Identity in Jasmine/TED talks

I recently watched a TED talk entitled: "The Universe is queerer than we suppose" given by Richard Dawkins in February 2003. At one point in the video Dawkins said that every molecule in your body was not there five years ago. We also know from copious amounts of studies that prove that memories are faulty, and that people re-remember experiences in the past. Then, the question remains. If you look at a photograph of yourself five years ago, is that really you? No physical part of yourself from the photo remains now, and chances are good, your memories of that time is faulty and inaccurate. Furthermore, the personality that you have is dissimilar to the one you had in the photo. What part of the you from the photograph remains in the you looking at it. Perhaps then, the person that is staring out at you from the photo is not indeed you, but somebody completely different, a shadow in your past.

This question of identity is a very important one in Jasmine. Her name has changed to represent her changing identity. She has had happiness and sadness in all of her lives, and changed drastically throughout. She often talks about how the version of herself now is not the same person as the she is now. She says that "Jyoti of Hasnapur was not Jasemine, Duff's day mummy and Taylor and Wylie's au-pair in Manhattan; that Jasmine isn't this Jane Ripplemayer," (127). She goes on to question "Which one of us is the undeteteced murder of a half-faced monster, which of us held a dying husband, which of us was raped and raped ad raped in boats and cars and motel rooms?" (127). Jasmine is struggling to differentiate herself, and find out when she became who she is now.

Jasmine believes that these things can happen that cause the "long playing record" of life to jump, and thrust new life into a "groove that was not prepared to receive it," yet this can only be caused by an extraordinary event taking place (127).  Dawkins seems to disagree, that change is a natural occurrence, and that in five years you are guaranteed to become a new, different person. One does not need a life changing event to become different. It is a law of nature. He also believes that "matter flows from place to place and momentarily comes together to be you," (TED Talk). This is similar to Jasmine's concept of life being pushed around, albeit more scientific. The idea of this constant change, guaranteed by the universe makes Jasmine's plight less dramatic in many ways. Perhaps, we all spend our entire lives changing, thus we are all trying to search for our identity. Perhaps Jasmine’s search through India to New York and later Iowa is a natural event that must occur in all of our lives, just, perhaps ours may be less dramatic than hers.  Perhaps our names also change over the years, and that Jasmine's is more a struggle of assimilation than of self-discovery.

Dawkins TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/richard_dawkins_on_our_queer_universe.html