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Included in this study of identity, of our role as a member of a society based on group affiliation, are works which can be considered under the rubric of what Lessing calls “space fiction”: the five novels of Canopus in Argos: Archives, as well as Briefing for a Descent into Hell and Memoirs of a Survivor, all of which have more to do with their effects on inner rather than outer space, at least in terms of our interest in identity construction. Nevertheless, “space” fiction is also important in a geographic sense, as we human beings are often defined in terms of our “place”; our relationship to others, our position within a network of power, a logic of classification based on binary opposition which defines and constructs our socioeconomic class, our gender, our nationality, our race, or other abstractions. Our insertion in this network happens automatically, and seemingly with our cooperation, from the very beginning; we are born into the “game.” We are defined, and our sense of self is determined by our membership in certain groups, or by our “coordinates,” in other words by the space which we occupy. A geographic vocabulary is in order: center / margin, right / left, inside / outside, without forgetting that certain positions are favored in relation to others. These reference points which seem fixed, natural and universal, reveal their illusion of stability in the critical representations offered by Lessing, an instability which in turn calls into question the “common sense” of our societies, especially the frontier which separates “us” from “them.”
Our identity is also defined ideologically, because the goal of a network of formative power is a subtle conditioning of its members through a body of received ideas which are the “rules of the game” just mentioned (Bourdieu, 111–113), and which ensure the integration of those who play by the rules. It is important to believe in the game, because such cultural baggage is in fact a falsehood, what Kathleen Kirby calls a “functional fiction,” which nevertheless has profound effects and very real consequences in the daily lives of subjects (39). These practices, habits, rituals, and performances become a social text, the product as well as the producer of meaning, knowledge, and ultimately reality for all of us; they define the norm among and between groups, and our individual and collective identity as a result.