11
“But
no
discourse
is
seamless
and
totalitarian,
no
discourse
is
immune
to doubt and reflexivity
and the fractures which open up within it allow
for forms
of resistance which
operate
within
discourse,
on
many
of its
own terms.” (2001:32-33)
Bill
Ashcroft
(2001:33)
comments
about
discourse
in his
perception
that a
discourse
such as imperial
discourse
may be so
pervasive and embracing
in
postcolonial
life
that
the
notion
of
any
discourse
beyond
it seems
remote.
A powerful
Eurocentric
discourse
such
as
literature
represents
itself
as
‘natural’,
universal
and
timeless,
and
yet
it exposes
itself,
by virtue
of such claims, to continual
resistances
and contradiction.
And
all those
particularly
clear
in
the
form
of counter-discourse
called
‘canonical
counter-
discourse’
or
‘writing
back’,
which
operates
within
the discourse
of literature
itself.
Canonical
literary
texts
are
‘consumed’
in
such
a way
that
they
become
the
basis
for
resistant,
appropriated
versions
which
subtly
subvert
the values
and political
assumptions
of
the
originals.
The
significance
of
the
texts
that
are
re-read
is
that
they
offer
powerful
allegories
of European
culture,
allegories
through
which
life
in post-
colonial societies has itself been ‘written’.
2.6 Identity
“The
problem
of
identity
at
a
time
is
similar:
it
seems
possible
that
more than one person (or personality) should share the same body and
brain,
so
what
makes
up
the
unity
of
experience
and
thought
that we
each
enjoy
in
normal
living?
The
problems
of
personal
identity
were
first highlighted
in the
modern
era by Locke, who recognized
that the
idea
that
the
sameness
of
a
person
might
consist
in
the
sameness
of
underlying
mental
substance, the solution
proposed
by Descartes, was
incapable
of
providing
any
criterion
for
use
in
the
ordinary
empirical
world, for instance in connection with the just attribution of
responsibility
for past action.
Locke's
own solution
lay
in the unity of
consciousness, and
in
particular in
the
presence of
memory of
past
actions;
this
account
has
been
criticized
as
either
circular,
since
memory
presupposes
identity,
or insufficiently
consonant with normal
practice, since people forget things that they themselves did.”
identity#Philosophy_Dictionary)
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