blydi Welshman Allan James 34 Linguistically the text is a thickly intertwined mélange of „Welsh‟ and „English‟ with artfully created syntactic, lexical, phonological and orthographic fusion. Syntactically, „Welsh‟ integration with „English‟ pivots on clause-initial forms of the present tense of bod („to be‟) such as in the first stanza rydw i, rydyn ni, („I am‟, „we are‟), in the second stanza rhydych chi („you (pl.) are‟) and past tense roeddwn i („I was‟) in stanza three. The close occurrence of the forms of the present tense is reminiscent of the verb conjugations found in learner textbooks (and perhaps chanted in the classroom by learners themselves). In reality and paradoxically, these forms of the verb bod are considered artificial and unsuitable for colloquial use. For instance, in the first stanza, in the first line the Welsh verb phrase rydw i am (fod) („I want to (be)‟) mutates into the English „I am‟ via homographic equivalence and in the second line via the same process Welsh rydw i mutates via nonce *rody i to English „rodney‟ („rodney I am‟), establishing that the writer character is in fact a „rodney‟, i.e. Wenglish for „idler, layabout‟. Welsh am (literally „for‟) as in the truncated first person plural rydyn am fod („we want to be‟) homographically mutates into a thrice repeated „I am‟ in line four and in the first line of the second stanza is incorporated into the continuous form „I am bicupping‟. Lexical integration from Welsh into an English frame is mainly at word level, whereas at phrase and clause level English itself is more prominent, there being for instance longer stretches of „uninterrupted‟ English text in stanza two and three (but cf. the Welsh clause frame with English insertion in roeddwn I’n fine yn y bore (oherwydd/ y heddlu...) („I was fine in the morning (because/ the police...)‟) in stanza three). The Welsh lexical insertions largely represent culturally and politically rich points of reference for Wales and are contextually parodied: e.g. in stanza one the placenames Pantycelyn and Rhydcymerau refer to, respectively, the pseudonym of a canonical author of the 18 th century and the location of a canonical early 20 th century novel; and Pwllheli most likely stands for the location of the R.A.F. „bombing school‟ which was (in-)famously set on fire by a group of Welsh political activists in 1936. Saunders (although, strictly, anglophone) is the name of the poet, dramatist, critic and political activist Saunders Lewis who was a member of the arsonist group, but who also held a seminal radio lecture on Tynged yr Iaith („The Fate of the Language‟) in 1962, which inspired subsequent concerted institutional action on the promotion of the Welsh language. The bastardised Mabinignog is a deflating version of the Mabinogi, a four-part series of Welsh mythical tales appearing in the 12 th and 13 th centuries, the fused nignog being (British) English slang for „a silly person‟. Other Welsh lexical items with sociocultural baggage would be in stanza two cym as the country abbreviation for „Wales‟ on car stickers and cymro for „Welshman‟, in stanza three y heddlu („the police‟), and in stanza four smot, superbod, and sam tan as Welsh language children‟s animation figures („Spot‟, „SuperTed‟ and „Fireman Sam‟, respectively). Further, in Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 35 the last stanza yn saesneg and ‘r cymraeg (respectively „in English‟ and „Welsh (language)‟) hardly need commentary, except for the fact that they are not spelled with a capital letter. In general the English lexical substance directly expresses „subversive‟ activity or traits of the poem‟s „I‟: in stanza two „bicupping‟ refers to a surgical process of removal, „hirsuit weirdo‟ is a mildly amusing physical description of the protagonist, whereas his antagonists, the English „cottagers‟ in Wales, are deftly labelled „imperialist‟ (a pseudo-radical political designation) and „longnosed pinky‟ (physical othering of Caucasians from an Asian perspective). The third stanza has, for instance, the proper names „zippo‟ for „cigarette lighter‟ and „Diamond White Red Stripe‟ as a beer brand name (blending „Diamond‟ and „Red Stripe‟) associated with the „subversive‟ activities of setting fire and (over-) consumption of alcohol. Other notable „transgressive‟ lexical uses would be the slang „aardvark‟ for „hard work‟, the fusion item „alcoalcohol‟ of stanza three containing „coal‟ as an icon of South Wales industry, „mouldering‟ in four as a pejorative blend of „mold(y)‟ and „smouldering‟, and „carchar poms‟ as semi-pejorative Australian English for „white Englishmen‟ who can‟t handlo (Anglicism „handle‟) ‘r cymraeg. Other deliberate Anglicisms are fine in the third stanza and the transliterated neishyn („nation‟) in the fourth in combination with the preceding Cambricism digidol for „digital‟. Further transliterations into Welsh are brns, ril for „real‟ and, most prominently, in the first, twentieth and last line blydi for „bloody‟. The poem presents images of different Welsh identities as „partisan‟ - the „rodney‟, the (incantating) learner of Welsh, „the dictionary cymro‟ („Welshman‟), the „hirsuit weirdo‟, and the political activist/ (drunken) arsonist. It is implicitly critical of past Welsh-language literary and political icons, but equally so of the digital age of (children‟s) entertainment, of satellite television (prefaced by the line ac yn nawr? („and now? ‟)) and with it the concomitant further incursion of the English language. There is implied criticism of both a contemporarily shallow and a historically saturated Cymreictod (characteristically transmogrified by Finch into bilingual „cymrectitude‟ in another poem St. David’s Hall (2001)). The picture is of a bricolage of particular Welshnesses in a time of continuing linguistic and cultural challenges and change. This is linguistically underscored as itself bricolage, showing radically “the way both the languages of Wales can be used in the same piece of writing without fitting into the categories of code-switching” (Bohata 2004: 127), where ultimately it is only revealing to a point to artificially dissect the discourse into the ostensible cambrophone and the ostensible anglophone for a deeper understanding of the poem. Partisan does “create at least an illusion of an „ethnorhythmic‟ fusion of the two languages” (Bohata 2004: 127), forming a dense cambrophone-anglophone synthesis. This, it seems, might indeed be the true syncretic idiom of a „ril traditional blydi Welshman‟. Allan James 36 3.3. Play as syncretic text: Llwyth (Tribe) by Dafydd James (2010) A syncretic idiom of less „traditional‟ Welshmen characterises the discourse of the play Llwyth, which portrays the social life of a group of four cambrophone Cardiff gays, Aneurin, Gareth, Gavin and Rhys (together with the older Dada), who are back in the city from London on the day of a Wales rugby international. The language depicted is a quickfire combination of colloquial spoken Welsh richly interspersed with colloquial English, with frequent use of gay register and jargon, resulting in a decidedly „transgressive‟ form of an „ethnorhythmic‟ dialogue. Overall, its “cheeky poetic rhythms, speedy as a racer bike, spurt with interjections from all involved”, constitute a high speed maswedd („banter‟) (Savill, quoted in Rabey 2015: xiii-xiv). The following extract is taken from the opening scene (Golygfa Un), in which while Rhys is singing popular modern Welsh language songs with a choir in a Cardiff chapel (off stage), and Aneurin is moving around in his London flat, Rhys phones / my translations/ : Mae Aneurin yn estyn ei ffôn o’I boced i weld yn union pwy sy’n galw (Aneurin reaches his phone out of his pocket to connect with the caller) Oh! My favourite gay! Aneurin: Beth ti moyn? (What do you want? ) Rhys: Ble wyt ti? (Where are you? ) Aneurin: Ble ti’n feddwl? (Where do you mean? ) Rhys: Ar fore Sadwrn? (On Saturday morning? ) Aneurin: Last chance, lovely. Rhys: Slag. Aneurin: Rhys Thomas, I take offence at that! Ti’n canu ar fore Sadwrn, that‟s equally anifeilaidd. (You singing on Saturday morning, that‟s equally beastly.) Rhys: Ni off w’thnos i heddi, nagyn ni? Taipei, here I come… (We‟re off a week today, aren‟t we? ) Aneurin: Rho hanner awr i fi and I‟ll be coming too. (Give me half an hour) Rhys: Twat. Aneurin: Knob. Rhys: Make notes. Aneurin: I‟ll report back with all the gory details! It‟s my gwobr. Am fy narganfyddiad ysgytwol am Iolo Morgannwg… (It‟s my reward. For my shocking discovery about Iolo Morgannwg...) While a linguistic consideration of this short extract can hardly substitute for a full analysis of the dense and varied cambrophone and anglophone richness of the play text as a whole, it will hope to identify certain recurring patterns of language use. In terms of code-mixing typology, both Welsh and English show predominantly clause-level „alternation‟ (Muy- Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 37 sken 2000) in both characters‟ speech, for instance as illustrated in Aneurin‟s fifth speech: Rho hanner…‟coming too‟, where Welsh and English clauses alternate. However, there are also individual „insertions‟ (Muysken 2000) such as in Aneurin‟s fourth speech: anifeilaidd in the clause „that‟s equally…‟. Gay register (here slang banter) is anglophone in the form of declarative non-finite commentary clauses: „Last chance, lovely‟, „Slag.‟, Twat.‟, Knob.‟ Comparing in general the situational semantics and social semiosis of the „Welsh‟ and the „English‟, one might conclude that while the former expresses more factual arrangement meanings, the latter is used to signal more affective (attitudinal, judgemental, emotional) meanings. Llwyth has attracted substantial critical attention, responding as it does to “the desire for new fictions that re-imagine Wales” (Blandford 2005: 191), for “Wales needs continually to „perform‟ its identity” (2005: 177). In performing Wales, the play performs cambrophone (with anglophone) queer identities, a combination hitherto unknown in contemporary Welsh theatre. In the words of the play‟s director Arwel Gruffydd: “Welsh speakers are continually confronted with issues of identity but seeing Welsh-language identity through a gay prism was not only bold and at times shocking but more immediately it was refreshing, fun and unexpectedly revealing. At the heart of this vision of Welshness is an assertion that being a Welsh speaker is like being gay; there is an innate queerness about lesser-used language identity” (2015: 174). But at one point in the play the character Gavin asks the older gay Dada polemically: Mae Cymraeg yn queer? („Is the Welsh language queer? ‟) to which the reply is Yn gallu bod („Can be‟). However, Gavin (here standing for Dafydd James himself, by the playwright‟s own admission) still struggles with this juxtaposition and reflects that there is actually no word in Welsh for „gay‟. This, though, is flatly contradicted by Morgan (2016), who in a historical review of cambrophone sexually ambiguous performance practices since medieval times actually provides the Welsh for „gay‟ as hoyw and further concludes that “we will find, in fact, that Welsh is a very queer language after all” (2016: 70). In a broad discussion of the play, Osborne (2015) sums up that “Wales is a representational space where ethnic and sexual differences coincide” (2015: 8), i.e. llwythau („tribes‟) come together. The play queries, and thereby subverts, a number of Welsh cultural icons in its “critical saturation with consciously and identifiably Welsh tropes” (Adam Somerset, quoted in Greer (2016: 220)). It profiles a „transgressive‟ cambrophone hybrid identity, e.g. by indirect reference probably to the drug addition (Aneurin‟s „shocking discovery‟) of the poet, romantic philosopher (and literary forger! ) Iolo Morgannwg (1747- 1826) as in the above extract, and throughout the play to the early medieval Gododdin saga whose hero Aneurin is transformed into a leader of an army of gays in the play character Aneurin‟s developing novel. Other Welsh sociocultural cambrophone as well as anglophone sociocultural Allan James 38 points of reference are also drawn into the script to underscore a staking out of Welsh territory - e.g. choral singing, chapel, rugby, Cardiff Bay, to name but a few. Thus while the performed hybrid identities of Llwyth might be seen to challenge monochrome cambrophone social practice, they are crucially complemented, if not indeed facilitated, by anglophone discourse specifically expressive of the most challenged identity of gay. Apart from whether Welsh has or has not an appropriate word for „gay‟, it remains highly significant that Welsh is not used in the banter of the play for the direct expression of sexual orientation. Relative to the discussion in 2. above of late modern language practices, one may conclude that Llwyth truly offers in Bohata‟s (2004) words an “exclusive site of authenticity” presenting a “self-consciously constructed kind of Welsh identity”, i.e. a transgressive performed mixedlanguage Welsh „style‟ (2004: 27). 3.4. Television interview as syncretic text: Rhian Madamrygbi Davies In contrast to Llwyth, which strives for the acceptance of a transgressive Welsh authenticity, Rhian Madamrygbi Davies embodies a totally stylised performance of a modern self-consciously vulgarised Welsh „identity‟, that of the seemingly naïve enthusiastic female rugby supporter who has access to her player heroes in the guise of a TV reporter. Her interviews are performed in (southern) Welsh, with scattered but significant anglophone „switches‟. The Welsh employed is of an over-familiar colloquial style, not entirely „appropriate‟ to a sports star interview - again a linguistic and stylistic transgression. Hers is a multimodal medial identity, dressed in an emblematic red Wales rugby shirt inscribed at the front with CYMRU („Wales‟) in white letters, sporting white jeans with a thick golden plastic wicker belt, red high-heel sandles and a cowboy-style hat in Welsh flag design, and typically over-gesturing in a stereotypically naïve enthusiastic manner (see Figure 1). The character‟s name, Rhian Madamrygbi Davies, includes the intralingual punning of English „Mad(am)‟ and „mad‟, which can only be totally disambiguated inter-lingually by comparing an English understanding of „Madamrygbi‟ as „title‟ „Madam‟ plus „surname‟ rygbi („rugby‟) with a Welsh interpretation of „Madamrygbi‟ as English-borrowed adjective „mad‟ as Mad, followed by Welsh am (English „for‟ or „about‟), followed by rygbi. Hence the personal name shows a dense cambrophone-anglophone syncretism. Her first name, Rhian, is a Welsh female forename with the meaning „maiden‟, while her last name, Davies, is a common surname in Wales. Madamrygbi, played by the actress Eirlys Bellin, featured prominently in the weekly Jonathan sports programme shown on the Welsh language TV channel S4C (Sianel Pedwar Cymru) in the period 2011-2014. Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 39 Fig. 1: Rhian Madamrygbi Davies posing in front of iconic Caernarfon Castle, draped with Welsh flags The following transcript is an extract from an interview conducted with the player Shane Williams before a crucial game between Wales and Ireland during the Rugby World Cup held in New Zealand in 2011 (provided in Pietikäinen et al. 2016: 171). (The English translation is that included in the original source; “(.)” signals pause): RHIAN 1 mae sgorio cais yn gwpan y byd yn breuddwyd i bawb ond (.) (scoring a try in the World Cup is everyone‟s dream) 2 mae‟n reality (.) ar gyfer y legend (.) Shane Williams (it‟s a reality for the legend Shane Williams) SHANE 3 yeah alright RHIAN 4 alright Shane? SHANE 5 yeah good RHIAN 6 sut ti‟n teimlo am y gêm fawr yn erbyn Iwerddon? (how are you feeling about the big game against Ireland? SHANE 7 o mae‟r bois yn edrych mlan am y gêm nawr ch‟mod (.) (oh the boys are looking forward to the game now you know (.) 8 sdim byd i colli nawr ma rhaid i mynd mas a warae (.) (there‟s nothing to lose now we have to go out and play (.) 9 a nab eth - ni (.) ti‟mod i ni‟n mynd i neud ar dydd Sadwrn (and that‟s what - (.) you know what we‟ll do on Saturday 10 so er (.) excited iawn ond edrych mlan (so er (.) very excited but looking forward RHIAN 11 i‟n nerfus achos bydde ni‟n crappo fy hyn? (are you nervous because I‟m crapping myself) Allan James 40 While the linguistic substance of the interview is clearly Welsh, anglophone syncretisms occur. They range from the integrated loans sgorio, gêm, bois and nerfus to the anglophone discourse markers „yeah‟, „alright‟, „good‟, „oh‟, „so‟ and the hesitation marker „er‟ to the ad hoc incorporated „reality‟, „legend‟, „excited‟ and „crappo‟. Hence the non-integrated „English‟ expressions are used for i) interpersonal phatic communion („yeah‟, „alright‟, „good‟), ii) to introduce speaker turns („oh‟, „so‟) (Shane) and iii) to signal strong affective meanings („reality‟, „legend‟, „excited‟ and „crappo‟) pertaining to the subject under discussion (Rhian) - the last profanity supplied with the necessary Welsh verbal suffix „-o‟. The deployment of these ad hoc anglophone syncretisms in a cambrophone TV interview would count as transgressive in itself, and we can note again how „English‟ is employed as a transgression-compounding register (in Llwyth above as „gay talk‟, with Rhian as over-familiar interpersonal framing and genre-inappropriate „spontaneous‟ emotional hyperbole). But as Pietikäinen et al. (2016) remind us, “many other Welsh people have come to experience their linguistic and sporting cultures in ways not dissimilar to how Rhian performs them. For them, the Welsh language cannot simply be „chosen‟ once and for all, in its entirety, as an alternative to English…In that sense, Rhian‟s linguistic syncretism and her „profane‟ identity projections lessen the burden of being a „real speaker of Welsh‟” (2016: 176). In this way “a space is opened up for metacultural reassessment, for rethinking what Welshness and bilingualism can be” (2016: 176). As a highly stylised meta-parodic identity performance Madamrygbi creates a hugely self-concious verbal and visual act totally consistent with the more entertaining of late modern language practices. 3.5. Sweatshirt display as syncretic text The final scripting to be analysed is a „portable and talkable bit of the linguistic landscape‟ of Wales (Coupland 2010b: 77), namely reflexively constructed sweatshirt inscription which is syncretic semantically and semiotically, showing both cambrophone-anglophone and specifically cambro-graphic-anglographic mixing. In other words, the display is both verbal and visual, both text and image. The general presence of Welsh and English in the linguistic landscape of Wales is predominantly in the form of „parallel text bilingualism‟ (see also above, Coupland 2012: 9-13) as highway signage, road markings, pedestrian directions, institutional designations, etc., where the two language texts juxtapose and are inevitably presented in the same font size, type and colour, and this situation makes the explicit or implicit linguistic mixing for public display itself „transgressive‟ with regard to Welsh sociocultural norms. With sweatshirts, the „meaningful‟ and reflected linguistic hybridity projected is also transgressive with regard to conventional fashionand image-driven inscription practice on such garments. Such syncretic texts displayed Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 41 Coupland labels „Laconic Metacultural Celebration‟ (2012: 17), a typical two of which are shown as Figures 2 and 3: Fig. 2: Sweatshirt (hoodie) 1 Fig. 3: Sweatshirt (hoodie) 2 Sweatshirt 1 in Figure 2 is in a patriotic red, with contrasting light blue hood cord. The inscription CMRU 4MBTH is boldly presented in large white upper case sans serif characters, the two lines directly on top of each other, left-justified. The text is recognisably a version of the traditional Welsh homeland slogan CYMRU AM BYTH („Wales for ever‟), but with both Y vowels omitted and A replaced by the digit 4. The first Y vowel is mid central / ə/ and the second high-mid front-central / ɪ/ . The two words as written CMRU and BTH would in practice be both pronounceable and readable, and hence recognisable, without the missing vowels. The missing letters, producing „fractured Welsh‟ (Coupland 2012: 89), are eye-catching and subversive in the way that public „signage‟ in Welsh is expected to be perfectly spelled. The substitution of the digit 4 for the A of AM is both linguistically and graphically „syncretic‟. With AM meaning „for‟ / fɔ: / in English, the digit 4 functions as its rebus, while the graphic shape of 4 is reminiscent of an A, which in turn would be the letter of the „original‟ Welsh word for „for‟ AM. Sweatshirt 2 in Figure 3 is in a purple, with contrasting lemon yellow hood cord. The inscription ffab is presented in relatively large white Beatles‟ Yellow Submarine letters, technically „Amelia‟ font, i.e. “the bulbous psychedelia…designed to look like an underwater LSD trip” (Garfield: 2010: 274). While this font is not likely to be encountered elsewhere in the public signage of Wales in any case, it signals in a pop art way a further subversion by association with the social mores projected by the Beatles‟ music of the time (1969). As for the linguistic syncretism, the word ffab is the Anglicism „fab‟ in Welsh, suitably transliterated. The original „fab‟ was teenage slang for „fabulous‟ at the time of „The Fab Four‟, i.e. the Beatles themselves. The expression is therefore highly dated, and in any case at first glance of ffab, a reader might briefly pon- Allan James 42 der on whether he or she is looking at a Welsh or an English word (apart from a small number of rare family names (e.g. „Ffrench‟, „Fforde‟) in reality there being no words beginning with „ff-„ in English). The sweater scripts (with also orthography as script(s) and font as script(s) are transgressive therefore on a number of levels - involving Welsh-English syncretism linguistically and (ortho-)graphically, and beyond this with reference to sociocultural associations evoked by the words and font types. Again here further typicalities of reflexive late modern language practices come to the fore: „fractured language‟ (i.e. truncated spellings familiar from styles of e-communication), display, visuality (i.e. multimodality), and not least ludicity. 4. Conclusion It has been regularly pointed out how the above mixed-language texts evidence late modern sociolinguistic practices particular to Wales. At the broadest level, of such practices it is perhaps the metacultural awareness displayed that is most pervasive: it is shown in multilinguality (Swrdwal, Finch, Llwyth) as the metalingual, in multimediality (Rhian) as the metamedial, and in multimodality (sweatshirts) as the metamodal. The presented texts all comprise Welsh-English syncretism in different manifestations: from the poetic transliteration of Swrdwal, the „chaotic‟ bricolage of Finch, the gay banter of Llwyth, the „loose‟ vernacular of Madamrygbi, the subtle punning of the sweatshirts. Each inscription is constructed for interlingual performance and interpretation, but projects transgressive Welshnesses relative to the conventional practices of their sociocultural contexts. Above all, it is Cymreictod, i.e. cambrophone Welshness, that is challenged, which needs English for its facilitation, its mediation and subsequently its realisation. It has been shown in all cases that it is the presence of „English‟ in the scripted texts that focusses the transgression and it is the anglophony itself that directly articulates it as a form of its enregisterment. However, the indexicality of the Welsh by its very presence in such contexts of use extends towards the transgressive, compounded by its textual juxtaposition and therefore association with the English. A value-added „Cymreictod +‟ sociolinguistic and sociocultural identity therefore crucially draws on the (socio-)linguistic anglophone „Other‟ for its confirmation and ultimate legitimation. References Blandford, Steve (2005). “Dramatic fictions in a postcolonial Wales”. In Jane Aaron & Chris Williams (eds.). Postcolonial Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 177-192. Bohata, Kirsti (2004). Postcolonialism Revisited. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. Transgressive Cymreictod as Scripted Bilingualism 43 Canagarajah, Suresh (2006). “Towards a writing pedagogy of shuttling between languages: Learning from multilingual writers”. College English 68 (6): 589- 604. Coupland, Nikolas (2007). Style: Language Variation and Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coupland, Nikolas (2010a): “The authentic speaker and the speech community”. In Carmen Llames & Dominic Watt (eds.). Language and Identities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. 99-112 Coupland, Nikolas (2010b). “Welsh linguistic landscapes „from above‟ and „from below‟”. In Adam Jaworski & Crispin Thurlow (eds.). Semiotic Landscapes: Language, Image, Space. London: Continuum. 77-101. Coupland, Nikolas (2012). “Bilingualism on display: The framing of Welsh and English in Welsh public spaces”. Language in Society 41: 1-27. Dobson, Eric (1954). “The Hymn to the Virgin”. Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. 70-124. Finch, Peter (1997). Useful. Bridgend: Seren. Finch, Peter (2001). Food. Bridgend: Seren. Garfield, Simon (2010). Just My Type. London: Profile Books. Garrett, Peter, Nikolas Coupland & Angie Williams (2003). Investigating Language Attitudes: Social Meanings of Dialect, Ethnicity and Performance. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. German, Gary (2009). “Two early examples of Welsh English as a marker of national identity: Ieuan ap Hywel Swrdwal‟s Hymn to the Virgin and Shakespeare‟s Fluellen”. In Anne Hellegouarc‟h-Bryce, Gary German & Jean-Yves Le Disez (eds.). Colloque international et pluridisciplinaire sur le Pays de Galles contemporain. Brest: Université de Bretagne Occidentale. 23-38. Greer, Stephen (2016). “Queer/ Welsh and Welsh/ Queer: Performing Hybrid Wales”. In Huw Osborne (ed.). Queer Wales: The History, Culture and Politics of Queer Life in Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 209-223. Gruffydd, Arwel (2015). “Introduction to Llwyth”. In Tim Price & Kate Wasserberg (eds.). Contemporary Welsh Plays. London: Bloomsbury. 173-175. James, Allan (2011). “English(es) in post-devolution Wales: The sociolinguistic reconstruction of late modern Valleys Voice”. Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik 36 (1): 47-63. James, Allan (2014). “English as a visual language: Theorising the social semiotics of anglography in polylingual texts”. English Text Construction 7 (1): 18-52. James, Allan (2016). “From code-mixing to mode-mixing in the European context”. World Englishes 35 (2): 259-275. James, Dafydd (2015). “Llwyth”. In Tim Price & Kate Wasserberg (eds.). Contemporary Welsh Plays. London: Bloomsbury. 169-278. Jones, Glyn (1968). The Dragon Speaks Two Tongues. London: Dent. Jørgensen, J. Normann (2008). “Polylingual languaging around and among children and adolescents”. International Journal of Multilingualism 5 (3): 161-176. Lewis, Robert (2008). Wenglish: The Dialect of the South Wales Valleys. Talybont: Y Lolfa. Mayr, Robert, Jonathan Morris, Ineke Mennen & Daniel Williams (2015). “Disentangling the effects of long-term and individual bilingualism: The case of monophthongs in Welsh English”. International Journal of Bilingualism 21 (3): 245- 267. Morgan, Mihangel (2016). “From Huw Arwystli to Siôn Eirian: Representative examples of Cadi/ Queer life from medieval to twentieth-century Welsh litera- Allan James 44 ture”. In Huw Osborne (ed.). Queer Wales: The History, Culture and Politics of Queer Life in Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 65-88. Muysken, Pieter (2000). Bilingual Speech: A Typology of Code-Mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Osborne, Huw (2016). “Introduction”. In Huw Osborne (ed.). Queer Wales: The History, Culture and Politics of Queer Life in Wales. Cardiff: University of Wales Press. 1-12. Owen, Llwyd (2006). Ffydd, Gobaith, Cariad. Talybont: Y Lolfa. Otsuji, Emi & Alistair Pennycook (2010). “Metrolingualism: Fixity, fluidity and language in flux”. International Journal of Multilingualism 7 (3): 240-254. Palibrk, Ivana & Tiana Tosić (2012). “Girl talk: English in modern means of communication”. Nasleđe 18: 151-165. Penhallurick, Robert (2008). “English in Wales”. In David Britain (ed.). Language in the British Isles. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 152-170. Pietikäinen, Sari, Helen Kelly-Holmes, Alexandra Jaffe & Nikolas Coupland (2016). Sociolinguistics from the Periphery: Small Languages in New Circumstances. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rabey, David (2015). “Foreword”. In Tim Price and Kate Wasserberg (eds.). Contemporary Welsh Plays. London: Bloomsbury. xii-xvi. Rampton, Ben (2006). Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Robert, Elen (2009). “Accommodating „new‟ speakers? An attitudinal investigation of L2 speakers of Welsh in south-east Wales”. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 195: 93-115. Saraceni, Mario (2015). World Englishes: A Critical Analysis. London: Bloomsbury. Stephens, Meic (2008). Yeah, Dai Dando. Blaenau Ffestiniog: Cinnamon. Walters, Roderick (2003). “A study of the prosody of a South East Wales „Valleys Accent‟”. In Hildegard Tristram (ed.). The Celtic Englishes III. Heidelberg: Winter. 24-239. Allan James English Department Alpen-Adria University Klagenfurt Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain Rewriting the Biblical Exodus Narrative from an African American Perspective Julia Zeppenfeld Zora Neale Hurston‟s novel Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939) is a groundbreaking rewriting of the biblical Exodus story from an African American perspective. It stands in a long tradition of adaptations of the Exodus narrative, which has always been a key component in the African American literary landscape. Despite the thematic prominence, the novel did not receive much attention at the time of release due to its progressiveness. Hurston differed from other African American authors because she did not adjust to established standards of white American writers, but was instead keen to promote black consciousness. This becomes apparent in Moses, Man of the Mountain, where the biblical Judeo-Christian concept is questioned by foregrounding African American religious and cultural traditions. This essay will investigate to what degree the biblical narrative was adopted, but also adapted and altered to represent the complexity of cultural and ethnic identities. I will argue that Moses, Man of the Mountain is an aesthetic deformation of the biblical Exodus narrative to raise awareness for cultural and religious diversity. Due to the election of Donald Trump, the topic of racism has recently been reinvigorated in the United States. In August 2015, Trump stated in a radio interview that his favorite biblical verse was “an eye for an eye” (McCaskill 2016), which can be found in Exodus 21. Strongly differentiating between they and we, Trump interprets this biblical verse as an invitation to retaliate against foreigners by claiming that the US is taken advantage of by other countries (ibid.). Trump‟s statement runs counter to the interpretation of this verse by most Jewish and Christian theologians, who construe the so-called lex taliones as a law for the regulation and restriction of disproportionate revenge (Krüger 2016: 371). Neither does biblical verse refer to foreigners. On the contrary, AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 43 (2018) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Julia Zeppenfeld 46 there are numerous verses in the immediate biblical context which demand xenophilia and the protection of the alien (Ex 22: 20, 23: 9). Not only does Trump‟s statement reveal his insufficient biblical knowledge, but also the dangerous arbitrariness in biblical interpretation. The biblical Exodus story has been a key component in the American literary and political landscape. For African Americans, it is a text of paramount importance. Especially during the time of slavery, African Americans embraced the Exodus narrative as a source of perennial hope and consolation. It is the biblical narrative most frequently acknowledged and adapted by African Americans (Callahan 2006: 83). They have been inclined to identify with the Hebrew slaves in the Bible and thereby found a way to denounce slavery as an unjust condition which can, however, be changed. The responsibility to resolve the oppressive situation shifted from the active initiative of the slaves themselves towards a greater reliance on divine liberation (ibid. 86). African Americans thus relied on God to free them from slavery, just like he had liberated the Hebrew slaves. The Exodus narrative serves as a unifying script for African Americans. As Callahan stresses, they could claim neither common territory nor ancestry; instead “the Exodus was an event that gave rise to a collective identity” (2006: 116). By identifying with a collective literary community, namely the Hebrew slaves in the Bible, African Americans also felt connected to each other. Due to its prominence among African Americans, the Exodus narrative was frequently retold. Zora Neale Hurston‟s novel Moses, Man of the Mountain 1 , which was published in 1939, is one these re-narrations. Written during a time of political oppression in Europe and racism on both sides of the Atlantic, a mirror was held up to the American readership of Hurston‟s novel. Increasingly, the Jim Crow laws were found not to differ profoundly from the racism of the Nazis which had emerged in the 1930s (Rasberry 2015: 404). African American soldiers, who returned from the battlefields of the First World War, had hoped to gain respect, but instead they had to face persistent discrimination and segregation in the United States (ibid. 405). Many African Americans responded with resentment and riots. They had experienced social equality during their time in Europe and no longer wanted to accept discrimination and segregation at home (Farrar 2005: 354). Additionally, the need for arms production in the First World War led to the “greatest demographic shift in American history” (Callahan 2006: 129), the Great Migration. Many African Americans left the agricultural South and resettled in the industrial North, also in the hope of fleeing the oppressive social situation caused by Jim Crow laws. This mass movement became 1 In this contribution, Zora Neale Hurston‟s novel Moses, Man of the Mountain will be referred to as Moses. Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain 47 known as the Exodus fever (ibid. 129). Therefore, the First World War marks a turning point for the struggle against segregation, which was further strengthened by the experiences of the Second World War (Rasberry 2015: 404). It seemed increasingly hypocritical to oppose Nazi racism without addressing racial problems in the home country. This awareness, combined with the resettlement in cities, gave rise to a vibrant African American literary scene. Whereas disorientation and hopelessness was expressed by white American authors like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who became known as the Lost Generation, African American writers gained self-confidence and were keen to promote black identity (West 2017). Harlem was the center for this production of literary pieces addressing black consciousness, today known as the Harlem Renaissance. Zora Neale Hurston emphatically promoted black consciousness and became a significant writer of the Harlem Renaissance (Kaplan 2015: 232). The major themes of the Renaissance, namely culture, identity and race, are operative in Hurston‟s novel Moses. She not only wrote about African American religious traditions, but virtually recreated the rhythms of their oral transmission by including folklore, spirituals, various dialects and African American religious traditions like hoodoo in her novel (Bell 1987: 30). Hurston wrote about African American culture in an anthropologically informed way; thus, she traveled to Haiti to research African American cultural and religious traditions (West 2005: 145). Subsequently, she also included her insights in Moses, and the novel contains the diversity of religious concepts related to the Exodus narrative she came to know in her hometown Eatonville, Florida (West 2005: 146), in Harlem where she moved in 1925 (Wright 2003: 44), and on the Caribbean islands (West 2005: 146). The Bible is a key element for “black and white religious traditions” (Caron 2000: 19) during the Harlem Renaissance, representing an influential factor of culture and religion. Many writers of the Harlem Renaissance also published anti-religious writings (Lackey 2009: 580). Christianity and the Bible were deprecated because Scripture had often been used to oppress, terrorize or degrade Blacks. Thus, the Bible was perceived as ambivalent since it was liberating and exploitative at the same time. On the one hand, it had helped people to endure slavery, but on the other hand, it had been used as a tool to justify the peculiar institution (Lackey 2009: 581). Furthermore, the Bible was discussed in a nationalist context. Whereas most authors during the Harlem Renaissance did not involve themselves in the question of nationalism, Hurston emphasized “the pitfalls […] of nationalism” (Farebrother 2007: 337) in her literary work. Because of its themes of nationalism, identity, race and ethnicity, Hurston‟s Moses can be considered a groundbreaking literary text of the Harlem Renaissance, although it did not receive much attention at the time of its release Julia Zeppenfeld 48 because it was too progressive for most contemporaries (Birch 1994: 44). Approximately twenty years later, “when a new aesthetic of racial pride emerged” (Delbanco 1997: 106), Hurston‟s novels were reread and admired. This shows the continuous relevance of Hurston‟s novel, especially today in times of renewed racist movements. As the title of Hurston‟s novel shows, it focuses on the character of Moses. In the African American tradition, Moses is significant because he led the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. African Americans who suffered from slavery in the US could relate to the situation of the Hebrews and Moses was perceived as a symbolic figure of liberation and hope (Delbanco 1997: 104). Important activists in African American history like Martin Luther King have referred to the Exodus story in their speeches and to Moses‟ leadership (Callahan 2006: 96). As Hurston argues in the author‟s introduction, there are various concepts of Moses and “Africa has her mouth on Moses” (Hurston 2016: vii). Thus, reducing the figure of Moses to the verbatim biblical representation would fall short because the biblical story is told from a Judeo-Christian perspective. In contrast to the emphasis on Moses‟ role as mediator between God and the Israelites in Scripture, Moses himself “is worshiped as a god” (ibid. viii) in the African American tradition. He is powerful, not only as mediator of the Ten Commandments, but also because of his own deeds and his “mystic powers” (Hurston 2016: viii). I am arguing that Hurston questions the established Judeo-Christian concept of Moses in her novel by foregrounding non-biblical aspects. She creates a complex character with a mixture of various, even contradictory, character traits and behavior patterns. Thus, Moses becomes, as Thompson holds, “an absolutely singular (yet hybrid) cultural figure” (2004: 397). Due to Hurston‟s reinvention of the Moses figure, he does not appear archaic and static, but complex and diverse. Not only does Hurston destabilize the Judeo-Christian concept of Moses in her novel, but she also criticizes Moses‟ function as the ideal liberator in the African American tradition (Lackey 2009: 583). Thus, she criticizes male dominance, the notion of solitary leading figures, and an uncritical acceptance of existing concepts. I argue that the representation of ethnic hybridity challenges the notion of a community based on a simplified categorization of ethnicity. This essay will investigate to what degree the biblical narrative was adopted, but also adapted and altered by Hurston to represent the complexity of cultural and ethnic identities by adding African American traditions. With the help of a detailed comparison between the biblical text and the novel, I will identify alterations and reveal criticisms of the well-established biblical concept, arguing that Moses is an aesthetic deformation of the biblical Exodus narrative to raise awareness for cultural and religious diversity. Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain 49 1. “I am not a Hebrew! ” — Moses, the Egyptian The novel and the biblical story have similar starting points: the birth of a Hebrew baby, Moses, during a time of genocide in Egypt. The Pharaoh of Egypt has proclaimed a law requiring the murder of every male Hebrew baby. To save her male newborn from murder, a Hebrew mother puts her baby into “an ark” (Ex 2: 3; Hurston 2016: 26) and assigns her daughter to observe what happens to the infant. In the Bible the unnamed Hebrew daughter witnesses the Pharaoh‟s daughter find the ark and take the baby in (Ex 2: 4-8). In the novel, however, the Hebrew daughter, who is identified as Miriam, falls asleep and thus loses track of her baby brother. Although she observes that the Egyptian Princess and her maids find a basket, she is not sure whether it is the same basket because she does not see her brother (Hurston 2016: 26). To avoid punishment for falling asleep, she tells her mother that the Egyptian Princess has found the baby (ibid. 29). At first, Miriam seems insecure, but gradually she believes in her own lie and invents further stories. Her father, however, does not believe her. The servants in the palace send the Hebrew mother away with the words that there is “no new baby to be nursed” (Hurston 2016: 34). They say that the only baby in the palace is already a couple of months old and that it is the son of the Egyptian Princess and her deceased Assyrian husband. In the Bible the Hebrew mother nurses her child by order of the princess (Ex 2: 9). Whereas there is no doubt in the Bible that Moses grows up in the Egyptian palace, it remains uncertain in the novel, though it is not unlikely. Both scenarios are possible - either the Egyptian Princess has pulled the Hebrew baby out of the water and adopted it or it is her biological child. Consequently, the ethnic background of Moses remains uncertain (Thompson 2004: 399). Moses grows up without questioning his ethnic origin. He feels comfortable in the palace and everyone, especially his Egyptian mother, admires him for his handsomeness and his military capabilities (Hurston 2016: 36). In reaction to Moses‟ claim to improve the Hebrews‟ situation, his uncle Ta-Phar, who is the leader of the anti-Hebrew party, gives currency to the rumor of Moses being a Hebrew. Moses learns about the rumor because his Ethiopian wife reveals her displeasure about his supposed Hebrew origins (ibid. 63). He is shocked by the accusation and repeats that he is “not a Hebrew.” (ibid. 64) This discussion is not included in the Bible. There Moses identifies with the Hebrews from the very beginning and calls them “his brethren” (Ex 2: 11). In the novel, however, he never feels like one of them but talks about “those Hebrews” (Hurston 2016: 122) or “all these people” (ibid. 130). The determiners “those” and “these” stress the distance between him and the Hebrews. Moses never includes himself by using first-person plural pronouns. He only links himself to the Hebrews in front of the Pharaoh, when he says: “let my people go” (ibid. 144). He repeats this phrase before each plague, Julia Zeppenfeld 50 but it is striking that he quotes God in most cases: “The Lord says, „Pharaoh let my people go.‟” (ibid. 151) Thus, Hurston‟s Moses avoids clear-cut identification with the Israelites. He appears as the messenger, who is closer to God than to the people. Hurston‟s Moses points out that he is the one talking to God and transmitting his messages, but he is not an integral part of the people. In the Bible Moses verbalizes his connection with the Hebrews, for example by saying to the Pharaoh: “We will go with our young and with our old, with our sons and with our daughters, with our flocks and with our herds will we go; for we must hold a feast unto the LORD” (Ex 10: 9). The firstperson possessive pronoun “our” is repeated six times, showing the strong identification of Moses with the Hebrews in the Bible. In turn, the Hebrews in Hurston‟s novel do not accept Moses as one of them, especially in times of crisis. It becomes obvious in these situations that they do not trust Moses and that they believe that he deceives them given his supposed Egyptian ethnicity. For example, when the Egyptian army follows them, the Hebrews suspect betrayal: “I always knowed it was some trick in it. That man is pure Egyptian and Pharaoh his brother. He just toled us of so his brother could butcher us in the wilderness” (Hurston 2016: 189). Moses‟ position among the Hebrews is difficult. Although he fights for them and protects them, they frequently question his motives. They cannot believe that an Egyptian would help them because they are not used to friendly acts on the part of their oppressors (ibid. 134). In the Bible the Hebrews also murmur against Moses (e.g. Ex 15: 24, 16: 2), but without showing distrust in his motives. They do not claim that he is betraying them, but instead they are frustrated, exhausted, or hungry and blame Moses for their situation. Not only the people of Israel believe that he is Egyptian, but also his wife Zipporah and her family. They think that he sounds like an Egyptian (Hurston 2016: 92). Aspects of dialect and language are important in the discourse of identification and group formation in Hurston‟s novel. Moses stresses that he does not know the language of the Hebrews. He names this as a reason for refusing God‟s order. By saying “I don‟t talk their language. I don‟t talk their thoughts. I don‟t know the first thing about them and they know next to nothing about me” (ibid. 130), he emphasizes that it is not only a linguistic, but also an ethnic problem. He thereby stresses that the language barrier affects mutual comprehension. In the Bible, language is not an issue; it is never suggested that Moses and the Hebrews speak different dialects or languages. There are no linguistic communication problems. However, Moses suffers from a lack of rhetoric in the Bible which is not mentioned in the novel. Moses responds to God‟s order to lead the people out of Egypt: “I am not eloquent, neither heretofore, nor since thou hast spoken unto thy servant: but I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue” (Ex 4: 10). In the novel it is frequently mentioned that Moses is intelligent and literate (Hurston 2016: 37, 112). Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain 51 Insufficient eloquence could darken this ideal representation. In the novel Moses predicts communication problems resulting from ethnic differences; in the Bible Moses fears to fail for personal reasons. Whereas Moses doubts his own abilities in the Bible, the fear seems to be disconnected from the individual in the novel. Instead it is a general issue of communication among people from different origins. In the Bible the rhetorical deficiency is not mentioned again, but in the novel Moses‟ fear of not being able to communicate with the Hebrews is a recurring topic. When Moses comes back to Egypt to free the Hebrews they question his motives because they think that he is an Egyptian. In this context they also talk about his name: “They call him Moses, because they say he came out of the water in some way or other” (Hurston 2016: 134). This is the translation of the Hebrew word mšh, but there is also the Egyptian word mś/ mśj, which means “to give birth” (Gertz 2008). Although they identify Moses as an Egyptian, they connect the name to the Hebrew stem. The translation refers back to the story at the beginning of the novel, and thereby indirectly suggests that Moses was indeed saved by the Egyptian Princess. Nevertheless, they seem to have forgotten about that story. In the Bible his identity is not questioned, and the Hebrews accept him as one of theirs from the beginning. Hurston‟s Moses cannot identify with any ethnic group. After leaving Egypt and crossing over, he faces an identity crisis. The act of crossing is a turning point in Moses‟ life. The sentence “He had crossed over” is repeated thirteen times within the course of twenty-one sentences (Hurston 2016: 78). At first, Moses appears to be relieved, but he quickly feels “empty as a post hole” (ibid. 78) because he thinks that he is “none of the things he once had been” (ibid.), especially “not an Egyptian” (ibid.). Consequently, Moses is a person between different ethnicities - Hebrew, Egyptian and Midianite. Wright states that Moses is “a mulatto” (2003: 64). She argues that Hurston, thereby, questions categorizing people based on their ethnicity (ibid. 64). Although it is uncertain who Moses‟ parents are in the novel, it is certain that he is the child of an interracial couple, whether of the Egyptian Princess and her deceased Assyrian husband or of the red-haired and white-skinned Jochebed and her Hebrew husband Amran (Hurston 2016: 11). By leaving the identity of Moses‟ biological parents open, Hurston stresses that his identity does not depend on the ethnicity of his parents. As Thompson puts it: “Hurston does not consider race to be first, but instead places culture disembodied from a biological imperative in the lead position” (2004: 398). Moses is influenced by people around him, and because they are from various cultures, he can be described as a cultural hybrid. Farebrother argues that Hurston not only blurs distinctive lines between different ethnicities, but also criticizes the monotheistic concept of Judaism (2007: 339). She draws connections between Hurston‟s Moses, Man of the Mountain and Freud‟s Moses and Monotheism, which was also Julia Zeppenfeld 52 published in 1939. In Moses and Monotheism, it is also suggested that Moses was an Egyptian (ibid. 333). Freud concludes that the monotheistic religion of Judaism has its roots in the polytheistic religious traditions of Egypt, meaning that the Egyptian culture is a driving force for the development of Judaism in the shape of Moses (ibid. 336, 339). Farebrother determines Judaism to be a “fusion of Egyptian and Hebrew cultural strands” (2007: 341). In the novel Moses embodies this fusion by being a cultural hybrid. Meisenhelder argues that the notion of Moses being Egyptian emphasizes the African tradition since Egypt is an African country (2015: 219). All in all, Hurston depicts Moses as a man without a definable ethnicity. He is in-between different cultures and races and cannot be defined as either Egyptian or Hebrew. Hurston‟s Moses appears as a leading figure, unifying a group “of nearly two million” (Hurston 2016: 198) Hebrews. Farebrother concludes that “something other than racial affiliation holds these people together” (2007: 343), namely the idea of building a nation, which consists of various races and cultural and religious traditions. For that a powerful leader, who cuts back on his own desires, is essential (ibid. 348). Nevertheless, nationalism is critically examined in Moses. Hurston‟s Moses struggles because of his leading position, and the mission of forming a nation affects him negatively. He feels isolated from the people (Hurston 2016: 99, 130, 190, 196, 200) because he has “given up everything else [he] wanted in life for the sake of this mission” (ibid. 245). The Hebrews constantly mutter and grumble (ibid. 200, 201, 202, 205) because they distrust Moses. In the Bible the Hebrews also frequently “murmur against Moses” (Ex 15: 24, 16: 2.7.8.9.12, 17: 3), but it is not stated that Moses feels lonely. On the contrary, he feels like a Hebrew and is closely connected to Aaron and Miriam. Whereas Moses does not realize that Miriam and Aaron are his siblings in the novel and the Hebrews also question that Aaron, Miriam and Moses are relatives (Hurston 2016: 140), the kinship with Aaron and Miriam is undoubted in the Bible (Ex 4: 14). Moreover, Moses‟ leadership increases in violence as the novel develops. This culminates in the murder of his brother. Moses kills him because he fears that Aaron could harm his mission of building a nation by undermining Moses‟ authority (Hurston 2016: 274-275). Moses claims that “nothing and nobody has been spared to make this nation great” (ibid. 275) and thereupon kills Aaron. Hurston‟s Moses seems fanatic in conducting his mission. In the Bible Aaron dies peacefully in old age (Deut 10: 6). Moses is less powerful and brutal in the Bible. Thompson argues that Hurston criticizes “fascist power” (2004: 407) by depicting Moses as a violent and isolated leading figure. At the beginning of the novel Moses is likeable, just, and good-natured, but in the course of his mission he develops negative character traits. In a letter addressed to her contemporary Carl Van Vechten, Hurston calls Moses a “dictator” because Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain 53 he forced laws on the Hebrews, which they did not want (Hurston 2007: 530). Furthermore, she states that he treated the Hebrews as inferiors and that he behaved violently. Thereby, she criticizes repressive leadership in general (Lackey 2009: 577). Thus, Hurston‟s Moses is ambivalent since he liberates and restrains the Hebrews simultaneously. On the one hand, he leads them out of slavery in Egypt, but on the other hand, they still feel oppressed by his laws. They think that they have “swapped one bossman for another one.” (Hurston 2016: 181). Hurston questions the ideal depiction of Moses in cultural and literary discourses. In her novel, negative character traits and the downside of leadership and responsibility are not concealed. Moses‟ ancestry is unclear in the novel. It is frequently mentioned in the novel that he is either an Egyptian or a Hebrew. Moses himself feels insecure and is torn between two ethnicities. He is an ethnic hybrid in the novel. This aspect is non-biblical. Moses is not called an Egyptian in the Bible, and by displaying the ambiguity of Moses‟ ethnic origin, Hurston adds another layer to the biblical story. The story becomes topical since race, racial segregation and nationalism were frequently discussed in the late 1930s. Especially for African Americans, this was of key importance because they were torn between assimilation and delimitation in the United States (Delbanco 1997: 106). Hurston promoted “black communal pride” (Caron 2000: 6). Diversity should prevent assimilation for the purpose of achieving homogeneity. Thus, Moses is complex character, who was influenced by various cultural and religious traditions. 2. “The finest hoodoo man in the world” — Moses, the Magician A key difference between the representations of the Moses figure in Hurston‟s novel and in Scripture is Moses‟ ability to perform magic. Whereas magic is rarely mentioned in the biblical Exodus story, it is a key feature of the novel. Magic is a component of the Exodus story in the Bible; however, it is not associated with Moses, but with the Egyptians. Moses is never called a magician or a sorcerer in Scripture. Only some of Pharaoh‟s adherents are magicians and the Pharaoh calls them to compete with Moses and imitate his deeds (Ex 7: 11.22, 8: 7.18, 9: 11). Consequently, Moses is not an independent magician, but a divine messenger in the Bible. Moses‟ divine actions are in stark contrast to the magical acts of the Egyptians. In the Bible Moses is not the initiator of the plagues, but he rather obeys God‟s order. The first three plagues are executed by Aaron. Moses delivers God‟s message, and God demands that Aaron raise the rod to arouse the plagues (Ex 7: 10, 8: 5.17). It is also Aaron who transforms the rod into a serpent (Ex 7: 10). In the novel Aaron is not involved, and instead Moses evokes all ten plagues. In the Julia Zeppenfeld 54 Bible God gives orders to Moses or acts without Moses‟ help (Ex 8: 25, 12: 29). In the context of the ten plagues (Ex 7: 1-12: 36), the word “hand” appears 16 times in the Bible. In Scripture “the hand” is not only associated with Moses, but also with God and Aaron. God announces that several plagues will come over Egypt to free the Hebrews, but only God‟s hand is mentioned in this context (Ex 7: 4.5.17). Afterwards Aaron is connected to the word “hand”. He executes the first three plagues by stretching his hand out (Ex 7: 19, 8: 5.6.17). Subsequently, Moses‟ hand triggers (Ex 9: 22, 10: 12.21.22), but also terminates (Ex 9: 29.33) the seventh, eighth and ninth plague. The last and most brutal plague is executed by God (Ex 12: 12). In the novel Moses always lifts his hand (Hurston 2016: 142, 151, 154, 163). Thereby, Moses seems active and powerful, but also more vicious in the novel. Furthermore, Moses has planned the plagues himself (ibid. 147). He desires to perform all ten plagues and therefore does not want the Egyptians to “give in right away” (ibid. 146). In the Bible Moses does not aspire to execute a pre-designed plan; instead he follows God‟s orders gradually. The word “hoodoo”, which appears frequently in Moses, is of course never used in the Bible. The plagues are not interpreted as magic in the Bible; instead they are the result of God‟s intervention. They are called “miracle” (Ex 7: 9), “wonder” (Ex 7: 3, 11: 9.10) and “sign” (Ex 7: 3, 8: 23, 10: 1.2, 13: 9). As Karner argues, the Hebrew words for ת ֵ פוֹמ (“wonder”; Ex 7: 3.9, 11: 9.10) and תוֹא (“sign”/ “miracle”; Ex 7: 3.9, 8: 23, 10: 1.2, 13: 9) are strongly connected to God in the Bible. They demonstrate God‟s power, but do not suggest magical powers (Karner 2014). Although the Pharaoh calls for magicians to imitate God‟s wonders in the Bible, God‟s signs are never described as magical. Magic is connoted negatively in the Bible, as in the context of God‟s Commandments it is said that a witch must be killed (Ex 22: 18). Consequently, Moses, who is depicted as a law-abiding figure in the Bible, keeps his distance from sorcery. In the novel, however, the Pharaoh says that Moses uses hoodoo (Hurston 2016: 145) and the magicians claim that they have taught Moses magic tricks, for example the “stunt” (ibid. 156) of bringing frogs to Egypt. Hurston‟s Moses seems more powerful, even “supernatural” (ibid. 116) and godlike, due to his magical powers (Caron 2000: 98). In the novel Moses‟ mighty arm and the image of a powerful leader connected therewith is frequently emphasized, which concords with “African, Haitian, and African-American traditions” (Britt 2004: 33). Moses is admired because of his strength and not because of his allegiance to God and his laws. In the Bible God is in the center of attention, but in the novel the focus is set on Moses, which is already revealed in the book title - Moses is the one standing on the mountain. In contrast, in the Bible God has his realm on the mountain and Moses climbs up from time to time with God‟s permission. In the novel Moses is not in need of “a god” Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain 55 (Hurston 2016: 128); instead he can act independently. The role of God in the novel is undermined by depicting Moses instead of God as the powerful protagonist. Caron (2000: 98) argues that the ascription of magical powers, constructing Moses as “larger than life” is necessary to depict him as a powerful deliverer of hope. Moreover, Moses is compared to the Haitian god Damballa. Hurston already draws the comparison in the author‟s introduction when she says that Moses is identified with Damballa (Hurston 2016: viii). Damballa is worshipped in Haiti, but has his origins in the African kingdom of Dahomey (Hurston 2016: viii). Thus, by associating Moses with Damballa, the connection to Africa becomes more apparent. In the novel Moses only talks to the Pharaoh on Wednesdays (ibid. 150, 153, 157, 158, 165). Birch recognizes a connection in the choice of this weekday because the Haitian god Damballa always performed hoodoo on Wednesdays (1994: 65). Moreover, Damballa is called the serpent god (ibid. 65). The serpent is very important in the novel. Moses‟ rod in the novel looks like a serpent; thereby, the rod symbolizes Moses‟ power and his connection to the Haitian god Damballa (Hurston 2016: viii). The serpent “is omnipresent in hoodoo iconography” (Wall 1989: 674) and it recurs frequently in the novel (Hurston 2016: 52, 59, 119, 126, 143). Moses‟ friend Mentu tells him wise men “enter the serpents” (ibid. 52). Moses‟ rod of power looks like a serpent and it is turned into a serpent during the divine revelation as a sign of God‟s power (ibid. 126). This account can also be found in the biblical story. The word “serpent” appears five times in Exodus (Ex 4: 3, 7: 9.10.12.15). Consequently, it can be assumed that the serpent is also important in the biblical story, but it is mentioned more often in the novel. Furthermore, the connection between the serpent and magic is more striking in the novel. In the Bible God demonstrates his power by turning the rod into a serpent (Ex 4: 3) and by letting Aaron repeat this action (Ex 7: 9.10.12.15). Thus, Aaron is charged with implementing God‟s plan. In the novel Moses transforms the rod into a serpent himself. Moses is called a hoodoo man by Egyptians, by Hebrews, and by his wife and her family (Hurston 2016: 114, 144, 145). The word “hoodoo” is strongly associated with African traditions in America. 2 Birch (1994: 65) concludes that Moses appears powerful in the novel due to his applied “African magic.” In contrast, God empowers Moses in the Bible. In the novel Moses is already powerful before the divine revelation, which takes place in chapter 17. During his time in Egypt his “military genius” (Hurston 2016: 50) and his physical strength are admired. He frees Jethro and his family from their cousins‟ exploitation by afflicting 2 In the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (2011) hoodoo is defined as magic with a West African origin, which is performed in the Caribbean and the US. Julia Zeppenfeld 56 frogs on them (ibid. 112-114), he performs magic in Midian by turning water into blood (ibid. 116), and defeats the deathless snake, which guards the book of Thoth (ibid. 119). These powerful actions all happen before the divine revelation. In the Bible the divine revelation forms the turning point of the Exodus story, which takes place at the beginning (Ex 3). Before this, the situation of the Hebrews is depicted (Ex 1), Moses‟ birth is briefly described (Ex 2: 1-10), and Moses‟ murder of an Egyptian (Ex 2: 11-14) and his flight to Midian are recounted (Ex 2: 15-22). The events before the divine revelation do not seem to be as important as the subsequent events because they are only described briefly. In proportion to the remaining Exodus story, little is put into writing about the time before the divine revelation (3 of 40 chapters). In contrast, the time before the divine revelation in Moses is enriched with many details (16 of 40 chapters). Whereas the focus in the Bible is on Moses‟ life as God‟s mediator, Moses and his personal development are illustrated extensively in the novel. Thereby, Hurston‟s Moses seems independent from God and is depicted as the center of attention. This confirms Hurston‟s statement in the author‟s introduction that Moses “is worshipped as a god” (Hurston 2016: viii) in African traditions. He is not worshipped because he delivered the Ten Commandments, but due to his own power and his ability to lead people out of poor conditions. As Young argues, Moses is “[n]o longer a stern lawgiver of the Israelites, […] [but] first and foremost, a conjuror” (2008: 11). In contrast to many of her African American contemporaries, Hurston writes about hoodoo, although it was considered superstitious and illiterate (Bell 1987: 32). She challenges this prejudice by combining literacy, intelligence, nobility, and the ability to perform hoodoo in the figure of Moses. Thereby, she demonstrates pride in African American traditions. It is not about assimilation and unification, but about the illustration of diversity and consciousness. As Farebrother states, hoodoo is “a unique cultural product of the African diaspora” (2007: 339). The reader connects hoodoo to African American traditions. According to Bell, Hurston achieves “a realistic portrayal of the ways in which ordinary black folk used religion, music, humor, and language” (1987: 129). Hurston does not exclude themes which could be evaluated negatively or could confuse the reader. In the Pentateuch magic is criticized (Ex 22: 18, Lev 19: 31, Lev 20: 6.27, Deut 18: 10.11) and magicians are supposed to be punished. By letting Moses perform hoodoo, Hurston‟s Moses differs from the biblical Moses and questions the established biblical concept of Moses. Hurston reinterprets and alters the “static text” (West 2005: 147) of the Bible. It is not about being faithful to the biblical text, but about using a well-known narrative to “challenge […] prevailing views of Moses” (Britt 2004: 34). By including folklore and hoodoo, the narrative becomes more relevant to the African American readership. With the help of Moses African American religious traditions will be passed on. Hurston Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain 57 stresses that “[n]egro folklore is not a thing of the past” (Caron 2000: 97), but instead a perpetual and topical process. 3. “Asking Nature her secrets” — Moses and Nature Besides hoodoo, nature is an empowering source for Moses in the novel. In his childhood, he spends much of his time in nature and he is interested in extending his knowledge about “plants” (Hurston 2016: 37) and “animals” (ibid. 38). He talks to “gardeners” (ibid. 37), and Mentu, who is a “stableman” (ibid. 39), becomes a person of significance for Moses. Both professions are closely linked to nature. Moses asks many science-oriented questions, but also religious questions concerning the creation of the world. The creation story is the first text in the Bible and thereafter, the theme of creation is taken up frequently, e.g. in the form of prayers about God‟s gratitude (Ps 104) or in the form of admonitions (Matthew 5: 24). Thus, nature is always connected to God. The word “nature” is not used in the Bible; instead “creation” is used, which emphasizes a relationship of dependence. The Creator is essential for the origin of nature. In the novel nature appears independent from God. At first, Moses sees a connection between nature and God. He is interested in the origins of the earth and asks many questions using the interrogative pronoun “who”. It can be deduced that he is fascinated by nature, but even more by its creation, and more specifically, by its Creator. Mentu responds by telling a creation story that differs from the biblical creation story. Thereby, Hurston illustrates that there are various stories of the same event. Subsequently, Mentu tells Moses about Thoth‟s book, which empowers its reader and brings him closer to nature (Hurston 2016: 53). Thereupon, Moses strives to find Thoth‟s book. Thoth is an Egyptian god of science and literacy, but also of magic (Budge 1969: 414). In the figure of Thoth, literacy and hoodoo are connected, which is comparable to the figure of Moses in the novel. Furthermore, Thoth is closely related to nature because Thoth is depicted as a human-animal hybrid in iconography, consisting of a human body and a head either of an ibis or a baboon. Moreover, Thoth is associated with natural light because he is a moon god and a communication partner of the sun god Ra (ibid. 402). Sun and moon have an impact on nature; for example on tides, climate and vegetation. The book of Thoth alludes to the Egyptian tale Setna and the Magic Book (Meisenhelder 2015: 125). It is suggested in the novel that Judaism is rooted in Egyptian religious traditions (Farebrother 2007: 341) because Moses first encounters Egyptian deities and afterwards receives God‟s order and the divine laws. Only after reading in the book of Thoth does he seem “ready for the big job” (Hurston 2016: 120). Meisenhelder argues that Hurston not only emphasizes that Judaism has Julia Zeppenfeld 58 its origins in Egyptian religious traditions, but also that Moses identifies with “Egyptian and pagan [traditions] rather than [with] Hebraic and monotheistic tradition[s]” (2015: 125). Thoth is not mentioned in the Bible. Farebrother argues that the integration of Egyptian religious traditions could undermine monotheism and thus they are not mentioned in the Bible (2007: 339). Nature is a source of inspiration for Moses in the novel. In times of confusion he goes “on asking Nature her secrets” (Hurston 2016: 123). There he is “at peace” (ibid. 123). Whereas “Nature” is capitalized in the novel, “god” is written in lower case letters. Thus, nature is portrayed as the superior concept. After God‟s revelation, Hurston‟s Moses questions God‟s order and calls him “a god” (ibid. 128). In this context the indefinite article “a” signifies that there are other gods. Thus, the monotheistic concept is negated. Moreover, the choice of the indefinite article “a” instead of the definite article “the” suggests that Moses has not accepted God completely, but feels a disconnection. Besides, Hurston‟s Moses does not speak about God‟s laws, but about the “law of Nature” (ibid. 79). However, at the end of his life, he sees a connection between God and nature and before he dies, he wants to “ask God and Nature questions.” (ibid. 285) Both words are capitalized and thus seem to be equally significant to him. Overall, nature is an important aspect in the novel and competes with, but also complements, Moses‟ experiences with God. Nature is more relevant in the novel than in the Bible, which is apparent from frequent references and capitalization. It forms a source of inspiration without a divine connection in the novel. By contrast, in Scripture nature is closely related to God. God is the creator of nature. Ijatuyi-Morphé stresses that nature is an important aspect of African religious traditions (2014: 47). On the one hand, “natural phenomena and objects are intimately associated with God” (Mbiti 2015: 48), and on the other hand, nature is perceived as religious in itself (Ijatuyi-Morphé 2014: 47). Hurston succeeds in underlining nature‟s importance and thereby imbeds African religious traditions in her novel. Birch states that it is a “pre-Christian” (1994: 67) concept to perceive nature as religious. Consequently, Hurston‟s Moses is not only depicted according to the Judeo-Christian concept, but also other religious traditions are perceptible. In the figure of Moses various religious traditions are coalesced. Scholars have stated that Hurston thereby emphasizes that the Judeo-Christian religion is rooted in Egyptian and African religious traditions (Young 2008: 14; Farebrother 2007: 341). Thus, she criticizes the claim of singularity and novelty of monotheistic religions. Hurston wants to stress the peril of monotheism (Lackey 2009: 582). Due to the claim of singularity other religious traditions have been suppressed in the twentieth century (Lackey 2011: 107). Hurston counters the claim of primacy by illustrating and appreciating diversity. Zora Neale Hurston’s Moses, Man of the Mountain 59 Moses is a significant and exceptional recreation of the biblical Exodus narrative profoundly changing the religious text. She kept cornerstones of the story and the names of characters and locations, but changed behavior patterns, character traits, and actions. She extended and shortened various biblical extracts. Hurston‟s Moses is influenced by various religious and cultural traditions and his character is multifaceted. The display and appreciation of diversity is a key subject for Hurston. Thereby, she negates homogenization and assimilation and challenges the reader to question prefabricated concepts and portrayals. The figure of Moses is suitable for this strategy because there is one dominant concept of Moses, namely the biblical concept, which was also accepted by mainstream African American thinking. Hurston illustrates that the biblical concept is not the only concept of Moses, but that there are various concepts which are equally genuine. By foregrounding nonbiblical aspects, Hurston‟s Moses becomes a unique and complex figure. In this paper I have focused on the non-biblical aspects Hurston brought into the story, many of which are closely linked to African American religious and cultural traditions. The ancestry of Moses remains ambiguous in the novel. Many characters suggest that Moses is an Egyptian and he himself feels insecure and torn between two cultures. He cannot be categorized in terms of his ethnicity. Thompson, therefore, calls him a “singular (yet hybrid) cultural figure” (2004: 397). Thereby, the figure of Moses contradicts the habit of categorizing people in terms of race and ethnicity throughout the twentieth century. In the novel the discussion about race and ethnicity leads to displeasure and isolation. Yet, this is not the only reason for Moses‟ struggle in the novel. His role as a leading figure forms a burden, too. He develops negatively and becomes more brutal and unlikeable in the course of his leadership. Hurston challenges the reader by questioning the ideal concept of Moses. Hurston‟s Moses is complex and multifaceted. She questions the perception of him as the ideal leader and thereby questions the concept of leadership in general. Moses also differs from the biblical concept due to his power and sovereignty. He is an independent decision-maker and -executor. Whereas Moses is the key figure in the novel, God plays a minor role. Moses‟ strength is frequently underlined and God‟s almightiness undermined. The aspect of Moses performing hoodoo is the most striking innovation in the novel. Whereas magic is connoted negatively in the Bible, it is a charismatic and significant character trait of Moses in the novel. There is a strong association between hoodoo and African American religious traditions. Thus, the integration of the hoodoo motif shows that Hurston desires to incorporate various religious traditions. Whereas African American writers of Hurston‟s time avoided the topic of hoodoo, it forms a distinct feature in Moses. Hurston‟s Moses receives power from God and hoodoo, but there is no power hierarchy - neither seems superior. Julia Zeppenfeld 60 The same is true for the relationship between nature and God. Both form a source of inspiration for Moses in the novel. Nature often seems more influential, but there finally is no power hierarchy. Hurston challenges her readers by creating complex and hybrid characters. Categorization based on ethnicity is destabilized as it causes isolation and agitation. To this day, this model is still highly important in American society. Political speeches embrace the thought of forming an inand outgroup based on ethnic or national grounds to “make America great again”, but instead they create a deeply divided nation rather than a strong community. Instead of the theological, the cultural aspect of the Exodus narrative is prioritized in Moses. Hurston‟s novel Moses, Man of the Mountain is a convincing rewriting of the biblical Exodus narrative cherishing cultural and religious diversity. References Bell, Bernard (1987). The Afro-American Novel and Its Tradition. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Birch, Eva Lennox (1994). Black American Women's writing: A Quilt of Many Colours. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf. Britt, Brian (2004). Rewriting Moses: The Narrative Eclipse of the Text. London: T & T Clark International. Budge, Ernest Alfred Wallis (1969). The Gods of the Egyptians. Vol 1. Chicago: Dover. Callahan, Allen Dwight (2006). The Talking Book: African Americans and the Bible, New Haven: Yale University Press. Caron, Timothy Paul (2000). Struggles Over the Word: Race and Religion in O'Connor, Faulkner, Hurston, and Wright. Macon: Mercer University Press. Delbanco, Andrew (1997). “The Political Incorrectness of Zora Neale Hurston.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 18. 103-108.1 Farebrother, Rachel (2007). “Moses and Nation-Building: Zora Neale Hurston's Moses, Man of the Mountain and Edward Said's Freud and the Non-European.” Comparative American Studies 5/ 3. 333-356. Farrar, Hayward (2005). “The Black Soldier in Two World Wars.” In Alton Hornsby (ed.). A Companion to African American History. Malden: Blackwell. 349-363. Gertz, Jan (2008). “Mose.” Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. 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West, Elizabeth (2017). “How WWI Sparked an Artistic Movement That Transformed Black America.” The Conversation Trust (UK) Limited. [online]. https: / / thecon-versation.com/ how-world-war-i-sparked-the-artistic-movement -that-transform-ed-black-america-74974 (accessed 04 Jan 2018). West, Margaret Genevieve (2005). Zora Neale Hurston & American Literary Culture. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. Julia Zeppenfeld 62 Wright, Melanie Jane (2003). Moses in America. The Cultural Uses of Biblical Narrative. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Young, Jason. (2008). “Of Moses, Mules, and Men: Zora Neale Hurston and the Politics of Folk Art.” Obsidian: literature & arts in the African diaspora 9/ 1. 9-19. Julia Zeppenfeld Technische Universität Dortmund The Return of Political Fiction? An Analysis of Howard Jacobson’s Pussy (2017) and Ali Smith’s Autumn (2016) as First Reactions to the Phenomena ‘Donald Trump’ and ‘Brexit’ in Contemporary British Literature Johannes Wally Donald Trump‟s electoral victory and the Brexit vote in the UK are said to have led to a politicization of the literary world. This essay deals with two recent novels in the light of this claim. Howard Jacobson‟s Pussy (2017), a satirical broadside fired at Donald Trump, and Ali Smith‟s Autumn (2016), focusing on the UK as a country divided by the Brexit vote, are analysed with regard to the political and cultural values underlying each novel. The analysis demonstrates that, despite being markedly different in terms of conception and topic, both novels deploy similar linguistic and literary devices. These devices serve a specific extra-fictional, political purpose: they help establish a bond between author and reader, who, in order to engage in this type of literary communication, must have similar social and educational backgrounds. Consequently, both novels can be read as acts establishing an identity which is not primarily based on political or economic power but on cultural knowledge. They thus document the identity crisis of those who, arguably, feel jeopardised by the current political situation - the educated middle class. 1. A Recent “Politicization of the Literary World” The average news consumer might be forgiven for thinking that the world is a very different place from what it used to be only a few years ago. In 1989, the American philosopher Francis Fukuyama famously diagnosed “the end of history”, arguing that the last few years of the twentieth cen- AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 43 (2018) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Johannes Wally 64 tury saw the “unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism” (Fukuyama 1989/ 2006: 421). This, his argument went, put an end to the ideological and political competition between Communism and Capitalism, which characterised the twentieth century. For many, this diagnosis might have rung true throughout the 1990s, a decade which was famously described as “a holiday from history” (Krauthammer 2003: online). 1 However, it lost credibility after the terrorist attacks of 9/ 11 and the ensuing „war on terror‟, and perhaps even more so with the financial crisis beginning in 2007/ 2008. Today, Fukuyama‟s diagnosis seems, if at all, only partially correct: what really seems to have happened is a spread of some sort of economic liberalism rather than of political liberalism. This has been argued by Slavoj Žižek, who claimed that “[n]o longer wedded to western cultural values, [market-based economics] is arguably divorced from them” (Žižek 2015: online). Žižek bases his claim on observations referring to the socio-political situation in India. While one could only with difficulty transfer his observations onto the „West‟, one might find it equally difficult to deny that illiberal tendencies have emerged in Europe and the United States over the past few years (cf. Malik 2017: online). For the English-speaking world, the two most unpredictable and thus unsettling events documenting the aforementioned change in the political climate may well have been the UK‟s withdrawal from the European Union - the so called „Brexit‟ - and Donald Trump‟s victory in the 2016 U.S. presidential elections. As different as these two events may be, they have both been analysed in terms of a return of nationalistic and antiintellectual populism. Especially the anti-intellectual thrust of this populism might have initiated a return of politically engaged fiction in British literature. This, at least, has been a recurring diagnosis in the feature pages of various quality newspapers. In an article, published in the New York Times, the British novelist Tim Parks (2017: online) notices an “intensifying politicization of the literary world”; taking the same line, the journalist Alex Clark (2017: online) goes as far as to proclaim “[t]he Return of the Protest Novel” in The Guardian. 2 1 This was certainly not the case. The 1990s saw enormously brutal genocides in Africa (Rwanda) as well as in Europe (Ex-Yugoslavia), witnessed fascinating technological advances (i.e. the internet) and scientific discoveries (i.e. the decoding of the genome) that would profoundly change the way human beings interact with each other or think of themselves. 2 A similar claim has been made about the return of poetry as a form of artistic protest against Donald Trump: “Like virtually everything else in the Trump era, poetry has gotten sharply political these days. Writers are responding to this turbulent moment in the country‟s history with a tsunami of poems that address issues like immigration, global warming, the Syrian refugee crisis, institutionalized racism, equal rights for transgender people, Islamophobia and health care” (Alter 2017: A1). The Return of Political Fiction? 65 Proclamations of this kind are difficult to either verify or falsify. It would be next to impossible to statistically evaluate Clark‟s return of the protest novel by, for instance, comparing all novels published in 2012 with those published in 2016. The sheer amount of yearly publications would doom such an enterprise. Yet, there is another, more important obstacle to such an undertaking: what exactly would one be looking for if one were to register all protest novels? Obviously, a protest novel is a political novel of some kind, but this realization is of little help. As Milan Kundera (2007: passim) argued in his poetological reflections, a novel is not one, but many things and while a given novel may not directly deal with politics, it is likely to be perceived as a political entity. Similarly, George Orwell (1954: 11) famously maintained that “no book is genuinely free from political bias”. In other words, whether or not a text can be considered „political‟ has as much to do with the text as with the circumstances determining its reception. This objection does not render Clark‟s or Park‟s observation invalid. The claim that there is a rising interest in politically motivated literature seems to be backed by the fact that George Orwell‟s 1984 leapt to the top of Amazon bestsellers shortly after Trump‟s inauguration (cf. Rossman 2017: online). Still, for the reasons mentioned above, it seems pointless to examine the truth of Clark‟s claim and in the following sections no attempt will be made at doing so. Rather, Clark‟s article will be used as a guide to recently published political fiction and representatives of this category will be subjected to narratological scrutiny. However, before doing so, it seems nonetheless indispensable to delimit our object of research. I will thus begin my discussion with a few classificatory considerations 3 and then move on to analysing two novels - one focusing on Donald Trump, one on Brexit - both published in the highly politicized atmosphere of the years 2016 and 2017. 3 Genre criticism is a highly complex and controversial area of literary criticism. More recent approaches have stressed the reception side of literary communication and argued that genres are essentially “social contracts” between a writer and a given public which guide the perception of literary works (cf. Jameson 1981: 106). A very good example of this approach is Lejeune‟s autobiographical contract (cf. Lejeune 1973/ 75). According to Lejeune, there is no linguistic strategy typical of either novelistic or of autobiographical discourse. Hence, the only way to distinguish between these two genres, whose referential aesthetics are usually thought to be fundamentally different, is an extra-textual phenomenon, namely the autobiographer‟s promise to the reader that the text is not fictitious but refers to something that „really happened‟. In a sense, such a reader-oriented approach also underlies my own reflections on the political novel, as I am basing my thoughts on a term that has recently been used in various media in order to depict current literary trends to readers - in other words, in order to guide readers‟ expectations. Given the scope of this article, however, a thorough genre discussion will not be attempted. Rather, central ideas about the political novel will be discussed and a preliminary tool for orientation will be suggested. Johannes Wally 66 2. Basic Definitions: The Political Novel vs. Politics in a Novel As was established above, the political novel is notoriously hard to define. Stout (2012: 410f.) even goes as far as to complain that “the political novel is in fact an entity still begging for critical definition.” While this claim is certainly an exaggeration, it is indeed true that many definitions which have been offered are - at least at first sight - of little value. They seem either too inclusive or too exclusive. For example, how is one to apply a definition as loose as the one given in the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines the political novel as “a novel with a political narrative, or concerned with politics or political themes”? (cf. https: / / en.oxforddictionaries.com/ , s.v. „political novel‟). This, it can be argued, applies to most novels in one way or another, provided one has a wide enough understanding of the words politics and political. As a result of this difficulty, researchers investigating the political novel have either discarded the entire business of defining the political novel or have treated it with a certain ironic distance (cf. Kemme 1987: 3). For instance, Harvie (1991: 8f.), in lieu of a definition, simply contrasts Balzac‟s Le Debuté d’Arcis (1854) with Disraeli‟s Sybil, or the Two Nations (1845) in order to illustrate the diversity of topics, styles and narrative strategies which might be subsumed under the term „political novel‟. While Balzac adheres to the conventions of literary realism, Disraeli deploys melodrama in order to drive his point home. This approach might work perfectly well for Harvie‟s historical survey; however, it is of little help if one wants to systematically reflect on contemporary forms of the political novel. A more widely applicable approach is taken by Howe in his seminal study Politics and the Novel. Howe (1957/ 2006: 443) suggests locating the political novel on a continuum which stretches from individual and “concrete experience” to ideological 4 or political abstraction. The novel, his argument goes, always deals with “concrete experience” (ibid.); in contrast, ideology is concerned with generalisations. Consequently, the defining element of a political novel is the conflict generated by the clash of these two opposing modes of thinking about the world. In a nutshell, one way of determining whether a given novel can be classified as a political novel is to analyze the novel‟s bias and see whether it leans towards concrete experience or towards ideological abstractions. This, it seems, is a very good method. However, there is a hitch: unless a novel contains many essayistic passages or auctorial comments, ideological abstraction will necessarily be translated into something con- 4 The term „ideology‟ is often used derogatively; however, not so in this article. Here, it is used neutrally, similar to the term „worldview‟ or the German term Weltanschauung, in the sense of one definition of „ideology‟ which Terry Eagleton lists in his book Ideology: “a body of ideas characteristic of a particular social group or class” (Eagleton 1991/ 2007: 1). The Return of Political Fiction? 67 crete such as story elements, individual characters and, say, specific settings. Thus, the trick is to establish to what degree politics is overtly present in these elements, in other words, to what degree political or politically motivated action has come to dominate the novel in its entire conception. As Howe (1957/ 2006: 442) argues, there are books such as Orwell‟s 1984 in which “politics has achieved an almost total dominion”, while there are other novels such as Dostoyevsky‟s Demons 5 (1872) or Stendhal‟s La Chartreuse de Parme (1839), which might be intuitively perceived as political novels, although politics are dealt with in a less obvious way. I will take the notion of a continuum as a basis for my analysis. On the one end, I suggest placing the „pure‟ political novel, which Kemme (1987: 5) circumspectly defines as a work of prose fiction which primarily focuses upon the exercise of political power within the body politic and where political ambition, political plans, and political acts permeate and unify the novel through both plot and character. On the other end of the continuum, I propose placing something we might call, perhaps a little vaguely, „politics in a novel‟. This category - different from „politics of a novel‟, which I suggest using as a receptionoriented category dealing with the socio-political effect the publication of a given novel might have 6 - attempts to do justice to novels in which political action plays a role without being the central topic. In other words, novels belonging to this category might share elements which are typical of a „pure‟ political novel. However, these elements are fewer and less pronounced. As a contemporary example of „politics in a novel‟, we might turn to Ian McEwan‟s A Child in Time. Although the novel‟s major themes are childhood and time as a post-Newtonian category (cf. Wally 2015: 76-87), aspects of the exercise of political power are incorporated in the novel, as Stephen Lewis, the novel‟s protagonist, acts as a member of a governmental subcommittee. Through the political function of its protagonist and the subplot connected to it, the novel condenses and reveals what is otherwise present only in a more elusive fashion: namely, the novel‟s biting critique of Thatcherism, especially of its onedimensional, pseudo-Darwinian conception of the conditio humana. Finally, some thoughts on Clark‟s use of the term „protest novel‟, which started these reflections. The term „protest novel‟ or „social protest novel‟ is commonly used to refer to narrative fiction attacking social evils such as the deplorable working and living conditions of factory workers 5 Howie cites the title of the older translation, namely The Possessed. 6 Cf., for instance, the enormous political impact Salman Rushdie‟s Satanic Verses made. Johannes Wally 68 or - in the context of North American literature - racism and apartheid (cf. Drake 2011: 5f.). The protest novel overlaps, at least partly, with the proletarian novel and is often inspired by Marxism or Socialism of some kind. As the political message is foregrounded, the protest novel has often been attacked for lacking artistic quality (cf. for instance Baldwin 1949/ 1955) - an attack which has also been directed against the political novel in general. While it is true that politically committed writers might rank political message over aesthetic refinement, 7 it is probably also fair to view such reproaches - at least partly - as defence mechanism deployed by those who are irritated by a specific political message. However, there is a more important reason why such reproaches need to be viewed critically: they imply an understanding of literary works which is highly questionable. By pitting a novel‟s political message against its artistic achievement, they presuppose a simple dichotomy of form and content. This simple, binary opposition has, among others, been refuted by Juri Lotman. In the course of developing his theory of the secondary world-modelling function of literary texts, Lotman (1970/ 1972: 27) argues that there is no such thing as a „form vs. content-dichotomy‟ in a piece of art. Rather, form and content are dialectically tied to one another; they determine each other. If we alter a single formal element of a literary text, we alter its content. This notion of the interdependency of form and content is central to the analyses offered in the next section. As we will see, rather than enclosing some kind of political message, the specific aesthetic techniques used determine the novels‟ political implications. I will begin by analysing Howard Jacobson‟s novel Pussy, before turning to Ali Smith‟s novel Autumn. Both novels were selected for analysis, as they have been merchandised as the first literary works by major contemporary British authors reacting to the phenomena „Donald Trump‟ and „Brexit‟, respectively. In a final section, both novels will be compared and analysed with regard to the genre definition offered in this section. 3. Literary Reactions to Donald Trump’s electoral victory and to Brexit 3.1. Pussy by Howard Jacobson The British booker prize winning author Howard Jacobson published the novel Pussy in April 2017, only a few months after he had begun writing 7 In his famous article “Why I write”, George Orwell (1954/ 1957: 11) points out that his book Homage to Catalonia (1938) might have been a greater artistic achievement if he had deleted a long, journalistic chapter on the Trotskyists. Yet, he chose to include the chapter, as he would otherwise have lost the very reason to write the book in the first place. The Return of Political Fiction? 69 it in a “fury of disbelief”, when hearing of the result of the American presidential election (Kean 2017: online). The novel is a satirical broadside fired at the 45 th president of the United States, and takes its title from one of Donald Trump‟s infamously sexist remarks concerning the art of initiating a sexual relationship with women (cf. Fahrenthold 2016: online). Jacobson wrote Pussy as a “pastiche of 18 th century satire novel” such a Swift‟s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) and Voltaire‟s Candide (1759) (Anthony 2017: online), which, as we will see in the course of this discussion, has implications with regard to how Pussy can be read fruitfully. That it can, in fact, be read fruitfully seems to have been doubted by most reviewers: Jacobson‟s satire received mostly lukewarm commentaries. The essence of most negative reviews was that, firstly, no satire could match the fact that Trump had been elected president of the United States (cf. Scholes 2017: online) and, secondly, that an attempt at satirizing Trump would necessarily be a futile, „a-preaching-to-the-choir‟-kind of achievement (cf. Cummings 2017: online). And indeed, one could ask, what is a satire directed at Donald Trump going to achieve, but “add to the noise” (Scholes 2017: online)? Not only is Pussy unlikely to swing anybody‟s opinion on Donald Trump, it will most certainly not change Trump himself. Furthermore, the proverbial saying that “a poet may satirise a man to death” has only meaning in a shame-based society (Knight 1980: 26), hence a society with a coherent ethical code which is binding for everybody and violation of which is avenged publically. These cultural features, however, do not apply to the United States of the 21 st century, at least not to a sufficient degree. Hence, why bother writing Pussy in the first place and why bother reading it? The reason why Howard‟s satire merits a more thorough analysis lies not so much in what is satirised but in how it is satirised. By taking a closer look at the rhetorical and narrative strategies the satire deploys, the tacit assumptions on which Pussy rests can be identified. In other words, one can reveal what has been called “the implied worldview” of a literary text (cf. Wolf 2008, and also Wally 2015: 34-41). In the context of satire, determining such an implied worldview might, of course, be a particularly thorny undertaking. After all, readers of satire find themselves confronted with a highly complex communicative situation, which might well be characterised by what Mahler (1992: 43) calls “eine Konversationsmaximen absichtlich verletzende, unaufrichtige […] Sprechhandlung.” Hence, textual elements are even less likely to be reliable indicators of an implied worldview than those of a non-satirical text. Although satirising a certain political situation presupposes a positive counter-image to what is being satirised, there is no simple and evident relation between what is satirised and the values which underlie the satirical attack (cf. Preisendanz 1976: 414). And yet, such an analysis seems rewarding, as it can have broader implications: it might help us under- Johannes Wally 70 stand some of the larger cultural and political dynamics we are currently witnessing. A first step towards such an understanding can be gained by taking a closer look at the prologue of Pussy. It focuses on Kolskeggur Probrius, a former professor of “Phonoethics, a university research program looking into the importance of language to ethical thinking” (P 6). Probrius is on his way to a job interview, which provides the omniscient narrator with an opportunity to describe the world we are confronted with: the walled republic of Urbs-Ludus, whose political and cultural foundations seem to be appearances and denial of unpleasant facts. Exquisite coiffeurs as well as huge ziggurats are signs of social respectability and oppressive heat is no reason to turn down the heating or take off one‟s coat. In fact, heat is repeatedly treated as if it were freezing cold, which is, of course, nothing but the satire‟s blunt nod towards Donald Trump‟s economically and politically motivated denial of climate change as well as his continuous twisting of facts. Urbs-Ludus itself is run by a financial aristocracy, the Grand Duke and the Grand Duchess, who have summoned Professor Probrius, as they hope that he is capable of boosting their self-reliant and backward son‟s education. Professor Probrius is thinking of accepting their job offer, as he has been fired by his university for committing the crime of “cognitive condescension” (P 6), hence of knowing more than those around him. When he arrives at the “Palace of the Golden Gates” (ibid.), where the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess live, he passes a demonstration of angered migrant workers, whom the republic‟s highly specialised economy - for a long time, the only professional activity in the republic has been the erection of towers - has attracted but failed to treat fairly. As this brief list of details reveals, Pussy tosses barbs at the world of the super-rich, who make obscene amounts of money by indulging in business activities which are of no use to the general public and who like to project an image of themselves as reliable, self-made men, despite the obvious falsehood of this projection. 8 Although seemingly adhering to the values of liberal democracies - e.g. free markets and free elections -, the political system which Urbs-Ludus is a part of resembles that of the feudal 8 “We‟re self-made - well, at least I am” (P 97), the Grand Duke says at one point in the narrative. If the Grand Duke is meant to function as a fictional stand-in for Fredrick Christ Trump, Donald Trump‟s father, then this utterance is a satiric broadside at one of the many instances of self-mythologizing which the Trump family has enjoyed. Fredrick Christ Trump was not self-made, at least not in the sense that he started his business from scratch without any financial support. In 1918, he inherited from his father an estate worth 30,000$, which, converted into today‟s standards, would roughly equal 500,000$. What is even more interesting in the light of the self-stylisation as a pioneering business man is the fact that the estate business, which would later be taken to a totally new level by his son Donald Trump, was in fact started by Fredrick Christ Trump‟s mother (cf. Dean 2016: online). The Return of Political Fiction? 71 city states of Renaissance Italy, where a few families distributed power and wealth among themselves. The Grand Duke admits this openly, when he calls the political system he heads “[a] benign commercial plutocracy”, which, as he explains, “cannot be run on democratic lines” (P 44). In Pussy’s world - and by implications in the USA of the year 2017 - a threat of which economists and philosophers such as the former German State Minister for Culture and Media Julian Nida-Rümelin have warned has become a reality: a historical regression is taking place and capitalism is dipping over into a new feudalism (cf. Nida Rümelin 2016: 423). This is, however, not the most depressing fact. What is really unnerving, as Jacobson‟s satire makes clear time and again, is that „the people‟ not only seem not to mind, but in fact contribute to this development by their mindless use of their democratic rights: “The people exercised their rights to vote and whatever it was what they‟d voted for was forgotten in the euphoria of their exercising it” (P 67). However, as much as Pussy is concerned with commenting on current political developments, its major focus lies, at least superficially, elsewhere. It lies with the story of Fracassus, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess‟ son and heir, who is no other than the satire‟s version of Donald Trump. In twenty-eight chapters the novel traces Fracassus‟ development, or rather the lack thereof. Pussy thus can be classified as a crossbreed of an anti-Bildungsroman and a roman à clef, whose plot rests on details of Donald Trump‟s s biography: from Donald Trump‟s repudiated elder brother Freddy Trump (in Pussy appropriately called Iago) over Donald Trump‟s work as host of the game show The Apprentice to his - meanwhile much changed - relationship with Vladimir Putin, who is called Vozzek Spravchik in the novel and rules over the republic Cholm - a reference to the Russian town of Kholm, where the first encirclement of the German army by the Red Army took place in 1942 (cf. Althaus 2017: online). The pivotal point on which the entire satire rests is language use, or abuse respectively. At the level of histoire, this concern is most prominently realised through Fracassus‟ inability to master the English language. Repeatedly, Fracassus is shown to be linguistically challenged. Professor Probrius and his colleague Dr Cobald‟s main task is to expand Fracassus‟ vocabulary, among others by practicing finding synonyms. This exercise gives away Fracassus sexist self-centredness: he can find more synonyms for the word prostitute than for the word woman. When Dr Cobald points out the strong connection between the concept of woman and the concept of prostitute in his mind, little Fracassus points his finger at her - a gesture typical of an irritated Donald Trump - and accuses her of being unfair (cf. P 29f). Other examples of Fracassus‟ struggle with words are his tweets, which arguably belong to the most hilarious parts of the book. At one point of the narrative, Fracassus meets Sojjourner Heminway, a “Metro- Johannes Wally 72 polian Liberal Elitists” (P 97), whom he falls in love with, much to his parents‟ distress. Sojjourner, whose first name references the Afro- American abolitionist and women‟s right activist Sojourner Truth (1797- 1883), has been interpreted as “a proxy for Hillary Clinton” (cf. Lawson 2017: online), as she eventually becomes Fracassus‟ political opponent. Nevertheless, immediately after meeting her for the first time, an enchanted Fracassus tweets: “Met a bitch called two js. Great piece of ass with two as. Moved on her, not close” (P 99). The two chapters in which this episode is narrated are entitled “When my love swears she is made of truth…” (Chapter 14) and “… I do believe her though I know she lies” (Chapter 15). The chapter titles, which are taken from the first two lines of Shakespearian Sonnet 138, form a strong contrast with Fracassus‟ linguistically and intellectually reductive tweet, thereby reinforcing the notion of Fracassus‟ linguistic and intellectual limitedness. The narrative offers an explanation of Fracassus‟ linguistic inability. This analysis adapts the Lacanian concept of the mirror stage (cf. Lacan 1949/ 2001). According to this concept, a toddler‟s recognition of him or herself in the mirror roughly coincides with his or her first attempts at using language. The mirror stage thus constitutes the intersection between the pre-linguistic stage (the imaginary) and the stage after the acquisition of language (the symbolic). In a nutshell, Lacan reinterprets Freud‟s oedipal phase and argues that the conflict the child experiences at this developmental stage is not so much one of loyalties and jealousies but one of identity and separation. The child realises that he or she is not one with his or her environment and therefore experiences a gap between wanting something and having that want fulfilled. This gap is bridged by language, however, only insufficiently: The enormity of the shock, for any child, of having to go from pointing to naming cannot be exaggerated. But for Fracassus, for whom to wish was to be given, it was as catastrophic as birth. To have to find a word to supply a need is to admit the difference between the world and you. Fracassus knew of no such difference. The world had been his, to eat, to tear, to kick. He hadn‟t had to name it. The world was him. Fracassus. (P 21) The notion that childish narcissism is the key to understanding Fracassus mirrors psychological explanations which have been offered in order to understand the motivations of Donald Trump (cf., for instance, Allens 2017: online). In Pussy, this notion is reinforced through the infantile game culture in which all political and economic activities in Urbs-Ludus, whose Latin name translates to game city, are embedded. For instance, in his first interview with Fracassus‟ parents, Professor Probrius is led to a dining room which abounds with “children‟s party food” (P 10), and when explaining his business activities, the Grand Duke compares them to the game Monopoly (P 11). It is the compelling result of these regres- The Return of Political Fiction? 73 sive dynamics that the grown-up Fracassus becomes a game show host, in which he tells “wrongdoers - wife-beaters, drug-takers, rapists, alcoholics, pickpockets, body snatchers, arsonists, forgers, cat burglars, paedophiles” to “[j]ust Stoppit” (P, 165, original emphasis). For Fracassus, as the narrator acidly comments, the show has the great advantage that Fracassus needs to remember only “two words” [! ], and if he forgets them, “there [is] always autocue” (ibid.). In comparison, Donald Trump became famous for saying three words on the show The Apprentice, namely: “you are fired.” If the motif of linguistic and cultural poverty pervades Pussy at the level of histoire, linguistic and cultural playfulness abounds at the level of discourse. The narrator‟s vocabulary is rich and varied, with the odd rhetorical figure such as anaphoric 9 or epiphoric 10 repetition and alliteration 11 worked into the discourse. As initially mentioned, the plot is characterised by a number of intertextual references, as it mirrors, among others, that of Gulliver’s Travels or that of Candide: like Gulliver or Candide, Fracassus, too, goes on an extended educational tour. A further prominent intertextual reference can be found at the beginning of the book. The actual narrative is preceded by an ironic reworking of a section of the Book of Revelation. As is the case in Revelation 13.1, a speaker also observes a beast rising from the sea; however, in Jacobson‟s version the beast has “the feet of a clown” and “face of a spoilt child” (P 3). Regarding the linguistic material that Pussy consists of, the names given to the various characters and places are of particular interest. Arguably, characters and places rather belong to the level of histoire than discourse, but as these names show a strong resemblance with the stylistic features of Pussy, we might as well discuss them here. In Pussy, prominent names - regardless whether they are names of persons or places - are often taken from Latin or Latin-based languages. I have already mentioned the Latin name of the walled Republic of Urbs Ludus, but there is more. The protagonist‟s name Fracassus refers to the Italian noun fracasso, which means noise or rumpus as well as to the French adjective fracassant, which means sensational but also thunderous. 12 Similarly, the last name of Fracassus‟ teacher Probrius could be read as a malapropism of either the Latin word proprius, which, among other things, can mean essential or typical, or the Latin word probus, which means excellent. 9 “It was situated on an artificial beach whose sands were of surpassing softness, sands the colour of his wife‟s hair […]” (P 62) 10 “A hunger for change. A dread of change.” (P 158) 11 E.g. “Another plebiscite, presumably. The Grand Duke held himself aloof from people politics.” (P 67) 12 Also the Renaissance Author François Rablais is said to have listed a certain Fracassus as the name of a mythical giant (cf. Bane 2016: 71). Johannes Wally 74 Latin or Italian, however, are not the only languages that Pussy draws on in order to create telling names. On his educational tour, Fracassus meets Phonocrates, the leader of the Republic of Gnossia, whose name clearly contains a reference to the Greek philosopher Socrates. Furthermore, the name of the republic Gnossia constitutes a pun on the Neo- Greek term „gnosia‟ - a psychiatric term which denotes “[t]he perceptive faculty enabling one to recognise the form and the nature of persons and things” (www.medical-dictionary.com, s.v. „gnosia‟) - but also on the term gnosis, which could either mean “immediate knowledge of spiritual truth” or refer to knowledge “as professed by the ancient Gnostics” (Webster’s Third International Dictionary, s.v. „gnosis‟). These allusions to philosophy and knowledge are, of course, rhetorical devices in order to create a satiric contrast to the wisdom Phonocrates actually divulges: “Don‟t keep your promises” (P 110), he advises young Fracassus, when he reveals to him “the whole secret of good government” (P 109). A similarly biting, though more complex joke is made with regard to Vozzek Spravchik, the satire‟s proxy for Vladimir Putin. The politician and game show host Vozzek Spravchik runs a show, in which the word spravnos is a term of abuse, whereas the term spravchik is a term of approval (P 115ff.). The irony here is that spravnos is reminiscent of the adverbs správně (Czech) or správne (Slovakian), both of which mean right or correct. Hence, one is probably not stretching this scene when reading it as reinforcing the idea that contemporary politics has come to equal an inversion if not negation of ethics. Considering these elaborate and polyglot puns, one question arises: Why all the effort? Why create such a complex and highly refined web of cultural and linguistic allusions if the satire‟s only aim was to illuminate how uncultured Donald Trump is? The explanation that Pussy is a satire and that satire often rests on a disproportion between what is told and how it is told is certainly correct. However, it does not go far enough. In fact, the discrepancy between histoire and discourse implies something else, namely an unexpected value judgement. Borrowing from Bourdieu‟s terminology (cf. Bourdieu 1986), this judgement could be summarised as follows: cultural capital is equal if not superior to economic/ political capital. This notion finds its expression most obviously in the character of Kolskeggur Probrius, as his research in Phonoethics supports the idea that “bad grammar leads to bad men” (P 6). The notion behind Probrius‟ research is that of linguistic relativity, better known as Sapir-Whorfhypothesis, which argues that linguistic structures determine our worldview. According to the strong version of this hypothesis, linguistic limitations might well lead to cognitive limitations. After all, you are likely not to know what you cannot name. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis has been contested for a variety of reasons. The idea, however, that language shapes our thoughts has not been discarded and has recently been applied The Return of Political Fiction? 75 to examining the relationship between political preferences and language use (cf. among others Lakoff 2009 or Wehling 2016). 13 The fact that Professor Probrius contributes to Fracassus‟ success might well cast a negative light on the role which intellectuals played in the rise of Donald Trump. It does, however, not weaken the aforementioned value judgement, which proves Pussy to be the product of a Bildungsbürger’s perspective on contemporary politics. It is this perspective, then, which ultimately changes Pussy‟s status from a literary weapon to a document of helplessness: what the novel cleverly identifies as the source of Fracassus‟ linguistic inaptitude becomes, in this light, a depressing meta-referential statement: “To have to find a word to supply a need is to admit the difference between the world and you” (P 21). The fact that Pussy exists is an admission that the values it sets out to support are not dominant anymore. Donald Trump was elected president, in spite of the many election forecasts that said otherwise and in spite of the many public intellectuals who warned against his time in office. Pussy can thus be seen as an attempt at putting right symbolically what went wrong in reality. Reminiscent of the Rambo movies, which regularly presented the audience with an outgunned and outnumbered American soldier who prevailed against the Viet Cong in the jungle (which is an exact inversion of what really happened), Pussy enacts a symbolic victory of cultural education and political liberalism over economic and political power. It is, thus, a telling document of the political changes which I referred to at the beginning of this essay. 3.2. Autumn by Ali Smith As predicted, a flood of Brexit literature hit the market at the end of 2017 (cf. Spencer 2017: online). This inundation constituted an anomaly in British literature. Up to that point, the European Union and its predecessors, respectively, seem to have had little impact on the UK‟s cultural production. This impression is not only supported by the research conducted for this essay, it also coincides with the verdict of the experimental author and literary scholar Gabriel Josipovici: in the course of a pre- Brexit Times Literary Supplement-symposium, Josipovici (2016: online) stated that the UK‟s cultural life was more European in the 1960s than it is today. 13 Lakoff (2009: 15), for instance, argues that language activates certain frames and metaphors and the more we are exposed to a certain type of language the more our thoughts will be shaped by the frames and metaphors activated by this specific language use. It is thus not irrelevant how a certain fact is expressed; rather, phrasing, itself is a political action open to ethical scrutiny. This is not a new insight. What is, however, new is that what was formerly argued intuitively can meanwhile be proven through cognitive research. Johannes Wally 76 It is perhaps no coincidence that the - to my knowledge - first and also only better known example of non-genre fiction in the English language 14 which foregrounds the European institutions and their policies was not written by a British author but by the Irish writer Gillman Noonan. His much anthologised short story “Dear Parents, I‟m Working for the EEC! ”, published in 1976, only three years after Ireland - and incidentally Great Britain - joined the European Economic Community, focuses on an Irish translator who works for the European Commission. If one is to trust Powell‟s verdict that euroscepticism is a hobby horse of politically conservative authors, Noonan‟s short story is the exception that proves the rule (cf. Powell 2013: 12f.): “Dear Parents, I‟m Working for the EEC” scrutinises the relationship between personal happiness and welfare, ultimately opposing a seemingly mad anarchist campaigner with the Belgian police force. The anarchist campaigner is arrested for indecent behaviour, as he performs a striptease in the middle of the Schuman roundabout vis-à-vis the European Commission building. In his striptease, the campaigner uses a jacket which has been pieced together from stolen dog coats as a prop. The fact that dogs are groomed and clothed like human beings in Brussels has come to “symbolise for him all that [is] wrong in the world” (DP 75). The striptease is observed by the Irish translator, whose love life has fallen apart since he began to work for the EEC. This narrative detail references the Marxist notion informing the short story that the type of material welfare fostered by a Capitalist institution such as the European Economic Community will ultimately lead to alienation. In other words, an economic community of this kind will damage if not destroy interpersonal communities of all kinds. Alienation, especially the alienating power of bureaucracy, is also a focal point of Ali Smith‟s novel Autumn. Published in October 2016, it was “hailed as the first Brexit novel” and as an extraordinary literary achievement (Clark 2017: online). In The Financial Times, the author and journalist Alex Preston (2017: online) epitomised the general thrust of the reviews of Autumn when he marvelled how “writing this good could have come so fast.” Ali Smith‟s novel is indeed a highly intriguing text. The classification „first Brexit novel‟, however, does not follow quite as readily as one might think from Smith‟s prose. In contrast to Julian Barnes‟ England, England (1998), which anticipated Brexit by effectively staging the extraction of the fictitious entity „Old England‟ from the European Union (cf. EE 253), 15 14 The EU as a corrupt agent threatening British national identity has played a certain role in crime and/ or spy fiction such as Andrew Robert‟s The Aachen Memorundum (1995), Graham Ison‟s Division (1996) and, more contemporary, Michael Dobbs‟ A Sentimental Traitor (2011) (cf. Powell 2013: 12f. and Powell 2014: online). 15 The situation as envisaged by Barnes is indeed eerily prophetic: “New political leaders proclaimed a new self-sufficiency. They extracted the country from the The Return of Political Fiction? 77 Brexit as a topic is alluded to, rather than addressed directly, in Autumn. In terms of narrative technique, this is often done through the inclusion of news snippets (e.g. A 58 and A 111); the term „Brexit‟, 16 however, is not used in the entire book. This should not come as a surprise, since Ali Smith‟s work is known for its polyphony and ambiguity, both of which stem from “discursive features such as dispersion and fragmentation of discourses and points of view” (Garcia 2012: 111). With regard to Autumn, Ali Smith has pointed out that she is specifically interested in “asking structural questions about the [novel]” (Smith and Anderson 2016: online), which, as a literary genre, is always concerned with time, regardless what else it is concerned with. This has caused many reviewers to place Autumn in the tradition of high modernism, relating the novel to works such as Marcel Proust‟s À la recherche du temps perdu (1913-1927) or Thomas Mann‟s Der Zauberberg (1924) (cf. Kavenna 2016: online). Although this is a valuable classification, which, to boot, is supported by the narrative techniques used in Autumn, it might not do the novel‟s thematic focus full justice. Like all art forms that concern themselves with the fundamental categories of human sense making, Autumn is ultimately a meditation on human identity. 17 More specifically, it is a meditation on political identity which branches out into three subtopics: (i) national identity; (ii) personal identity; and (iii) - connecting the first two subtopics - nostalgia as defence mechanism. All three topics are introduced in the opening chapter, which in a dream-like scene shows the character of Daniel Gluck regaining his consciousness after having been washed up on a shore. In the course of this brief chapter, Daniel Gluck metamorphoses from an old man to a young man to a boy and back to “his respectable self again” (A 11). These changes indicate how much Autumn will be concerned with the fluidness and, perhaps, contingency of personal identity. Yet, there is more to it. In the year 2016, beginning a book with someone who is washed up on a shore is not simply a literalisiation of Heidegger‟s Geworfenheit of human existence or a learned allusion to great literary works such as Shakespeare‟s The Tempest (1611), Defoe‟s Robinson Crusoe (1719) or Donne‟s Meditation XVII (1624): it has political implications. The covert reference to Donne‟s verse line “If a clod be washed away, Europe is the less” can be seen as pointing to the Brexit vote, while the section where Daniel European Union - negotiating with such obstinate irrationality that they were eventually paid to depart […]” (EE 253). 16 The chapter tackling the state of the nation after the Brexit referendum only speaks of “the vote” without further specifying which vote (A 53). 17 This claim is based on McHale‟s observation that there is an intricate connection between epistemology and ontology (cf. McHale 1987: 11). Most obviously, this claim can be exemplified by the following question, variations of which are often asked in introductory lectures to philosophy: if I am standing with my back to a tree so that I can‟t see the tree, can I be sure that the tree exists? Johannes Wally 78 Gluck “looks along the shore at the dark line of the tide-dumped dead” (A 12) evokes the contemporary refugee crisis, whose death toll had already passed 1,000 in April 2017 (Dearden 2017: online). 18 Finally, Daniel‟s continuous craving for being young again anticipates the nostalgic bias of the novel, which, as we will see in our discussion, emerges specifically as desire for and appreciation of British art of various epochs, especially of the 1960s. The three subtopics are fully developed in the ensuing chapters. Although not less allusive, these are less lyrical and more narrative in nature. Alternatingly, they centre on the everyday life of “thirty two years old, no fixed hours casual contract junior lecturer at a university in London” (A 15) and on episodes telling of her friendship with Daniel Gluck, who, more than 100 years old, lies in a coma. The dreamlike opening scene we have just analysed thus turns out to be the product of a dying man‟s subconscious. In her discussion of political and personal identity, Smith resorts to the (post-)structuralist notion that identity is a relational category: hence, identity is not something that exists per se, but is established through relations, in other words, “we can say what something is by dint of what it is not” (Childs 2000/ 2001: 2). This thought is fleshed out more fully in the episode when Elisabeth Demand tries to obtain a new passport, hence when she tries to obtain a symbol in which individual and national identity interlock. Her first attempt at doing so fails, as the photograph she attaches to the application form does not comply with the norms: “HEAD INCORRECT SIZE” (A 25, original emphasis), the post office clerk writes in “the box next to the word Other” (ibid., original emphasis). This episode not only shows how much, in late modernity, personal identity has come to mean state-administered identity (cf. for example, Horkheimer 1970), it also literalises the aforementioned notion of identity being a relational category: by trying to obtain a passport, Elisabeth attempts at establishing an identity in relation to a superordinate entity such as the nation state. This mirrors Britain‟s need to establish an identity with relation to a superordinate entity, namely the European Union. In autumn 2016, some two months after the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, creating a British identity is a difficult enterprise. The major reason for this is that the nation itself is divided. Therefore it cannot simply develop an identity by demarcating itself as a whole from a larger unit: All across the country, the country split in pieces. All across the country, the countries cut adrift. 18 As Daniel Gluck is a German Jew, this scene also alludes to the National-Socialist genocide of six million Jews. The Return of Political Fiction? 79 All across the country, the country was divided, a fence here, a wall there, a line drawn here, a line crossed there, a line you don‟t cross here, a line you better not cross there, a line of beauty here, a line dance there, a line you don‟t even know exists here a line you can‟t afford there a whole new line of fire, line of battle, end of the line here/ there. (A 61) The answer to this existential crisis which Autumn proposes is a nostalgic evocation of the „good old days‟. In terms of discourse, this longing for the past finds its expression in the achronological design of the narrative. The regular analepses focusing on Elisabeth‟s friendship with Daniel Gluck - often set in early 1990s - suggest that the present can only be endured in small doses; not before long the past has to be conjured up as a site of relief. In terms of story, the nostalgic bias of the novel manifests itself predominately in the evocation of the paintings and life of the only female British Pop art painter Pauline Boty, on whom Elisabeth Demand wrote her dissertation. Pauline Boty was a “proto-feminist pop-art pioneer” (Laing 2016: online), who died of cancer aged only 28. Her art work was long forgotten but regained public attention in 2013, when three exhibitions made her paintings available to the general public (Stummer 2013: online). Autumn’s reference to Boty is of significance since Boty‟s work is directly connected to one of the major political scandals of the 1960s, namely the so called, „Profumo affair‟. In 1963, Boty was commissioned to paint Christine Keeler, English model and call girl, who had had affairs with John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War in Harold Macmillan‟s government, and Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attaché (cf. Schmidt 2011: 165ff.). The painting called Scandal ‘63, which has disappeared since the year of its creation, places Christine Keeler at the centre, while showing the male protagonists of the affair at the top of the canvass (Stummer 2013: online). The Profumo affair subsequently brought the conservative Macmillan government down, and Ali Smith has argued that one reason for including Pauline Boty in Autumn is the fact that through her art, Boty documented the politically charged year 1963. This year, however, can be seen as anticipating the year 2016, as in both cases a political lie “had dramatic consequences for the society at large” (Laing 2016: online). Johannes Wally 80 Smith‟s explanation is comprehensible. However, the political implications of this reference seem more complex. After all, they place Autumn in a specific literary and ideological tradition, which has political implications in itself: with its nostalgic evocation of the art of a bygone decade, Autumn is a prototypical postmodern novel. 19 As Jameson (1992: 166) has argued, one defining feature of postmodernism is a certain fascination with the past, which can be linked to a lost faith in individualism. Artists perceive themselves as no longer capable of creating something original; rather they turn to a (mythologised) past, “as though, for some reason, we were unable to focus on our own present, as though we have become incapable of achieving aesthetic representations of our own current experience” (ibid. 171). However, nostalgia might not only be interpreted as a sign of artistic self-doubt. It can also be viewed as a form of escapism. The nostalgic evocation of the past indicates a profound dissatisfaction with the present, and ultimately, the political inability to change the present. Conjuring up the year 1963 - the “anus mirabilis” (A 251), as the novel puns drawing on Philip Larkin‟s famous poem annus mirabilis (1974) and Boty‟s painting Bum (1966), which shows a nude female behind - becomes a defence mechanism, in other words, a tool which is meant to help ignore what seems unchangeable. And yet, Smith‟s Autumn might not be quite as pessimistic a book as Jacobson‟s Pussy, which ends with a note of gloomy foreboding. This has to do with the character of Daniel Gluck, a German Jew, who at one point of the book is tellingly referred to as “European” (A 77). In the episodes centring on Daniel Gluck and Elisabeth Demand‟s friendship, Gluck, whose name is meant to echo the German word for happiness (i.e. Glück), comes across as the personification of wisdom, combining emo- 19 This classification might come as a surprise, especially when we remember the aforementioned connection between Autumn and high modernist texts. And indeed, especially in terms of discourse, the novel could be classified as modernist, since the narrative mode freely switches between omniscient comments and character focalisation, using techniques such as free indirect discourse and inner monologue. However, what looks like a modernist novel really is a conscious quote of the modernist originals such as Virginia Woolf‟s Mrs Dalloway (1925), to which Autumn bears a slight resemblance also thematically, as both novels show the female protagonist running everyday errands. What further corroborates this classification of Autumn as a postmodernist novel is the fact that we do not only find an abundance of references to touchstones of high modernist culture - e.g. William Butler Yeats‟ poem “The Second Coming” (1920) (cf. A 15), Aldous Huxely‟s novel Brave New World (1932) (cf. A 17) or James Joyce‟s‟ short story “The Dead” (1914) (cf. A 97) -, we also find a verbatim quote of a cornerstone of literary realism, namely Charles Dickens‟ A Tale of Two Cities (1859) (cf. A 15 and A 201), evoking the tradition of „the condition of England novels‟. Hence, Autumn is a collage of highly meta-referential quotes (i.e. meta-referential, as the collage foregrounds the novel‟s literariness), combining references of at least two literary traditions that can be seen as opposing one another. This syncretism can be seen as another indicator of the novel‟s postmodernist leaning. The Return of Political Fiction? 81 tional warmth with an enlightened worldview. After having been in a coma for the better part of the book, Gluck regains consciousness at the end of the novel and asks Elisabeth the question which she has anticipated throughout the book: “What are you reading? ” (A 258). This scene sets off an entire train of questions: Are we to infer from it that in a world full of radicalisation and simplifying messages, literature is reason‟s last refuge? And what are we to make of Daniel Gluck‟s nationality? Might it be a hint that the novel supports the view, ironically put forth by the German historian Philipp Felsch, that Hegel‟s Weltgeist must be acting in utter confusion, since Germany and the UK seem to have swapped the political roles typically assigned to them? Whereas the UK seems to be retreating into some kind of blinkered nationalism, German foreign policy has come to epitomise a reasonable and postideological pragmatism (cf. Felsch 2017: 14f.). Hence, could Autumn be read as subtly supporting a political agenda as pursued, for instance, by Angela Merkel? And, finally, does Daniel Gluck‟s „resurrection‟ imply that the „voice of reason‟ could make itself heard again in the UK? There is no way to ultimately settle these questions. Still, all three might be answered in the affirmative, albeit tentatively. Autumn might be too hazy to overtly put forth a political message, but it certainly conveys a deep appreciation of art and literature and also expresses a deep dissatisfaction with the UK‟s current political situation. Moreover, through the inclusion of story details such as the negative depiction of discrimination against migrants (cf. A 53), criticism of Thatcherism (cf. A 111) and a positive depiction of homosexual love (cf. A 221), Autumn can be interpreted as leaning towards some kind of social and cultural liberalism, which is often associated with support of international institutions such as the European Union and which, at the global political scene, has recently been pursued by the German government. Hence, in spite of the fact that Autumn refrains from returning open verdicts on current political affairs, it is a deeply political book (if not exactly a political novel). In contrast to Howard Jacobson‟s Pussy it does not foreclose the possibility of a better future. It does, however, not hint at any possible way forward either. 4. Types of Contemporary Political Fiction: Classifying and Comparing Pussy and Autumn I have just argued that Autumn is not a representative of the political novel, at least not if we apply Kemme‟s view that the political novel is “a work of prose fiction which primarily focuses upon the exercise of political power within the body politic” (Kemme 1987: 5). Rather, Autumn is a representative of what one might call „politics in a novel‟. In other words, it is a novel whose thematic focus lies elsewhere, at least at first sight, in Johannes Wally 82 this case on the relationship between a young woman and her geriatric friend. Autumn does not depict political actions in the narrow sense such as the act of voting or the plotting and scheming of political elite. Rather, politics - especially Brexit - serves as a backdrop against which the plot unfolds. Pussy sits on the other end of the continuum we postulated in section 2. It can be classified as a political novel, albeit an atypical one. Following Fracassus‟ development from a spoilt child to a statesman of sorts, the novel depicts political actions and also explores aspects of political philosophy. What makes Pussy an atypical representative of the political novel is the fact that it is, at least overtly, not concerned with the political events of a real state. As a satire in the tradition of Gulliver’s Travels, it traces the political events in a fictitious country and only those in the know - in this case probably all persons with access to the daily news - are able to decode the setting and relate it to the political scene of the USA in 2017. Despite these differences, there is much common ground between Pussy and Autumn. This common ground is established by the way both novels tell their stories. As Knight (1980: 4) has argued, “form is crucial” in producing the ideological substratum of a literary text, and this is particularly obvious with the two novels under scrutiny here. Both heavily deploy intertextuality, thereby placing their stories in a frame of reference which, arguably, is decipherable specifically for members of a certain social stratum, namely the educated middle class. 20 Referencing an entire literary canon can be interpreted as a means of establishing a bond between the author and knowledgeable readers. It enacts a set of values which, with reference to Pussy, I have condensed in the slogan that cultural capital is superior to economic/ political capital. Thus, both novels perform extra-fictionally what Autumn stages intra-fictionally: they act out the identity crisis of those who might feel especially jeopardised by the rise of an anti-intellectual nationalism. In this sense, both novels can be viewed as documents of the current political crisis. In particular, they bear witness to the identity crisis of the liberal, educated middleclass, who perhaps feel that they are no longer the cultural and political backbone of western societies. 21 20 It seems noteworthy that both novels assign central roles to characters who are scholars. And indeed, Autumn was read as a document of the educated middleclass. 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Johannes Wally Institut für Anglistik Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz Rezensionen Hans H. Hiebel, Samuel Beckett: Das Spiel mit der Selbstbezüglichkeit. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2016. André Otto Bereits wenn man die Bandbreite von Becketts Schaffen und dessen Wirkmächtigkeit für das 20. Jahrhundert einordnen will, trifft man auf ein terminologisches Problem, das den Impetus des Beckettschen Projekts anzeigt. Denn Beckett hat nicht nur im Bereich der traditionell der Literatur zugehörigen Großgattungen der Lyrik, dem Drama und der Prosa, sowohl in Form des Romans als auch der Kurzprosa, Entscheidendes beigetragen, sondern auch in den ‚neuen„ Medien des Films und des Hörspiels. Dabei ging es jedoch nicht um eine mediale Allgegenwärtigkeit, die schließlich auch mit dem Literaturnobelpreis belohnt worden wäre. Vielmehr stehen immer wieder die Wirksamkeit des Medialen und des Mediums im Vordergrund. Zeigt sich dies schon im Theater Becketts an einer zunehmenden Tendenz zur Reduktion, erscheint sowohl der Textbegriff als auch die Frage nach der Medialität der Literatur in Fernseh- und Radiospiel umso problematischer. Worüber spricht man also bei Beckett? Definiert man Literatur und ihre Gattungen primär über Sprachlichkeit, wird man etwa in den späten Theaterstücken oder auch in den Filmen bestenfalls noch auf Sprache als Medium einer Notation treffen, die Versuchsanordnungen aufzeichnet, denen dann selbst die Sprache fast völlig entzogen ist. Diese Reduktionen sind zentral für Becketts Werk und dessen Bedeutung für die Kunst des 20. Jahrhunderts, da sie die konstitutive Medialität der unterschiedlichen Kunstformen herausarbeiten und in ihrem Zusammenspiel und den beständigen Medienwechseln die Interferenzen zwischen den unterschiedlichen Medien betonen. Becketts Texte reflektieren stets die Bedingungen ihrer Medialität und weisen sich als mediale Gefüge aus. Dies mag in Form der Intermedialität ebenso wie des Gattungs- und Medienwechsels erfolgen. Es wird aber auch in den reduktiven Versuchsanordnungen der Prosa vor allem ab Comment C’est / How it is deutlich, die sowohl die Räumlichkeit der gedruckten Seite hervorheben als auch mit der AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 43 (2018) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen Rezensionen 88 medialen Differenz von (konzeptueller) Mündlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit spielen. Mittels der Betonung der eigenen Medialität und der besonderen medialen Gefüge der jeweiligen Kunstform dient die Reduktion daher in Becketts Werken einem radikalen und selbstbezüglichen Austesten dessen, was im 20. Jahrhundert Literatur und Kunst sein kann und was deren Grenzen sind. Dies meint sowohl die relativen Grenzen zwischen Gattungen und medial verschiedenen Kunstformen als auch die absolute Grenze künstlerischen Ausdrucks. Zugleich erfolgt dabei eine Dekonstruktion idealistisch überhöhter Kunst- und Literaturauffassungen, die sich im konstanten Spiel zwischen Tragik und Komik, philosophischer Tiefe und grotesker Körperlichkeit niederschlägt. Hier setzt nun Hans H. Hiebels Untersuchung zu Becketts Spiel mit der Selbstbezüglichkeit an. Wie der Titel bereits ankündigt, geht es Hiebel zum einen um Selbstbezüglichkeit, deren unterschiedliche Formen und Erscheinungsweisen in den Texten ausdifferenziert werden, und deren Einbindung in einen literarischen Modus, der unter dem Begriff des Spiels vor allem auch die Rolle des Humors bei Beckett hervorstreichen will. Selbstbezüglichkeit, Humor sowie die unterschiedlichen Konzeptualisierungen des Spiels bei Beckett werden zum anderen aber historisch und medial differenzierend erarbeitet. Darin zeigt sich der Anspruch des Buches und sein Verdienst, denn ausgehend von Phänomenen der Selbstbezüglichkeit unternimmt Hiebel einen jeweils chronologisch geordneten Durchgang durch das Beckettsche Œuvre. Mit Ausnahme der Lyrik breitet das Buch das ganze mediale Spektrum Becketts aus, wodurch nicht nur inter- und transmediale Bezüge beobachtbar werden, sondern auch die Insistenz deutlich wird, mit der Beckett in unterschiedlichen Medien die konstitutiven Verfahren fiktionaler Sinnstiftung ausstellt und sie auf ihre medialen Bedingun-gen befragend subvertiert. Entsprechend weist Hiebel die Selbstbezüglichkeit vielfach unter dem Schlagwort der Medienadäquatheit nach. Mit dem Medium verändern sich demnach auch die Verfahren, Gegenstände, textpragmatischen Ebenen und semiotischen Bezugssysteme selbstreferenzieller Betrachtung. Systematisch wird das Phänomen der Selbstbezüglichkeit eingeleitet anhand der Überlagerung der Kommunikationssysteme in literarischen Texten, die Hiebel beispielhaft am Drama vornimmt, um darin die beteiligten Ebenen zu differenzieren und ihren Bezug zueinander zu klären. Dies bildet die Voraussetzung für die Konzeptualisierung textueller Selbstbezüglichkeit. Entwickelt wird diese im Sinne der Metafiktion vor allem ausgehend von Werner Wolf, der sie typologisch weiter differenziert hat in Metafiktionalität, die sich auf die fictio- oder die fictum-Ebene bezieht, also sich entweder auf die Prozesse und die Verfahren fiktionaler Weltkonstitution konzentriert oder auf die Reflexion des ontologisch fiktiven Status der jeweils dargestellten Welt: „‚Selbstbezüglichkeit„ […] bezeichnet also alle Formen von Metadrama, von metafiction (im Sinne von fictio-Metafiktionalität) und von narrativer Metafiktivität (im Sinne von fictum-Metafiktionalität) sowie von Metalyrik.“ (23) Um jedoch den transgenerischen und (inter-)medialen Problemen bei Beckett gerecht zu werden, versteht Hiebel Selbstbezüglichkeit vor allem mit Rezensionen 89 Blick auf den ebenfalls von Wolf in den letzten Jahren profilierten Begriff der Metareferenz, der mediale Bezüge zwischen unterschiedlichen semiotischen Systemen fokussiert. Zugleich dient der Zugang über die Metareferenz Hiebel zur Einschränkung der Selbstbezüglichkeit, insofern Metareferenz einen „Spezialfall“ (23) innerhalb des weiteren Feldes der Selbstreferenz darstellt. Während letztere „sämtliche nicht-zufälligen intrasystemic references“ (17) umfasst, grenzt Hiebel Metareferenz dezidiert von impliziten Selbstverweisen ab, die Jakobson unter der poetischen Funktion subsumiert hat. Wie bei Wolfs Begriff der Metareferenz geht es ihm mit der Selbstreflexivität um Thematisierungen des semiotischen Systems, in dem sich eine Ebenendifferenz anzeigt: „Wir wollen indessen den Terminus ‚Selbstbezüglichkeit„ auf den Bereich der Metareferenz eingrenzen; ‚Selbstbezüglichkeit„ stellt den Selbstbezug eines Werks in den Vordergrund, während der Terminus ‚Metareferenz„ den Aspekt der Metaebene der Elemente - an der gleichen Sache - hervorhebt; es handelt sich um zwei Seiten einer Medaille. Selbstbezug spielt immer auf einer Metaebene, Metareferenz besteht immer in einem Selbstbezug.“ (17) Im Zentrum stehen mithin „(explizite oder implizite) Aussagen über Aussagen“ (23), die immer auch mit auf die textinterne Pragmatik verweisen. Allerdings zeigt sich hier bereits ein Problem für die medialen Herausorderungen Becketts an. Denn mit der Verengung auf die thematisierende Diskursivierung können gerade jene radikalen Befragungen der medialen Konstitution der Texte nur zum Teil in den Blick genommen werden, die an den und über die Grenzen des Sprachlichen und Diskursiven hinaus arbeiten. Dies wird sich letztlich auch in der Art zeigen, wie Hiebel das Spiel bei Beckett denkt. Denn er scheint hier vor allem auf eine spielerische Distanzierung und Illusionsdurchbrechung zu zielen, die Selbstreferenzialität als Verfügungsgewalt zu begreifen scheint. Diese dekonstruieren Becketts Texte jedoch aller Orten sowohl hinsichtlich eines entsprechenden Sprach- und Zeichenverständnisses als auch mit Blick auf Vorstellungen moderner Subjektivität. Allerdings geht das Buch auf die subjekt-, sprach- und medienphilosophischen Implikationen der Selbstbezüglichkeit kaum ein, vielmehr fällt es oftmals in seinen nicht näher befragten impliziten Grundannahmen der Lektüren hinter die Erkenntnisse der neueren Beckett-Forschung zurück. Mit dem zweiten zentralen systematischen Bezugspunkt neben Wolf greift Hiebel die Frage nach der Medialität und medialer Selbstreferenz auf. Anhand von Shimon Levys Studie zu Samuel Beckett’s Self-Referential Drama, auf die Hiebel auch in den Textlektüren vielfach zurückkommt, unterstreicht er nicht nur das Medienbewusstsein bei Beckett, das „im Wesentlichen ein implizites ist“ und „praktisch allen Werken Becketts“ eignet (24). Mit Levys Annahme, „dass bei Beckett die medialen Komponenten eines Theaterstücks oder eines Fernsehspiels quasi zur Schau gestellt werden und dass sich das jeweilige Werk in dieser Weise auf sich selbst bezieht, selbstbezüglich ist“ (25), fasst er mediale Selbstbezüglichkeit bei Beckett unter der Perspektive „ostentative[r] Medienadäquatheit“ (25): „Becketts Anliegen ist es, die dem Medium eignenden und ihm adäquaten Mittel einzusetzen“ (24). Es wäre hier jedoch zu fragen, ob Medienbewusstsein und dessen Manifestationen in Rezensionen 90 impliziter Metareferenz bei Beckett tatsächlich auf eine Medienadäquatheit zielen bzw. ob dies ein glücklicher Begriff ist. Denn diese implizierte nicht nur ein Verständnis der jeweiligen medial-semiotischen Konstituenten, sondern auch deren Akzeptanz, braucht Adäquatheit doch einen Standard nach dem sich die Angemessenheit richtete. Dem gegenüber könnte man jedoch behaupten, dass Becketts radikale Reduktionen genau dies nicht mehr gelten lassen, weil sie die jeweiligen Konstituenten singularisieren und zueinander in Spannung bringen. Eine solche Subversion und Befragung dessen, was das jeweilige Medium künstlerisch-literarischer Kommunikation ausmacht, hat die Selbstverständlichkeit der Angemessenheit verloren und setzte stattdessen eine Poetik des medialen Rauschens in Szene, die mit der Literatur des Unworts bereits früh im so genannten German Letter an Axel Kaun ausgeführt wird. Hier würde aus einem Spiel mit den adäquaten Komponenten ein Spiel, das sich das Intervall des Medialen als unergründeten Zwischenraum eröffnete. Die anfängliche einschränkende Klärung, was unter Selbstbezüglichkeit in den Blick genommen werden soll, leitet das Vorgehen im Rest des Buches. Der umfassende Durchgang durch Becketts Werk beginnt aufgrund des medialen Schwerpunkts mit einem ersten Teil zum Theater, den Filmen / Fernsehspielen und den „Hör-Spielen“ und geht im zweiten Teil zur Prosa von den Romanen zur späten Kurzprosa über. Die einzelnen Kapitel sind dabei strukturell gleich aufgebaut. In ihrer Makrostruktur sind sie weitestgehend chronologisch geordnet. Sie präsentieren dann jeweils zunächst den Aufbau des besprochenen Textes in Form einer Inhaltszusammenfassung, soweit dies bei Beckett möglich ist, um in einem zweiten Schritt die verschiedenen Formen der Selbstbezüglichkeit für die jeweiligen Texte herauszuarbeiten und von dort aus entsprechende Querverweise auf andere Texte und Medien herzustellen. Diese Analysen der Selbstbezüglichkeit nach Stellenwert und Funktion innerhalb des Textes unterscheiden zwar immer wieder besonders zwischen impliziten oder expliziten Formen der Metareferenz, sind jedoch eher aufzählend-gewichtend denn typologisch und typologisierend ausgerichtet. Eine leitende Grundfrage ist durchweg die nach dem Verhältnis der Selbstbezüglichkeit zum Humor und zur Komik, die letztlich auch das titelgebende Spiel im Sinne spielerisch-komisierender Distanznahme betrifft, ohne jedoch Komik und Humor theoretisch-begrifflich zu situieren und strukturell zu explizieren. Dabei scheint in beiden Teilen eine klare Teleologie auf, nach der Beckett sowohl im Drama als auch in der Prosa einen anfänglichen „leichtgewichtigen“ Humor (48) in seiner Explizitheit und Krudheit hinter sich lassen musste (vgl. 53), um über Bewusstseinsstücke zur conditio humana (so wird vor allem Waiting for Godot gelesen, aber erstaunlicherweise auch The Unnamable, den trotz aller Subversionen des Anthropomorphismus, die der Text nicht zuletzt durch seine Dekonstruktion der Narration vollführt, Hiebel als stream of consciousness versteht), zur permutativen Kombinatorik vorzudringen. Der stets wiederholte Grundtenor des ersten Teils ist die implizite Metareferenz, die Medienadäquatheit mit Medienreflexion verbindet und deren grundsätzliche Doppellesbarkeit auf Objekt- und Metaebene betont Rezensionen 91 wird. Exemplarisch wird dies zunächst dankenswert ausführlich am von Beckett zurückgezogenen Stück Eleutheria entwickelt, an dem Hiebel nicht nur die Möbiusschleifeneffekte zwischen den Kommunikationsebenen mit ihren Illusionsdurchbrechungen (48 f.) einführt, sondern auch, das gesamte Werk vorwegnehmend, die selbstreferenziellen Verfahren der Sinnverweigerung nachzeichnet. Diese sollen, so Hiebel, auf der Basis einer impliziten wie expliziten Selbstkritik auf den unterschiedlichen Kommunikationsebenen letztlich im Rezipienten eine Reflexion über die in der Negation vorgeführten Dramenkonventionen auslösen (52). Eleutheria liefert derart einen „Steinbruch“ (53) für alles Weitere. Dies gipfelt in der selbstbezüglichen Schaffung dessen, was Hiebel mit Cohn als theatereality beschreibt. Unter anderem durch handlungslogische Unwahrscheinlichkeiten und das Herausstellen des Gemachtseins werde „das nicht-referentialisierbare Geschehen auf der Bühne als reines, für sich selbst stehendes Spiel erfasst.“ (75) Kommen dabei bereits die unterschiedlichen Dimensionen und Medien theatraler Kommunikation zur Geltung, verschärft sich dies in den späteren Stücken sowie den Filmen und Hörspielen durch die singularisierende Sektion des medialen Gefüges in seine einzelnen Konstituenten. So konzentriere und reduziere sich Krapp’s Last Tape weitestgehend auf den Ton, Play fokussiere Licht, während in Film Montage und Kamera entautomatisierend ins Bewusstsein gerückt würden und die Hörspiele das akustische Spektrum von den naturalistischen Parametern wie Sekundenchronologie und Mimesis in All that fall bis zur Verfremdung des Mediums durch das Aufbrechen der Kontinuität und Geräuschmontagen in Embers zur Geltung brächten: „In all diesen Werken wird Medienadäquatheit auf je eigene Weise realisiert und werden in impliziter Selbstreflexion die Konstituenten des Mediums offengelegt.“ (99) Mit der Zerstückelung des (Ton-)Kontinuums in Embers wird darüber hinaus ein Verfahren prominent, das anhand der Differenz von bedeutenden Wörtern und „‚words-as-words„“ (132, zit. von Levy) dann auch für die Prosa leitend ist: In der „Paradoxie von abstrakten concreta“ (132) verbinden sich „absolute Konkretion“ mit Abstraktion. Mit diesen abstrakten concreta werden nicht nur die unterschiedlichen Reflexions- und Wahrnehmungsebe-nen problematisch, sondern letztlich auch die (medial bedingte) Kohäsion und Kohärenz der Texte, wie dies Becketts Prosa immer wieder vorführt. Die unterschiedlichen selbstbezüglichen Verfahren ausgestellter Intertextualität, der metaleptischen Dekonstruktion der Narration hinsichtlich ihrer Ebenen und Instanzen sowie kombinatorisch-permutativer Kompositionsweisen bilden die Kernpunkte der Selbstbezüglichkeit in der Prosa, wobei die zunehmende Entpersönlichung und Umstellung auf permutative Prinzipien textueller Produktion von Hiebel als Abnahme der Selbstbezüglichkeit verstanden wird. Besonders mit der von Wolf hervorgehobenen Musikalisierung der späten Prosa, ihrer referenzlosen Sprache und Dekonstruktion des Bedeutens „sind [wir] an die Schwundstufe der Selbstbezüglichkeit gelangt.“ (292) Wenngleich Hiebel für The Unnamable feststellt, dass Becketts Werk „ein permanenter Prozess - vor allem ein Prozess der Reduktion (auf allen Ebenen) - und doch ein Prozess mit Wiederholungen und Permutationen“ Rezensionen 92 (258) sei, zeigt dies aber, dass er in der Prosa jene Reduktionen nicht mehr mit der gleichen Konsequenz als medial ausgerichtete (implizite) Metareferenzen liest, wie noch vor allem bei den Fernseh- und Hörspielen. Statt die Prozessualität der Sprache und ihrer Permutationen in den Vordergrund zu rücken, versteht er die Selbstbezüglichkeit in der Prosa stark personal an den Erzähler gebunden und konstatiert daher: „Selbstbezüglichkeit im Sinne von Metareferenzialität fehlt mithin den meisten der späten Kurztexte“ (290). Damit ändert sich aber auch das Spiel, das mit Selbstbezüglichkeit betrieben wird: „das Spielerische [verschwindet] grundsätzlich zugunsten ernster Meditationen […]. Auch das Moment des Humors, des Witzes, der Komik ist nicht mehr zu entdecken.“ (290) Statt des Spielerischen gibt es Spiel für Hiebel nun nur noch in Anführungsstrichen: „Wir haben noch ein ‚Spiel„ vor uns, allerdings kein humoristisches Spiel mehr, sondern Spiel im Sinne einer ernsten experimentellen Komposition der verwendeten Elemente.“ (291) Gerade weil Hiebel in seinen Lektüren der Prosa auch immer wieder auf Iser rekurriert, wäre es hier interessant gewesen, jenes ernste Spiel vor dem Hintergrund der Iserschen literaturanthropologischen Thesen zur Funktion des Spiels und seiner Strukturhomologie zur Literatur heranzuziehen (vgl. Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre, 1991), um die Beckettschen Reduktionen als Befragung der Möglichkeit von Literatur und Sprache besonders jenseits repräsentationslogischer Bedeutung zu lesen. Doch eine nähere theoretische Auseinandersetzung mit dem Begriff des Spiels bleibt bei Hiebel ebenso aus wie vertiefende systematische Reflexionen zu ontologischen, epistemologischen und ästhetischen Implikationen der Selbstbezüglichkeit mit Blick auf Fragen der Textualität, literarischer Sinnkonstitution oder der Funktion der Literatur im historischen und philosophischen Kontext des 20. Jahrhunderts. Darin spiegelt sich auch, dass das Buch kaum die neuere Forschung zu Beckett vor allem aus anglo-amerikanischen und/ oder poststrukturalistischen sowie medientheoretischen Kreisen rezipiert hat, die solche Fragen mit Blick auf Becketts Selbstbezüglichkeit bereits seit Blanchots, Hills oder auch Deleuzes und Badious einflussreichen Beckettlektüren stellen. Stattdessen verfolgt das Buch weitestgehend einen deskriptiv-additiven Ansatz, der sich selbst als ein „Durchstreifen […] auf der Suche nach metafiktionalen Elementen und hervorstechenden Geschehnissen und Gedanken“ (217) charakterisiert. Zwar gewinnt man dadurch durchaus einen Eindruck von der Fülle selbstbezüglicher Momente in Becketts Texten und ihrer textübergreifenden Rekurrenz, doch läuft dieses Durchstreifen nach Elementen, Geschehnissen und Gedanken die Gefahr sowohl der Kontingenz der unmöglich erschöpfenden Aufzählung als auch der Performanz permutativer Wiederholung, wie sie auf Objektebene für die Texte Becketts beobachtet wird. Hinzu kommt, dass die punktuellen Beobachtungen immer wieder mit nicht weiter kontextualisierten oder methodisch reflektierten Bezügen zu Becketts autobiografisch bedingten Motivationen und einzelnen deutenden Behauptungen und Wertungen angereichert werden, die sich nicht aus einem systematischen Argumentationszusammenhang ergeben oder auf entsprechende Fragestellungen bezogen werden. Sie sind daher weder sonderlich thesengeleitet, noch liefern sie neue Lektüren oder überraschende Erkennt- Rezensionen 93 nisse. So wird etwa Murphy ohne die Beachtung seiner epistemologischphilosophischen Implikationen sowie der Dekonstruktion des Romans als „‚skurril„ - und quasi ‚prä-absurd„“ (170) abgetan, Watt auf „das humoristische Spiel mit den Serien“ (179) reduziert, oder Molloys Steinpermutation als „Sinnbild der Sinnlosigkeit des Daseins und des nichtigen Spiels mit Belanglosigkeiten“ (215) gedeutet. Die metareferenzielle und sonstige „Dichte der Beckettʼschen Werke“ (188) wird damit zwar angedeutet, verliert sich aber oft in problematischen Zusammenfassungen und dem repetitiven Gestus eines Durchstreifens „der Vollständigkeit halber“ (215). André Otto Institut für Romanische Philologie Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Claudia Lillge. Arbeit - Eine Literatur- und Mediengeschichte Großbritanniens. Paderborn: Willhelm Fink, 2016. Johannes Scherling “A man who has lost his job has lost his passport to society. It is not only that idleness is boring and the dole a mere pittance. What hurts most is the knowledge that his service is not wanted. His work is rejected, and that means that he himself is rejected, as a man and as a citizen.” This quotation from Thomas Humphrey Marshall, which Claudia Lillge draws on in her insightful and comprehensive book to define the phenomenon of labor, illustrates the great value that people attach to it. It also, however, shows the misery that befalls people when they are out of labor, and while the quotation stems from 1945, these fundamental feelings have not changed. If anything, they have been exacerbated by an economic system and a labor market that increasingly sees people as expendable and mere resources to be used in order to satisfy the requirements of „the market‟, an amorphous entity that is both a means and an end. Claudia Lillge‟s monograph explores literary and media representations of labor in Great Britain in the course of the 20 th and early 21 st century. With Great Britain widely seen as a pioneer in industrialization as well as in the emergence of a working class, the idea pursued in this book is to establish how British culture has reacted to and depicted situations and developments in recent British workers‟ history. In this endeavor, it covers the following major issues: industrialization and timed labor; unemployment; the Thatcher era and its labor disputes; workers‟ solidarity and resistance movements; the idleness of non-work; and the end of tenured labor. With all of these issues, Lillge contrasts historical developments or concepts from the field of labor Rezensionen 94 with their representations in a variety of media, ranging from novels to movies and photo exhibitions, selecting her examples with regard to aesthetic aspects, but also ensuring a sufficient degree of representativeness concerning “medienkomparatistische Gesichtspunkte” (31). She underlines and complements these examples with rich theoretical foundations by drawing from a variety of fields such as philosophy, the social sciences and literary studies. In chapter 1 (14-32), Lillge lays the theoretical groundwork by describing Great Britain‟s role in the context of labor and labor struggles and by providing a variety of definitions for the term of „labor‟ as well as outlining the importance of cultural studies for analyzing it. Labor is defined as a “passport to society” (17) and as an “Inbegriff des In-der-Welt-Seins” (18), and has, as a concept, undergone various modifications over time, such as the increasingly blurred borderline between work and non-work, the social legitimation of labor as well as the social meaning and societal function that labor is given (cf. 21). Lillge makes the argument for a cultural studies approach to the history of labor, where culture - following Stuart Hall‟s definition - is conceptualized as a site of struggle over meaning (23), and media-related forms of expression such as literature, film or photography are perceived as intersections between culture and society. Lillge then proceeds by giving an overview of developments, topics and policies in post-WWII Britain against which media artifacts are analyzed. Chapter 2 (33-89) is dedicated to the overarching issue of acceleration and deceleration of work processes. Following an introductory section, in which the author defines the concepts of time and timed-labor in the context of industrialized societies, she dives into an interpretation of how these are represented in Arnold Wesker‟s play The Kitchen (1956) as well as in Alan Sillitoes‟ novel Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) (and its 1960 film adaptation), which are put forward as examples of texts by the Angry Young Men and the New Wave, respectively. The presented examples are described as illustrations of a growing critical attitude towards the steady decline in the possibility to manage one‟s own time (cf. 44) due to a growing synthesis between the time-optimized pro-cess management of Taylorism and the standardized industrial mass production of Fordism (cf. 46), affecting even private practices such as eating, which has become a mere means to ensure productivity. Chapter 3 (91-126) deals with the representation of unemployment, primarily in the works of photographer Paul Graham and his „social photography‟. Graham‟s photo book Beyond Caring is based on pictures taken in labor offices during the Thatcher era, whose social unrest is epitomized in the Falklands War, the miners‟ strike and an escalation of the conflict in Northern Ireland. It was a time during which the number of unemployed people rose to some 10 million (96) and in which social tensions erupted in the crowded and overburdened labor offices, where, according to Graham, “political policy and people collide, where economic decisions and human lives meet head on” (100). Lillge focuses her analysis of these photographs on the representation of time, space and social relations (101). Her conclusion is that, while his pictures were taken at different places at different times, they all seem to Rezensionen 95 be eerily similar. Lillge sees the reason for this in their shared identities as „non-spaces‟ which are not ruled by human beings, but by regulations (104). In chapter 4 (127-166), Lillge deals with worker solidarity once more against the backdrop of the Thatcher government. After introducing the rise and fall of the welfare state and outlining the erosion of the working class, she discusses several media examples in which class differences are depicted and critically reflected on. The main focus of the chapter is on three films by director Ken Loach, namely Riff-Raff, Raining Stones and The Navigators. This discussion is contextualized within the dramatic social and political changes of the Thatcher era in Britain, such as the destruction of workers‟ unions and the privatization of large parts of the economy and of the social system, an issue that features heavily in Loach‟s works. The “ideological success” of the Thatcher era, in Stuart Hall‟s terms (165), is therefore seen in the dissolution of class consciousness and by consequence of class solidarity, in that it created an atmosphere of constant insecurity and competition. According to Lillge, Loach discusses this topic by illustrating this lost solidarity on the one hand, but on the other hand by creating empathy and thus revitalizing solidarity with the workers at the same time. Moving on to a different medium, chapter 5 (167-214) discusses musical performances as an act of resistance against bleak or constraining social conditions. The question that is pursued by Lillge is to what extent the political potential of art performances can be activated or used for alternative selfimages in times of work-related hardships. In the two films The Miners’ Hymns (Bill Morrisson) and Brassed Off (Mark Herman), which can be seen as homages to Britain‟s coal industry (172), music and musical performance serve as a means of protest against the closure of mines under the Thatcher government as well as a signifier for the miners‟ collective identity. The movie The Full Monty, on the other hand, shows the fate of six men in Yorkshire, a British city in decline, where the closing down of the local steelworks has forced these six workers into unemployment. Having restorted to stripping - a traditionally female occupation - their gender roles have become „unstable‟ and „exchangeable‟ (192). While their gender roles are questioned, their courageous action and solidarity with each other protects them - for a time - from the relentless new economic order. Finally, the film Billy Elliot - I will dance focuses on the creative energies of the working class in the face of overwhelming problems. Set against the background of the miners‟ strike, it shows a young boy‟s fight to transcend the traditional expectations of his social group, the working class community, by following his dream of becoming a ballet dancer, which in itself is an expression of protest. The 6 th chapter (215-250) revolves around the issue of non-work as a challenge to society in which citizens are seen as constantly having to legitimate their existence through a recognized activity. The issue is illustrated by Nick Hornby‟s novel About a Boy, whose protagonist is entitled to live his life without having to work, due to his late father‟s musical success. The reason for analyzing this novel is the author‟s proposed reading as a text on the phenomenon of non-work. Even though the protagonist is an adaptable, flexible, single male, and thus an ideal worker in the modern economy, he chooses to Rezensionen 96 refuse both the established model of the family as well as any kind of traditional work life in favor of a lifestyle following the dictates of „coolness‟. This abundance of freedom and spare time, Lillge points out (236), leads to the interesting phenomenon that the protagonists‟ daydreams revolve around the issue of work, more particularly around welfare and voluntary work, which do not promise economic compensation, but only social appraisal. In spite of or through not working, Hornby‟s protagonist manages to obtain the socializing effect otherwise only attributed to work (245). In the book‟s final chapter (251-270), Lillge discusses the end of working society (“Arbeitsgesellschaft”) under the influence of New Capitalism, which has transformed lifelong work from the norm to the exception, and where „flexibility‟ has become a key asset, which means that people need to be willing to ignore past work experience and be ready to tackle entirely new kinds of labor as the opportunity arises. As an example of this new worker, Lillge examines Iain Levison‟s novel A Working Stiff’s Manifesto (2002). Levison‟s protagonist is struggling to make ends meet and drifting from job to job without these jobs being in any way related to his qualifications, something Lillge refers to as “Job-Odyssee” (257). “There are two types of jobs in here,” he is quoted as saying (260), “jobs I‟m not qualified for and jobs I don‟t want. I‟m considering both.” This highlights the quintessential dilemma of young people in the neoliberal age - that they are not expected to study in order to gain knowledge and develop their interests and talents, but primarily to become a „human resource‟ catering to the needs of „the market‟. „Flexibility‟, in this respect, is not so much concerned with the notion of „freedom‟ than with worker „insecurity‟ (266), i.e. with keeping workers in a limbo of precarious work and, thus, docile. Overall, Lillge‟s book shows great potential and raises many interesting and highly topical questions about the place of work in British society, and how its conceptualization has developed during the postwar years and the neoliberal age. It tackles existential questions such as whether we work to live or live to work; whether the economy works for the people or the people for the economy. By drawing on an impressive variety of scholars and philosophers, Lillge provides a solid theoretical basis on which she constructs her analysis of selected exhibitions, novels, plays and films. Unfortunately, this also has a downside: by drawing on existing literature to such an extent, this book obscures the author‟s own accomplishments aside from compiling and coherently combining quotations from said literature. It is difficult to see what, behind and beyond all the citations and references and extensive metatextual footnotes, the author‟s stance on the issue is. This only becomes evident on closer reading, but then quite remarkably so. Very occasionally, the reliance on famous philosophers also feels excessive, for example when Lillge discusses the comedy The Full Monty and attempts to interpret the act of striptease by the protagonists by drawing on the philosophical explications of Roland Barthes: “Man sieht die Professionals des Strip-tease [sic] sich in eine wunderbare Gewandtheit einhüllen, die sie unausgesetzt bekleidet, sie entrückt und ihnen die eisige Gleichgültigkeit geschickter Praktikerinnen verleiht, die sich hochmütig in die Sicherheit ihrer Technik zurückziehen. Rezensionen 97 Ihre Technik umgibt sie wie ein Gewand” (196). Considering that the film intentionally presents a clumsy act of striptease that is supposed to create a humorous effect, this reference to the great semiotician seems like an all too keen attempt at finding supportive evidence. Another issue concerns the book‟s structure, which - apart from its major chapters - does not seem to follow a consistent pattern. At times, the chapter headings focus on works of art (e.g. “>Last Resorts< bei Paul Graham und Martin Parr: Das Fotobuch und die New Colour Photography”), while at other times the focus is on topics (“Kultur und Theater der Zeitfresser”), or on details in the analysis (“Arbeiter verlassen (nach wie vor) die Fabrik”). There are also occasional inconsistencies in chapter content, for example in chapter 3, which examines unemployment, where an exhibition is discussed that portrays run-down holiday resorts of the working class; or in chapter 5, which focuses on resistance through performance, where the author discusses gender roles without overtly linking this to the overarching topic. Unquestionably the strongest asset of the book is its critical exegesis of political and economic developments and their impact on the concept and quality of labor from what could be called a Marxist perspective. Each chapter in the book contains extensive background information that allows the reader to meaningfully contextualize the media discussed. However, even though the overarching links that are drawn are strong and consistent, at times there is a certain lack of detail. For example, the closing of the steelworks is merely mentioned, but no reason is given (such as the increasing outsourcing of labor). Also, the author fails to sufficiently establish the link between Blair and New Capitalism: while Blair may have symbolized a new and humane economic approach, he essentially continued and strengthened the neoliberal economic system already in place. Nevertheless, the book provides a lucid and intense discussion of the struggle over work and worker solidarity which has a very familiar ring in a time where jobs have become a luxury and full-time or lifelong employment have come to sound like utopian dreams. Due to its rich data, the monograph will be of high value to students and researchers of cultural as well as literary studies, and additionally - as it effectively emphasizes the impact of social changes reflected in art - also for illustrative purposes in the social and political sciences. Johannes Scherling Institut für Anglistik Karl-Franzens-Universität Graz