THE SELF AS THE OTHER: EXISTENTIAL PROJECTIONS OF IDENTITY IN PHILIP ROTH’S NOVEL “THE HUMAN STAIN”

Abstract

One of the main vectors of the creative evolution of the outstanding American prose writer Philip Roth is the study of identity problems. From the novella “Goodbye, Columbus” (1959) to the novel “Nemesis” (2010), the author’s increasing attention to a comprehensive understanding of otherness and identity in key aspects of cultural and existential diversity is obviously traced. A milestone in this regard is the novel “The Human Stain” (2000), in which the main character’s way from “betrayal” of his racial origin to the discovery and comprehension of limitless possibilities for individual development appears as a kind of quest for self-affirmation. The purpose of the study is to reveal, through the analysis of the issues and poetics of Ph. Roth’s novel “The Human Stain”, the artistic and aesthetic originality of the formulation of existential problems of identity in the context of philosophical and psychological studies of otherness. Research methodology. The analysis of the novel “The Human Stain”, given its ideological and content multifacetedness, requires the use of a complex methodology. In the philosophical plane, the most significant basis for us was P. Ricoeur’s work “Oneself as Another”. Among the approaches of literary criticism, we use the latest achievements of the narratological method, strategies of reader-response criticism, and the new historicism approach. As a result of the analysis, it was revealed that the basis of the problematic and thematic complex of the novel “The Human Stain” is the ambivalent concepts of identity and selfness, individualism and decency, freedom and arbitrariness. This complex is organically embodied in the nonlinear plot and compositional organization of the work and the complicated narrative structure. Conclusions. The ideas and poetics features of the novel “The Human Stain” give reason to consider this work a profound and unique fictional study of the problems of otherness in modern society, individual’s searching for ways to affirm identity not only in the ethnical, cultural, social and psychological dimensions, but also in the perspective of ontological and existential self-identity.