Who We Become when Disaster Strikes: Doris Lessing's the Making of the Representative for Planet 8/Felaket Bizi Vurdugunda Kime Donusecegiz: Doris Lessing'in 8. Gezegen Adli Eseri‪.‬

In the early pages of Ideology, David Hawkes takes issue with the postmodernist tendency to view things and historical events as discrete objects and isolated incidents, arguing instead that a subject's identity can only be understood as relational within a totalizing conception of society: "Totalizing modes of thought suggest that isolated phenomena can only be truly understood if placed in relation to the whole of society and seen in the overall context of human history" (11). To do otherwise simply maintains the status quo, which helps explain why Doris Lessing, as an arch-enemy of the status quo, often adopts a totalizing philosophy in her work, specifically in her literature of social critique. The status quo is an illusion, often exploited by those in power and often appreciated by subjects in their day-to-day lives, which gives a sense of stability, order and permanence to our environment. But nothing is permanent, Lessing cautions, and even "the petty fates of planets, let alone individuals, are only aspects of cosmic evolution" (Hazleton 25). Planet 8 of the title is undergoing such an "evolution," in the form of an ice-age which threatens to annihilate the current residents of this formerly-comfortable planet, a natural catastrophe which becomes a brutal reminder that cosmic forces do not respect mere human's ideas of stability. (1) As the population endures this cataclysmic change, their individual and collective identities evolve as well, as they pass through various phases of shock, hope and despair. Three points which seem especially important regarding the definition of identity as addressed in Lessing's novel will be examined. First, the coming ice-age accelerates what is normally, in geologic time, a very slow process of change; the population finds itself circumscribed both in terms of time and of space. Second, identity is not static but an ongoing process based on negotiation, on struggle, on wavering between obedience and rebellion. And finally, identity is always relational, becoming a representational identity corresponding to the representative of Planet 8 of the title: "individual psychology," Terry Eagleton reminds us, "is also a social product" (7, original italics). If the residents of Planet 8 have made the mistake of seeing their world as the whole to which they identify, those who survive are led to a new way of seeing the ensemble, a way of defining their relation to the whole which does not depend on geography. The residents of Planet 8 are disoriented, and with good reason. Evolutionary change is so gradual as to be imperceptible to the subject, but the cataclysm which threatens the planet leaves relatively little time for adaptation. (2) Disorientation becomes a tool, whether for the residents of Planet 8 or for the reader, by which Lessing hopes to create a space in which to look at things differently, to think more objectively by avoiding the simple, reflexive formulas of day-to-day routine. (3) Lessing makes frequent use of such destabilizing situations, and Muge Galin (in a discussion of Lessing's interest in Sufi philosophy) relates this technique to Sufi teaching stories: