Deixis and Dissociation: On the Adaptive Power of Dissociated “I”s

Abstract

This essay argues that a continuous and unified sense of self is, at times, achieved by cognitive dissociation and that deixis facilitates these dissociated states of consciousness. Making this argument illuminates a primary part of ordinary cognition that is underexamined. By rethinking dissociation as basic, not psychotic, this essay highlights the powerful cognitive tool that is personal deixis and attends to the cognitive strategy of self-separation that is, among other things, so foundational to the writing and reading of fiction. The aim is to provide a more expansive cognitive framework with which to view modernism.