Renderings of the Self: The Theme of Fluid Identity in the Work of Jackie Kay

• Thesis title in Czech: Ztvárnění sebe sama: Téma fluidní identity v díle Jackie Kay
• Thesis title in English: Renderings of the Self: The Theme of Fluid Identity in the Work of Jackie Kay
• Key words: Jackie Kay|skotská literatura|současné spisovatelky|fluidní identita|gender|skotská národní identita
• English key words: Jackie Kay|Scottish literature|contemporary women writers|fluid identity|gender|Scottish national identity
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2019/2020
• Thesis type: Bachelor's thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 16.10.2019
• Date of assignment: 16.10.2019
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 17.10.2019
• Date and time of defence: 18.06.2020 00:00
• Date of electronic submission: 24.05.2020
• Date of proceeded defence: 18.06.2020
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: Mgr. Petra Johana Poncarová, Ph.D.

Guidelines

Jackie Kay is a contemporary Scottish poet, novelist, writer of short stories and the third modern Makar, Scottish poet laureate. Kay has previously expressed her interest in people’s ability to invent themselves, and, correspondingly, her works frequently explore various interrelated types of identity. Questioning its fixedness and stability, the entity is portrayed rather as mutable and, simultaneously, self-created. The first part of this bachelor thesis will introduce Jackie Kay and her work. Additionally, it will give an overview of the theoretical frameworks applicable to the subsequently discussed problematic of diverse identities and their changeability, with an emphasis placed on gender identity and Scottish national identity.
Conceiving an individual’s self-concept as composed of, among other components, varied social identities, the second part of the thesis is going to proceed with an examination of their portrayal as fluid and self-invented in the author’s first poetry collection The Adoption Papers (1991), her, so far, only novel Trumpet (1998), and her first short story collection Why Don’t You Stop Talking (2002). This analysis will focus on the rendering of some of the identities defined by social relations and social group memberships, such as gender identity and national, specifically Scottish, identity. These will also be considered in connection with other pertinent and interdependent aspects of identity, for example one’s body, sexuality or origins. Apart from representing different genres, the chosen works encompass a multiplicity of voices and perspectives, and, therefore, manifest the observed phenomenon in relation to diverse individuals, whose distinctive background signifies the universality of the struggle for a subjective (re)construction of the self. The wide range is exemplified by the compilation of voices and personae figuring in both parts of The Adoption Papers, the numerous narrators and focalizers of Trumpet, as well as the narrators and protagonists of the separate stories in Why Don’t You Stop Talking. Although the primary focus of the thesis will be the three aforementioned works, other titles from Kay’s bibliography may be referred to where considered significant.
Consequently, the thesis aims to demonstrate that in Jackie Kay’s works, regardless of genre, the theme of identity and its individual categories is recurrent and depicted as fluid, self-constructed and multidimensional. The delineation of its self-invented character as well as its incessant fluctuation is facilitated, among others, by an appearance of an assemblage of voices. (Re)inventing the distinct identities and (re)negotiating their aspects, be it gender, kinship or nationality, the characters and personae ultimately epitomise a vehicle for the contemplations of mobile identity and self-presentation.

References

Primary sources
Kay, Jackie. Trumpet. London: Picador, 2016.
Kay, Jackie. The Adoption Papers. Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 1991.
Kay, Jackie. Why Don’t You Stop Talking. London: Picador, 2011.
Kay, Jackie. Darling: New and Selected Poems. Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2007.
Kay, Jackie. Wish I Was Here. London: Picador, 2011.
Kay, Jackie. Reality, Reality. London: Picador, 2013.

Secondary sources

Abrams, Lynn, et al., eds. Gender in Scottish History Since 1700. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006.
Arana, Victoria R. “Clothing the Spirit: Jackie Kay’s Fiction from Trumpet to Wish I Was Here.” Women: a cultural review 20.3 (2009): 250-261.
Bertram, Vicki, ed. Kicking Daffodils: Twentieth Century Women Poets. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997.
Christianson, Aileen and Alison Lumsden, eds. Contemporary Scottish Women Writers. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011.
Douglas, Fiona. Scottish Newspapers, Language and Identity. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.
Fong, Ryan D. “Weaving a Different Kind of Tartan: Musicality, Spectrality, and Kinship in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet.” Indiscretions: At the Intersection of Queer and Postcolonial Theory 22 (2011): 243-264.
Gish, Nancy K., and Jackie Kay. “Adoption, Identity and Voice: Jackie Kay’s Innovations of the Self.” Imagining Adoption: Essays on Literature and Culture. Ed. Marianne Novy. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2004. 171-192.
Jackson, Ronald L., ed. Encyclopedia of Identity. Los Angeles: SAGE Publications, Inc, 2010.
Pérez Fernández, Irene. “Re/Articulating Identity in Jackie Kay’s Trumpet.” A Rich Field of Pleasant Surprises. Ed. Francisco Fernández and Alejandra Moreno Álvarez. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014. 50-63.
Schoene, Berthold, ed. The Edinburgh Companion to Contemporary Scottish Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
Zimmermann, Ulrike. “Out of the Ordinary – and Back? Jackie Kay’s Recent Short Fiction.” Multi-Ethnic Britain 2000+: New Perspectives in Literature, Film and the Arts. Ed. Lars Eckstein, et al. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008. 123-137.