Spend enough time thinking about identity and the ways in which it is exploited and brandished and it begins to take on a sinister tone:
We are born subject. From the moment of our birth we are subject. One mark of this subjection is the certificate of birth. The perfected state holds and guards the monopoly of certifying birth. Either you are given (and carry with you) the certificate of the state, thereby acquiring an identity which during the course of your life enables the state to track you (track you down); or you do without an identity and condemn yourself to living outside the state like an animal (animals do not have identity papers). Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year (4)
Notice the voice of sarcasm that sneaks in, so that the narrator is at once banal and proper (read the passage again but skip over the parentheticals) and yet also angry and irreverent. It’s all he can do to keep that sneering alter ego tucked inside those parentheses, as if the other voice is locked behind a door, but his whispers slip through the cracks.
