Literature and the Construction of Identity in Alistair MacLeod’s No Great Mischief

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Published: Jan 1, 2008

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Verita Sriratana

Abstract

This essay aims at exploring the complex web of relationships between literature, its reader, its author and the cultural context as well as investigating the significant roles of literature in the construction of identity: firstly, literature as a construction of personal identity by means of exposing the workings of the “technology of sex” and the “technology of space,” the techniques which form an individual’s awareness of his/her identity in terms of sexuality and space. Secondly, literature as, to use Suzanne Nalbantian’s wonderful term in Memory in Literature, a “laboratory for the workings of the mind” (1) which aims to reconcile with the past, regrets and traumas via stream of consciousness. Thirdly, literature as a construction of collective identity by means of including and excluding the Other in the fabrication of histories and boundaries which serve to contain the “imagined communities” of society and nation. Furthermore, this essay will point out that the process of writing can be regarded as the process of shaping the self as it tries to piece together or, in other words, “re-member” fragments of recollections from the past, of haunting guilt and traumas, of beautiful dreams and aspirations and that identity, far from being a fixed and essentialised entity, is, rather, an endless and unfinished process filled with clashes and conflicts. The hypothesis and conclusion of this essay will be attested and illustrated in a close analysis of Alistair MacLeod’s novel No Great Mischief (1999).

Article Details

Issue
No. 1 (2008): Thoughts 2008
Section
Articles

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Author Biography

Verita Sriratana

Ms. Verita Sriratana is a recipient of the Ananda Mahidol Foundation Scholarship. She has earned a BA (First Class Honors and Gold Medal for highest achievement) in English from Chulalongkorn University and an MA (Distinction) in Colonial/Postcolonial Literature in English from the University of Warwick.

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