Identity by Milan Kundera

Date Published: 1997, HarperCollins Publishers.
ISBN: 0-06-093031-4
# of Pages: 168

This book was assigned for my Philosophy in Literature course this semester -- predictably during the unit we are doing on identity, haha. I think I really enjoyed this book, but I'm still not really sure what happened or what the conclusion really is. I tried to read another book by Kundera in the past (The Unbearable Lightness of Being) and I had a really hard time with it and had to put it down. I found this read much easier, but I'm not sure if it's just because I'm older. (I was 18 when I tried to read the other book and I am now 21. For whatever that's worth.)

What I got out of this was a sort of conversation between the psychological and materialist approaches to the philosophy of identity. I want to say that the materialist view won out in the end, but I'm not sure if that's just my bias! The bulk of the story is a series of conflicts that take place between a couple, Jean-Marc and Chantal, that generally center around misunderstandings about each other's motivations, thoughts, desires, etc. Personality stuff that we think we should know about our loved ones. Jean-Marc has some serious issues with bodies (for example, he dropped out of medical school because he could not deal with the reality of dead bodies, or seeing bodies as simply bodies at all -- and he has a weird hangup on simple functions of female bodies, such as blinking, that makes them unattractive to him at times). Chantal seems more comfortable with bodies, but struggles because she feels that she is expected to be guided by something more than that. Jean-Marc tends to idealize her and not see her for the body she truly is.

In the end, Chantal seems to relax and throw aside the expectations that hold her back. There are a lot of references and descriptions of sight and of the literal, physical eyeball along with visual cues, such as the color red. The last line of the story has Chantal insisting on leaving a light on so that she can better see Jean-Marc, and I read that as a sort of conquest of the physical over the idealized spiritual or psychological.

ANYWAY, I enjoyed reading it and thinking about it, but now I have to write a paper that uses this and John Locke, so I am a little resentful. I think I'll like it more again once this paper is finished!