CONTEMPORARY BRITISH WRITING AND ETHNICITY

Contemporary British Writing Explore Issues Of Ethnicity

How Effectively Does Contemporary British Writing Explore Issues Of Ethnicity?

Historians have long tended to define medieval British society in terms of interactions between ethnic groups. This approach was developed over the course of the long nineteenth century, a formative period for the study of medieval Britain. At that time, many scholars based their analysis upon scientific principles, long since debunked, which held that medieval 'peoples' could only be understood in terms of 'full ethnic packages'.

This approach was combined with a positivist historical narrative that defined Germanic Anglo-Saxons and Normans as the harbingers of advances of Civilisation. While the prejudices of that era have largely faded away, the modern discipline still relies all too often on a dualistic ethnic framework. It is becoming increasingly obvious that there are signs in contemporary British literature indicating that writers have been turning to the “old” or premodern forms, practices and strategies. It seems to me that novels with meta historical dimension, the ethical component, the revival of realist storytelling in the novels of Penhall, Griffiths , Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan, Kate Atkinson, Julian Barnes's novel Arthur and George (2005) attest to the new mode which reaches beyond postmodernism. Meta fiction, postmodernist experiment with narrative technique, attacks on mimetic preferentiality, delight in popular culture became mainstream, they lost their subversive power and shock effect and no longer produce the effect of novelty; thus to reach alterity the postmodernist and modernist novel are deconstructed: old, premodern forms are used to achieve defamiliarization. This point is made particularly well by Griffiths, written in rough, tough and fiercely native prose, Sheepshagger is a coming-of-age ensemble novel about a bunch of promiscuous, disenchanted, druggy Welsh youngsters, growing up in a world from which they feel disconnected, surrounded by a beautiful countryside they struggle to understand.

In the middle and somehow pivotal to this motley Celtic crew is Ianto: a genetically unfortunate ne'er-do-well who yet possesses the spiritual centredness the others lack. It is Ianto who relates to the rurality around them: "the lightning blasted blackthorn", the "same soil his forefathers dug in". As a result of the strange, totemic figure he cuts, Ianto manages to hang with the others and become something of a mascot to them, even though they tease him mercilessly about his virginity. Griffiths'comprehensive and illuminating article “From the Postmodern to the PreModern: More Recent Changes in Literature, Art, and Theory” which focuses on the evolution of the postmodern to the premodern mode. (Griffiths, 2002, 42-53)

A return to ethical values with a revival of narrative, a growing interest in questions of identity is extensively discussed in the collection of essays Beyond Postmodernism. Reassessments in Literature, Theory, and Culture, edited by Klaus Stierstorfer, among them in Vera Nunning's “Beyond Indifference: New Departures in British Fiction at the Turn of the 21st Century”. (Nunning, 2003, 235-254) Ihab Hassan's seminal essay in the same collection “Beyond Postmodernism: Toward an Aesthetic of Trust” advocates for “Truth”, “trust”, ...