While the figure of the ‘double’ has traditionally been used to categorise and organise binary di... more While the figure of the ‘double’ has traditionally been used to categorise and organise binary distinctions, the contemporary world is marked by doublings—of presence, identity and reality, with the advent of a more technological ‘life’¬—which, rather than demarcate boundaries, threaten the stability of the binary mode in which the world and the self are perceived. Utilising the theories of several critics, including Michel Foucault, Marc Augé, Jean Baudrillard and Theodor Adorno, this study will examine how three contemporary texts literalise and exaggerate this present state through their use of doubled settings and identities: Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last, China Miéville’s The City & The City and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.
Identifying language as a double itself which mediates the perception of reality, the study will analyse the use of language within the texts to underpin the destabilisation of binarity, the hyper-reality of signification, and thus the resistance of totality of meaning. With this as a basis, the work will analyse how all three texts, both in form and content, use doubling and the resultant liminality to depict the displacement of real space, either for a ‘non-space’, a Foucauldian heterotopia, or a virtual reality which is neither real nor unreal.
The crisis facilitated by the liminality of place, the digitalisation of identity and Augé’s concept of the acceleration of history into the present will be explored, as will the characters’ attempts to stabilise themselves through a fictionalised narrative order, by creating alter-egos, simulating (or, even, dissimulating) shared identities and roles, or adhering to genre-based archetypes. The effects of this upon the notion of authentic identity and reality will be posited to draw some conclusions regarding the themes’ connection and relevance to the contemporary condition.
While the figure of the ‘double’ has traditionally been used to categorise and organise binary di... more While the figure of the ‘double’ has traditionally been used to categorise and organise binary distinctions, the contemporary world is marked by doublings—of presence, identity and reality, with the advent of a more technological ‘life’¬—which, rather than demarcate boundaries, threaten the stability of the binary mode in which the world and the self are perceived. Utilising the theories of several critics, including Michel Foucault, Marc Augé, Jean Baudrillard and Theodor Adorno, this study will examine how three contemporary texts literalise and exaggerate this present state through their use of doubled settings and identities: Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last, China Miéville’s The City & The City and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.
Identifying language as a double itself which mediates the perception of reality, the study will analyse the use of language within the texts to underpin the destabilisation of binarity, the hyper-reality of signification, and thus the resistance of totality of meaning. With this as a basis, the work will analyse how all three texts, both in form and content, use doubling and the resultant liminality to depict the displacement of real space, either for a ‘non-space’, a Foucauldian heterotopia, or a virtual reality which is neither real nor unreal.
The crisis facilitated by the liminality of place, the digitalisation of identity and Augé’s concept of the acceleration of history into the present will be explored, as will the characters’ attempts to stabilise themselves through a fictionalised narrative order, by creating alter-egos, simulating (or, even, dissimulating) shared identities and roles, or adhering to genre-based archetypes. The effects of this upon the notion of authentic identity and reality will be posited to draw some conclusions regarding the themes’ connection and relevance to the contemporary condition.
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Utilising the theories of several critics, including Michel Foucault, Marc Augé, Jean Baudrillard and Theodor Adorno, this study will examine how three contemporary texts literalise and exaggerate this present state through their use of doubled settings and identities: Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last, China Miéville’s The City & The City and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.
Identifying language as a double itself which mediates the perception of reality, the study will analyse the use of language within the texts to underpin the destabilisation of binarity, the hyper-reality of signification, and thus the resistance of totality of meaning. With this as a basis, the work will analyse how all three texts, both in form and content, use doubling and the resultant liminality to depict the displacement of real space, either for a ‘non-space’, a Foucauldian heterotopia, or a virtual reality which is neither real nor unreal.
The crisis facilitated by the liminality of place, the digitalisation of identity and Augé’s concept of the acceleration of history into the present will be explored, as will the characters’ attempts to stabilise themselves through a fictionalised narrative order, by creating alter-egos, simulating (or, even, dissimulating) shared identities and roles, or adhering to genre-based archetypes. The effects of this upon the notion of authentic identity and reality will be posited to draw some conclusions regarding the themes’ connection and relevance to the contemporary condition.
Utilising the theories of several critics, including Michel Foucault, Marc Augé, Jean Baudrillard and Theodor Adorno, this study will examine how three contemporary texts literalise and exaggerate this present state through their use of doubled settings and identities: Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last, China Miéville’s The City & The City and Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.
Identifying language as a double itself which mediates the perception of reality, the study will analyse the use of language within the texts to underpin the destabilisation of binarity, the hyper-reality of signification, and thus the resistance of totality of meaning. With this as a basis, the work will analyse how all three texts, both in form and content, use doubling and the resultant liminality to depict the displacement of real space, either for a ‘non-space’, a Foucauldian heterotopia, or a virtual reality which is neither real nor unreal.
The crisis facilitated by the liminality of place, the digitalisation of identity and Augé’s concept of the acceleration of history into the present will be explored, as will the characters’ attempts to stabilise themselves through a fictionalised narrative order, by creating alter-egos, simulating (or, even, dissimulating) shared identities and roles, or adhering to genre-based archetypes. The effects of this upon the notion of authentic identity and reality will be posited to draw some conclusions regarding the themes’ connection and relevance to the contemporary condition.