Identiteit en narratieven in Dit zijn de namen van Tommy Wieringa

Abstract

Identity and narratives in Dit zijn de namen by Tommy WieringaTommy Wieringa is one of the most prominent contemporary Dutch novelists. The novel These are the Names 2012 depicts, on the one hand, a police commissioner’s need for faith in midlife crisis and, on the other, the journey of a group of refugees in the steppe in search for civilisation and salvation. On the edge of existence and without any point of narrative reference, the refugees kill one of them and then sacralise their act. Using a postmodern paradigm, in particular, the psychoanalytic theories and the theory of the scapegoat mechanism developed by René Girard, this paper attempts to show the connection between the lack of narrative and the birth of the ritual, which is later to become a myth. This underlines the dynamic nature of identity and its dependence on various narratives.