POST-APOCALYPTIC IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN AYN RAND’S ANTHEM WITH REFERENCE TO CULTURE/NATURE DUALITY
POST-APOCALYPTIC IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION IN AYN RAND’S ANTHEM WITH REFERENCE TO CULTURE/NATURE DUALITY

Summary/Abstract: The present article seeks to illustrate how identities are constructed in the context of Ayn Rand’s post-apocalyptic dystopian novel, Anthem. A significant contributor to the process of identity-making is the particular employment of language and the circulation of meanings of a symbolic order that enchains individuals by turning them into obedient subjects. Foucault’s conception and Fiske’s understanding of identity construction address the duality of power and resistance, which seems to be absent in this post-apocalyptic work. It is rather the imperialising power that is single-handedly in charge of the identity-making mechanism in the subjectivity of the characters. Throughout the novel, there is no evidence of any sort of systematic resistance to the dominant representations of the imperialising power. While the duality of power and resistance is lacking in Rand’s Anthem, the duality of nature and culture is at work, which directly affects the way identity is constructed. The imperialising power seeks to eradicate and, at worst, to limit the representations of nature. The semantic burden that nature carries threatens the existence of the imperialising power. We intend to elucidate how the imperialising power reacts to the representations and the meanings that nature establishes. Finally, we propose that the reaction of the imperialising power towards nature is much stronger in post-apocalyptic contexts. For instance, the representations of nature is only limited to the “Uncharted Forest” which is highly restricted.

• Details
• Contents