The Modern Traffic In Martin Amis’ London Fields

Martin Amis(1949–2023)is one of the most influential writers in Britain.His novel London Fields(1989),published two years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union,serves as one of the representatives of post-war writing dealing with the modern crisis.Depicting the desolate urban traffic landscape and the postmodern isolated individuals on the move,Amis reflects the state of crisis in the shadow of the Cold War in the late twentieth century.Mainly adopting Bauman’s sociological theory,this thesis is intended to explore how the theme of crisis is represented through the traffic writing in the novel.The thesis consists of three chapters.Chapter One focuses on the representation of traffic space and alienated self-perception in the novel by adopting Marc Augé’s theory of “non-place” and Zygmunt Bauman’s theory of individualization.Depicting the characters’ perception of a nomadic self-existence in liminal traffic spaces including automobiles and transitional nodes,Amis reveals how the modern individual experiences the crisis of the mobile self in Thatcher’s atomized society.In the novel,isolated car-motorist cyborgs with Keith Talent as one of the representatives gradually lose a coherent self-being tied to the domestic place and become delocalized wandering vagabonds inhabiting the automobile who are driven by the individualistic ethic of late capitalism.Through driving,they are made subjects of an atomized society exemplifying the anonymity of the individual in an age of mobility.Furthermore,delineating the characters’ frustrating experiences of displacement and their loss of belongingness in traffic terminals,Amis represents the modern mobile subject as an isolated global soul whose presence is continuously questioned and further deconstructs the ideal notion of cosmopolitan citizenship.Chapter Two focuses on Amis’ representation of the disastrous traffic phenomenon and the governing rationality of late modernity – neoliberalism – in the novel.Amis condenses the crisis of modern order in his delineation of traffic disasters.The bleak traffic landscape marked by the degradation of the traffic environment,the destruction of mobility systems,and undisciplined traffic individuals serves as an epitome of social disorder during modernizing process and mocks the modern quest for perfect order.Contextualized in Thatcher’s Britain in the 1980 s,Amis’ representation of the disastrous traffic scenario further reveals the logic of Thatcherite neoliberalist orderbuilding.Amis’ representation of traffic disorder reveals the crisis of modern order and deconstructs Thatcherite neoliberal order in London Fields from two aspects: the crisis of moral order in Thatcher’s class-divided London represented in the dystopian traffic landscape and the crisis of urban rationalist order in Thatcher’s desire-driven London represented in the dysfunctional traffic system.Chapter Three examines how the delineation of traffic terror in London Fields indicates the pervasiveness of existential anxiety in an age of nuclear deterrence.In the novel,Amis presents a mysterious and suspicious atmosphere generated from the insidiousness of man-made existential danger.Such a sense of suspense and precariousness is condensed into the narrative of traffic terror which functions as an embodiment of the collective unconscious of fatality during the Cold War.Embedding the whole story into the structure of the postmodern car crime narrative,Amis depicts the pervasiveness of existential anxiety through the representation of narrative uncertainty.Furthermore,the image of aerial traffic in the novel functions as an embodiment of the nuclear war and the apocalyptic anxiety hidden in the collective unconscious in an era of nuclear deterrence.This thesis concludes that,in London Fields,traffic functions as a concrete sign of crisis in the neoliberal Western society.Modern traffic landscapes,mobile subjects,as well as traffic symbols recurrent in the novel allegorically contribute to negotiating subtexts of Thatcherism and the Cold War into the apocalyptic narratives.In this way,Amis establishes a new narrative form by embedding the modern mobile culture into the narrative frame of contemporary crisis,expresses his critique of the Thatcherite neoliberal ideology and Western discourse of modernity,and exemplifies the deconstructive power of postmodern skepticism.