The Fertility of Liminality in Locks and my Other Published Works

Nugent, A (2025) The Fertility of Liminality in Locks and my Other Published Works. Doctoral thesis, Liverpool John Moores University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines mixed-race identity in post-colonial Britain through the lens of my critical and creative works. Focus is paid to my debut novel, Locks, which explores the racial identity of Aeon, a mixed-race teenager who is labelled as Black in Liverpool but White in a Jamaican prison. Aeon’s identity crisis is shown to mirror the confusion of life in a post-colonial society, demonstrating how individual life history may mirror historical epoch. Mixed-race identity is, therefore, situated as analogous to the liminality inherent in the declining empires of the post-colonial West. To elucidate this idea, the thesis entwines my work with sociological, scientific and mythological frameworks. Drawing on postcolonial theory, critical race theory, colonial history and social science the study engages with quantum physics and ancient mythologies to illuminate the complex, non-binary realities of identity formation in the contemporary West. The works of Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Frantz Fanon, Wilson Harris and Joseph Campbell inform this exploration. The thesis also draws on a range of critical and creative texts by Black British authors such as Afua Hirsch, Courttia Newland and Reni Eddo-Lodge, and explores mystical motifs in Black diasporic literature, including the works of Toni Morrison, Jesmyn Ward and Octavia E. Butler.
By bridging creative practice with interdisciplinary scholarship, this research demonstrates how creative writing can disrupt inherited racial taxonomies and open space for more nuanced understandings of identity. Aeon’s quest for a theory of self that is both individuated and integrated, functions as an allegory for the possibilities of navigating be-tween historical legacies and emergent modes of being.
This study contributes to critical and postcolonial theory by positing mixed-race identity development as an analogy for how all living in the post-colonial West, regardless of race, may start to navigate the muddy, and fertile, waters of the declining Western empires.

Item Type:	Thesis (Doctoral)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Mixed-Race; Postcolonial Theory; Critical Race Theory; Mythology; Philosophy; Quantum Physics; Black British Literature; Colonial History; Liverpool; Transatlantic Slavery; Jamaica; Identity
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
Divisions:	Humanities and Social Science
Date of acceptance:	20 November 2025
Date of first compliant Open Access:	22 December 2025
Date Deposited:	22 Dec 2025 15:20
Last Modified:	22 Dec 2025 15:22
DOI or ID number:	10.24377/LJMU.t.00027714
Supervisors:	Perfect, M, Piesse, J and Morris-Campbell, J
URI:	https://researchonline.ljmu.ac.uk/id/eprint/27714

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