The venae cavae

Abstract

My novel, 1983, is a political novel in the sense that it is concerned with characters in a position of marginality and their interactions with the state, during a time dominated by public fear. In the exegesis I explore how interactions are affective, visceral, constructed as networks through which political ideas spread, like the chemical or electrical signals in the body. Documents, including texts created by protest organisations, were used in writing the novel, not to convey an objective truth about what happened, but to help create the texture of the times. The media, both mainstream and ex-centric, is the noise in the background, generating the heartbeat, the pulse of the novel, its messages conveyed through the characters' social networks and relationships, as adrenaline and cortisol, the chemicals of fear and action, are conveyed in the blood. Incorporated into the introduction of the exegesis, are issues of searching for a generic model for the novel, and dilemmas about the use of archival material, which relate to decisions about what kind of novel I was setting out to write.

Date of Award	2011
Original language	English