In search for identity: discourse of the future in modern dystopia by Vanessa Veselka “Zazen”, Alejandro Morales “The Rag Doll Plagues”

The article deals with the collective and individual identity problem in the context of changing world and socio-political conditions in hypothetical reality. World literature is an ever-living source for understanding a variety of possible options for development of civilization, the role and place of the individual in the future society. The authors examine representation of individual and collective identification in the dystopian novels by modern writers: V. Veselka “Zazen” (2011) and A. Morales “The Rag Doll Plagues” (1992). The object of the study is the socio-political discourse of the future, outlined in fiction form. The subject of the research is the process of individual and collective identification in the context of the predicted future reality. The purpose of the study is to analyze Veselka and Morales’ dystopian novels for outlining factors influencing the process of individual and collective identification in the hypothetical future. The research methodology is based on the principles of semiotic-communicative and cultural-historical approaches. The discourse of the future is considered as a political discourse, a set of verbal signs that performs a certain function in political communication and conveys information about social processes, norms and values in a given socio-political situation. Within the framework of the cultural-historical approach, the literary text is studied as a product of social life in specific cultural-historical conditions. Individual and collective identity is forming in the conditions of an unfavorable, “negative” version of the future civilization. Veselka and Morales project in their works nowadays socio-political problems in a hypertrophied form: terrorism, epidemics and pandemics, environmental disasters, dehumanization, consumerism, etc. The analysis of dystopias clearly indicates that main factors in individual and collective identification are ethnopolitical, ethnocultural and psychological ones. Ethnopolitical and ethnocultural factors affect deeply the process of social identification, while psychological factors have a major impact on the search for individual identity