ANALYSIS ON DAVID LODGE’S “NICE WORK”

The present extract from David Lodge’s “Nice Work” seems to provide a definition of postmodernism and a criticism to all the ideals and thoughts capitalism has brought in our society.

Robyn, a lecturer, is the main character of the extract, which consists in a lecture where her though is being exposed. The whole discourse is based on the definition of the “self” which, according to Robyn, doesn’t exist. Indeed, the self, which means considering every individual as a unique identity, isn’t real because we’re nothing but the result of the “discourses” (as Lodge calls them) we live in. But what are the discourses? They are the foundation of societies, the foundation of human beings, for example sex, power, family, religion, poetry… According to this, we don’t have an identity that we decide to build because it only depends on the place we were born and the society, the culture we grew up in. Now it is explained why the “identity” is defended by capitalsim. However, so it is for human beings and so it is for texts: the “author” doesn’t exist… no one can create a text from nothing because, as it happens for human beings, every text is a product of other text, exactly like every human being is the product of other human beings, that means he’s the product of the society and what he learns in it. In conclusion, Lodge states that the real determined subject is the individual who is not conscious of what is made of, that means the discourses that influenced him since he was born. The second part of the extract describes Robyn’s routine and her attitude towards life and work.