Dual Consciousness in Body-Switching Fiction: A Lockean-Phenomenological Approach to Narrative Identity

Abstract

This paper argues that body-switching narratives expose two underappreciated flaws in Lockean personal identity theory. First, while Locke defines identity through psychological continuity (memory chains), his framework cannot resolve conflicts when consciousness splits into coexisting entities—as seen in cases like The Double (dual consciousness) and Permutation City (hybrid fusion). Second, Locke’s dismissal of bodily criteria overlooks the phenomenological “body-as-anchor” that grounds lived experience, a necessity revealed when narratives depict identity destabilization post-body-transfer (e.g., Avatar). Against Parfitian reductionism and Cartesian dualism, the study proposes a narrative-phenomenological triad: (1) memory coherence, (2) somatic continuity, and (3) narrative agency. Through literary analysis, it demonstrates that bodily perception (Merleau-Ponty) and temporal unity (Bergson’s durée) are irreducible to psychological criteria. Crucially, narrative ethics—not abstract metaphysics—determines which consciousness claims legitimacy in post-human scenarios (e.g., cloned selves in Never Let Me Go). By reframing fiction as a laboratory for ontology, the paper concludes that personal identity demands tripartite negotiation: what the mind remembers, the body enacts, and the story legitimizes.