The Impact of Visuals on the Marginalised Self in Jose Saramago’s The Double

Abstract

Ever since the novel has developed into a distinct genre, various techniques in content and narration have been explored by novelists across the globe. In doing so, the genre has attempted to capture the multifaceted complexities of modern life. The Hungarian literary critic George Lukács once said that the novel was the epic of modern life, abandoned by God. This radical view of the novel is exemplified in the works of Portuguese writer José Saramago. In The Double, while addressing various major modernist themes, Saramago delves into a human consciousness that is alienated and marginalized by the overwhelming influence of visuals that dominate human life. It is not commodities, as Marx suggested but the spectacles of them that have come to dominate our existence, according to the neo-Marxist theorist Guy Debord offering a slight twist on Marx’s worldview. These visuals not merely accumulate in the present world but also govern our modern lives. Their effects are far-reaching, leading to a range of phenomena from people doubting their own reality to individuals feeling estranged from themselves. This paper aims to explore how visual culture in the contemporary world influences individual identity, leading to the fragmentation and the marginalization of the self.