Abstract

Taking off from Paul Ricoeur's book Soi-même comme un autre (Oneself as Another), this essay discusses two kinds of identification in Modiano's relation to Dora: identification as appropriation, where the writer "assimilates" Dora's story in order to explore his own relation to his parents, especially his father; and identification as empathy, where the writer underlines the differences between his and Dora's stories and also seeks to come to a historical understanding of what happened to her. In that process, he also evokes the fate of other Jews who, like Dora and her family, were deported from France. I conclude that this kind of empathetic identification leads to mourning, which is the realization that the death of a person has left (as Jacques Lacan puts it) a "hole in the real."

Keywords: Paul Ricoeur, Soi-même comme un autre, identity, Dora Bruder, identification, Jews, holocaust, mourning, death

How to Cite:

Suleiman, S. R., (2007) “"Oneself as Another": Identification and Mourning in Patrick Modiano's Dora Bruder”, Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature 31(2). doi: https://doi.org/10.4148/2334-4415.1656