Identity (Re)construction in Truman Capote's In Cold Blood: A new Journalistic Process?

Abstract

Classified as a work of new journalism, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood lends itself to the study of identity representation as a new journalistic function grounded through the generic codes of truth and objectivity. Nevertheless, the genre’s representational function is not to be determined through generic hybridity only, but it is also to be scrutinized through the inspection of the infused psychoanalytical instances in the book, allowing the new journalistic authorial silence to become artistically voiced with no subversion of the reported facts. The silent reverberations of psychological truths about subject characters in In Cold Blood, are delineated through examinations of fragmentariness, status details and the Lacanian concept of Mirror Stage. By means of these journalistic and literary techniques, the artistically voiced truths transform the representational purpose of the text, along with the historical aspect it bears, from a mere replica of facts about a Southern American crime to a hybrid process of reality reconstruction. In compliance with the predicaments of truthfulness in reportage, though, this process embeds reportage into a whirl of critical reconstructions of the individual’s psychological and cultural identities in a dialectical relationship with the community.