Reflexiones sobre la identidad con Doctor Pasavento de Enrique Vila-Matas

Abstract

Identity is one of the key topics in contemporary postmodernist criticism. Many authors, either theorists or creators, have focused on this subject to add their own ideas in such an abstract concept. Enrique Vila Matas’ Doctor Pasavento explores the complexities of the individual’s identity. This essay aims at reflecting on the contemporary concept of identity that this novel may be said to portray. In these pages, an overview of the «theory of identities' chest» is offered for a possible reading of Vila-Matas’s text, considering such different but meaningful topics as the importance of one’s name, identity as a «journey», or the difficulty for separating the diegetic ontologies of reality and literary fiction.