Globalization, Risk, and Transformation of Intimacy: Investigating Mark Ravenhill’s <i>Some Explicit Polaroids</i> and <i>Faust Is Dead</i>

Abstract

Exploring how literature represents social context, the present study aims to critically examine Mark Ravenhill's plays, Some Explicit Polaroids and Faust is Dead, in terms of Giddens' concepts of Globalization, Risk, and Transformation of Intimacy. The central argument of this analysis is thus to demonstrate how Ravenhill's plays represent the social changes of the contemporary era in which the plays have been produced. The study addresses the concepts of Globalization and Risk in the plays in order to illustrate how transformations brought by it affect individual's day-to-day life in contemporary society. Accordingly, the researcher thus focuses on the impacts of such transformations on the process of self-identity construction as well as the transformation of intimacy in that, as Giddens has contended, the characteristics of the globalized world deeply intrude into the heart of self-identity and reshape the way individuals build up their self-identities.