Identity, N a rra tive and P olitics

T he construction of n arra tiv e identity is a public - and hence potentially

political — process. T elling and listening to stories about oneself involves
n arra tiv e techniques. U sing m odern novels as a reference point, M aureen
W hitebrook asks w h at follows for political identity (be it of a person, group
or nation) from taking the n arrativ e elem ent seriously: ‘W ho am I?’ in
conjunction w ith ‘W ho are we?’, and ‘W ho tells the political story?’
Identity, Narrative and Politics argues th a t political theory is lim ited in its
und erstan d in g of n arra tiv e identity, and explores the sophisticated ideas
w hich em erge from novels as altern ativ e expressions of political u n d e rstan d ­
ing. U sing a bro ad in tern atio n al selection of tw entieth-century English
language works - by w riters such as V irginia Woolf, N adine G ordim er and
T hom as Pynchon — this book considers each novel as a source of political
ideas, in term s of content, structure, form and technique, and specifically in
relation to n arrativ e political identity.
T he book assumes no prior know ledge of the literatu re discussed, and will
be fascinating reading for students of politics, literature, cu ltu ral politics
and political m orality.

M au reen W h iteb ro o k is H o n o rary R esearch Fellow in the D ep a rtm e n t of

Politics, U niversity of Sheffield. H er publications include Reading Political
Stories and Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens: Narrative Accounts o f Liberalism.
She is the C h air/C o n v en o r of the Politics and the Arts G roup.
This page intentionally left blank
Identity, N arrative and
Politics

M au reen W h iteb roo k

| J Routledge
Taylor &. Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2001 by Routledge

Published 2014 by R oudedge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, O xon 0 X 1 4 4RN

Simultaneously published in the USA and C anada by R oudedge

711 T hird Avenue, New York, NY, 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint o f the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2001 M a u ree n W h iteb ro o k

T y p eset in Baskerville by BG T y p esettin g , Bristol

All rig h ts reserved. No p a rt of this book m ay be rep rin ted or

rep ro d u c ed or utilized in an y form or by any electronic,
m ech an ical, or o th er m eans, now know n or h ereafter
in v en ted , in clu d in g p h o to co p y in g an d recording, or in any
in fo rm atio n sto rag e or retriev al system , w ith o u t perm ission in
w ritin g from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication D ata
A catalo g u e reco rd for this book is av ailab le from the B ritish L ib rary
Library o f Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
W h iteb ro o k , M a u ree n .
Id e n tity , n a rra tiv e and p o litics/M au ree n W hiteb ro o k .
p. cm.
In clu d es b ib lio g rap h ical references an d index.
1. E nglish fiction - 20th cen tu ry - H isto ry and criticism . 2. Politics and
lite ra tu re E nglish-speaking coountries - H istory - 20th century. 3. A m erican
fiction - 2 0th cen tu ry - H isto ry and criticism . 4. P olitical fiction —H isto ry and
criticism . 5. Id e n tity (Psychology) in lite ra tu re . 6. G ro u p id en tity in lite ra tu re .
7. N a rra tio n (R h etoric) I. T itle.

P R 888.P 6 W 47 2001
82349109358 dc21 00-062790

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-23894-6 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-23895-3 (pbk)
 Contents

Acknowledgements VI

150 Introduction: identity, narrative, narratives and

narrative identity 150

2 The narrative construction of identity 22

3 Uncertain identity 43

4 Gaps and fragments 64

5 Contingency, identity and agency 87

6 Coherent identity 107

7 Narrative, identity and politics 127

8 Postscript 150

Notes 153
References 161
Index 175
A cknow ledgem ents

T h e a u th o r and publisher are grateful for perm ission to reproduce copy­

righted m aterial: extracts from Philip R o th ’s Operation Shylock are reproduced
by perm ission of T h e R a n d o m H ouse G roup; extracts from V irginia
W oolf’s M rs D allow ay are reproduced by perm ission of the Society of A uthors
as the literary representative of the E state of V irginia W o o lf
Between proposal and p ublication, this book has been subject to the unfor­
tu n ately not uncom m on vagaries of the publishing business. I am therefore
grateful to both C aroline W intersgill and C raig Fowlie; the form er for
taking the project on and encouraging me to develop it, the la tte r for showing
real interest in a project th a t he did not initiate, and for seeing it th ro u g h to
com pletion w ith equal interest and encouragem ent.
I th an k the various readers of the original proposal for this project and the
first draft, all of w hom m ade helpful com m ents and suggestions, m ost of
w hich have found th eir w ay into the com pleted book. I thank J o h n H o rto n
for his continuing, and encouraging, interest in my work and, again, for his
willingness to read d raft versions of this book. I am greatly indebted to
Susan Stephenson for her com m ents on and help w ith my work over the
long period th a t this book has been in the m aking, and in p a rtic u la r for her
careful reading of an early version.
P articip atio n in a n u m b er of workshops and conference panels has enabled
me to try out some of the ideas here and to receive m any helpful com m ents,
suggestions and references. W hile it has not been possible to acknow ledge all
this help in the text, I hope th a t those who recognize their contributions will
accept the ap p earan ce of this book as a token of my thanks for their help.
I am , as always, m ost grateful to those friends who have p atiently sup­
ported m y w ork and helped it along in various en tertaining ways - and espe­
cially thanks to S tu a rt B ennett.
1 Introduction
Identity, narrative, narratives and
n arrativ e identity

In 1991, in a lengthy article in the N ew York Review o f Books, J o a n D idion dis­

cusses the ‘w ilding’ episode, an incident of rape w hich had taken place in
C en tral Park, New Y ork in 1989, w hen a w hite w om an investm ent banker
jogging in the p ark was attack ed and rap ed by a gang of black and H ispanic
youths (D idion 1991 ).1 D id io n ’s m ode of analysis was to place the incident
in relation to the city of New Y ork and the ‘story’ or ‘stories’ of th a t city,
taking off from the account of the rape and subsequent cap tu re and trial of
the alleged rapists to m ake certain points ab o u t the n arrativ e of New York.
T he victim of the crim e was not generally identified by nam e, but
‘a b stra c te d ’ and her situation ‘m ade to stand for th a t of the city itself’. H er
em ployers th o u g h t her ‘the personification of “ w hat makes this city so
v ib ra n t and so g re a t” ’ who had been ‘struck dow n by a side of our city th a t
is as awful and terrifying as the creative side is w onderful’. D idion com m ents:

It was precisely in this conflation of victim and city, this confusion of

personal woe w ith public distress, th a t the crim e’s ‘story’ would be
found, its lesson, its encouraging prom ise of n arrativ e resolution . . . For
so long as this case held the city’s febrile attention, then it offered a n a r ra ­
tive for the city ’s distress, a fram e in w hich the actual social and eco­
nom ic forces w renching the city could be personalized and ultim ately
obscured.
(D idion 1991: 46, 54)

As D idion com m ents on the case, she discusses this n a rrativ iz atio n of both
the p a rtic u la r incident and the life of the city as such. For instance, New
Y ork is ‘rapidly vanishing into the chasm betw een its actual life and its p re­
ferred n a rra tiv e s’. As reportage sw itched from a p ragm atic acceptance of
the dan g er of open spaces at night to an ideal construct w hereby New York
- including C en tral Park - had been, or should be, safe, she notes th at
‘the insistent sentim entalization of experience’ is hab itu al in New York,
along w ith a ‘preference for . . . the distortion and flattening of c h a ra c te r’,
and ‘the reduction of events to n a rra tiv e ’ as the ‘heart of the way the city
presents itself’. And this n arrativ e, ‘w ith its d ram atic line of “ crisis” and
2 Identity, narrative and politics

resolution, or recovery’, obscures race and class tensions, civic and com ­
m ercial arrangem ents, ‘the conspiracy of those in the know ’. T he history of
C en tral P ark is shown to be such a ‘sto ry ’ - an artificial construction, a
‘sto ry ’ th a t ‘had to do w ith certain d ra m a tic contrasts, or extrem es, th a t
were believed to ch aracterize life in this as in no other city’.
F rom this reading of the crim e, and its location, the park, D idion draw s
general conclusions. F or exam ple,

Stories in w hich terrible crim es are inflicted on innocent victims, offering

as they do a sim ilarly sentim ental reading of class differences and
h u m an suffering, a read in g th a t prom ises both resolution and re trib u ­
tion, have long perform ed as the city ’s endorphins, a built-in source of
n a tu ra l m orphine w orking to b lu r the edges of real and to a g reat extent
insoluble problem s.

And even m ore generally:

T h e im position of a sentim ental, or false, n arrativ e on the d isparate and

often ran d o m experience th a t constitutes the life of a city or a country
m eans, necessarily, th a t m uch of w h at happens in th a t city or country
will be rendered m erely illustrative, a series of set pieces or perform ance
opportunities.

So this case allow ed, for exam ple, ‘a n a rra tiv e based on the m agical ability of
“ leaders” to im prove the com m on w eal’.
D id io n ’s conclusion is th a t

am ong the citizens of a New Y ork com e to grief on the sentim ental stories
told in defense of its ow n lazy crim inality, the city ’s inevitability
rem ained the given, the h eart, the first and last w ord on w hich all the
stories rested. W e love New Y ork, the n arra tiv e prom ises, because it
m atches our energy level.

D idion, herself a novelist, specifically voices an awareness of the dangers of

narrativ e. Social scientists m ay well sym pathize w ith her suspicions: n a rr a ­
tive accounts are suspect, because they lack objectivity; stories prom ote a
certain point of view; there is a tendency to rom anticize or sentim entalize in
the process of storytelling. H ow ever, not only is D idion’s account itself a
story, but, m ore im p o rtan tly , her n a rra tiv e analysis is flawed. Those factors
taken together suggest th a t her a ttack on n a rra tiv e deserves some atten tio n ,
th a t h er suspicions are unfounded and even, by extension, th a t n arrativ e
accounts can be positively helpful to analyses of the socio-political realm .
H er com m entary on the city of New Y ork takes the form of a n a rrativ e
account: characters and events, togeth er w ith com m entary on them , have
been p u t together to present — show — a certain in te rp reta tio n of a set of
 Introduction 3

facts. A nd her talk o f conspiracy, or herself om itting to nam e the victim , are
n a rra tiv e or rhetorical devices em ployed in order to m ake her point the
m ore strongly. Those features suggest how easily even the intentionally n o n ­
n arra tiv e w riter slips into using n arra tiv e techniques. But D idion also makes
explicit statem ents on n arrativ e, w hich are m isleading in their m isunder­
standing o f ‘n a rra tiv e ’ and ‘sto ry ’.
D idion thinks th a t n a rra tiv e ’s effects can only obscure ‘the real w o rld ’ of
facts and inferences to be d raw n from those facts. ‘S entim en tality ’ should
not be a factor in political deliberation; nor should accounts th a t by their
m ethod distort or rom anticize, th a t ‘reduce events to n a rra tiv e ’. Such objec­
tions do not correspond, though, to the form ulation w hereby at its most
basic ‘n a rra tiv e ’ denotes the p atte rn in g or ordering of events - the fu n d a­
m ental elem ent of n arrativ e. D idion speaks o f ‘a reading th a t promises both
resolution and re trib u tio n ’ but the im position of a n arrativ e fram ew ork does
not thereby entail ‘resolution’. N a rra tiv e theory distinguishes betw een
ending and closure; and indeed, D id io n ’s own account ends (concludes), but
there is little or no sense of closure —the ‘story’ of New York is not resolved,
the characters are not neatly disposed of.
Tw o m ajo r points em erge from D id io n ’s strictures on the (mis) use, or even
d anger, of n arra tiv e in real-life situations. O ne is th a t n a rrativ e m ethod,
explaining w h at is happen in g by w ay of narratives, is a com m onplace
hu m an activity, and th a t the student of politics who seeks to u n d erstand
th a t activity in m ore or less specific term s m ay need both to em ploy n arrativ e
techniques them self and to take other people’s narratives into account. T he
second follows from that: the need to u n d erstand w hat n a rrativ e is, and
w h at its use entails. I take up these points in the study th a t follows.

A rgu m ent
M y specific interest is in the relationships betw een narrativ e, identity and
politics. M y discussion moves aro u n d the interconnections, draw ing out
w here there is - actually or p o tentially - in terp lay betw een n a rrativ e identity
and politics,2 and finally suggesting how the connections can be developed
for the benefit of political th eo ry .3
As one of the m ore recent works th a t claim to apply n arra tiv e to political
theory points out, ‘A t present there is a sm all cottage industry . . . aw ash
in a sea of claim s . . . ab o u t n a rra tiv e ’ (D ienstag 1997: 209). O r again,
‘References to n a rra tiv e and storytelling have become an alm ost obligatory
gesture for theorists who defy the academ ic norm of detached w ritin g ’, and
who ‘use storytelling to shift know ledge from a center th a t purp o rts to be
im p artial, uniform and om niscient, to a m argin th a t acknowledges the
heterogeneity and inevitable p a rtia lity of any sta n d p o in t’ (Disch 1994: 1, 10,
and cf. 5 -9 ). H ow ever, the increasing frequency of assertions about n arra tiv e
iden tity in theory is not m atched by explanation or even acknow ledgem ent
4 Identity, narrative and politics

of w h at is involved in ad o p tin g n a rra tiv e as a term for social and political

explanation.
References to n arrativ e, the n a rra tiv e self and even n arra tiv e identity are
now frequent enough in political discourse to suggest th a t it is tim e to con­
sider m ore carefully th a n heretofore ju st w h at n arrativ e implies for political
u nderstanding. T h ere is an aw areness of the n arrativ e m ode in political
theory, b u t n arra tiv e has to be fu rth er understood as m ore th a n ju st story­
telling taken to be so n a tu ra l an activity th a t it requires no a tten tio n to tech­
nique, or to underlying technical requirem ents. ‘N a rra tiv e ’, like most
theoretical concepts, carries w ith it an accom panying baggage of technical­
ities, allusions, connotations, references. Those w anting to use the idea of
n a rra tiv e as ‘simply telling a sto ry ’ m ay object th a t they have no need of
intensive w ork on n a rra tiv e as such. But ‘telling a story’ is far from simple,
as n a rra tiv e theory discloses - and so even th a t most basic usage leads
back into the technicalities, if n a rra tiv e is to be given proper a tten tio n in
theorizing.
A lthough there are now several studies w hich have focused on specific
aspects of n arrativ e, id en tity and politics - for exam ple, in A nglophone
theory, C harles T a y lo r’s Sources o f the S e lf (T aylor 1989) on the self and
identity, A lasdair M a c In ty re ’s ch ap ter in A fter Virtue (M ac In ty re 1985) on
id en tity and n arrativ e, and Jo sh u a Foe D ien stag ’s Dancingin Chains (D ienstag
1997) on n a rra tiv e and political theory - this discussion though is based on
a p a rtic u la r definition of identity: th a t identity is a m a tte r of telling stories -
hence narrative id en tity - and th a t this has political im plications deriving
from storytelling’s public setting. T he construction of n arrativ e identity is a
collective act, involving tellers and listeners. C ertain aspects of n a rrativ e , its
defining characteristics and elem ents, have a bearing on the political.
I suggest th a t iden tity is, prim arily, a m a tte r of the stories persons tell
others ab o u t themselves, plus the stories others tell ab out those persons
a n d /o r other stories in w hich those persons are included. Defining identity in
term s of n arra tiv e rests on claim s ab o u t the naturalness of storytelling, and
hence the construction of id en tity th ro u g h stories (Nash 1994a: xi and
passim ). T h e n inasm uch as id en tity m eans som ething like ‘w h at the self
shows the w o rld ’ or ‘w h at of the self is show n to the w o rld ’, together w ith
‘w h at of the self is recognized by the w o rld ’, the construction of identity -
n a rra tin g iden tity - entails placing the self in the public sphere, and thus a
capacity for taking on a political role. T he political aspect of identity rests
on an und erstan d in g of the self as social, ‘situ a te d ’, and narratives of identity
as em bedded in oth er stories, including the w ider stories of social and cultural
settings.
I exam ine the use of n a rra tiv e for politics by way of narratives —novels —as
a w ay of expanding on w h at n a rra tiv e m ay be understood to m ean for poli­
tical theorizing, taking it th a t m odern novels have som ething to say about
m odern lives. Such novels exhibit - show in practice - features of narrativ e
th a t are politically relevant, and their characters depict the problem s of
 Introduction 5

constructing identity. I draw from n a rra tiv e theory to suggest th a t certain

elem ents of n arra tiv e relate to some of the cu rren t concerns of political
theory, and thence assist political understanding.
T heorists m ay, of course, use ‘n a rra tiv e ’ m erely adjectivally, or to refer to
historical narrativ es —or, as in the case of D ien stag’s Dancing in Chains , works
of political theory m ay be classified as narratives. T here w ould then be only
tenuous reasons, if any, for links to literary narratives, and it w ould certainly
seem over-scrupulous to apply n arrativ e theory or the literary critical u n d er­
standing of n arra tiv e to such usages. H ow ever, in the case of political uses of
‘n arra tiv e id e n tity ’, it m ight be expected th a t n arrativ e identity w ould
exhibit n arra tiv e features - and hence my atte n tio n to elem ents of n arrativ e
as understood in literary and philosophical studies.
T he connection of id en tity to fictional narratives is not only a m a tte r of the
provision of a p p ro p ria te models for, or occasions for reflection on, theoretical
concerns b u t has a direct bearing on u n d erstan ding n arra tiv e identity. I take
it th a t there w ould be little or no point in yet an o th er study of a political
them e w ith literary exam ples - several theorists, notably P eter Johnson,
have done th a t well enough already (e.g. Ingle 1979; Fishm an 1989;
Jo h n so n , P. 1988). New w ork requires m oving on from treatin g novels as
exem plary or m im etic to look at n a rra tiv e form as well as content, on the
u nd erstan d in g th a t form is a m etap h o r for them e a n d /o r th a t content is
always m ediated th ro u g h form - both of w hich are com m onplaces of literary
criticism . If, then, a them e is politically significant —as I take identity to be
- w hat can be learn t from the form of expression of th at them e in literary n a r­
ratives?
Storytelling th a t constructs identity is not a simple m a tter - there m ay be
doubling, tim e shifts, gaps, any or all of the constituent and characteristic
features of n arrativ e. For th a t reason, I look at novels as accessible instances
of n arrativ e in practice. T u rn in g to narratives —m odern novels —allows for
observation of how iden tity is constructed, th rough atten tio n to content and
form: plot and ch aracterizatio n ; and n arra tiv e structure, style and techni­
ques. T he process of n arra tiv e construction is relevant inasm uch as it makes
the point th a t identity is n arrativ ely m ade, and shows w hat th a t m eans for
an u n d erstan d in g of political identity.
T he outcom e of this exam ination of n a rra tiv e and reading of narratives is
to show th a t iden tity is, or m ay be, uncertain: n arrativ e does not necessarily
ensure unity. N eith er n arrativ e theory nor m odern narratives offer a direct
link betw een n arra tiv e and unity, or order: n arrativ e m ay exhibit lack of
p a tte rn , an absence of closure. Such instability m ay a p p ea r politically
th reaten in g , or even dangerous; b u t atte n tio n to n arra tiv e also shows
how instability - disorder —can be a characteristic of coherent stories. T he
n arra tiv e process itself - n arrativ e telling — is significant here. N arrativ e
understood by w ay of process —form, n arra tiv e structure, style and tech­
niques - suggests th a t coherence is in the telling. U n certain ty , frag m entation
6 Identity, narrative and politics

and disunity can be co ntained in the n a rra tiv e by w ay of content and form,
w h at is told and the telling of it.

Content
I d e n tity

Id e n tity is the subject of a vast lite ra tu re in disciplines such as philosophy and

psychoanalysis. I do not a tte m p t to critique this work, or to enter into debates
ab o u t the status of the self, the existence or not of an essential self, or a p re­
existing, essential or core identity, as definitive of the self as, for instance, in
the interest in m em ory, or continuity over tim e.4 H ow ever, I do w ant to dis­
tinguish betw een the two term s, to establish a sense of identity , as distinct
from self ’ beyond the u n derstandings presently on offer, m aking the distinc­
tion in term s of the public - intersubjective, social, political - n a tu re of
id en tity .5 M y concern is w ith the process of iden tity form ation, external iden­
tification and recognition. In this u n d erstan d ing of identity as the public
m anifestation of the self, iden tity expresses som ething of one’s self, does so
for public consum ption, and in so doing allows th a t th a t expression m ay
need to be m odified by the reactions of others.
T h e two d o m in an t conceptions of id en tity are th a t it is a pro d u ct of o u r­
selves or th a t it is a p ro d u ct of our social context, or our beings as social
selves. These are not m u tu ally exclusive. T h e concept of individual identity
‘represents the convergence of the psychological developm ent of the self
w ith the social position of the in d iv id u al’ (Alford 1991: 6); and we ‘becom e
self-conscious in the process by w hich we are inducted into social life, and
the forms of social life into w hich we are inducted provide the resources -
prim arily, b u t not only the linguistic resources —in term s of w hich we are
conscious of ourselves’ (Poole 1996: 55). It is such a com bined u n d erstanding
of id en tity th a t I w ant to w ork w ith.
T heories of iden tity relate closely to linguistic considerations, a m a tte r of
some relevance for a conception of n a rra tiv e identity.

T h e casting of th o u g h t in language m akes the private and individual

public and collective by accom m odating individual experience and sub­
jectiv ity w ithin the concepts, categories, and order of a p a rtic u la r culture
and political system. . . . In dividuals m ake themselves out of the m a tte r
and according to the p attern s th a t th eir language provides.
(N orton 1988: 46-7)

It is significant th a t the language used to express identity is not a private

possession b u t a given deriving from the culture: ‘the p rivate experience of a
h u m an being is shaped and ordered in learn in g to speak and w rite and in
acquiring the know -how of o th er social and m aterial practices’, and ‘th a t
ordering is expressed in the use of language and other in tentional, norm
 Introduction 1

governed p ractices’. T hen, ‘our sense of our own id e n tity ’ originates in

‘ap p ro p riatio n s of the stru ctu re of public discourse betw een p a rtic u la r and
singular persons for the ordering of p riv ate experience and the expression of
our personal identities as singularities in public space’ (H arre 1998: 42, 43).
T h e em bodim ent of identity is also significant: ‘[t]he n arratives of our
lives are stru ctu red aro u n d the facts of birth , im m atu rity and dependence,
grow th and developm ent, and finally decay and dissolution’ (Poole 1996:
47). B enhabib insists th a t ‘the subjects of reason are finite, em bodied and
fragile creatures, and not disem bodied cogitos or ab stract unities of tran scen ­
den tal ap ercep tio n ’ (B enhabib 1992: 5; cf. K erby 1991: 115 n. 4; N icholson
1995: 40-4; B arron 1993: 95-6; N o rto n 1988; Bordo 1993).
C ertain critical questions for politics are consequent upon these definitions
and distinctions. Is iden tity self-constructed, self-defined, w hat the person
takes them self to be, or a consequence of their social context - and in th a t
la tte r case, is it self-assumed or ascribed? Is identity a m a tte r of how the
person sees them self or how others see them? A nd w hat of collective identity
- ‘w e’ as well as ‘I ’? Is identity a p ro d u ct of inherent or ascribed c h a ra c te r­
istics, given or chosen - ‘given’ by characteristics such as age or gender,
w hich can be affirm ed or denied, or ‘chosen’, either by affirm ing or denying
given characteristics, or by adopting non-given characteristics, negotiating
an identity? T h en , w hat range can be chosen from, w hat connections are
there to the ‘given’ situation - some m ust be necessary for a basic coherence?

P o litic a l id e n tity

T h e available m eanings of political iden tity range from citizenship, used

alm ost as a n eu tral, m erely descriptive term , a concom itant of the rela tio n ­
ship of the individual and the state, to the characteristics of m em bers of
groups, or, in a w ider m eaning beyond the political identity of persons, to
the identity of political entities —groups significant in the political realm or
politically defined entities such as nations or states, in tra -state or su p ra ­
n atio n al groups (‘E u ro p e la n d ’, for exam ple).
Noel O ’Sullivan has identified three ‘cu rrently availab le’ theories of the
political, liberal, discourse and agonal, represented by R aw ls, H aberm as
and H onig and C onnolly, respectively and a fourth, ‘the classical ideal of
civil association’ w hich he considers ‘best suited to m odern conditions of
increasing diversity’ (O ’Sullivan 1997: 740). E ach of these indicates a rele­
v an t form of political identity. T he id en tity of the liberal/R aw lsian person is
the individual, autonom ous, ratio n al chooser — as Sandel sum m arizes it,
‘the h u m an subject as a sovereign agent of choice, a creatu re whose ends are
chosen ra th e r th a n given, who comes by his aims and purposes by acts of
will, as opposed, say, to acts of cognition’ (Sandel 1982: 22; cf. F lath m an
1992: 124; P arekh 1992: 161-2).6 Discourse theory regards id entity as
pro d u ct, in p a rt at least, of the com m unity - a ‘n eg o tiated ’ identity, and poli­
tically d ep en d en t on the existence of a political realm w here ‘conversation’
8 Identity, narrative and politics

as ‘free and equal agen ts’ is possible (cf. T a y lo r 1991: 47—50). A gonal theory
is based on the ‘d ecentring of the sta te ’, w here political identity w ould be
th a t of dem ocratic citizens (O ’Sullivan 1997: 745). For W illiam Connolly,
for exam ple, the construction of iden tity dem ands awareness of the political
as the aren a w ithin w hich a struggle w ith the problem of evil takes place
(O ’Sullivan 1997: 747). Civil association theory allows for diversity, ‘radical
and p luralist d em ocracy’ (O ’Sullivan 1997: 749): political id entity m ay be
shifting, m ultiple in the sense th a t it follows from a ttac h m en t to p artic u lar
enterprises - ‘causes’. It is political precisely because it rests on a collective
identification w ith others.
By im plication for all of the theories w hich O ’Sullivan discusses, as w ith
m any usages of political identity, th a t id en tity m ight be expressed in term s
of citizenship. M ouffe asserts th a t ‘citizenship’

is not one iden tity am ong others, as it is in liberalism , nor is it the dom i­
n a n t id en tity th a t overrides all others, as it is in civic republicanism . . .
[but] an articu latin g principle th a t affects the different subject positions
of the social agent w hile allow ing for a p lu rality of specific allegiances
a nd for the respect of individual liberty.
(M ouffe 1995a: 38)

‘O nly citizenship enables us jo in tly to take charge of and take responsibility

for the social forces th a t otherw ise dom in ate our lives and lim it our opinions,
even though we produce th e m ’ (Pitkin 1981: 327-52; cf. P arekh 1995b).
P olitical iden tity w ould then represent a m ovem ent from separate identity
to collective identity, a m ovem ent from ‘I ’ to ‘w e’. Indeed, T ra cy Strong
w ould m ake th a t move definitive of politics as such: ‘T he political is th a t
form of h u m an activity in w hich the answ er to the question “ who am I?” is
also the answ er to the question “ who are we?” ’ (Strong 1990: 34; C onnolly
1991: 158; cf. Booth and R osam ond 1996). T h e re is always some collective
elem ent to political id entity. T h e in ter-relatio n ality in h erent in n a rrativ e
id en tity implies this, in line w ith th a t u n d erstanding of political identity
w hich assumes aggregation: ‘in the political arena, those who encounter
one an o th er are collective actors contending ab o u t collective goals and the
d istrib u tio n of collective goods’ (H ab erm as 1994: 108). E m bedm ent and
in tertex tu ality , entailing th a t stories are alw ays connected and often derive
from o th er stories, also suggest th a t this m ight be the case. Jo h n G ray asserts
‘the m oral and political im p o rtan ce of collective identification as

the pervasive h u m an p henom enon in virtu e of w hich personal identities

are constituted by m em bership in some n ation, religion, tribe or other
collectivity . . . the fact is th a t the m an who conceives him self as a
solitary individual, whose id en tity is u n encum bered by any collective
identification, though he is real, is vanishingly rare.
(G ra y ,J. 1993: 7)
 Introduction 9

Indeed, H a rre claims th a t identity is not to be treated as a singularity at all,

bu t is now a group characteristic; his reason for this contention is the
ubiquity of id en tity politics in recent discussions of identity (H arre 1998: 6;
A ppiah and G ates 1996: 1).
In general term s, political iden tity m ay be theorized in two ra th e r different
ways: either as a m a tte r of (self-) aw areness ab o u t the relationship of the
person to the political order or as a function of inclusion in political units
and as referring to certain characteristics w hereby persons can be grouped
for political purposes by a wide range of id en tih cato ry characteristics:
natio n ality , geographical place or regional location, race, ethnicity, family
or kinship, language, class, sex/gender, political affiliation, religion, or even
football support. T he first represents personal identity in a political context;
the second is th a t of the political subject taken as a unit for political analysis,
citizen, m em ber of a group or nation. T h e person is identified, ascribed
identity, by virtue of their belonging to, bearing the characteristics of, a
political or politically relevant entity.
T h ere are certain draw backs to sep aratin g out political identity in term s
of the political status of the individual or the person as m em ber of a political
collectivity. T o con cen trate on the separate person allows an over-em phasis
on the separate self, w hereas in the political context, these persons are also,
and often, grouped — aggregated. A ggregation risks de-personifying and
stereotyping; political identity understood in group term s also tends to
depersonalize. In the w orld of In te rn a tio n a l R elations, for instance, ‘no
children are ever born, and nobody ever dies, in this constructed w orld.
T h ere are states, and they are w hat is’ (E lshtain 1987). T h e person whose
id en tity is of interest to political theory can be strangely characterless: as
Jac q u e lin e Rose has noted, for exam ple, R aw ls’s ratio n al person does not
feel envy (Rose 1996: 86). Such a p p a re n t deficiencies m ay be thought
h ardly surprising given the theoretical need to ab stract, to define by
reference to specifically political contexts and by characteristics held in
com m on w ith others and taken as the relevant features for political
analysis - disregarding, th a t is, the individual characteristics of political
actors. (H ow ever, recent theory, in critiquing of such approaches, has
w orked tow ards altern ativ e conceptualizations of the political self; some of
these have connections to or a bearing on n arrativ e identity as applied in
the political sphere, and are referred to in the course of this study.)

N a r r a tiv e id e n tity

T he conceptualization of n arrativ e iden tity rests on the claim th a t n a rra tin g

is a basic h u m an activity. Persons und erstan d their own lives as stories. N ot
only are ‘stories being told endlessly by everyone, in public and p riv a te ’, but
‘[w jith o u t the n arra tiv e stru ctu re they impose, our experience of the world
and of ourselves w ould not be intelligible: it would only be a continuous
given, in the w ay one supposes it m ust be for anim als’ (Gave 1995: 112;
10 Identity, narrative and politics

cf. B runer 1996; H a rd y 1987; H y v arin en 1992: 543). T ay lo r claims th a t in

order to have ‘a sense of who we a re ’, to have an identity, ‘we have to have a
notion of how we have becom e, and of w here we are going’; we grasp a sense
of our lives in a n arra tiv e —‘I u n d erstan d m y present action in the form of an
“ and th e n ” ’ (T aylor 1989: 47). F u rth erm o re, ‘social life itself is storied’,
and ‘n a rra tiv e is an ontological condition of social life’ (Somers 1994: 614) —
‘in offering an ex p lan atio n of w h at we are doing, we relate it to our own
intentions and thereby present it u n d er the aspect of a fu rth er episode in the
n arra tiv e of our lives’ (and ‘ [t]his is w h at explains the fact th a t both short-
and long-term stretches of our lives can be and are characterized in term s
ap p ro p ria te to literary w orks’) (M ulhall and Swift 1996: 76, 87). A specifi­
cally political gloss is p u t on the u n d erstan d in g of the ubiquity of n a rra tin g
as a h u m an activity by the assertion th a t ‘the form ation of subjects is the
prim al political process’, and ‘the process by w hich energies are form ed into
subjects’ is linked to ‘the basic cu ltu ral act th a t is in the final analysis less
th a t of know ing th a n of m aking coherent n arrativ e ex p lanations’ (Siegle
1986: 13).
N a rra tiv e identity then consists of stories we tell to ourselves ab out o u r­
selves and the stories we or others tell to others, or stories th a t are told to
others ab o u t ourselves - all the stories in w hich we are included: ‘m y inside
story th a t I convey to o th ers’ - the ‘inside-out story’, and ‘im pression’ stories
‘th a t are en tertain ed ab o u t me outside-in , th a t are “ re a d ” into m y life by all
those who know me or enco u n ter me in any w ay . . . “ m y” life in the sense of
w hat is made of me by o th ers’ (R an d all 1995: 54-6). T here is a distinction to
be m ade betw een self-identity as perceived and indeed constituted by,
n a rra te d by, the self and id en tity in a m ore general sense, including the p e r­
ception by others of th a t w hich m akes the self recognizable to self and to
those others. N arrativ e id en tity is then at once subjective and intersubjective,
and entails answ erability and responsibility and the capacity for negotiation.

N a r r a tiv e
‘N a rra tiv e ’ refers to a v ariety of genres and a variety of forms of expression,
usually verbal; including novels, epic poetry, history, biography and a u to ­
biography, b u t also including non-verbal forms such as rep resentational art
and film (C h atm an 1978). T h e term m ay convey some co n n o tatio n of
non-real, or im aginative; certainly it is a p rim ary feature of n arra tiv e th a t all
its forms are constructed (and so liable to ‘creative am b ig u ity ’ (Lieblich and
Josselon 1994)). T he selection and arran g em en t of events, in a p a rtic u la r
order, so as to suggest some relationship betw een them , distinguish n a rra tiv e
from m ere descriptions of qualities, states or situations. N arrativ es are
‘com plex o rg an izatio n al schem ata w hich involve agents, events, tim e,
consciousness, m em ory, ju d g m e n t, la n g u a g e ’. T hey ‘organize h u m an experi­
ence in such a w ay th a t it is rendered significant’, providing ‘a connective
th re a d betw een one state of affairs and an o th er such th a t they are given a
 Introduction 11

continuity in the consciousness of the storyteller and the listener’ (Stephenson

1996: 6). T h ere is (often b u t not always) explanation th a t unfolds in time,
w ith surprise d u rin g its progress and know ledge only by hindsight.
Somers defines n arratives, in a social science context, as ‘constellations of
relationships (connected parts) em bedded in time and space, constituted by
causal emplotment\ T h e distinction from o th er forms of explanation is th at
m eaning is not a ttrib u te d by categorization: ‘n arra tiv ity precludes sense-
m aking of a singular isolated phen o m en o n ’. It ‘dem ands th a t we discern the
m eaning of any single event only in tem poral or spatial relationship to other
events’: its chief characteristic is ‘th a t it renders u n d erstanding only by
connecting (how ever unstably) parts to a constructed configuration or a social
network of relationships (how ever incoherent or unrealizable) com posed of
sym bolic, institutional, and m aterial practices’ (Somers 1994: 616).
N arrativ e involves both the organizatio n of events, story , and the process of
o rganization, narration (C ohan and Shires 1988: 53): there are two over­
lapping aspects, the ‘question of content, the assem blage of m a te ria l’, and
the ‘rhetorical, how the m aterial is presented to the audience’ (Fowler, R.
1973; cf. Ross 1973: 122; G ray, M . 1992: 191). T here is then a technical
difference in m eaning betw een ‘n a rra tiv e ’ used as synonym ous w ith ‘story’
or ‘storytelling’, and ‘n a rra tiv e ’ as denoting a form or tech n iq u e.7 M y a rg u ­
m ent is th a t m ore atte n tio n should be paid to the latte r in order to b etter
un d erstan d the form er: I exam ine how in ord er to show that. (The point is
m ade by the distinction betw een ‘n a rra tiv e ’ as the form and content, and
‘sto ry ’ as the untheorized practice, and thus a distinction fam iliar to theorists
betw een a p ractice and its theorizing.) T h e n arra tiv e m ode m ust be u n d e r­
stood as m ore th a n storytelling, taken to be so n atu ral an activity th a t it
requires no atte n tio n to technique or underlying technical requirem ents
(cf. Brodsky 1987; F a m a rq u e and O lsen 1994: 227ff.).
I suggest th a t n a rra tio n , voice and point of view, who is telling the story,
from whose, or w hat, perspective, em plotm ent, especially in relation to
contingency and chance), and closure are all relevant to an interest in the
n arra tiv e construction of identity. T h en , given th a t certain n arrativ e term s
are potentially exp lan ato ry for the construction of identity, atten tio n is direc­
ted to th a t form of n arrativ e w here those term s are most clearly deployed.
Novels display the process of construction and the use and the effect of typical
n arra tiv e elem ents and techniques, including those th a t are p articu larly rele­
v an t to n arra tiv e id en tity as understood in a n d /o r relevant to co n tem porary
political theory.

N a r r a tiv e s

T he general injunction to tu rn to n arrativ e, originating (in those words) in

A nglophone theory w ith R ich ard R o rty and also expressed, ra th e r differ­
ently, by A lasdair M acIn ty re, Charles T ay lo r and M a rth a N ussbaum , has
been frequently cited in recent political theory; their term inology has been
12 Identity, narrative and politics

adop ted to the extent th a t ‘n a rra tiv e ’, ‘sto ry ’ and ‘storytelling’ have becom e
reg u lar usages in political theory, beyond the work on or deriving directly
from these p a rtic u la r theorists. A ra th e r different, and longer-standing
interest in storytelling derives from H a n n a h A rendt, who ‘from her early
w ritings to h er unfinished lectures on ju d g in g . . . sustains the belief th a t poli­
tical theory can be understood as a kind of storytelling’. Storytelling is ‘an
integ ral p a rt of her political philosophy’, ‘a m ethod she em ployed and a
w ay she described w h at she was d o in g ’ (Disch 1994: 2; cf. Disch 1993: 689;
B enhabib 1996: 112-13, 125-6; L ane 1997).
Beyond the utilization of storytelling as m ode of political explanation or
arg u m en t, in m ain tain in g th a t the concept of n arrativ e can be helpful for
political understan d in g , I also argue th a t th a t u n d erstanding m ay be
enhanced by a tte n tio n to literary n arrativ es - novels. N ot surprisingly,
literary studies have som ething to say ab o u t n a rra tiv e identity. It is claim ed
th a t ‘the history of id en tity is a good deal m ore visibly and colourfully
exhibited in fiction th a n in philosophy as such’, w ith th a t claim su b stantiated
by reference to stories and lives, exam ples w hich bring out ‘the pow er of
n a rra tiv e to determ ine our sense of w hat id en tity is and w here it is lo cated ’
(C ave 1995: 105). For exam ple, Som er argues th a t it is novels th a t best
account for aspects of L atin A m erican n atio n al identities - hence ‘fo u n d a­
tional fictions’ (Som er 1991; cf. D olan 1994; E chevarria 1985).

M o d e r n n o v e ls
W hile realist novels m ay seem the m ost accessible, w ith no a p p a re n t
problem s of n a rra tio n , w here iden tity is in question, the theorist needs to
a tte n d to m ore com plex exam ples, post-realist m odern novels, the n arra tiv e
stru ctu rin g of w hich calls into question sim plistic conceptualizations of n a r­
rative. M odern fictional n arrativ es distu rb assum ptions ab out sequentiality
and causation; they p u t closure and conventional ideas of coherence into
question; they allow for contingency and coincidence, and for the disordered
or in accu rate recall of events th a t is a feature of lived life. Such novels have
m oved on from realism in so far as th a t is associated w ith the E nlightenm ent
culture of classic liberalism and w ith a confidence about the establishm ent
of modes of thinking based on reason. In realist novels the autonom ous
individual of the liberal tra d itio n is reproduced in literary term s as the om nis­
cient a u th o r/n a rra to r figure. T h e depiction of characters w ith fixed m o tiv a­
tion moves tow ards a fixed or conventional ending and em plotm ent is tied
to clear pursuit of certain outcom es (m arriage and m oney, for instance).
Post-realist m odern novels ad o p t a m ore questioning attitu d e in respect of
form and content.
T h e techniques, stru ctu re, style and m ethods of c h aracterizatio n of the
novels read in the following chapters are such as to distinguish them from
the typical realist novel. All are ‘ex p erim en tal’ to some extent; all draw on
 Introduction 13

characteristic n arra tiv e features and techniques associated w ith m odernism ;

several have been categorized as late-m odernist; none is u n arg u ab ly post­
m odernist. T h ey have each been liable to a diversity of critical labelling.
For exam ple, the first novel exam ined, E. L. D octorow ’s The Book o f Daniel
(1971), has been variously identified as m odernist, experim ental and post­
m odernist, the la tte r by several different definitions of th a t term . T hom as
Pynchon, a u th o r of The Crying o f Lot 49 (1979), the last novel exam ined, is
variously claim ed as a m odernist (M cH ale 1987; T a n n e r 1982: 31-56); as a
postm odernist (H ite 1983: 4); either (H ilfer 1992: 99); or both (M adsen
1991: 114-15).
As Stevenson points out, w riters w rite, critics label - m odernism is a c riti­
cal construct (Stevenson 1992: 8); and so are the other categorizations,
including postm odernist. A com m ent on A uster makes the point: there are
m any definitions of postm odernism ; critics read his novels ‘through the
screen of one or an o th er of these’, as illu stratio n of the definition, b u t to do
so ‘is to severely lim it it’, given th a t ‘w hich definition one begins w ith will
m ake all the difference in how one reads his w ork’ (Barone 1995: 16). T here
is a certain confusion outside of literary studies about the ap plication of
‘po stm o d ern ’ as a label for fiction. Such labelling is highly contentious, as
indicated by the variety of labelling attach ed to the novels I refer to. Novels
com m only ch aracterized as postm odernist inherit from and share w ith
m odernism features p opularly applied solely to postm odernism such as
au th o rial self-consciousness, n arrativ e knowingness, or techniques such as
stru ctu ral disorder, non-linear sequentiality, or shifts of n arra tiv e voice.
Indeed, the relevant features are com m on to m any different novels across
the history of the genre, from Tristram Shandy onw ards (H utcheon 1989).8
S tip u latin g ‘post-realist’ or ‘ex p erim en tal’ as the relevant label(s) for the
novels I refer to avoids entering into digressionary and distracting debate on
literary sub-genres.
T h ere is also a strong case for avoiding en tanglem ent w ith postm odernism
as such w hich is m ore cen tral to the m ain arg u m en t of this study th an is the
relatively m inor m a tte r of the categorization of the novels cited in exposition
of th a t argu m en t, and in h eren t in its focus on n arrativ e identity. W hile
acknow ledging th a t the work of those C o n tin ental philosophers com m only
cited in discussions of n arra tiv e —‘the usual suspects’ on the subject, R icoeur,
L y o tard , D errid a in p a rtic u la r,9 - underpins m any of the sources th a t I do
cite, there are reasons in tern al to this study for my ap p aren t ‘failure’ to con­
front them directly, arising from why or how they pay atten tio n to n arrativ e.
For exam ple, ju st as I go on to show the lim itations of A lasdair M a c In ty re ’s
discussion of n arra tiv e (in C h ap ter 6), despite its ubiquitous citation in the
social sciences and philosophy, so sim ilarly for these philosophers. J u s t as
M a c In ty re ’s a tte n tio n to n arrativ e is contained w ithin his overall atten tio n
to the necessity of restoring the virtues, so for exam ple R ico eu r’s discussion
of n arrativ e is said to be concerned w ith questions of time and of the self and
14 Identity, narrative and politics

the other, and is ju d g ed to be directed tow ards ethical outcom es (R ain w ater
1995: 105, 107; K earn ey 1995: 182ff.), and as such not directly relevant to
this study of n arrativ e id en tity and political outcom es.
N a rra tiv e political id en tity links id en tity w ith agency: postm odernism ,
tending to decentre the subject, is therefore outside of the scope of this study
(Schrag 1997: 27; cf. Brodsky 1987: 13; C ave 1995: 109; Jo h n so n , B. 1994:
28, 29; M adsen 1991: 118-19; W hite 1991: 19; W arren 1988: 1). Inasm uch
as the late-tw en tieth -cen tu ry , ‘postm o d ern ist’ novel is ‘preoccupied w ith . . .
the d e a th of the cen tral subject’ (B radbury 1982: 16; cf. A ltieri 1994;
C ad av a et al. 1991), th a t too precludes a tte n tio n to postm odernism in a dis­
cussion of n arrative(s) in relatio n to politics. T he link betw een agency and
responsibility also entails th a t postm odern n arrativ e theory is in ap p ro p riate
for this study w here it is associated w ith ‘an aesthetic of “ deliberate
irresponsibility” ’ or ‘ “ indecisive indifference” ’ —as F o u ca u lt’s and D e rrid a ’s
respectively are said to be (K earney 1995: 184 and passim; C ritchley and
Schroeder 1998: 398). K earn ey also notes th a t ‘politically radical critics of
deco n stru ctio n ’ have long attack ed postm odernism for ‘its quietistic,
apolitical n eu trality , its in a p titu d e to lead to political intervention,
its privileging of analysis over action . . . it paralyzes, or at least cannot
au thorize, actio n ’ (K earn ey 1995: 173—90, 184 and passim).
Schrag notes th a t for L y o tard , ‘[T jh e self is simply dispersed into a p a n o r­
am a of radically diversified and changing language gam es’ (Schrag 1997:
27; cf. Brodsky 1987: 13). M ore p articu larly , for identity politics,

deconstruction has been seen by critics as underm ining, ra th e r th a n

enabling, political agency . . . w hile political activists are critiquing
deconstruction for analyzing the w orld w ithout intervening to change
it, deconstruction is w arn in g against the identity-based grounds on
w hich such an in terv en tio n has been conceptualized.
(Johnson, B. 1994: 29)

In this view, ‘D errid a renders epistem ologically groundless all identities,

even those of w om en or racial m inorities who would a tte m p t to assert
them selves oppositionally’ (Johnson, B. 1994: 28). T he link betw een agency
and responsibility then again m akes postm odern n arra tiv e theory in a p ­
p ro p riate for this study. T h e in ap p licab ility of these theorists to my discussion
is exem plified in the rem ark th a t ‘the postm odern c o u n teractan t of cele­
b ra tin g p lurality, incom pleteness, and difference m ay well be an over­
reaction th a t leaves us w ith a subject too th in to bear the responsibilities of
its n a rra tiv e involvem ents’ (Schrag 1997: 28). It would be m ore th an som e­
w h at ironic if the thinness of the self w hich is com plained of as a feature of
some political theory was replaced w ith an equally thin figure from post­
m odernism .
 Introduction 15

The u se o f n o v e ls f o r th e o r y

In an In tro d u c tio n to a collection of papers on identity, the editors say (refer­

ring to the argum ents, exam ples and counter-argum ents in th a t volum e)
th a t ‘[I]n negotiating the m yriad com plex dim ensions of our h u m an id en ti­
ties we surely need all the tools we can borrow or in v en t’ (A ppiah and G ates
1996: 6). I ‘b o rro w ’ novels.
M y case for bringing narratives into the theoretical arg u m en t of this study
is th a t political u n d erstan d in g w ould benefit from a developm ent of the idea
of n arra tiv e iden tity w hich goes beyond cu rren t theoretical usages, and such
a developm ent is possible by reference to certain m odern novels. T h ere is a
need to see the person in context, both extra-politically and across time, and
to account for ‘the dense construction of the norm al in d iv id u a l’, or the
‘ab n o rm alities’ of the o rd in ary self (Connolly 1991; cf. T ay lo r 1989: 18).
Novels allow this, presenting ‘the aw kw ard couplings of experience non-
analytically, holistically, and . . . in all their cu ltu ral and historical p a rtic u ­
la rity ’ (Cave 1995: 118-19).
Some forms of theorizing depersonalize the political, or tend tow ards the
presen tatio n o f ‘th in ’ political actors: ‘a substantive self, thick w ith p a rtic u la r
traits, is progressively shorn of characteristics once taken to be essential to
its id e n tity ’ w ith ‘features [th at] are seen to be arb itrarily given . . . relegated
from presum ed constituents to m ere attrib u tes of the self’ (Sandel 1982: 93).
T heo ry frequently fails to m ake the political agent concrete: for exam ple,
H a rp h a m says of C harles A ltieri’s Subjective Agency th a t it is ‘[R ]elentlessly
theoretical . . . and even som ew hat phobic of exam ples (in his book there are
lots of first, second and th ird persons, b u t very few people)’; and th a t by
‘choosing to talk ab o u t agency ra th e r th a n agents . . . he seems even m ore
“ in h u m a n ” th an his presum ptive an tag o n ists’ (H arp h am 1995: 12, 13). O r,
ch a ra c ter is treated as a m a tte r of ‘the variables an observer m ust assess
w hen trying to u n d erstan d or predict an y o n e’s beh av io u r’ (R osenau and
B redem eir 1993: 343, 347) . A tu rn to narratives allows for the de-personalized
persons of theory, the bearers of a representative or typified identity, to be
understood as separate persons —characters —w ith singular sets of c h a ra c te r­
istics, including b u t not confined to their political context an d /o r group id en ­
tity. Novels deal w ith persons not ju st as given agents, and not in isolation,
bu t in com plex interrelationships, situated in a world.
Novels can be read as studies not only of political or other real-life situ a­
tions, but of the n a rra tiv e self, and the construction of n a rrativ e identity.
Novels provide m ore th a n m erely illu stratio n or example: literary narratives
raise distinctive technical questions for theoretical analysis. T h e process of
narra tiv e construction is readily observable in m odern novels; novels are
prim e instances of the developm ent of c h aracter, and m any m odern novels
‘discuss’, im plicitly or, increasingly, explicitly the idea of authorship. Novels
also suggest, by w ay of content and structure, style and techniques, the
References
Acklesberg, M.A. (1993) ‘Identity politics, political identities: reclaiming politics’, unpublished
paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association,
Washington DC.
Alford, C.F. (1991) The Self in Social Theory: a Psychoanalytic Account of Its Construction in
Plato, Hobbes, Locke, Rawls and Rousseau, New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University
Press.
Allen, W. (1964) Tradition and Dream: the English and American Novel from the Twenties to
Our Time, London: Phoenix House.
Altieri, C. (1994) Subjective Agency: a Theory of First-person Expressivity and Its Social
Implications, Oxford: Blackwell.
Amis, M. (1995) The Information, London: Flamingo.
Anderson, J. (1996) ‘The personal lives of strong evaluators: identity, pluralism, and ontology
in Charles Taylor’s value theory’, Constellations 3(1): 17–37.
Appiah, K.A. (1995), ‘African identities’ in L. Nicholson and S. Seidman (eds) Social
Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Appiah, K.A. (1997) ‘The multiculturalist misunderstanding’, New York Review of Books, 9
October: 30–36.
Appiah, K.A. and Gates Jnr, H.L. (eds) (1996) Identities, Chicago, IL and London: University
of Chicago Press.
Appiah, K.A. and Gutmann, A. (1998) Colour Conscious: the Political Morality of Race,
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Arblaster, A. (1984) The Rise and Decline of Westera Liberalism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Arendt, H. (1958) The Human Condition, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Aronowitz, S. (1995) ‘Reflections on identity’ in J. Rajchman (ed.) The Identity in Question,
New York: Routledge.
Ashenden, S. (1996) ‘At the boundaries of the political: feminism beyond identity politics?’ in
J. Lovenduski and J. Stanyer (eds) Contemporary Political Studies, vol. 3, Belfast: Political
Studies Association, 1853–1862.
Auster, P. (1992) Leviathan, New York: Viking Penguin.
Avinieri, S. and de-Shalit, A. (1992) ‘Introduction’ in S. Avinieri and A. de-Shalit (eds)
Communitarianism and Individualism, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Avnon, D. and de-Shalit, A. (eds) (1998) Liberalism and Its Practice, London: Routledge.
Bainbridge, Beryl (1998) Master Georgie, London: Abacus.
Baldick, C. (1990) The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Ball, T. (1995) Reappraising Political Theory: Revisionist Studies in the History of Political
Thought, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Banville, J. (1997) ‘A life elsewhere’ [review of J.M. Coetzee , Boyhood: Scenes from
Provincial Life], New York Review of Books, November 20: 24–26.
Barber, B. (1984) Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Barber, B. (1988) The Conquest of Politics: Liberal Theory in Democratic Times, Princeton,
NJ: Princeton University Press.
Barone, D. (1995) ‘Introduction: Paul Auster and the postmodern American novel’ in D.
Barone (ed.) Beyond the Red Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster, Philadelphia, PA: University
of Pennsylvania Press.
Barron, A. (1993) ‘The illusions of the “I”: citizenship and the politics of identity’ in Alan Norrie
(ed.) Closure and Critique: New Directions in Legal Theory, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Barth, J. (1984) The Friday Book: Essays and Other Nonfiction, New York: G.H. Putman.
Barry, B. (ed.) (1986) ‘Symposium on Derek Parfit’s Reasons and Persons ’, Ethics 96: 4.
Baumann, Z. (1993) Postmodern Ethics, Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Beiner, R. (1983) Political Judgment, London: Methuen.
Bell, M. (1994) ‘How primordial is narrative?’ in C. Nash (ed.) Narrative in Culture: the Uses
of Storytelling in the Sciences, Philosophy and Literature, London: Routledge.
Bellamy, R. (1992) Liberalism and Modern Society, Oxford: Polity Press.
Benhabib, S. (1992) Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism in
Contemporary Ethics, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Benhabib, S. (1996) The Reluctant Modernism of Hannah Arendt, Thousand Oaks,
CA/London/New Delhi: Sage.
Bennett, W.L. (1998) ‘The uncivic culture: communication, identity, and the rise of lifestyle
politics’, PS: Political Science and Politics 31 (4): 741–761.
Berman, M. (1992) ‘Why modernism still matters’ in S. Lash and J. Friedman (eds) Modernity
and Identity, Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Bernstein, J.M. (1994) ‘Self-knowledge as praxis: narrative and narration in psychoanalysis’
in C. Nash (ed.) Narrative in Culture: the Uses of Storytelling in the Sciences, Philosophy and
Literature, London: Routledge.
Bloom, H. (1994) ‘Operation Roth’, New York Review of Books, 22 April: 45–48.
Booth, J. and Rosamond, B. (1996) ‘Who on earth are “we”? globalisation, localisation and
identity’ in B. Axford and G. Browning (eds) Modernism/Postmodernity: from the Personal to
the Global, Oxford: Thamesman.
Booth, W. (1991) [1983] The Rhetoric of Fiction, 2nd edition, London: Penguin.
Bordo, Susan (1993) Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Bradbrook, F. (1964) ‘Virginia Woolf: the theory and practice of fiction’ in B. Ford (ed.) The
Modern Age, vol. 7 of the Pelican Guide to English Literature, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Bradbury, M. (1982) Saul Bellow, London and New York: Methuen.
Bradbury, M. and McFarlane, J. (1976) ‘The name and nature of modernism’ in M. Bradbury
and J. McFarlane (eds) Modernism 1890–1930, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Brettschneider, M. (1996) Cornerstones of Peace: Jewish Identity Politics and Democratic
Theory, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Bridges, T. (1994) The Culture of Citizenship: Inventing Postmodern Civic Culture, Albany,
NY: State University of New York Press.
Brodsky, C.J. (1987) The Imposition of Form: Studies in Narrative Representation and
Knowledge, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Brooks, P. (1984) Reading For the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative, New York: Harvard
University Press.
Brown, W. (1988) Manhood and Politics: A Feminist Reading in Political Theory, Totowa, NJ:
Rowman & Littlefield.
Brown, W. (1993) ‘Wounded attachments’, Political Theory 21 (3): 390–410.
Brown, W. (1995) States of Injury, Power and Freedom in Late Modernity, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Bruckner, P. (1995) ‘Paul Auster, or the heir intestate’ in D. Barone (ed.) Beyond the Red
Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Bruner, J. (1987) ‘Life as narrative’ Social Research, 54(1): 11–32.
Bruner, J. (1991) ‘The narrative construction of reality’, Critical Inquiry, 18: 13–21.
Bruner, J. (1996) The Culture of Education, Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University
Press.
Buckler, S. (1996) ‘Hamlet and Hannah Arendt’s theory of action’, in J. Lovenduski and J.
Stanyer (eds) Contemporary Political Studies vol. 3, Belfast: Political Studies Association,
1566–1576.
Buckler, S. (1998) ‘Literature and politics as vocations: the case of the Spanish Civil War’,
unpublished paper presented at the Political Studies Association Annual Conference,
University of Keele.
Buj, L. (1996) ‘Croatia constructed’, The European Legacy, 1(2): 415–420.
Bürger, P. (1992) ‘The disappearance of meaning: essay at a postmodern reading of Michel
Tournier, Botho Strauss and Peter Handke’ in S. Lash and J. Friedman (eds) Modernity and
Identity, Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Burns, T. (2000), ‘What is politics? Robinson Crusoe, deep ecology and Immanuel Kant ’,
Politics 20(2): 93–98.
Buruma, I. (1997) ‘Selling out Hong Kong’, New York Review of Books, August 14: 26–27.
Buruma, I. (1998) ‘The Afterlife of Anne Frank’, New York Review of Books, 19 February:
4–8.
Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, New York:
Routledge.
Butler, J. (1995) in J. Rajchman (ed.) The Identity in Question, London and New York:
Routledge.
Cadava, E. , Connor, P. and Nancy, J. -L. (eds) (1991) Who Comes after the Subject?, New
York: Routledge.
Calhoun, C. (ed.) (1994) Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, Oxford: Blackwell.
Calvino, I. (1996) Six Memos for the Next Millennium, London: Vintage.
Canovan, M. (1977) The Political Thought of Hannah Arendt, London: Methuen.
Carr, D. (1986) Time, Narrative and History, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Cave, T. (1995) ‘Fictional identities’ in H. Harris (ed.) Identity: Essays Based on Herbert
Spencer Lectures Given in the University of Oxford, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Chabot, D. (1993) ‘In defense of “moderate” relativism and “skeptical” citizenship’,
unpublished paper presented at the American Political Science Association Meeting,
Washington DC.
Chatman, S. (1978) Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film, Ithaca, NY,
and London: Cornell University Press.
Chénetier, M. (1995) ‘Paul Auster’s pseudonymous world’ in D. Barone (ed.) Beyond the Red
Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Christman, J. (ed.) (1989) The Inner Citadel: Essays on Individual Autonomy, New York:
Oxford University Press.
Cohan, S. and Shires, L.M. (1988) Telling Stories: A Theoretical Analysis of Narrative Fiction,
New York: Routledge.
Connolly, W. (1987) Politics and Ambiguity, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Connolly, W. (1988) Political Theory and Modernity, Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
Connolly, W. (1991) Identity\Difference: Democratic Negotiations of Political Paradox, Ithaca,
NY, and London: Cornell University Press.
Constellations (1966), 3(1), ‘Identity and the Politics of Recognition’ section.
Cook, T.E. (1997) ‘The making of identities: self, dyad, subnational group, nation and
transnation’, unpublished paper presented at the American Political Science Association
Annual Meeting, Washington DC.
Cooke, M. (1997) ‘Authenticity and autonomy: Taylor, Habermas, and the politics of
recognition’, Political Theory 25(2): 258–288.
Cooper, B. (1990) ‘New criteria for an “abnormal mutation”? an evaluation of Gordimer’s A
Sport of Nature ’ in M. Trump (ed.) Rendering Things Visible: Essays on South African
Literary Culture, Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.
Creeley, R. (1994) ‘Austerities’, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Special Issue Paul Auster :
Danilo Kis , 16(1): 35–39.
Critchley, S. and Schroeder, W.R. (eds) (1998) A Companion to Continental Philosophy,
Oxford: Blackwell.
Crites, S. (1986) ‘Storytime: recollecting the past and projecting the future’ in T.R. Sarbin
(ed.) Narrative Psychology: the Storied Nature of Human Conduct, New York: Praeger.
Crittenden, J. (1992) Beyond Individualism: Reconstituting the Liberal Self, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Dean, J. (1996) Solidarity of Strangers: Feminism after Identity Politics, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press.
Di Stefano, C. (1990) ‘Dilemmas of difference’ in L. Nicholson (ed.)
Feminism/Postmodernism, New York: Routledge.
Di Stefano, C. (1993) ‘Autonomy and abjection, or, the haunting at Koenigsberg’, unpublished
paper presented at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington
DC.
Didion, J. (1991) ‘New York: sentimental journeys’, The New York Review of Books, 17
January: 45–56.
Dienstag, J.F. (1997) Dancing in Chains: Narrative and Memory in Political Theory, Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Digeser, P. (1995) Our Politics, Our Selves? Liberalism, Identity and Harm, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Disch, L. (1993) ‘More truth than fact: storytelling as critical understanding in the writings of
Hannah Arendt’, Political Theory 21 (4): 665–694.
Disch, L. (1994) Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Philosophy, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell
University Press.
Doctorow, E.L. (1982) [1971] The Book of Daniel, London: Picador.
Dolan, F. (1994) Allegories of America: Narratives – Metaphysics – Politics, Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Dolan, F.M. (1995) ‘Political action and the unconscious: Arendt and Lacan on decentring the
subject’, Political Theory 23(20): 330–352.
Dunn, John (1980) Political Obligation in its Historical Context: Essays in Political Theory,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dunn, John (1985) Rethinking Modern Political Theory: Essays 1979–83, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Dunn, John (1990) Interpreting Political Responsibility: Essays 1981–1989, Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Dupriez, B. (1991) A Dictionary of Literary Devices, translated and adapted by Albert W.
Halsall , New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Echevarria, R.G. (1985) The Voice of the Masters: Writing and Authority in Modern Latin
American Literature, Austin, TX: University of Texas Press.
Edwards, L. (1977) ‘War and roses: the politics of Mrs Dalloway ’ in A. Diamond and L.R.
Edwards (eds) The Authority of Experience: Essays in Feminist Criticism, Amherst, MA:
University of Massachusetts Press.
Elshtain, J.B. (1987) Women and War, New York: Basic Books.
Ettin, A.V. (1992) Betrayals of the Body Politic: the Literary Commitments of Nadine
Gordimer, Charlottesville, VA and London: University Press of Virginia.
Euben, J.P. (1990) The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Ezrahi, Y. (1995) ‘The theatrics and mechanics of action: the theater and the machine as
political metaphors’, Social Research 62(2): 299–322.
Feibleman, J.K. (1968) ‘Disorder’ in P.G. Kunz (ed.) The Concept of Order, Seattle, WA:
University of Washington Press.
Femia, J. (1988) ‘An historicist critique of “revisionist” methods for studying the history of
ideas’ in J. Tully (ed.) Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics, Cambridge:
Polity Press.
Fierlbeck, K. (1996) ‘The ambivalent potential of cultural identity’, Canadian Journal Of
Political Science 29(1): 3–22.
Fish, S. (1995) Professional Correctness: Literary Studies and Political Change, Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Fisher, W.R. (1989) Human Communication as Narration: Toward a Philosophy of Reason,
Value and Action, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press.
Fishman, E.M. (1989) Likely Stories: Essays on Political Philosophy and Contemporary
American Literature, Gainesville: University of Florida Press.
Flathman, R.E. (1992) Willful Liberalism: Voluntarism and Individuality in Political Theory and
Practice, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press.
Flax, J. (1994) ‘Is Enlightenment emancipatory?’ in J. Flax Disputed Subjects: Essays on
Psychoanalysis, Politics and Philosophy, London: Routledge.
Fowler, D. (1992) Understanding E.L. Doctorow, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina
Press.
Fowler, R. (ed.) (1973) A Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms, London: Routledge & Kegan
Paul.
Friedl, H. (1988) ‘Power and degradation: patterns of historical process in the novels of E.L.
Doctorow’ in Herwig Friedl and D. Schulz (eds) E.L. Doctorow, a Democracy of Perception: a
Symposium with and on E.L. Doctorow, Essen: Verlag die Blaue Eule.
Furman, A. (1995) ‘A new “other” emerges in American Jewish literature’, Contemporary
Literature 36(4): 633–653.
Gallie, W.B. (1964) Philosophy and the Historical Understanding, London: Ghatto & Windus.
Gath, D. (1989) ‘What a lark! What a plunge! Fiction as self-evasion in Mrs Dalloway ’,
Modern Language Review 84 (1): 18–25.
Giddens, A. (1991) Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age,
Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gill, E. (1986) ‘Goods, virtues and the constitution of the self’ in A.J. Damico (ed.) Liberals
and Liberalism, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Gill, E. (1992) ‘Autonomy and the encumbered self’, unpublished paper presented at the
American Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Chicago.
Girgus, S. (1988) ‘In his own voice: E.L. Doctorow’s The Book of Daniel ’ in Herwig Friedl and
D. Schulz (eds) E.L. Doctorow, a Democracy of Perception: a Symposium with and on E.L.
Doctorow, Essen: Verlag die Blaue Eule.
Goldberg, S.L. (1993) Agents and Lives: Moral Thinking in Literature, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Gordimer, N. (1987) A Sport of Nature, London: Jonathan Cape.
Gordimer, N. (1988) The Essential Gesture: Writing, Politics and Places, edited and with an
introduction by Stephen Clingman , New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Gray, J. (1989) Liberalisms: Essays in Political Philosophy, London: Routledge.
Gray, J. (1993) Postliberalism: Studies in Political Thought, New York and London:
Routledge.
Gray, M. (1992) A Dictionary of Literary Terms, Beirut: Longman, York Press.
Griffith, E.E.H. , Blue, H.C. and Harris, H.W. (eds) (1995) Racial and Ethnic Identity:
Psychological Development and Creative Expression, New York: Routledge.
Guaraldo, O. (1998) ‘Identity and storytelling’ [review of Adriana Cavarero , Tu Che Mi
Guardi, Tu Che Mi Racconti], Finnish Year Book of Political Thought, 2: 261–267.
Gubar, S. (1997) Racechanges: White Skin, Black Face in American Culture, New York:
Oxford University Press.
Gutmann, A. (ed.) (1994 a) Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition/Charles
Taylor et al., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Gutmann, A. (ed.) (1994 b) ‘Introduction’ in A. Gutmann (ed.) Multiculturalism: Examining the
Politics of Recognition/Charles Taylor et al., Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Habermas, J. (1994) ‘Struggles for recognition in the democratic constitutional state’ in A.
Gutmann (ed.) (1994) Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition/Charles Taylor
et al, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Hagen, W.M. (1995) ‘ Operation Shylock: a confession’, World Literature Today 69(1):
142–163.
Haight, G. (ed.) (1956) The George Eliot Letters, London: Oxford University Press.
Hampshire, S. (1992) [1989] Innocence and Experience, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Hampshire, S. (1993) ‘Liberalism: the new twist’ [review of John Rawls’s Political Liberalism]
New York Review of Books, August 12: 43–48.
Hanne, M. (1994) The Power of the Story, Oxford: Berghahn Books.
Hardwick, E. (1997) ‘Paradise Lost’ [review of P. Roth’s American Pastoral], New York
Review of Books, June 12: 12–14.
Hardy, B. (1987) The Collected Essays of Barbara Hardy Volume 1, Narrators and Novelists,
Brighton: Harvester Press.
Harpham, G.G. (1995) ‘Who’s who’ [review of C. Altieri’s Subjective Agency], London Review
of Books, 20 April: 12–14.
Harré, R. (1998) The Singular Self: An Introduction to the Psychology of Personhood,
London/Thousand Oaks, CA/New Delhi: Sage.
Harris, H. (ed.) (1995) Identity: Essays Based on Herbert Spencer Lectures Given in the
University of Oxford, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Harrison, B. (1991) Inconvenient Fictions: Literature and the Limits of Theory, New Haven,
CT, and London: Yale University Press.
Harrison, R. (ed.) (1979) Rational Action: Studies in Philosophy and Social Science,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hauerwas, S. and Burrell, D. (1989) ‘From system to story: an alternative pattern for
rationality in ethics’ in S. Hauerwas and L.G. Jones (eds) Why Narrative? Readings in
Narrative Theology, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Hauerwas, S. and Jones, L.G. (eds) (1989) Why Narrative? Readings in Narrative Theology,
Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
Hawthorn, J. (1992) A Concise Glossary of Contemporary Literary Theory, London: Edward
Arnold.
Hekman, S. (ed.) (1999) Feminism, Identity and Difference, London: Frank Cass.
Held, D. (ed.) (1991) Political Theory Today, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Herzog, A. (1999) ‘The poetic nature of political disclosure: Hannah Arendt’s storytelling’
unpublished paper presented at the ECPR Workshop ‘The Political Uses of Narrative’,
Mannheim, Germany.
Hilfer, T. (1992) American Fiction since 1940, London and New York: Longman.
Hite, M. (1983) Ideas of Order in the Novels of Thomas Pynchon, Columbus: Ohio State
University Press.
Hoffmann-Axthelm, D. (1992) ‘Identity and reality: the end of the philosophical immigration
officer’ in S. Lash and J. Friedman (eds) Modernity and Identity, Oxford UK and Cambridge,
MA: Blackwell.
Holloway, J. (1963) ‘The literary scene’ in B. Ford (ed.) The Modern Age, vol. 7 of the Pelican
Guide to English Literature, 2nd edition, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Honig, B. (1988) ‘Arendt, identity and difference’, Political Theory 16(1): 86–90.
Horne, P. (1992) ‘It’s just a book’, London Review of Books, 17 December: 20–21.
Horton, J. (1996) ‘Life, literature and ethical theory: Martha Nussbaum on the role of the
literary imagination in ethical thought’ in J. Horton , and A. Baumeister (eds) Literature and
the Political Imagination, London and New York: Routledge.
Horton, J. and Baumeister, A. (1996) ‘Literature, philosophy and political theory’ in J. Horton ,
and A. Baumeister (eds) Literature and the Political Imagination, London and New York:
Routledge.
Hospers, J. (1967) An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis, 2nd edition, London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul.
Hutcheon, L. (1988) A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction, London and New
York: Routledge.
Hutcheon, L. (1989) The Politics of Postmodernism, London and New York: Routledge.
Hyvärinen, M. (1992) ‘Narrative analysis and political autobiography’, Journal of Political
Science 20: 51–70.
Ingle, S. (1979) Socialist Thought in Imaginative Literature, London: Macmillan.
Jackson, B.E. (1994) ‘Legal theories and legal discourse’ in C. Nash (ed.) Narrative in
Culture: the Uses of Storytelling in the Sciences, Philosophy and Literature, London:
Routledge.
Jackson, S.J. (1996) ‘A disjunctural ethnoscape: Ben Johnson and the Canadian crisis of
racial and national identity’, unpublished paper presented at the International Crossroads in
Cultural Studies Conference, Tampere, Finland.
Jencks, C. (1987) Post-modernism: the New Classicism in Art and Architecture, New York:
Rizzoli International Publications.
Johnson, B. (1994) The Wake of Destruction, London: Blackwell.
Johnson, P. (1988) Politics, Innocence, and the Limits of Goodness, London: Routledge.
Johnson, P. (1996) ‘Three theories of narrative gaps’ in J. Lovenduski and J. Stanyer (eds)
Contemporary Political Studies, vol. 3, Belfast: Political Studies Association, 1352–1357.
Johnston, D. (1994) The Idea of a Liberal Theory, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jones, E.C. (1992) ‘Figuring Woolf’, Modern Fiction Studies 38(1): 1–14.
Journal of Arts Management, Law and Society, The (1995) ‘Art and the politics of identity’,
Special Issue, 25(1).
Kaplan, T.J. (1986) ‘The narrative structure of policy analysis’, Journal of Policy Analysis and
Management 5: 4.
Kariel, H. (1992) [review of Strong, The Idea of Political Theory] Political Theory 20(2):
345–348.
Kateb, G. (1982) Hannah Arendt: Politics, Conscience, Evil, Towota, NJ: Rowman &
Allanheld.
Kauvar, E.M. (1993) ‘An interview with Cynthia Ozick’, Contemporary Literature 34(3):
359–394.
Kauvar, E.M. (1995) ‘The doubly reflected communication: Philip Roth’s “Autobiographies”’,
Contemporary Literature 36(3): 412–446.
Kearney, R. (1995) ‘Narrative imagination: between ethics and poetics’, Philosophy and
Social Criticism 21(5/6): 173–190.
Kearney, R. (1998) Poetics of Imagination, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Kellner, D. (1995) Media Culture: Cultural Studies, Identity and Politics Between the Modern
and the Postmodern, London: Routledge.
Kerby, A. (1991) Narrative and the Self, Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Kermode, F. (1967) The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction, New York:
Oxford University Press.
King, R. (1988) ‘Between simultaneity and sequence’ in Herwig Friedl and DieterSchulz (eds)
E.L. Doctorow, A Democracy of Perception: a Symposium with and on E.L. Doctorow, Essen:
Verlag die Blaue Eule.
Kinzer, S. (1992) ‘Self-portrait of a revolutionary’ [review of Tomas Borge , The Patient
Impatience: From Boyhood to Guerrilla: a Personal Narrative of Nicaragua’s Struggle for
Independence], New York Review of Books, 3 December: 17–18.
Kirkegaard, P. (1993) ‘Cities, signs and meanings in Walter Benjamin and Paul Auster: or,
never sure of any of it’, Orbis Litterarum, International Review of Literary Studies,
Copenhagen 48(2–3): 161–179.
Kramer, L. (1989) ‘Literature, criticism, and historical imagination: the literary challenge of
Hayden White and Dominic LaCapra’ in L. Hunt (ed.) The New Cultural History: Essays,
Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Kundera, M. (1988) The Art of the Novel, trans. Linda Asher , New York: Harper & Row.
Kuntz, P.G. (ed.) The Concept of Order, Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press [for
Grinnell College].
Kymlicka, W. (1990) Contemporary Political Philosophy: an Introduction, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Laclau, E. (1995) ‘Universalism, particularism and the question of identity’ in J. Rajchman
(ed.) The Identity in Question, New York: Routledge.
Laffan, B. (1996) ‘The politics of identity and political order in Europe’, Journal of Common
Market Studies 34(1): 81–102.
Lamarque, P. and Olsen, S.H. (1994) Truth, Fiction and Literature: a Philosophical
Perspective, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Lane, A. (1997) ‘Hannah Arendt: theorist of distinction(s)’, Political Theory 25(1): 137–159.
Leavis, F.R. (1972) Nor Shall My Sword: Discourses on Pluralism, Compassion and Social
Hope, London: Chatto & Windus.
Leftwich, A. (ed.) (1990) New Developments in Political Science: an International Review of
Achievements and Prospects, Aldershot: Edward Elgar.
Leitch, T.M. (1986) What Stories Are: Narrative Theory and Interpretation, University Park,
PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Levine, P. (1985) E.L. Doctorow, London and New York: Methuen.
Levine, P. (1988) ‘E.L. Doctorow: the Writer as Survivor’ in Herwig Friedl and D. Schulz (eds)
E.L. Doctorow, A Democracy of Perception: a Symposium with and on E.L. Doctorow, Essen:
Verlag die Blaue Eule.
Lieblich, A. and Josselon, R. (eds) (1994) Exploring Identity and Gender. The Narrative Study
of Lives, vol. 2, London: Sage.
Linde, C. (1993) Life Stories: the Creation of Coherence, New York: Oxford University Press.
Livingston, P. (1991) Literature and Rationality: Ideas of Agency in Theory and Fiction,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lloyd, G. (1993) Being in Time: Selves and Narrations in Philosophy and Literature, London:
Routledge.
Lodge, D. (1977) The Modes of Modern Writing: Metaphor, Metonymy and the Typology of
Modern Literature, London: Edward Arnold.
Lodge, D. (1992) The Art of Fiction Illustrated from Classic and Modern Texts, London:
Penguin.
Lorraine, T. (1990) Gender, Identity, and the Production of Meaning, Boulder, CO: Westview.
Love, N. (1993) ‘Am I that performance?’ unpublished paper presented at the American
Political Science Association Annual Meeting, Washington DC.
McCormick, P.J. (1988) Fictions, Philosophies and the Problems of Poetics, Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Macdonald, S. (1994) ‘Identity complexes in Western Europe: social anthropological
perspectives’, in S. Macdonald (ed.) Inside European Identities, Providence, RI: Berg.
McHale, B. (1987) Postmodern Fiction, London: Routledge.
McFarlane, J. (1976) ‘The mind of modernism’ in M. Bradbury and J. McFarlane (eds)
Modernism 1890–1930, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
MacIntyre, A. (1985) After Virtue: a Study in Moral Theory 2nd edition, London: Duckworth.
MacIntyre, A. (1988) Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press.
Madsen, D.L. (1991) The Postmodernist Allegories of Thomas Pynchon, Leicester and
London: Leicester University Press.
Mantel, H. (1996) ‘Murder and memory’, New York Review of Books, 19 December: 4–9.
Martin, D.-C. (1995) ‘The choices of identity’, Social Identities i(1): 5–20.
Martin, W. (1986) Recent Theories of Narrative, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Mendus, S. (1995) ‘Human rights in political theory’, Political Studies, XLIII: 10–24.
Mendus, S. (1996) ‘What of soul was left, I wonder? The narrative self in political philosophy’
in J. Horton , and A. Baumeister , (eds) Literature and the Political Imagination, London and
New York: Routledge.
Miller, D. (1990) ‘The resurgence of political theory’, Political Studies 38: 421–437.
Miller, D. (1995) ‘Reflections on British national identity’, New Community 21 (2): 153–156.
Miller, D.A. (1981) Narrative and Its Discontents: Problems of Closure in the Traditional
Novel, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Mink, L. (1981) ‘Everyman his own annalist’ in T.W.J. Mitchell (ed.) On Narrative, Chicago, IL:
The University of Chicago Press.
Mitchell, T.W.J. (1981) ‘Foreword’ in T.W.J. Mitchell (ed.) On Narrative, Chicago, IL: The
University of Chicago Press.
Morrison, Toni (1982) Sula, London: Triad.
Morson, G.S. (1998) ‘Contingency and poetics’, Philosophy and Literature 22: 286–308.
Mouffe, C. (1995 a) ‘Democratic politics and the question of identity’ in J. Rajchman (ed.) The
Identity in Question, New York: Routledge.
Mouffe, C. (1995 b) ‘Feminism, citizenship and radical democratic politics’ in L. Nicholson and
S. Seidman (eds) Social Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Mulhall, S. and Swift, A. (1996) Liberals and Communitarians; an Introduction, 2nd edition,
Oxford: Blackwell.
Nash, C. (1994 a) ‘Introduction’ in C. Nash (ed.) Narrative in Culture: the Uses of Storytelling
in the Sciences, Philosophy and Literature, London: Routledge.
Nash, C. (1994 b) ‘Slaughtering the subject: literature’s assault on narrative’ in C. Nash (ed.)
Narrative in Culture: the Uses of Storytelling in the Sciences, Philosophy and Literature,
London: Routledge.
Newton, A.Z. (1995) Narrative Ethics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
New Yorker (1992) Review of Leviathan, 9 November.
Nicholson, L. (1995) ‘Interpreting gender’ in L. Nicholson and S. Seidman (eds) Social
Postmodernism: Beyond Identity Politics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Norton, A. (1988) Reflections on Political Identity, Baltimore, MD, and London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Nussbaum, M.C. (1990) Love’s Knowledge: Essays on Philosophy and Literature, New York:
Oxford University Press.
O’Donnell, P. (1992) Echo Chambers: Figuring Voice in Modern Narrative, Iowa City, IA:
University of Iowa Press.
O’Sullivan, N. (1997) ‘Difference and the concept of the political in contemporary political
philosophy’, Political Studies 45: 739–754.
Oates, J.C. (1993) ‘Introduction’ in J.C. Oates (ed.) The Oxford Book of American Short
Stories, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Osteen, M. (1994) ‘Phantoms of liberty: the secret lives of Leviathan ’, Review of
Contemporary Fiction 14(1): 87–91.
Parekh, B. (1992) ‘The cultural particularity of liberal democracy’, Political Studies, XL:
160–175.
Parekh, B. (1995 a) ‘Introduction’, New Community 21 (2): 147–151.
Parekh, B. (1995 b) ‘The concept of national identity’, New Community 21(2): 255–268.
Parker, D. (1994) Ethics, Theory and the Novel, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Pecora, V.P. (1989) Self and Form in Modern Narrative, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins
University Press.
Pitkin, H. (1981) ‘Justice: on relating private and public’, Political Theory 19(3): 327–352.
Plant, R. (1991) Modern Political Thought, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Pocock, J.B. (1975) The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic
Republican Tradition, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Polonoff, D. (1982) ‘Self-deception’, Social Research 54: 46–53.
Poole, R. (1996) ‘On being a person’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74(1): 38–56.
Pynchon, T. (1996) [1979] The Crying of Lot 49, London: Picador.
Rajchman, J. (1995) ‘Introduction’ in J. Rajchman (ed.) The Identity in Question, New York:
Routledge.
Rainwater, M. (1995) ‘Refiguring Ricoeur: narrative force and communicative ethics’,
Philosophy and Social Criticism 21 (5/6): 99–110.
Rancière, J. (1995) ‘Politics, identification and subjectivisation’ in J. Rajchman (ed.) The
Identity in Question, New York: Routledge.
Randall, W.L. (1995) The Stories We Are: an Essay on Self-Creation, Toronto: University of
Toronto Press.
Rawls, J. (1972) A Theory of Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Raz, J. (1986) The Morality of Freedom, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Rex, J. (1995) ‘Ethnic identity and the nation state: the political sociology of multicultural
societies’, Social Identities 1(1): 21–27.
Ricoeur, P. (1991) ‘Narrative identity’ in D. Wood (ed.) On Paul Ricoeur: Narrative and
Interpretation, London: Routledge.
Roe, E. (1994) Narrative Policy Analysis: Theory and Practice, Durham, NC. and London:
Duke University Press.
Rorty, A.O. (ed.) (1976) The Identity of Persons, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Rorty, R. (1989) Contingency, Irony and Solidarity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Rosamond, B. and Booth, J. (1995) ‘The globalisation of the state’ in J. Lovenduski and J.
Stanyer (eds) Contemporary Political Studies, vol. 2, Belfast: Political Studies Association,
924–931.
Rose, J. (1996) States of Fantasy, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Rosenau, P.V. and Bredemeir, H.C. (1993) ‘Modern and postmodern conceptions of social
order’, Social Research 60(2): 341–349.
Rosenblum, N. (1987) Another Liberalism: Romanticism and the Reconstruction of Liberal
Thought, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ross, A. (1973) ‘Narrative’, in R. Fowler (ed.) Dictionary of Modern Critical Terms, London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Roth, P. (1989) The Facts: a Novelist’s Autobiography, London: Jonathan Cape.
Roth, P. (1993) ‘A bit of Jewish mischief’, New York Times Book Review 7 March: 1, 20.
Roth, P. (1994) [1993] Operation Shylock: A Confession, London: Vintage.
Rycroft, C. (1968) A Critical Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Said, E. (1984) ‘Permission to narrate’, London Review of Books, 29 February: 247–294.
Sakwa, R. (1996) ‘Russian studies: the fractured mirror’, Politics 16(3): 175–186.
Saltzman, A. (1995) ‘ Leviathan: post hoc harmonies’ in D. Barone (ed.) Beyond the Red
Notebook: Essays on Paul Auster, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Sandel, M.J. (1982) Liberalism and the Limits of Justice, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Schaar, J. (1981) Legitimacy in the Modern State, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books.
Schechtman, M. (1996) The Constitution of Selves, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell
University Press.
Scholes, R. (1981) ‘Language, narrative, and anti-narrative’ in T.W.J. Mitchell (ed.) On
Narrative, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Schrag, C.O. (1997) The Self after Postmodernity, New Haven, CT, and London: Yale
University Press.
Schulz, D. (1988) ‘E.L. Doctorow’s America; an introduction to his fiction’ in Herwig Friedl and
Dieter Schulz (eds) E.L. Doctorow, a Democracy of Perception: a Symposium with and on
E.L. Doctorow, Essen: Verlag die Blaue Eule.
Schwab, G. (1994) Subjects without Selves: Transitional Texts in Modern Fiction, Cambridge,
MA and London: Harvard University Press.
Schweizer, H. (1990) ‘Introduction’ in F. Kermode (ed.) Poetry, Narrative, History, Oxford:
Basil Blackwell.
Scott, J. (1995) ‘Multiculturalism and the politics of identity’ in J. Rajchman (ed.) The Identity
in Question, New York: Routledge.
Shanley, M.L. and Pateman, C. (eds) (1991) Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory,
University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Shapiro, I. (1990) Political Criticism, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Shapiro, M.J. (1988) The Politics of Representation: Writing Practices in Biography,
Photography and Policy Analysis, Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Shklar, J. (1991) [review of Taylor’s Sources of the Self] Political Theory 19(1): 105–109.
Siegle, R. (1986) The Politics of Reflexivity: Narrative and the Constitutive Poetics of Culture,
Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
Skinner, Quentin (1985) ‘Introduction’ in Q. Skinner (ed.) The Return of Grand Theory in the
Human Sciences, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Skinner, Quentin (1991) ‘Who are “we”? Ambiguities of the modern self’, Inquiry 34(2):
133–153.
Sluga, G. (1996) ‘Inventing Trieste: history, anti-history and nation’, The European Legacy
1(1): 25–30.
Smith, A.D. (1995) ‘The formation of national identity’ in H. Harris (ed.) Identity: Essays
Based on Herbert Spencer Lectures Given in the University of Oxford, Oxford: Clarendon
Press.
Smyth, E.J. (ed.) (1991) Postmodernism and Contemporary Fiction, London: Batsford.
Somer, D. (1991) Foundational Fictions: the National Romances of Latin America, Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
Somers, M. (1994) ‘The narrative construction of identity: a relational and network approach’,
Theory and Society 23(5): 605–649.
Stephenson, S. (1996) ‘Narrative, self and political theory’, unpublished PhD thesis,
University of Southampton.
Stephenson, S. (1998) ‘Graham Swift and the politics of integrity’, unpublished paper
presented at the Political Studies Association Annual Conference, Keele.
Stevenson, R. (1986) The British Novel since the 1930s: an Introduction, London: Batsford.
Stevenson, R. (1992) Modernist Fiction: an Introduction, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Stone, R. (1999) ‘Ellison’s promised land’ [review of Ralph Ellison’s Juneteenth] New York
Review of Books, 12 August: 16–18.
Strawson, G. (1996) ‘The sense of the self’, London Review of Books, 18 April: 21–22.
Strong, T. (1990) The Idea of Political Theory: Reflections on the Self in Political Time and
Space, Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press.
Strong, T. (1992) ‘Introduction’ in T. Strong (ed.) The Self and the Political Order, Cambridge,
MA, and Oxford: Blackwell.
Sturgess, P.M. (1992) Narrativity: Theory and Practice, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Tambling, J. (1991) Narrative and Ideology, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.
Tanner, T. (1982) Thomas Pynchon, London: Methuen.
Taylor, C. (1985) ‘What is human agency?’ in C. Taylor Human Agency and Language:
Philosophical Papers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, C. (1989) Sources of the Self: the Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, C. (1991) The Ethics of Authenticity, Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University
Press.
Taylor, C. (1994) ‘Multiculturalism and the politics of recognition’ in A. Gutmann (ed.)
Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition/Charles Taylor et al, Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Trenner, R. (ed.) (1983) E.L. Doctorow: Essays and Conversations, Princeton, NJ: Ontario
Review Press.
Tucker, E. (1995) [letter], London Review of Books, 19 October: 2.
Turner, J. (1993) ‘Nicely! Nicely!’, London Review of Books, 13 May: 20–21.
Waldron, J. (1998) ‘Whose Nuremberg laws?’, London Review of Books, 19 March: 12–14.
Walkup, J. (1987) ‘Introduction’, Social Research, Special Issue ‘Reflections on the Self’,
54(1): 3–9.
Warren, M. (1988) Nietzsche and Political Thought, Cambridge, MA, and London: MIT Press.
Warren, M. (1990) ‘Ideology and the self’, Theory and Society 19: 599–643.
Warren, M. (1992) ‘Democratic theory and self-transformation’, American Political Science
Review 86(1): 8–23.
Watt, I. (1996) Myths of Modern Individualism: Faust, Don Quixote, Don Juan, Robinson
Crusoe, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weber, M. (1970) [1948] ‘Politics as a vocation’ in H.H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds) From
Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Weinstein, M. (1982) ‘Dostoevsky and Unamuno: the anti-modern personality’ in B.R. Barber
and M.J.G. McGrath (eds) The Artist and Political Vision, New Brunswick, NJ and London:
Transaction Books.
Wendt, A. (1994) ‘Collective identity formation and the state’, American Political Science
Review 88(2): 384–396.
West, C. (1995) ‘The new cultural politics of difference’ in J. Rajchman (ed.) The Identity in
Question, New York: Routledge.
White, H. (1981) ‘The value of narrativity in the representation of reality’ in T.W.J. Mitchell
(ed.) On Narrative, Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
White, H. (1987) The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical
Representation, Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.
White, S. (1991) Political Theory and Postmodernism, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Whitebrook, M. (1995) Real Toads in Imaginary Gardens: Narrative Accounts of Liberalism,
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.
Whitebrook, M. (1996) ‘Taking the narrative turn: what the novel has to offer political theory’
in J. Horton , and A. Baumeister (eds) Literature and the Political Imagination, London and
New York: Routledge.
Williams, C. (1998) ‘Post-structuralism, subjectivity and political theory’, unpublished paper
presented at the Political Studies Association Annual Conference, Keele.
Williams, P. (1997) Seeing a Colour-blind Future: the Paradox of Race, London: Vintage.
Wirth, E. (1995) ‘A look back from the horizon’ in D. Barone (ed.) Beyond the Red Notebook:
Essays on Paul Auster, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Wood, G. (1996) ‘Involuntary memories’, London Review of Books, 8 February: 20–21.
Woolf, V. (1992) [1925] Mrs Dalloway with an Introduction and Notes by Elaine Showalter ,
text edited by Stella McNichol , London: Penguin Books.
Young, I. (1992) ‘Identity\difference’, Political Theory 20(3): 511–514.
Zalewski, M. and Enloe, C. (1995) ‘Questions about identity in international relations’ in K.
Booth and S. Smith (eds) International Relations Theory Today, Oxford: Polity.
Ziegler, H. and Bigsby, C. (1982) The Radical Imagination and the Liberal Tradition:
Interviews with English and American Novelists, London: Junction.