In an increasingly globalized society, individuals tend to feel lost amid the prevailing chaos. Understanding this reality is no easy task, particularly when society is constantly changing. The contradiction becomes more pronounced when individuality itself takes on a collective character. We are all doubles.
About the Author
José de Sousa Saramago, better known as José Saramago, was born on November 16, 1922, in Ribatejo, Portugal. His parents were peasants, and the family moved to Lisbon before he was two years old. Financial constraints prevented Saramago from completing his schooling, but he trained as a metalworker and later practiced the trade.
In addition to working as a metalworker, he was a translator, civil servant, journalist, editor, and literary critic. In 1947, he published his first novel, “Land of Sin.” In 1971, his political activism cost him his job at the newspaper where he worked, after which he devoted himself exclusively to literature. His writing is distinguished by its invitation to political and social reflection. Another notable feature is his use of commas in place of other punctuation marks, evoking the rhythms of spoken language.
Among his most celebrated works are “Baltasar and Blimunda” (1982), “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” (1991), and “Blindness” (1995). Over the course of his career, he received numerous awards, including the Camões Prize—the most prestigious award for Portuguese-language literature—in 1995, and the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998. Saramago died on June 18, 2010, in Lanzarote, in the Canary Islands, at the age of 87. His work left a lasting legacy, inspiring reflection and influencing countless readers.
The Double (2002)
“Chaos is merely order waiting to be deciphered” (Saramago, The Double)
After the darkness of another night, narrow shafts of light crossing your bedroom announce the day. Shaped by monotony, the exhausting routine of work—with its meaningless conversations and the inexorable weight of time bearing down on you—lies before you once again. Yet through mere coincidence, or the mysterious and somewhat uncanny workings of fate, your life is turned upside down when you follow a colleague’s film recommendation and discover that you have a double on your television screen. Somewhere out there is an actor in a supporting role who looks exactly like you. This is not resemblance in a metaphorical sense, but literal sameness. The same appearance. The same body and voice, the same distinguishing marks and height, the same eyes and hair. It is as though you were looking at your reflection in a mirror.
What would you do if you discovered that you had a double? With this question, José Saramago draws us into his remarkable novel “The Double,” which explores the life of Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, a secondary-school history teacher overwhelmed by a torrent of uncertainties, curiosities, and desires. Through chance—a recurrent force in the lives of those laid low by life’s indignities—chaos takes hold, permeating every aspect of his existence. From this point onward, Tertuliano seeks to learn about his double: What films has he appeared in? Where does he live? Who is he really? What should Tertuliano do when they meet? And so on.
The story develops through this relentless search, and Saramago offers reflections that extend beyond the experience of a character who encounters his double. Within this framework, he addresses globalization and the loss of individual identity in an increasingly globalized world.
Globalization and the Erosion of Identity
Globalization is a complex process, but it can be characterized as the diminishing significance of borders through the expansion of global capital flows. The growing power and increasingly prominent role of multinational corporations in the international system reflect this continuing process.
According to Valérie de Campos Melo (1999), globalization must be understood as “more than a fully realized political and social transformation […] It is a phenomenon that is both broad and limited: broad because it encompasses political, economic, and cultural transformations; limited because it is neither a complete nor a finished process, and it does not affect everyone in the same way (Campos Melo, Valérie. 1999, p. 165).” According to Milton Santos (2002), both the state of technology and politics must be taken into account. In this sense, globalization encompasses the development of new technologies as well as the political actions undertaken to advance these ends.
Within this process, the history teacher Tertuliano Máximo Afonso recognizes that history, the instrument of his profession, must be reconsidered. Simply speaking about the past is not enough: his knowledge finds no purchase, and his actions have no effect:
Talking about the past is the easiest thing there is, it is all written down, you only have to repeat it, parrot it, check against the books what students write in their exercises or say in oral examinations, whereas talking about a present that blows up in our faces every minute, talking about it every day of the year while navigating upstream along the river of History toward its origins, or somewhere near them, striving to understand ever more clearly the chain of events that has brought us to where we are now, that is another matter entirely, it takes a great deal of work, it demands sustained application, the rope must always be kept taut, without a break (Saramago, The Double, p. 71).
In this sense, it is not the past that provides the tools necessary to understand the present. Rather, the present equips us with the tools needed to immerse ourselves in the past.
Globalization, with its neoliberal rhetoric, has also brought about the Westernization of the world. For João Ribeiro Júnior, “the major multinational corporations have long condemned local cultures to homogenization and trivialization, and, with them, the very sovereignty of the countries that host them (Ribeiro Júnior, João. 2001, p. 304).”
In this regard, the upheavals that homogenization brings to the remotest corners of the world tend to narrow cultural distances, bring opposites closer together, and lead the “self” to recognize its likeness in the “other.” Like Tertuliano, we all have a double. Indeed, we are copies of others. Tertuliano’s double brings him closer to himself by provoking an existential crisis in which his very essence collapses. These are consequences of a globalized world in which social massification serves as an instrument of cohesion and harmony, sustaining a society adapted to new patterns of living and consumption.
According to Danilo Luiz Carlos Micali (2011):
Modern—or postmodern—society’s drive toward uniformity would dissolve personal singularities into a mass culture that aspires to universality. In fact, in seeking his double, Tertuliano would have set out in search of himself, of his inner life, only to confront the total loss of identity in a body duplicated and reduplicated ad infinitum (MICALI, Danilo L.C., 2011).
Nevertheless, as a counterpoint to the industry that produces this mass culture in the service of a developed capitalist market, there is also popular culture: culture that emerges “from below,” responds to the everyday life of a particular community, speaks directly to it, and provides the bond connecting its members to culture. According to Milton Santos (2000):
Mass culture certainly produces symbols. Yet these symbols, directly or indirectly serving power or the market, are fixed at any given moment. In response to social change, and to avoid appearing outdated, they are replaced, but by another equally fixed symbolism: what comes from above is always dying and can, in anticipation, already be regarded as a corpse from the moment of its birth. Such is the ideological symbolism of mass culture. Symbols “from below,” by contrast, products of popular culture, carry the truth of existence and reveal the very movement of society (Milton Santos, 2000)
Despite its powerful presence, substantial resources, and extensive reach, mass culture finds a counterpoint in popular culture. A culture that responds to people’s aspirations, gives them a voice, and allows the “self” to recognize itself as an individual, a citizen, and a human being has the power to bring forth the fullness of humanity amid the world’s chaos.
Concluding Reflections
Saramago offers us a remarkable narrative that explores one of the most debated and controversial issues of our time: globalization. The individual thrust into this maelstrom faces an imminent conflict. Ultimately, the reflections contained in “The Double” offer valuable insights into the contradictions of this process, helping us understand our own condition within it.