THE IDENTITY CRISIS IN THE CONTEXT OF GLOBALIZATION IN THE NOVEL BY OLGA TOKARCZUK “FLIGHTS”

Abstract

This article considers the issue of the identity crisis in the context of globalization, represented in the novel Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, a Nobel Prize laureate and one of the best-selling Polish writers of our time. The artistic world of the novel reveals key features of globalization such as increasing global mobility, intensifying migrations, the dissipation of national borders, and the deactualization of national memory. O. Tokarczuk portrays an original type of a character acting in such conditions – a modern nomad that can be an emigrant, a refugee, a traveler, or a homeless person.

This paper focuses on the correlation between memory collapse and identity crisis depicted in several stories from the novel.  It mainly considers the philosophical aspect of the issue, namely, people’s fear of death and desire for immortality expressed through their propensity for perpetual motion and rejection of individual and national memory. The topic of plastination (a method of body preservation), deeply elaborated throughout the novel, is examined in the context of interdependency between human’s body and identity.

Specific attention is dedicated to fragmentariness as essential characteristic of both formal side of the novel (composition, narrative) and its thematic range. Fragmentariness is also intrinsic to the artistic manifestation of memory, presented in the form of a heterogeneous archive. Providing an alternative, polyphonic narrative, O. Tokarczuk opposes it to any kind of a coherent, monolithic historical narrative.

Written in 2007, this novel is particularly interesting to analyze nowadays, when impugning the globalization values is becoming a common tendency. In the new context, Flights can be construed as a warning about creating a world devoid of memorial meaning. This article highlights a well-pronounced appeal to recollection and verbalization of the past. In the “narrating” of life, O. Tokarczuk sees the way to salvation and liberation, thus affirming the crucial role of memory in dealing with the identity crisis faced by contemporary societies.