Identity in Doris Lessing’s Space Fiction By David Waterman

In fact, people are separated from such a perspective by a society which constructs them as predefined subjects; individuals are constituted in a certain way and “invited,” as Terry Eagleton suggests, to see themselves and their position within society as defined for them by the dominant power (Ideology, 166). By means of binary opposition, classification, and exclusion, an ide-ological system tries not only to secure social categories and their signification but also has as a goal to reproduce itself, while at the same time giving its reproduction a natural appearance; domination, as Butler highlights, creates an illusion of difference which then becomes social reality (Gender Trouble, 118).

In Lessing’s novel, Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971), the character of Charles Watkins illustrates the prophet who has come with teachings to help repair the fragmented state of society, by challenging the current concept of reality. He is the so-called insane Professor of Classics, who is literally dragged back to normality and passivity by electric shocks and psychotropic drugs. In other words, the treatment that Charles undergoes does not simply reward him for changing his mind, but rather re-creates his identity from scratch; according to Theodore R. Schatzki, exposing a subject to new conditions creates completely new subjects (54). Although the psychiatrists consider Charles’s “therapy” a success, his integrity and his identity have been destroyed in the process, and the result, as Julian Rice explains, is that the ordinary Charles Watkins is boring and not worth knowing (72). Rice also suggests, as we will see, that despite his apparent cure, Charles has perhaps simply learned to hide his androgyny in order to avoid further physical and psychological torture, including incarceration, mind-altering drugs and electric shocks (76). In any case, Charles at least seems normal after his treatment; he has become a victim of what Elizabeth Grosz calls an institutionalized system of torture (134), institutions which for Althusser are the repressive apparatuses of ideology, or further concerning, according to Schatzki, the cultural investment of the subject (61)³.