Expression of Multidimensional Identities in the Post-truth World: Innate Identities in Saramago’s Blindness

Joby Joseph¹ & Catherin Edward²

¹Research Scholar, Holy Cross College, Affiliated to Bharathidasan University, Trichy.

Email: jhobu@yahoo.co.in

²Associate Professor & Research Advisor, Department of English, Holy Cross College, Trichy

Volume 11, Number 3, October-December, 2019 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v11n3.09

ABSTRACT

The Psychological wavelengths intermingled in pursuance of roots of various characteristics as reflected through the novel Blindness are different conceptual explorations. Identity is an intricate term in the present scenario. For him, the novel is a medium where socio-cultural and political issues are addressed and his voice acts as a didactic language that represents the colonial and postcolonial subjects. Moreover, he illustrates the political ideology in a different way. The representation of the other by a meta-narrative voice is the hallmark of Jose Saramago’s novels. In his novels, he acts as an all-knowing narrator or implied author who tries to transform the society and the Portuguese culture in general. The representation of the other in the novel Blindness is a kind of historical discourse which is articulated as artificial, a constructed category, a power-based and discriminatory construction. Of course, it is communicated through conventional, discursive and narrative strategies. Hence, we find a relation between history and story in these narratives. As so many disaster narratives start, Blindness also begins with a disaster-traffic jam. It anticipates a search for identity. In the novel, Saramago invites our attention to think of a kind of chaos and horror that happens in Blindness. In the novel Blindness, the identities clash with one another owing to the common identity of blindness having a big and tremendous impact in it one way or the other. In short, the significance of blindness becomes dominant only when there is eyesight and the existence of the non- blind. In that way, the blind have their own identity and culture and Saramago tries to add more coloring to that identity in a philosophical and eschatological manner. The paper intends to explain that idea.

Keywords: Blindness, Post Truth, Identity Crisis, Physical blindness, Spiritual blindness, Globalization and Localization