Self-recognition through narrative: projecting the self as another one in J. M. Coetzee’s Boyhood

Abstract

This essay investigates identity formulation on literary field set up by the self-recognition achieved through narrative practice. This problem is shaped from J. M. Coetzee’s work Boyhood (1997). The analysis of the literary object focuses on the constitution of the self projected on the discourse through the fictional figure. Therefore, I intend to point out how the discursive projection of the self as another one implies a course of recognition that underlies the construction of the character’s identity. In an hermeneutic-phenomenological approach, I resort to Paul Ricoeur and Phillip Lejeune to make up the theoretical framework necessary to accomplish the investigative proposal; as well as Walter Benjamin ideas about narration and experience. According to the theoretical discussion and the literary analysis, the narrative is understood as a way of organization and transmission of experience and a privileged space to self-recognition and, by extension, a constitutive medium of identity.