SOURCE: Conroy, Jane. “Constructions of Identity: Mirrors of the ‘Other’ in Racine's Theatre.” In Racine: The Power and the Pleasure, edited by Edric Calidcott and Derval Conroy, pp. 75-99. Dublin: University College Dublin Press, 2001.

In the following essay, Conroy explores the quest for identity and notions of “self” and “Other” in Racine's plays, looking at collective ethnic groups and individual strangers in various works before focusing on the depiction of the “Oriental” in Bajazet.

Julian Huxley has provided us with a negative formulation of the relationship between the Other and the creation of collective self-identity: ‘A nation is a society united by a common error as to its origin and a common aversion to its neighbours.’ However, in considering Racine's plays as cultural narratives, I should prefer to adopt two more positive lines of thought from Paul Ricœur which are not, of course, exclusively his. Firstly, the...