Abstract

The universally accepted trait of the contemporary age – plurality of cultural values and forms of manifestation – has imposed a need for the contemporary self to adapt to such new societal trends and to come to foster such pluralities. The academic self found himself/ herself in a position in which he/ she lost previous superiority upon the common individual because the latter was now defter in adapting to changing cultural values most of the time as a result of the demographic, geographical and cultural migration. Thus, he/ she began a process of adaptation to the new conditions transmitting and retaining what he/ she could of the abundance of novel values arising on the political, economic or artistic market. Malcolm Bradbury’s characters are most obviously subjected to such experiences of having their identity transferred onto other cultural territories and feeling directly the shock of new civilizations and mentalities. Cultural anomalies are experienced as new artistic forms, new ontological principles are guided by new pragmatic (written or unwritten) laws and new values are imposed on a pragmatic global market. The social or psychological obstacles that the new self has to overcome have landed him/ her in a world of individualism and individual desire thus amplifying the general trend of pluriperspectivism and multiculturality. Thus, the new self is presented in a permanent search of intrinsic and extrinsic fulcra, of passivity and implication, of observation and action, of acceptance and rejection of the new cultural markers.