Writing truth to power

: whistleblowing as counter-imaginary to neoliberal culture in contemporary writing

Abstract

This thesis examines how different forms of contemporary writing represent whistleblowing as a counter-imaginary to neoliberal culture. Public interest in stories about whistleblowing has been noteworthy since the 1970s. Given neoliberalism has been hegemonized, it has shaped the way in which we have come to think about whistleblowing through lenses of individualism, risk, and economised life. This, I suggest, is problematic as it delegitimises whistleblowing’s disruptive potentials by organising it within the narrative frames of neoliberalism. I show how contemporary writing has responded to this by offering alternative imaginaries of public interest whistleblowing which stage themselves specifically against neoliberal culture. The texts I examine emphasise the democratisation of knowledge- and meaning-making, offer critiques of deregulation, articulate the inability for whistleblowing to become an institutionalised process of dissent, and imagine whistleblowing’s speculative potential for our uncertain future. Thus, I argue that through the presentation of whistleblowing as counter-cultural to neoliberalism, contemporary writing creates imaginaries which allow us to articulate a wider cultural function of whistleblowing. Chapter 1 analyses narratives about Edward Snowden, identifying how texts by The Guardian, Snowden himself, and Mike Bartlett engage with questions of mediacy in an attempt to capture whistleblowing’s politics of disclosure. Chapter 2 examines representations of whistleblowing in the context of contagion narratives written by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig, Christopher Wylie, and Tess Gerritsen. In Chapter 3, I theorise representations of dead or transformed whistleblowers in the context of institutional rhetoric in works by Chelsea Manning, Tim Price, and John Le Carré. Chapter 4 is concerned with whistleblowing in forms of futurist speculative writing by Ali Smith and Elisa Cristallo. The thesis therefore expands on our understanding of the cultural value of whistleblowing in the twenty-first century.

Date of Award	2 Dec 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	James Purdon (Supervisor)