The perceiving self/subject and its transformation in the novels of David Malouf and Margaret Atwood

Abstract

This thesis considers how two post-colonial authors, the Australian David Malouf and the Canadian Margaret Atwood, create a perceiving self and subject within their novels. Particular focus is placed not only on how the perceiving self and subject comes into being within their . novels, but also on how the enunciative subject within the novel is in a process of on-going transformation. As post-colonial writers, both authors approach their subject from a wide perspective tackling its formation, representation and reconstruction. Within this framework of construction and formation of identity, the emergence of subjectivity is examined through various processes that enable its coming into being. Primarily identity is looked at within the larger framework of the construction of nationality. The first chapter attempts to throw light on how the history of both Canada and Australia has precipitated the need to construct a sense of self out of the narratives of the past. This need is reflected in the way that both authors are very much concerned with the re-writing of history the quest for self and national identity is undertaken through the understanding of the past. However the past also needs to be re-worked to be made relevant to the present sense of being oneself. One way of reworking the past is to review it through the re-writing of myths. Both Atwood and Malouf indulge in the creation of reality as construct in order to help their readers re-live their past through a fictional writing. Both place their perceiving self/character in the novels in a socially identifiable place. The second chapter moves on to explore the coming into being of an enunciative subject within the novels. To a certain extent, the perceiving self re-claims its identity through discourse. Whereas Malouf focuses on the way that his perceiving self attains definition through naming and language, Atwood concentrates on how language as discourse constructs subjects and empowers them. The perceiving subject also becomes the narrating subject and hence, he or she has a moral obligation towards the rest of society. However, both authors also maintain a certain ambivalence towards the use of language. Malouf and Atwood have their perceiving self use language in order to express their rejection of it, or the transcendence of the selfsame language into limitless possibilities of coming into being. Similarly, the third chapter explores how possibilities of being are constantly suggested in the novels. Atwood and Malouf constantly pair their protagonists up with a double, if not multiple others, to show how identity is never a unified whole. Both authors problematize the idea of unitary identity as they show their perceiving self/subject moving beyond binaries of fixed definition. Malouf and Atwood show their protagonists in a constant reaction towards fixity in a steady movement beyond. Whereas Malouf seems concerned about the mirroring of two characters, Atwood endows her individual character with an inherent possible multiplicity of being.