Original Sin

I was completely fascinated by the idea, in Never Let Me Go, that all of the donors have “originals.” At different moments, Ruth and Kathy’s obsessions with finding their originals emerge. Ruth is heartbroken when the woman at the travel agency isn’t hers, and Kathy pores over porn magazines because she figures her overactive sex drive might be a sign of some kind of natural predisposition.

To me these two persons, the “original” and the donor/copy of them, reflect the tension we discussed with Lacan’s mirror stage between the real and ideal, the self and the image.

If he’s anything like me…

Since this week has been pretty intense with the exams, I’m offering a bit of a lighter post. When I was in my car after class on Thursday, I heard a song that really embodied what Professor Parham was talking about with how we construct children’s gender identities. In fact I don’t think that any child will ever be more “ensconsed in signification” than the one country artist Brad Paisley sings about in his song “Anything Like Me”…