Fragmented selves and otherness in Ian McEwan

Abstract

This dissertation will deal with the fragmentation of self and otherness in Ian McEwan‘s novels, mainly Enduring Love, Atonement, and Saturday. It acknowledges that as postmodernity is abounding in instability, anxiety and uncertainty are inherent in the postmodern self, such that one cannot speak of a unified self anymore. However, this is not necessarily detrimental to the self, as fragmentation triggers the multiplicity and plurality of meaning, perspective and interpretation. Hence, the self is no longer dependent upon the same, or the Ricoeurian idem, but can now engage with the otherness within, such that ipseidentity is achieved. This then allows for the possibility of the self to be ethical in relation to that which is exterior to it, embodied within the Levinisian Other. The introduction to this dissertation will set the context, and will also engage with the theories of Paul Ricoeur and Emmanuel Levinas. Different aspects of fragmentation and otherness will be explored in the following sections. The first chapter will discuss the application of the motif of the double both as another self and as the Other in Enduring Love. The second chapter will evaluate the use of fragmented selves within Atonement, whereas the third chapter will consider the political Other in connection with the entrapments posed by the hegemonic discourses of the self. Aside from bringing together all the points previously made in this dissertation, the conclusion will extend ideas of plurality to other novels by McEwan, as well as linking his work to that of other contemporary British writers.