"Lose Yourself": Narrative Instability and Unstable Identities in Black Swan

Abstract

This article discusses narrative instability as a significant dynamic in recent American cinema and focuses on an investigation of the film Black Swan“ as such a narratively unstable text. After an introduction to narrative instability and its connection to a (post-)postmodern cultural instability in general, I analyze Black Swan“ as a narratively unstable text that dramatizes previous unstable films’ concerns about identity and reality.

Keywords

• Narrative Instability
• Narrativity
• Post-Postmodernism
• Identity
• Black Swan