Unstable Identity in Caryl Churchill's Love and Information

Abstract

Caryl Churchill’s play, Love and Information, presents a shift in focus from unstable personal and political identity towards unstable logical identity, a philosophical concept that takes identity out of the realm of identity politics.. As a new play Love and Information has understandably been subject to very little scholarly analysis. This thesis situates the play within Churchill’s corpus in order to consider how the depersonalized identities of this play fit within the broader scope of Churchill’s work. Anchored in Elin Diamond’s study of gender identity in Churchill’s corpus, this thesis will further incorporate theories of logical identity as well as theories of language in order to define what I argue is Churchill’s shift towards logical identity. Through a study of both the text of Love and Information and the 2014 New York première, I conclude that Love and Information represents a shift in focus while Churchill maintains her playwriting methodology.