A POST-STRUCTURALIST DECONSTRUCTION OF NARRATIVE AND IDENTITY IN THE NOVELS OF JULIAN BARNES

201 Vol. 5, No. 11 – Special Issue (EJAR) ISSN: 2181-2020 LPTIENP International Scientific-Practice Conference on “Linguistics and Pedagogical Technologies: International Experience and National Practice” Denau, November 20, 2025 in-academy.uz/index.php/ejar A POST-STRUCTURALIST DECONSTRUCTION OF NARRATIVE AND IDENTITY IN THE NOVELS OF JULIAN BARNES Hamidova Sarvinoz O‘ralovna Masters student Department of English Philology Denau institute of entrepreneurship and pedagogy Tel: +998 (99) 018 7732 Email: [email protected] Sodiqova Baxtigul lbdullayevna Supervisor: (PhD) https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17628563 Abstract: This paper undertakes a post-structuralist reading of narrative and identity in Julian Barnes's novels Flaubert's Parrot and The Sense of an Ending. Employing theoretical concepts advanced by Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, and Michel Foucault, the study demonstrates how Barnes destabilizes conventional notions of truth, authorship, and subjectivity Through metafictional techniques, unreliable narration, and intertextual play, Barnes exposes narrative as an instable process in which identity is constructed, reconstructed and frequently deferred. The analysis argues that both novels enact deconstructive procedures: they reveal the contingency of meaning, the textuality of memory. and the ethical consequences of narrative misrecognition. By foregrounding the mechanics of storytelling, Barnes transforms reading into an interpretive practice that must accept uncertainty as intrinsic to textual and human life. Key words: post-structuralism, deconstruction, narrative, identity, metafiction INTRODUCTION Julian Barnes's fiction repeatedly foregrounds the limits of representation and the instability of the self that relies upon narrative. In Flaubert's Parrot and The Sense of an Ending, Barnes refuses teleological closure and essentialist accounts of personality, choosing instead to dramatize how identity emerges from language, memory, and discursive practices. Post-structuralist theory particularly Derrida's insistence on the deferral of meaning (différance), Barthes's decentering of authorial authority, and Foucault's view of subjectivity as historically produced provides a potent set of lenses for understanding Barnes's literary strategies. This paper reads the two novels as complementary case studies in which narration itself is the principal object of inquiry. Where structuralist approaches seek stable systems and referential certainty, Barnes stages fragmentation, contradiction, and self-reflexive textuality The novels therefore not only illustrate post-structuralist premises but also contribute to ongoing debates about ethics, memory, and responsibility in narrative form. Postmodernism expresses two central, constitutive tendencies: one is indeterminacy, and the other is immanence. These two tendencies are not dialectical, for they are not completely opposed, nor do they lead to synthesis. Each contains its own contradictions and alludes to elements of the other. Their interaction reflects the movement of “polilectics” that encompasses postmodernism. [11, 66] Post-Structuralism and the Crisis of Meaning Post-structuralism problematizes the idea that language can secure ultimate meaning. Derrida's formulation of différance underscores that signification is always relational and postponed there is no final presence to ground interpretation. Barnes's novels dramatize this crisis by presenting narratives that continually undermine their own claims to truth. In Flauberts Parrot, Geoffrey Braithwaite's obsessive philological investigation into Gustave Flaubert becomes an allegory for the impossibility of definitive biographical knowledge. 202 Vol. 5, No. 11 – Special Issue (EJAR) ISSN: 2181-2020 LPTIENP International Scientific-Practice Conference on “Linguistics and Pedagogical Technologies: International Experience and National Practice” Denau, November 20, 2025 in-academy.uz/index.php/ejar Braithwaite collects facts, artifacts, and anecdotes in the hope of reconstructing an authentic Flaubert, yet the very multiplicity of his evidence the competing accounts, the ambiguous parrot histories, the ambiguous significance of objects demonstrates meaning's slipperiness. The parrot motif. repeated and refracted, suggests that authenticity is at best an effect produced by narrative selection rather than a stable referent. The Sense of an Ending pursues a related project with a narrower, more intimate focus: memory Tony Websters retrospective account initially gives the reader the impression of straightforward recall, a neat causal chain of events leading to his later feelings. However. as the narrative unfolds and external documents intervene that apparent coherence collapses. Tony's memory is not a faithful repository but a text that has been written. redacted, and misread. Barnes thereby aligns memory with textuality both are contingent constructs shaped by narrative interest and discursive constraints. The novels thus embody Derridean insights by making presence whether historical truth or remembered event always already haunted by absence and deferral Deconstructing Authorship and Authority Barthes's influential declaration of the "death of the author" resonates through Barnes's metafictional apparatus. In Flaubert's Parrot, Flaubert as a historical figure dissipates under the weight of mediated representations: critics' opinions, commemorative objects, and Braithwaite's own readings. The novel's form mixing essay, anecdote, catalogue, and fiction refuses the seamless authority of a single interpretive voice. Barnes thereby relocates meaning from an authoritative authorial center to a decentralized network of readings and misreadings. Braithwaite's attempt to restore Flaubert's "real" intentions is implicitly parodic: the more he seeks to pin down the author, the more Flaubert becomes a spectral text comprised of competing narratives. Barthes's thesis also informs The Sense of an Ending, in which authorial intention is obfuscated by the narrator's fallibility. Tony, who endeavors to narrate his life honestly is revealed to be a compromised historian of himself. When new documentary evidence arrives, the reader must reassess prior judgments; the authority of TonVs voice is diminished Barnes thus stages an ethical dimension to the "death of the author": when narrative authority is dispersed responsibility for meaning shifts to the reader and the social networks that produce documents and testimony. The novels suggest that authorial death does not dissolve responsibility but redistributes the ethical burden among interpreters, institutions, and textual traces. Identity as a Textual Construct Foucault's critique of the autonomous subject reframes identity as an effect of discursive formation. Barnes's protagonists exemplify this neither Geoffrey nor Tony possess a unified inner core independent of narrative. Braithwaite fashions his identity in relation to Flaubert his scholarly persona and his private grief interweave, making the self a collage assembled from textual fragments. His repeated oscillation between sentimentality and scholarly distance highlights the libertine instability of identity: one's self-understanding is continually revised in light of interpretive Tongs narrative demonstrates the ethical consequences of this textualized self. His youthful decisions, later rationalized in memory, are shown to be partial narratives that omit discomforting facts. When confronted with alternate documentary accounts, Tony experiences not simply cognitive dissonance but an identity crisis the stable moral self he believed he inhabited dissolves into uncertainty Barnes thereby dramatizes Foucault's claim that subjectivity is historically and discursively produced: Tongs moral identity depends on the narrative he tells and the narrative available to him, both of which can be revised by new textual interventions. Metafiction and Intertextuality as Deconstructive Strategies Barnes's metafictional techniques render the mechanics of storytelling visible and thereby deconstruct claims of transparent 203 Vol. 5, No. 11 – Special Issue (EJAR) ISSN: 2181-2020 LPTIENP International Scientific-Practice Conference on “Linguistics and Pedagogical Technologies: International Experience and National Practice” Denau, November 20, 2025 in-academy.uz/index.php/ejar representation. Flauberts Parrot abuses genres biography, criticism, anecdote so that the readers expectation of coherent authority is subverted. The novel's playful lists, fabricated scholarly notes, and intrusions of the narrators personal grief make reading an interpretive task rather than a passive reception. In The Sense of an Ending, metafiction appears more quietly: the narrative's frame, the epistolary surprises, and the presence of documents within the text expose memory as mediated rather than immediate. Intertextual references extend the novels' deconstructive reach. Bames's repeated nods to Flaubert and other canonical figures situate his texts within a network of quotation and reworking. These intertextual moves emphasize that literary meaning is not originary but the product of continuous rewriting. This echoes Barthes's idea of the text as a tissue of quotations; originality becomes a rhetorical effect emerging from selection, not an ontological property The novels thereby invite readers to consider authorship, authenticity, and identity as relational and regulative rather than foundational. Ethics. Responsibility, and the Limits of Interpretation A post-structuralist reading of Barnes must also grapple with ethical questions that arise when epistemic certainty erodes. If narrative is provisional and identity a textual effect, what becomes of moral responsibility? Barnes refuses to treat deconstruction as merely an intellectual game; both novels highlight the human costs of narrative misrecognition. Braithwaite's sentimental yearnings and Tonys late discovery of consequences suggest that narrative errors can produce real harm. Thus, Barnes implicitly asks readers to reconcile post-structuralist suspicion of fixed meaning with an ethical demand to account for others' suffering. Interpretation, in this sense, is not value-neutral; it participates in shaping lives and is therefore ethically charged Intertextual references extend the novels' deconstructive reach. Bamesls repeated nods to Flaubert and other canonical figures situate his texts within a network of quotation and reworking. These intertextual moves emphasize that literary meaning is not originary but the product of continuous rewriting. This echoes Barthes's idea of the text as a tissue of quotations; originality becomes a rhetorical effect emerging from selection, not an ontological property The novels thereby invite readers to consider authorship, authenticity, and identity as relational and regulative rather than foundational. Ethics, Responsibility and the Limits of Interpretation A post-structuralist reading of Barnes must also grapple with ethical questions that arise when epistemic certainty erodes. If narrative is provisional and identity a textual effect what becomes of moral responsibility? Barnes refuses to treat deconstruction as merely an intellectual game; both novels highlight the human costs of narrative misrecognition. Braithwaite's sentimental yearnings and Tonys late discovery of consequences suggest that narrative errors can produce real harm. Thus, Barnes implicitly asks readers to reconcile post-structuralist suspicion of fixed meaning with an ethical demand to account for others' suffering. Interpretation, in this sense, is not value-neutral; it participates in shaping lives and is therefore ethically charged CONCLUSION Through Flauberts Parrot and The Sense of an Ending, Julian Bames offers a sustained literary enactment of post-structuralist critique. Yet his work also insists on the ethical stakes of interpretation: deconstruction does not relieve readers or narrators of responsibility but complicates how responsibility is understood. Barnes's fiction thus becomes a site where theoretical insights about language and subjectivity meet practical concerns about memory, culpability, and the possibility of reconciliation. Reading Barnes post-structurally means accepting uncertainty while remaining attentive to the human implications of the stories we tell about ourselves and others. 204 Vol. 5, No. 11 – Special Issue (EJAR) ISSN: 2181-2020 LPTIENP International Scientific-Practice Conference on “Linguistics and Pedagogical Technologies: International Experience and National Practice” Denau, November 20, 2025 in-academy.uz/index.php/ejar References: 1. Barthes R. Image-Music-Text. – London: Fontana Press, 1977. – 180 p. 2. Barnes J. Flaubert's Parrot. – London: Jonathan Cape, 1984. – 190 p. 3. Barnes J. The Sense of an Ending. – London: Jonathan Cape, 2011. – 150 p. 4. Derrida J. Writing and Difference. – Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978. – 354 p. 5. Foucault M. The Archaeology of Knowledge. – London: Tavistock, 1972. – 245 p. 6. Hutcheon L. A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. – New York: Routledge, 1988. – 287 p. 7. Waugh P. Metafiction: The Theory and Practice of Self-Conscious Fiction. – London: Methuen, 1984. – 207 p. 8. Sodiqova, B. Postmodernizm tarixiga oid ta’riflar // Tamaddun nuri. – 2024. – №2. – B. 65–67. 9. Sodiqova, B. Postmodernizm oqimining falsafiy, estetik va badiiy-metodologik tamoyillari // Ilmiy tadqiqot va innovatsiya. – 2022. – №1. – B. 25–30.