Identity in Doris Lessing’s Space Fiction By David Waterman

Anarchy, the collapse of the accepted social order⁸, is theoretically a moment of opportunity, the possibility to experiment with alternative ways of living and being; in reality, anarchy engenders so much fear that people hesitate to even call it by name. Lessing’s characters are no exception, referring only to “it” as conditions gradually deteriorate:

Citizens of the old order fear its break-up, in spite of its imperfections, for many reasons, one being that they are no longer sure of their “place” or their role within the transitional and new order(s). A part of their identity is threatened as group affiliations dissolve or change, since group membership is one of the fundamental producers of a subject’s identity. Lessing’s novel explores two responses to this dissolution of authority and its subsequent threat to the subject’s identity: first, the formation of tribes, the solution favored by most as it reproduces the system of group affiliation with which we are familiar, giving us a sense of security and belonging as the member of such a tribe. But secondly, there exists an alternative solution for those of a broader mind, for those who are willing to overcome their fears and seek a solution which does not simply reproduce the status quo; in Memoirs, that possibility exists for those who are willing to explore behind the wall, beyond the grasp of ideological inculcation and the prescriptions of Authority.

Those who represent official Authority in the novel are shown to be what they really are, namely puppets in the service of a fragile system, who become the victims of historical conditions rather than the directors of circumstance, a class of administrative elite whom Lessing derisively refers to as “Talkers” (48).