Performative Identity Formation in Frank McCourt's "Angela's Ashes: A Memoir"

Strangely, very little discussion has ensued in the secondary criticism regarding the complicated linguistic structures and narrative techniques McCourt uses to fashion his memoir,3 and yet analyzing these structures and techniques by way of Lacanian and performative identity theory provides possible answers to frustrating questions offered by Angela's Ashes and outwardly asked by critics regarding the "truth" of the text.\n Thus, the technique of Performance as Other functions throughout the memoir as an umbrella technique, occurring in each passage and thus encompassing the memoir, but always employed through a different method as a combination of one or several of the other narrative techniques discussed in this article. It would, of course, be an infinite, unending task to aim to identify all the identities McCourt-as-Author performs as Other, and readers and critics instead tend to hone in on one of these numerous identities and equate this identity with who McCourt "is"-the innocent child, the judgmental adult, the merciless fabricator, the talented storyteller, the brilliant survivor, the thankless child, the passive observer, the unbiased chronicler, the cruel critic, the cynical autobiographer, the successful Irish-American, etc.