Open Access

Carolin Steinke

• Mike McCormack’s novel Solar Bones (2016) explores the collapse of Celtic Tiger Ireland not only through its aging, struggling protagonist, Marcus Conway, but also through the female body and its association with shame – specifically, the bodies of his wife, Mairead, and his daughter, Agnes. While Mairead’s water poisoning critiques inadequate political structures, Agnes politicises female bodily shame through an artwork created with her own blood. By externalising the Kristevan abject – her blood – and deliberately presenting her body as shameful, Agnes enacts a form of emancipation that disrupts the symbolic patriarchal order. This article argues that McCormack’s novel subverts both post-independence ideals of ‘virtuous’ femininity and neoliberal, at times reactionary, Celtic Tiger discourses surrounding the female body. By engaging shame as a meta- and counter-discursive tool, Solar Bones illuminates the lived materiality of women’s bodies, challenging their historical andMike McCormack’s novel Solar Bones (2016) explores the collapse of Celtic Tiger Ireland not only through its aging, struggling protagonist, Marcus Conway, but also through the female body and its association with shame – specifically, the bodies of his wife, Mairead, and his daughter, Agnes. While Mairead’s water poisoning critiques inadequate political structures, Agnes politicises female bodily shame through an artwork created with her own blood. By externalising the Kristevan abject – her blood – and deliberately presenting her body as shameful, Agnes enacts a form of emancipation that disrupts the symbolic patriarchal order. This article argues that McCormack’s novel subverts both post-independence ideals of ‘virtuous’ femininity and neoliberal, at times reactionary, Celtic Tiger discourses surrounding the female body. By engaging shame as a meta- and counter-discursive tool, Solar Bones illuminates the lived materiality of women’s bodies, challenging their historical and contemporary invisibility and objectification. Thus, the novel’s entanglement of shame and corporeality not only questions and disrupts entrenched narratives but also bridges past and present, fostering recognition and respect for women’s embodied realities. Moreover, it contributes to a broader understanding of the female body, not merely as a passive symbol within national and political discourses but as a complex, interrelational agent that affects – and is affected by – political, economic and historical forces. To analyse these issues, this study integrates affect theories of shame with historical and political insights while also considering Solar Bones’ meta-modernist and experimental quality, which, on an aesthetic and narratological level, provides the foundation for challenging both calcified and recent shame dynamics.…