Memory and Place in Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family
Memory and Place in Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family

Summary/Abstract: More concerned with the nature of meaning than with the definitional literary function of finding meaning, postmodern criticism usually does not reward the reader with new and fresh insights or perspectives into the ways of questioning and repudiation of dogmatic thought which it proclaims as its highest goal. Instead, critical interpretations seem to reiterate the well known premises on which postmodern theory rests: there can be no true or fixed identity, there is no origin or original, no singular author, no ultimate knowledge, and representation is no longer a matter of veracity or accuracy. Notions of truth and authenticity are outdated. And yet, within certain discourses (multicultural writing is one of them) there is a need for affirmation of self and origin, there is an integrity in authenticity. There is a desire to strengthen one's identity through the act of writing and reading, and lived experience plays an integral role in this. This essay is about this kind of literature whose theme is not the process of dispersal of the self into a number of subject positions but the transformation of the subject back into the individual. The emphasis that Ondaatje places on the importance of particularity, individual life and imagination as moral force shows that he has no interest in dismantling his identity but instead wants to confirm it, albeit in its hyphenated form.

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