Community of Emotions: Affect, Brexit, and Contemporary Literature

This thesis investigates the role and the form of what I call Brexit affects—nostalgia, anger, fear, anxiety, optimism, and hope—in recent British fiction. I analyse the representation of the affective tenor of pre- and post-Brexit Britain in contemporary novels and short stories, considering how writers, such as Bernardine Evaristo, J. G. Ballard, Ian McEwan, Agnieszka Dale, Anthony Cartwright, Ali Smith, and Zadie Smith, capture the affective relations and emotional climate of the United Kingdom in the post-2001 moment. This research originates from the claim that certain affects (and affective forms related to them) were present in British literary imagination before the 2016 referendum, at least since the dawn of the new millennium. This work offers an original contribution to the affect studies by introducing four distinctive forms of affect present in contemporary fiction: amassing loss, carnival of Brexit, feanxiety, and union of hope. By tracing the affective development of recent fiction, this thesis also aims to establish the political, ethical, and aesthetic implications of the textual affects. Specifically, I argue that by providing a platform to the voices of those underrepresented (including economic migrants and asylum seekers) in the socio-political debates and mainstream media discourses, Brexit fiction facilitates encounters with others and their affectivity, thereby gaining ethical potential (although not always exercising it). I also suggest that the dialogue with otherness is, in the case of Brexit literature, a political gesture, albeit not always successful, aimed not only at diagnosing but also overcoming social divisions, precisely by engaging with the emotions of those othered.