Given that family determines self, it is no wonder that the former figures prominently in literature, which can be seen as an entreprise devoted to the understanding of the self. Reading fiction, theatre or poetry can thus function as a form of imaginative pyschotherapy in which the self is brought to light through identifaction with characters whose family life was perhaps similar to one's own. This bringing to light is especially significant when neurotic families determine disfunctional selves, since disfunctional selfhood so often plays itself out in a dynamic of repression in which the self is alientated from its authentic self. Literature can serve to bring the self back to itself. This homecoming is nevertheless incomplete since the identification of alienated selfhood with imaginative selfhood is necessarily vicarious and often only subconsciously perceived. When it is consciously perceived, it can only but provide the self with the ilumination necessary for its own emancipation. Literature can thus be seen as an instrument of freedom and as a middle term in the reconciliation of family and self.
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Niall, there's lots to discuss even in your opening sentence... Does family really determine self, and if so is it by means of nuture (upbringing) or nature (genes)? I'm not sure even Freudians would argue strictly for family as the self's prime determinant. Then how much is literature devoted to understanding the self, and how much (often, at least) to escaping it? And perhaps it's as an instrument of escape, enabling people to imagine other worlds, other ways of being, that literature has most liberatory potential?
Anyhow, interesting stuff.
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