Identity in a World of Scarcity： The Book of Eli

• 来源期刊: 中国经济评论：英文版
• 学科: 经济
• 关键词: identity history memory Bible Barths NARRATION
• 年，卷（期）: 2014,（8）
• 页码范围: 531-536
• 页数: 6页
• 分类号: F0

摘要

This paper examines the construction of identity in Hugue＇s brothers movie, The Book of Eli setting in an America post-apocalyptic world destroyed by nuclear war and environmental disasters. Economic relations in this world without time or history and without production of goods and commodities, are based on ancient practices such as barter. The goods are exchanged for goods according to the need and the currency lost its meaning before the supreme usefulness. Essential items to human life like water now have a very high value due to its complete scarcity. Eli （played by Denzel Washington） toured the United States for 30 years westward circling the wasteland leading the only existing copy of the King James version of the Bible. Then he reaches the town, which is under the control of Carnegie, the villain, whose ambition is to have the holy Bible in order to exercise power. In this world full of shortages, power belongs to the old that has the memory of the past. Texts of Giddens, Beck, Lash, Benveniste, and Marx compose the theoretical apparatus that allow understanding how to reconstruct the identity in a world in crisis, and no shortage of complete story without memory card with the movement of goods excluding currency.