| Chapter 1: | Androgynous Identity in a Fragmented Society: Briefing for a Descent into Hell |
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He still would like to believe in the power of heroism against all odds (226), but he is also taking the risk that his perspicacity will be destroyed in the process. After the treatments, it seems as though Charles’s androgyny has been destroyed, because his “identity” has been reestablished (275). However, if one accepts the argument that Charles prefers a guerilla war to a frontal assault, one must consider the possibility that he is operating in disguise, with the intention of returning to his position of authority as university professor, a figure of authority much like a psychiatrist, from where he can better be subversive. According to Judith Butler, every act of resistance functions in this way: s/he who resists is constituted by the same political system against which s/he resists, hence such resistance is never a true, external opposition; one must negotiate with the system from inside:
Charles’s role, as discreet revolutionary, allows him to foster social changes from the interior, because Charles is not entirely what he appears to be.
Lessing provides a critique of the dominant ideology because she has removed the stable reference points, which anchored the ideology in question, thus she reveals the contradictions of an ideological system whose goal is its own reproduction. Eccentric voices are required to interrogate such a system through negotiation and / or disguise, a sort of coded resistance, because marginal or crazy individuals are almost inexistent, since even the margins are recovered by the dominant power.