The Architecture of Harm

Rumour, Routine, and Spatial Constraint in Anna Burns’ No Bones

Bibliographic Data

ID17820152
AuthorsUbaid Khursheed (Lovely Professional University, corresponding author), Rayees Ahmad Bhat (0000-0003-2376-1577, Lovely Professional University), Anudeep Kaur Bedi (Lovely Professional University)
Year2026
Volume15
Issue4
Pages54-54
Publication date2026-04-02
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueHumanities (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2076-0787 • E-ISSN: 2076-0787
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/h15040054
OpenAlexW7147475058
LanguageEN
References cited14

Anna Burns’ No Bones has extensively documented its depiction of trauma during the Troubles; less attention has been paid to the systematic mechanisms through which pervasive psychosocial harm is quietly administered and normalised. This article moves beyond readings of individual suffering to diagnose a collective condition, arguing that Burns constructs a veritable architecture of harm: a meticulously designed system operating not through overt aggression alone, but through the mundane, yet powerfully insidious, interplay of social forces governing everyday life. This synthesis reveals how these forces converge to produce what Achille Mbembe terms a death-world: a state of being where populations are subjected to conditions that confer upon them the status of the living dead. Within this necropolitical landscape, the protagonist Amelia’s routines are dictated by shrinking spatial affordances, while incessant rumour functions as a policing mechanism that enforces social death long before physical death is a threat. This analysis demonstrates that harm is not an atmospheric byproduct of conflict, but the very logic of this architecture, which compels the community to participate in its own subjugation. Ultimately, by mapping this architecture, this article reframes Burns’ novel from a historical text of the Troubles into a trenchant meditation on the governance of populations under duress. It offers a vital framework for understanding how quiet harm is spatially engineered, a dynamic with profound relevance for contemporary studies of carceral geographies, algorithm-driven social control, and the politics of atmospheric violence. It posits Burns’ work as a crucial resource for theorising the invisible structures that shape and constrain modern life

Depiction · Harm · Politics · Tying · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

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