TY - JOUR AU - Dawson, Carrie PY - 2000/06/06 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Calling People Names: Reading Imposture, Confession, and Testimony in and after Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient JF - Studies in Canadian Literature JA - SCL VL - 25 IS - 2 SE - Articles DO - UR - https://journals.lib.unb.ca/index.php/SCL/article/view/12840 SP - AB - Lacan states that although naming is ultimately an arbitrary marker of identity, it nevertheless functions as a stabilizing "guarantee" that we can agree upon identity in some way. In <em>The English Patient</em>, Michael Ondaatje's deferral of names in the first section, and the English patient's withholding of his identity — whether through genuine trauma or through imposture — forces readers into a partnership with the characters to adopt an alternative narrative practice in which we might forego the desire for stable identities. The related sub-theme of erasure, of nations, of history, of individual identity, is attempted through a progression of confession through to testimony, where transformative renewal might be forged. The desire, both of the characters and of the reader, for a "fully named world," needs a re-evaluation. ER -