THE GRAMMATICAL FICTION:SELF VS. SUBJECT IN ARTHUR KOESTLER'S Darkness at Noon
THE GRAMMATICAL FICTION:SELF VS. SUBJECT IN ARTHUR KOESTLER'S Darkness at Noon

Summary/Abstract: The paper starts from the assumption that art is capable of articulating and bringing to the fore the portion of the self from whose standpoint the process of ideological interpellation can be resisted. This experience of personal being is dubbed 'the grammatical fiction' by Rubashov, the protagonist of Koestler's novel Darkness at Noon. The Party to which Rubashov has belonged throughout his adult life has taught him to forgo not only his self-interest in the struggle for social change, but also his sensitive self, his mystical experiences of 'oceanic oneness' with the world, and his capacity for self-reliance in making moral decisions. These buried traits come to constitute Rubashov's Other, shadowy self, providing a potent counterpoint to his ideological position, to the subject whose life and political actions have been determined by the internalized doctrines of the Party. The paper focuses on the way Koestler's novel juxtaposes 'the grammatical fiction' and the subject as two mental attitudes within the protagonist's stream of consciousness, and draws on this juxtaposition in reaching its insights. These insights concern not only the mechanisms of the ideology which the novel discusses, but also its inherent notion of the self and of the desirable direction of social progress.

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