Living in a fictional world: reading and identification in Lost Girls

Abstract

This chapter studies Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls and how it deals with another topic that is being discussed in contemporary aesthetics: identification with fictional characters. However, most philosophers hold that people cannot identify with fictional characters. When someone says that they identify with a certain fictional character, they are just wrong, or, at best, using the term in a metaphorical sense. The chapter shows how, because a given situation always has different aspects, identification happens with regard to different aspects too. It puts forward a concept called “egocentric identification,” which refers to the identifying of oneself with a fictional character, caring about them in the same way someone cares about themselves.