“New Future Selves:” Gender Fluidity in the Short Stories of Jackie Kay and Ali Smith

• Název práce v češtině: “Nová budoucí já:” Genderová fluidita v povídkách Jackie Kay a Ali Smith
• Název v anglickém jazyce: “New Future Selves:” Gender Fluidity in the Short Stories of Jackie Kay and Ali Smith
• Klíčová slova: Jackie Kay|Ali Smith|skotská literatura|povídky|genderová identita|genderová fluidita
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Jackie Kay|Ali Smith|Scottish literature|Short stories|Gender identity|Gender fluidity
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2020/2021
• Typ práce: diplomová práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
• Vedoucí / školitel: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno a potvrzeno stud. odd.
• Datum přihlášení: 26.07.2021
• Datum zadání: 27.07.2021
• Schválení administrátorem: zatím neschvalováno
• Datum potvrzení stud. oddělením: 29.07.2021
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 09.06.2022 00:00
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 10.05.2022
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 09.06.2022
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: odevzdaná studentem a finalizovaná
• Oponenti: Mgr. Petra Johana Poncarová, Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

The thesis aims to examine and juxtapose the portrayal and construction of gender fluidity in the short stories of Jackie Kay and Ali Smith, positing that this rendition of gender identity operates as an argument against, and subversion of, culturally and socially specific norms and standards. It is, therefore, crucial to acknowledge that the Scottish cultural and literary environment has traditionally been considered prevalently masculine. Within this context, Scotland’s women writers, such as Kay and Smith, now often speak for those hitherto overlooked and diversify the country’s cultural representations. The two authors have, thus, been chosen to be studied together in order to examine current trends in Scottish literature in relation to the perception of gender. Displaying numerous analogies in that they both portray gender as fluid, employ the short story form to do so, and, by extension, contribute to the modification of the image of Scottishness, Kay and Smith represent a significant tendency in the country’s contemporary literature. Furthermore, as both writers retain their respective differences, the choice enables the thesis to study the idiosyncratic means and methods of achieving the parallel outcome – gender fluidity.
The thesis will ultimately show that, depicting a wide-ranging assortment of (non)gendered voices, perspectives and experiences, the fiction of both authors destabilises the perception of gender as an innate, fixed phenomenon the expression of which is unchangeable and universal. This will be demonstrated on select stories from Jackie Kay’s collections Why Don’t You Stop Talking (2002), Wish I Was Here (2006), and Reality, Reality (2011), and Smith’s Free Love and Other Stories (1995), Other Stories and Other Stories (1999) and The First Person and Other Stories (2008). This will be done through the lens of the germane theoretical framework, i.e. the junction of postmodern feminism and queer theory. Specifically relevant will be the former’s rejection of essentialism, recognition of language’s function in ordering the sense of reality, and understanding of group identities as social constructs,[1] and the latter’s understanding of gender and sexual identities as unstable and artificial.[2] Consequently, this will also require a more detailed outline of theories introduced by authors such as Judith Butler, whose notion of gender performativity will be crucial, or Mimi Marinucci. Although the thesis will predominantly be focused on issues of gender, national and cultural identities do, inevitably, contribute to formulating the potentialities and limits within which, as Butler shows, the performance of gender functions, and it will also be necessary to briefly delineate the intersection of Scottishness and gender as a backbone to the ensuing literary analysis, providing the context in which Kay and Smith’s fiction is studied.
Focusing on the short stories of Kay and Smith respectively, the thesis aims for a genre-specific analysis, accentuating that the works of both authors are polyphonic, offer diverse perspectives and so, even formally, defy the notion of fixedness, which relates to the linguistic aspect as well. Embracing previously underrepresented or conventionally marginalized protagonists and characters (including LGBT+ characters), the fiction of Kay and Smith opens a more inclusive literary space. It will, however, be seen that despite the numerous parallels and analogies between the works of the two authors, their depictions of gender (fluidity) are distinctive. Jackie Kay’s stories frequently reveal intersections and interdependencies between diverse aspects of identity, including gender, sexuality, ethnicity, or nationality. Throughout her collections, Kay questions and subverts the notion of the normal, portrays transformations, and destabilises boundaries, exclusions and fixities, instating fluidities and inclusions instead. Furthermore, she illustrates the crucial function of the individual, accentuates the gendered performance and, ultimately, enriches not only the conventional understanding of masculinity and femininity but also that of humanity itself. Ali Smith, influenced by modernism and postmodernism both, focuses on various subjectivities as well as on the crossing of artificially constructed boundaries. Her protagonists’ being often without narratively defined past, name or even gender problematises the importance of these categories and contributes to the questioning of identities perceived as stable and predetermined. Valorising self-assertion, be it through language or behaviour, Smith centres on humanness and her stories undermine the (constrictive) norms of gender, sexuality, and genre, replacing them by changeability, acceptance and unlimitedness. Thus, the thesis will show that through idiosyncratic means, the short stories of Jackie Kay and Ali Smith portray gender fluidity, destabilise standards and boundaries, and, consequently, encourage cultural inclusivity.


^[1]Jane Ward, Susan Mann, “Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Queer, and Transgender Theories,” in Reading Feminist Theory: From Modernity to Postmodernity, edited by Susan Archer Mann, Ashly Suzanne Patterson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 301.
^[2] Ward, Mann, “Postmodernism, Poststructuralism, Queer, and Transgender Theories,” 306.

Seznam odborné literatury

Bibliography
Primary sources
Kay, Jackie. Why Don’t You Stop Talking. London: Picador, 2011.
--------------. Wish I Was Here. London: Picador, 2011.
--------------. Reality, Reality. London: Picador, 2013.

Smith, Ali. Free Love and Other Stories. London: Virago Press, 1995.
------------. Other Stories and Other Stories. London: Penguin Books, 2004.
------------. The First Person and Other Stories. London: Penguin Books, 2009.


Secondary sources
Abrams, Lynn, et al., eds. Gender in Scottish History Since 1700. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
Delaney, Paul and Adrian Hunter, eds. The Edinburgh Companion to the Short Story in English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019.
Christianson, Aileen and Alison Lumsden, eds. Contemporary Scottish Women Writers. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter. Oxon: Routledge, 2011.
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York, NY: Routledge, 2006.
Germanà, Monica and Emily Horton, eds. Ali Smith: Contemporary Critical Perspectives. London: Bloomsbury, 2013.
Jansen, Bettina. Narratives of Community in the Black British Short Story. Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.
Mann, Susan Archer and Ashly Suzanne Patterson, eds. Reading Feminist Theory: From Modernity to Postmodernity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Marinucci, Mimi. Feminism is Queer: The Intimate Connection between Queer and Feminist Theory. London: Zed Books, 2016.
Norquay, Glenda, ed. Edinburgh Companion to Scottish Women’s Writing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.
Sacido-Romero, Jorge and Laura Lojo-Rodríguez, eds. Gender and Short Fiction: Women’s Tales in Contemporary Britain. New York: Routledge, 2018.
Williams, Kirsty. “‘A Different Kind of Natural’: The Fiction of Jackie Kay and Ali Smith.” Ethnically Speaking: Voice and Values in Modern Scottish Writing. 157-178. Edited by James McGonigal and Kirsten Stirling. New York: Rodopi, 2006. 157-178.
Young, Emma. Contemporary Feminism and Women’s Short Stories. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
Young, Emma and James Bailey, eds. British Women Short Story Writers: The New Woman to Now. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2015.