The Brexit Subject : Cognitive Capitalism and Biopolitical Production in Post-Referendum Fiction

Abstract: This thesis explores precarization of work and subject formation in seven post-referendum Brexit novels through theories of cognitive capitalism and biopolitical production. The analysis is anchored in Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s reconceptualization of Michel Foucault’s notion of biopolitics. Hardt and Negri combine the concept of biopolitics with contemporary theories of cognitive capitalism and immaterial labour, to illuminate how subjects are subsumed into a system of biopower in which capitalistic production has become biopolitical production. I argue that the Brexit novels examined in this thesis demonstrate how the intrinsic bond between production and life shapes the characters’ relationship to the referendum. As the characters are caught between individual goals and communal values, in a system that demands that they take sole responsibility for their own success while also being responsible democratic citizens, the referendum produces conflicted subjects that experience deep internal and external conflicts in relation to Brexit.