Hauntological-Communitarian Approach to the Work of Anna Burns

A Hauntological-Communitarian Approach to the Work of Anna Burns is the first critical study of Anna Burns’ fiction, establishing her as one of the most significant writers of our time, especially within the context of contemporary Irish literature. Read through the lens of a combination of post-phenomenological communitarian theories and Derridean hauntology, this book provides detailed close readings of Burns’ works of fiction, paying close attention to what is left unsaid, and that which speaks form the margins. The book explores both the ways in which Burns’s fiction interacts with abstract notions of community, secrecy, immunity and identity, whilst at the same time underscoring how it may speak more specifically to our current times – times partially defined in Northern Ireland by social and political unrest, suspended parliaments, invisible sea-borders, revelations of institutional violence, and the cyclical return of transgenerational trauma. The book investigates how Burns’ use of humour may provide something of a way out of the self-destructive grip that the trauma narrative seems to maintain on individuals, communities and nations alike. The book appeals to postgraduate students and academics in the field of English Literature, Irish Studies and Cultural Studies.