Invented Histories: Gossip as Archival Practice in Anna Burns' Milkman

In this article I will interrogate the role of gossip as archival practice as evidenced in Anna Burns’ 2018 novel Milkman. Set at the height of the Northern Irish Troubles, the novel depicts the complex power dynamics that are enacted within the Catholic community. The novel focuses intensely on gender, being a coming-of-age novel for the unnamed female narrator whose life is entirely structured by the power plays that enmesh her on a daily basis. I will argue that these complex power dynamics are maintained by the use of non-traditional forms of archiving – specifically gossip. Further, I will argue that the contemporaneous archival practices foregrounded in the novel delimit the potential for subjectivity to only two clear forms: what Michael Rothberg has termed the “implicated subject” and what Burns herself terms in the novel the “beyond-the-pales,” or those who have been effectively cast out of the Catholic community