Performing the Domestic: Identity, Power, and Thick Description in Contemporary Noir Fiction

The thesis offers a new critical and creative framework for analysing and writing domestic noir by integrating Goffman’s dramaturgical model with Geertz’s concept of thick description. It positions domestic noir as a performative and culturally embedded genre, where identity, control, and gendered violence are enacted across private and institutional spaces. The accompanying novel, Submersion, extends the genre by blending domestic noir with police procedural and legal drama, exposing how coercive power operates through both intimate relationships and systemic structures. Through this transdisciplinary approach, the thesis contributes to feminist literary criticism, narrative theory, and practice-based research in creative writing.