"A trick of the mind": Alterity, ontology, and representation in Virginia Woolf's The Waves

Through a close reading of Bernard in The Waves, within a theoretical framework linking Julia Kristeva's subject-in-process to the ethical philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, this paper examines the novel's metaphor of subjectivity and explore its relation to language, history, and social convention. It will highlight the symbolic nature of totality as it is expressed in Bernard's narrative, with language, history, and convention grouped together as the home of the singular self, and the decentering of this self figured through the problematization of representation, teleology, and social structures. The philosophy staged through Bernard's subjective experience will be shown to reveal the paradox of selfhood along with the inherent violence of representation in all its forms. This will, in turn, raise associated questions regarding the ethics of representation and of
the writer's task