Harry Du Bois, John Locke, and the Problem of Personal Identity
Major spoilers for Disco Elysium
I've been thinking about Harry Du Bois through John Locke's distinction between the man and the person: the man as a continuous living body, and the person as the consciousness.
Harry seems to create an interesting, and particularly strange problem got Locke. The body remains continuous. The memories of the previous life, however, is gone. Harry inherits the consequences of a life he cannot remember living, and he has to decide what to do with it.
I ended up writing this essay exploring Harry and Kim through that lens, particularly, the relationship between memory, identity, and agency.
If Harry cannot remember being the person who made his past choices, what responsibility does the person who woke up in Martinaise have for them?
I'd like to hear what other people think about this. Especially on whether you think Locke's framework actually works for Harry, or whether Disco Elysium ultimately points toward a different conception of identity altogether.
I also deliberately avoided getting too deep into the political aspects. A lot of Harry's political identity is shaped by player choice, and I wanted to focus more on the identity aspect.