but I do hope this questioning of individual and collective fallenness is one way to understand, and maybe care about, the various forms of violence that the concept brings with it in the real world.
We have already witnessed a lot of violence in the 21st century, in the United States or elsewhere: from September 11 to the wars it spurred, from racial violence to school shootings, and from suicide bombings to new, technologically slick proponents (and practitioners) of terrorizing ideologies, such as ISIS. Discussing fallenness and its connection to violence is only one way, of many, to challenge our identities, which, in turn, could be one way in which literary studies can contribute to the discussion. I could have chosen other concepts that are deeply rooted in our Western (and Westernized) minds: it could have been race; it could have been gender; it could have been capital; it could have been empire. The reason why fallenness appeals to me as a challenge—as a way to seek to understand “the symptom that reveals the malaise of the society in which we live,” to use a Lacanian phrase, is that it is so specific, so personal that it can resonate on many levels with any reader, and it is so unspecific that it can expand the conversation to the most abstract proportions, while (it is my hope) keeping it comprehensible.
One of the main tasks of this book is to elaborate on a complex network of factors contributing to a problematic understanding of identity that has always been at work in Western societies (though other cultures are not exempt). Specifically, I narrow down the use of literature to significant moments in American literature, so that much of the discussion will focus on how these factors that ground the search for identity affect American identity and account for the violence that is part of an American engagement with identity. This does not mean I will focus solely on an American brand of violence. Still, the theoretical discussion of these issues will lead into and will be supported by a poststructuralist/deconstructivist analysis of literary works that are retroactively and strongly associated with different ages and trends in American literature. Billy Budd, Absalom, Absalom!, The Crying of Lot 49, Tortuga, and Beloved are among the finest written instances of American identity at work, and the perspectives they bring to identity are those of the social center, the self-sufficient individual, meaninglessness, and the margin.
I will focus on some of these constituents of identity (linguistic, historical, psychoanalytic, and so on) to explain first and foremost why identity is perceived as flawed—fallen—and why this perception delivers some form of violence to individuals who pursue a reversal of this fall. The pursuit of this reversal is a dangerous task in that, among other detrimental consequences, it estranges individuals from those with whom they come into contact. This estrangement (call it lack or loss of communication) in turn creates tension and conflicts within and between different societies. The retrieval of a lost identity translates into the fight for a territory: whether it is a physical territory (as in the case of war for land), or an abstract territory (such as a concept, an ideal, an ideology). In the case of the US, the territory to be defended is either physical (for instance, “the South”), or abstract (for instance, “freedom”). The notion of territory is strictly connected to the notion of identity, because both bind the individual to language. Chapter One explains the processes by which identity and the fall from identity are foundational to subjects of language in conflict with one another. Chapters Two, Three, and Four are the chapters where I demonstrate, through literary texts, why different understandings of identity depend upon what I narrowed down (though by no means exhausting the possibilities) to three different understandings of the fall. Chapters Six and Seven offer first a theoretical resolution for the fall from identity, then a literary analysis of two other novels, to demonstrate how identity can be healed. I end with a very brief conclusion in Chapter Eight.
1 Identity is perceived as social when individuals identify with a role in the social fabric, and strive to achieve perfection within it. This identity is seen as flawed because of unavoidable transgressions against mythical or social systems, and such transgressions generally convene under the umbrella of the fall from innocence. Billy Budd, Herman Melville’s character, is the embodiment of the failure to represent innocence, especially considering that, in a way, Billy Budd represents America.
2 Identity is perceived as self-authentic when individuals identify with wholeness—a form of coherent, pure self-unity—that they believe only they themselves can define, in opposition to mythical and social systems. This identity is seen as flawed because of a loss/lack of self-identity, and is defined as the fall from authenticity. Sutpen in William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! embodies a solipsistic quest for identity, and also the failure of American individualism.
3 Identity is perceived as postmodern when meaning is believed to be constructed, rather than essential. Identity, therefore, is indefinable, or does not exist. However, there still is an identity in non-identity, because the world (and individuals in it) strives toward retrieving the lost meaning. Identity (or non-identity) is still defined, in this case as a fall from meaning. Oedipa, in Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49, represents America’s failed quest for meaning within the interchangeable signs that refuse to signify.
These definitions of the fall can account for numerous ways in which the encounter with others, seen as the Other as understood by Lacan, is marked by conflict and even destruction. Such conflicts arise because the wholeness lost in the fall, which is seen as in need of retrieval, is defined as such at the expense of the Other, since the Other stands in the way of retrieving the lost wholeness. I will first ground the discussion in 21st Century events, especially the conflicts arising from the terrorist attack on America in September 2001, the armed conflicts following that attack, and the aftermath of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the birth of ISIS. Through them, I will illustrate the problematic nature of American identity assumed to be strictly connected to “freedom,” and the problematic nature of identity defined on the reverse side, where “death to America” is seen as one way to purify the world and return it to its wholeness.
I will argue that the quest for identity, doomed to failure because of the identification with a fall, may find resolution in shifting the stakes in language and abandoning the mentality of the fall. Relationality and communication can be salvaged if steps are taken to understand that identity is not fallen and should instead be seen as an effect of what it intends to be, rather than an absolute goal. Identity stands in the way of communication, so that the question becomes: is it possible to relate to other individuals in a way that is no longer a competition between identities?
In Chapter Six, I look at Satya Mohanty’s understanding of contextual identity, then in Chapter Seven I turn for an answer to Rudolfo Anaya’s Tortuga and Toni Morrison’s Beloved. At the time that these novels were written, they were seen as written from the margins of the dominant American culture. Today, after an African American was president for eight years, the margin is not as marginal as it used to be, but there is still a long way to go. These two novels exemplify a point of view that sees identity not as something to retrieve from an idealized past, but as something to be built contextually, as part of the interaction between what I call effects of identity: the effect of being American, the effect of being Native American, African American, and so on.
In order to point to the fallacies of metaphysical thought (which defines the identity that needs to be retrieved), as well as the flaws in the positions of both the proponents and the critics of de-centered thought, this book revisits the deconstructive and poststructuralist/psychoanalytical theories that are to this day the strongest critiques of structured, transcendental thought. As I already suggested, the main connections between identity, territoriality, and language will be made with the help of the formidable Jacques Lacan and Jacques Derrida. Lacan will assist in showing how identity (defined differently by different ages) always participates in the formation of the self.
