Subjective Spaces - Spatial Subjectivities: Movement and Mobility in Monica Ali’s Brick Lane and Ian McEwan’s Saturday

Abstract

1. IntroductionIn the course of the spatial turn, cultural theory has begun to conceptualise space as the result of processes of cultural production and social appropriation (cf., e.g., Bachmann-Medick 2006; Doring and Thielmann 2008). This new understanding of space stresses the role of discourses as well as individual and social projections for the constitution of space and thus highlights its potential function for subject constitution. Lived spaces rely on movement and imagination to attain value (cf. Lefebvre 1991; de Certeau 1984).In recent years, literary spaces2 have increasingly come into focus as important carriers of cultural meanings (cf. Hallet and Neumann 2009a). Efforts to retrieve and develop Ernst Cassirer's (2006), Yuri Lotman's (1977) and Mikhail Bakhtin's (1981) models of space, in which the aesthetic spaces of literature are integrated into wider models of culture (cf., e.g., Hallet 2009; Frank 2009; Lotman 1990, 2009), are indicative of a growing consensus in literary studies that static conceptualisations of space (cf. Barthes 1982; Genette 1976; Hoffmann 1978) are not adequate analytical tools for the multiplicity of meanings and socio-cultural references spaces convey. Another trend towards investigating cultural constructions of space and borders finds its expression in the development and appropriation of new key concepts like transgression, liminality, cognitive maps and territorialisation. These concepts point towards the intertwining of space, social relations and power, inevitably raising the question of the relationship between space and the subject. The relational and dynamic concepts of space (cf., e.g., Lotman and Low 2001; Soja 1989, 1996; Lefebvre 1991; Simmel 1992) at the heart of the spatial turn implicitly or explicitly assume an interdependence between subject and space: hence, it can be argued that while the subject constitutes space, it is also shaped by the material and symbolic dimensions of space.In many contemporary London novels, space is an important carrier of meaning. The city is part of the very texture of the lives and thoughts of the characters, and constitutes the very air in which they live and breathe (Worpole 1995: 183 f.; cf. also Sizemore 1989). The characters' location, their movements and their sensual experience of the city have both real and symbolic significance: they have concrete bearing on the characters' actions in allowing and restricting movement, perception, and personal relations. At the same time, as the spatial structure of a text is closely connected to more general cultural models of space (cf. Lotman 1977), spatial relations (e.g. centre/periphery, vertical/horizontal) often serve the representation of non-spatial relations (e.g. class, gender or ethnic differences and their various intersections). Hence, despite the claims of some that space is 'disappearing' as a central category for the organisation of everyday life due to economic, cultural and medial globalisation processes, allegedly resulting in the decreasing importance of spatial distances and physical borders (cf., e.g., Hubbard et al. 2002), contemporary London literature emphasises the strong link between the spatial and the social organisation of life. To provide some examples of how issues of space, movement, mobility and subject formation are staged in contemporary London novels, two novels with different foci in regards to relevant social categories for the protagonists' subject formation have been chosen for this article: While Monica Ali's Brick Lane (2003) focuses on the intersection of ethnicity and gender, Ian McEwan's Saturday (2005) centres on class.2. Relational and Dynamic Space in LiteratureIn literary studies, space has traditionally been conceptualised as the static background for the action, its main function being to contribute to the 'reality effect' of a literary text (Barthes 1982). Even a model like Gerhard Hoffmann's (1978) that attributes important functions to the representation of space in literary texts resorts to static triptychs of types of space {Raummodelle) {gestimmter Raum - 'mood-invested space'; Aktionsraum - 'space of action'; Anschauungsraum - 'observed space') and structures of space {Raumstrukturen) {kausal - 'causal'; konsekutiv-final - 'consecutive'; korrelativ - 'correlative'). …