Identity in Progress

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Why do we believe what we believe in? Where are the values that we take for granted in constructing our identity coming from? Do we know how we came to be the person that is us? Identity in Progress is a book that tries to trace the value construction processes by way of analysing Nobel Prize-winning British author Kazuo Ishiguro’s two top novels The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go. The former shows an old butler now sceptical about his unshakeable loyalty to whatever he once believed to constitute ‘dignity;’ the latter shows a young woman on a journey, both literally and metaphorically, to find out who or what she is. With Fredric Jameson’s words on “the propaedeutic value of art” in mind, Identity in Progress provides a refreshing reading of the two novels with a Marxist perspective, revealing, as Jameson says, the historical and social essence of what we believe to be individual experiences.