Personal identity and the semiotics of corporeality: the metamorphosis of doubles in literature and cinema

Abstract The article develops a semiotic approach to understanding personal identity. Following D. Parfit in considering personality as bodily embodied consciousness, identity can be interpreted as the result of identification. The bodily shell, appearance, plays a special role here, which we will classify as a special type of sign – an indexical qualisign. Appearance never exactly coincides with itself, but while changing within a certain range, it maintains self-identity that ensures personal identification. Doubling denies the singularity of personality embodiment. In this situation, appearance ceases to indicate the consciousness it expresses and instead points to the existence of two completely similar individuals. The article distinguishes between the minimal conditions of doubling, the core of doubling, and deviations from the core. The minimal conditions include the presence of two somatically identical referent-subjects and the necessity of their identification. The core of doubling expands these conditions with additional features. Using the example of Jack Finney’s novel The Body Snatchers , its film adaptations, and a number of related cases in literature and cinema belonging to fantastic discourse, the article examines one of the deviations from the core. The essence is that doppelgängers, while being in the same space, find themselves in different times.