中的潛態宇宙觀 the Virtual Cosmic Vision in Doris Lessing's Re

國立臺灣師範大學英語學系

博士論文

Doctoral Dissertation

Graduate Institute of English

National Taiwan Normal University

多麗絲．萊辛《希卡斯塔》中的潛態宇宙觀

The Virtual Cosmic Vision in Doris Lessing’s Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta

指導教授: 邱漢平博士

Advisor: Dr. Hanping Chiu 研究生: 鄭如玉

Advisee: Ju-Yu Cheng

中華民國一百零二年七月

July, 2013 多麗絲．萊辛《希卡斯塔》中的潛態宇宙觀

中文摘要

在《希卡斯塔》(Shikasta)這本屬於首部「外太空」（outer-space）科幻系列的小說中，諾貝爾文學獎得主多麗斯．萊辛（Doris Lessing）意圖呈現一個存在矛盾又共生共存的混沌宇宙演化過程，她以雙重觀點(dual vision)勾勒出寓言式的兩種地球面貌，並套用烏托邦/反烏托邦的主題呈現:一方面以近距離、

局部觀點描繪受個人主義的宰治的希卡斯塔/地球 (Shikasta)日趨墮落的物種與實際社會政治環境;另一方面則以殖民主星球加諾波斯(Canopus)的遠距離觀點看待希卡斯塔/地球，藉由宇宙共感與演化所構成的宇宙潛態轉變來看待希卡斯塔/地球(Shikasta)的時空變化。萊辛旨在發現一個能超越二元對立的新興烏托邦宇宙(潛態混沌宇宙)。矛盾的是，這個新興宇宙竟從一個銀河殖民的關係開始。我們該如何從殖民關係中解讀這兩種觀看希卡斯塔(地球) (Shikasta)的觀點？萊辛又如何調和兩種看似相互矛盾的關係：一個是墮落的社會政治光景，另

一個是宇宙進化。殖民系統又如何啓動宇宙進化？這個二元的殖民系統又如何在內部矛盾中自我超越？特別是當萊辛呈現出殖民兩造關係時，她意圖超越當代地理政治困境而描繪出的代表宇宙進化力量的潛態烏托邦常常招來「退化」，甚至是「背叛」的評價。為了反駁這樣的誤解及替萊辛如此精妙的遠見辯解，我的論文致力於闡明這幅有著自相矛盾複雜性的動態錦織畫。這個矛盾首先就出現在萊辛所描繪的共生殖民關係中。我的論文想琢磨的是，她如何以雙重觀點(dual vision)勾勒出一個多元共生的動態混沌宇宙。萊辛的

雙重觀點(dual vision)意欲揭示能量之間的流動而不是二元對立的展演。萊辛一生投入政治活動、精神分裂議題與蘇菲主義(Sufism)，她明白以單一觀點捍衛信念的徒然，因為單一觀點必陷入二元對立(dichotomy)的泥沼。這得來不易的覺醒在《希卡斯塔》(Shikasta)這部作品中於焉成型。潛態宇宙演化的達成並不在於消除實存的社會政治條件，而是如萊辛般將矛盾而分歧的社會政治元素廣納入內，呈現出其潛在多樣性。在小說中，萊辛豐富化喬荷(Johor)這位潛態的銀河使者，突變的倖存者、擴張的城市與持續演化的文檔式(archival)宇宙記憶的

目的在於創造出一個持續演化的混沌宇宙。混沌宇宙中交織著相生相剋力量之間

的互動:加諾波斯(Canopus)與希卡斯塔(地球) (Shikasta)之間、殖民主與被殖民者之間、遠觀與近觀之間、宇宙進化與社會政治的墮落之間、和希卡斯塔個人化而侷限於地球的內在空間與加諾波斯客觀而廣大的外太空視野之間的相互流動。本論文將借用德勒茲對於「潛態」的看法，包括他的個體化、知感、情動 (情感)、渾沌宇宙與非個人記憶理論，旨在闡明萊辛在《希卡斯塔》(Shikasta)中藉由雙重觀點的擺盪呈現出一多元共生的潛態混沌宇宙：本文處理在潛態與實存

兩端所涵蓋的身份、空間與時間種種擺盪如何激盪出一擺脫二元對立之多元共生混沌宇宙。本論文的主體分成三個章節。核心論述的主旨，在討論當主體、空間與記憶都被加諾波斯(Canopus) 星球的宇宙殖民計劃所制約時，萊辛所企圖呈現的潛態混沌宇宙如何暫時超越各種實存的存有或政治社會框架、鬆綁主體、空間與記憶的枷鎖並重新界定了宇宙演化的軌跡。第一章主要探討本小說主角喬荷(Johor)身為銀河系使者與其種族間矛盾的

關係: 為何喬荷(Johor)能既服從又背離其隸屬殖民星球所制定的宇宙計劃，並且，他如何能穿梭在不同世界與真實的不同面向中，並居中調和鼎鼐。在論文中，我將闡明雙重觀點(dual vision)如何搖擺在潛態的宇宙演化與實存的殖民計劃之間並激盪出多樣性:這樣的擺盪呈現在潛態的殖民星球使者喬荷(Johor)與實存的喬治(George)(喬荷在地球上的化身)之間並發散成萬花筒般的多元變化。喬荷(Johor)的多重身份使得個體與帝國間的矛盾關係變得可能。作為一個宇宙潛態的代言人，喬荷(Johor)能超越實存個體的限制，揭露宇宙演化的各種可能性。

本章節將借用德勒茲關於個體化的理論來理解喬荷(Johor)如何超脫其種族的限制，並引導希卡斯塔人以及他的族人參與宇宙的進化，進而詮釋萊辛如何以潛態的宇宙能量(SOWF)修正以加諾波人(Canopeans)為中心的宇宙計劃，並藉由如此的修正，促成一場宇宙演化革命。在第二章中，我試著探索小說中萊辛並置古老城市與浩劫後未來城市的意圖：一個是古老而僵化的殖民系統，另一個是新興直覺演化式的新設計，這兩股勢力形成一特殊雙重觀點使得潛態與實際間的共生變得可能。一個是殖民主計劃要實

現的遠古幾何城市，另一個則是潛態化的浩劫後城市，萊辛試圖解釋這兩股勢力

如何幫助形成在希卡斯塔(地球) (Shikasta)上倖存者與城市之間無法區辨的關係，這樣的關係使得兩者能進而與宇宙力量(SOWF)產生連結。事實上，城市與倖存者之間界線的消融有助於形成一種海納岩石、植物、猩猩、巨人、希卡斯塔人 (Shikastans)、加諾波人（Canopeans）等概念的新的「我們」(We)。我將引用

德勒茲(Deleuze)與瓜特里（Guattari）對於知感、情動 (情感)、渾沌宇宙的看法去理解倖存者與城市之間的微妙關係，並且藉著城市演化的觀念，闡明萊辛的潛態宇宙觀，最終揭示啟動潛態渾沌宇宙進化的關鍵元素: 全新的「我們」

(We) 。第三章旨在探討萊辛如何將兩種與記憶相關的矛盾敘述揉合。其一牽涉到詳細的心理記憶，其二則是客觀的宏觀記憶。小說中，在主角喬荷(Johor)對於記錄希卡斯塔(Shikasta)的正當性質疑後，藉著猩猩、巨人與另一宇宙能量(Lock) 的幫忙，他才能夠探索並改變看似客觀的回憶，因而同時參與了宇宙記憶的演化過程。在我的論文中，德勒茲對於柏格森的記憶概念挪用有助於解讀記憶的雙重觀點：實證的個人記憶與不存於大腦的潛態記憶。以喬荷(Johor)的多重身份為

例，藉由不同的化身與綿延的潛態生命，喬荷(Johor)以暫時性顛覆時間限制的手段介入宇宙記憶的文檔母體，使他得以與共存的過往宇宙記憶互動，並進而參與了潛態渾沌宇宙的演化過程。

關鍵詞: 萊辛、德勒茲、潛態混沌宇宙、宇宙演化

iii

The Virtual Cosmic Vision in Doris Lessing’s Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta

Abstract

Doris Lessing’s first outer-space novel, Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta, depicts a paradoxical, symbiotic chaosmos of cosmic evolution. With dual vision, she paints allegorical pictures of Earth from two perspectives. One is the “short, partial views” of Shikasta’s (Earth’s) actual degenerating beings and socio-political milieu, dominated by individualism. The other, seen from the colonizing planet Canopus, is the “long view” of Shikasta’s (Earth’s) virtual transformation via cosmic symbiosis and evolution. Lessing purports to discover a new utopian cosmos that transcends discrete identities and dichotomies and thus evolve. Paradoxically, this new cosmos develops from a galactic colonial relationship. If Lessing envisions a world apart from socio-political conditioning, why does she portray the galactic Empire of Canopus, and, ironically, make it responsible for cosmic evolution? How do we decode the dual vision of Earth rendered through this colonial relationship? How can/does Lessing reconcile the two seemingly contradictory strands: one, the degenerating socio-political condition, the other, cosmic evolution. Her departure from the contemporary dilemma of geopolitics through delineation of a virtual utopia of cosmic evolution is often criticized as regressive and even treacherous, especially since she renders a colonial relationship.

In defense of the cunning visionary, my dissertation explains the paradoxical, yet symbiotic colonial relationship as a dual vision, which comprises much of Shikasta’s visionary complexity and supports Lessing’s philosophy of a dynamic cosmos. Her two contradictory but complementary perspectives, represented by that between utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta, reveal, not a display of fixed dichotomous identities or concepts, but a vast symbiotic transaction of manifold dichotomous forces—all in unceasing states of becoming-one another. Lessing’s dual vision

iv becomes a kaleidoscopic vision of multiplicity.

Lessing’s lifelong passionate involvements, successively, in political affairs, schizophrenia, and Sufism push her to realize the futility of fighting for any belief from only one perspective—because discrete identities and conflicting dichotomies remain. This hard-won awareness crystalizes in Shikasta. Virtual cosmic evolution is accomplished, not because of the elimination of actual socio-political embeddedness, but because of Lessing’s incorporation of imcompossible, divergent socio-political elements. In depicting the virtual galactic messenger (Johor), the mutating Survivors, the expanding cities, and the evolving archival cosmic memory, Lessing creates an evolving chaosmos that turns the dichotomy into a multiplicity and the potential of a reciprocal cross-fertilization between utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta, between the colonizer and the colonized, between the long view and the partial view, between cosmic evolution and socio-political embeddedness, between Shikastans’ personal, earthbound, inner space vision and Canopus’s impersonal, cosmic, outer-space vision.

Deleuze’s theory of the virtual, which includes his ideas of individuation, becoming, percept, affect, chaosmos, and memory, helps explain the emergence of a virtual chaosmos, triggered by Lessing’s two contradictory perspectives, utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta. In Shikasta, the two perspectives are revealed as the virtual and the actual regarding identity, space, and time and illuminate how the utopian/dystopian cosmos can be transformed into a chaosmos of multiplicity, where the infinite speed and recomposition replace the per-established harmony.

In Chapter One, I examine how Johor can simultaneously follow and precede the cosmic Master Plan set up for the functioning of the Empire of Canopus. The conflict between the utopian aspiration of Canopus and the dystopian degeneration of Shikasta is revealed through Johor’s oscillation between the actual cosmic plan and virtual cosmic forces (the Lock and SOWF) as well as between the actual manifestation of Johor as George Sherban, conditioned by the geopolitical situation and Johor, who tilts toward the virtual because of his connection with the virtual cosmic forces so that

v he can revise the cosmic plan and thereby trigger cosmic evolution. Through Johor’s multiple identities, the paradoxical relationship between the individual and the empire can be manifested and the emergence of a virtual chaosmos is made possible. Deleuze’s theory of individuation informs my explanation of Johor’s contribution to the chaosmos of cosmic evolution. My Chapter Two explores Lessing’s juxtaposition of the ancient dystopian cities and the future post-catastrophic utopian cities, of old static colonial design and of new intuitive evolutionary design. Her dual vision makes possible virtual symbiosis of the two forces, not in spite of, but because the link to the cosmic force is always interrupted by conditioning of colonial, geopolitical “realities.” The two forces, the actualization of the ancient geometric cities via the colonial Master Plan and the virtualization of the post-catastrophic cities, help form an indiscernible relationship between the Survivors and the cities. The dissolving of boundaries between the cities and the Survivors facilitates the formation of a new virtual “we” that encompasses different beings such as stones, plants, apes, Giants, Shikastans, and even Canopeans and trigger the emergence of a virtual chaosmos of multiplicity. Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect, and chaosmos help explain the imperceptible relationship between the Survivors and the cities, highlight the divergences of the evolving cities, illuminate Lessing’s turning the dual vision into a multiplicity, and reveal the formation of a new virtual “we,” a key element of the virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution. My Chapter Three examines Lessing’s creation and conjoining of two contradictory narratives regarding memory. One involves detailed, psychological memory, and the other, impersonal, macroscopic memory. After Johor is skeptical of the legitimacy of his personal records of Shikasta, he, aided by the ape, the Giants, and the cosmic force Lock, is able to explore and even transform impersonal memory, thus symbiotically revising cosmic evolution. Deleuze’s appropriation of the Bergsonian concept of memory aids in decoding the dual vision of memory: the empirical, personal memory and the ontological memory that preserves itself

vi elsewhere than the brain. The “virtual” Johor provisionally subverts temporal limitations so as to facilitate intervention into the Archival cosmic memory matrix, where the virtual co-existence of the cosmos’ past allows him to interact with the cosmic memory. His intervention in the cosmic memory through his multiple reincarnations and long virtual life helps generate the virtual chaosmos of multiplicity.

Key Words: Lessing, Deleuze, virtual Chaosmos, cosmic evolution

vii

Acknowledgements

The long process of research and writing has revealed an important message to me: I am loved and supported by so many people! Thanks to them, my dream is being fulfilled. Father, I made it! I express unreserved gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Hanping Chiu, who has never given up on me. This is a miracle because my writing has left a lot to be desired. He has led me into Deleuze’s difficult but fascinating theoretical world, encouraged me to participate in important conferences and camps and to publish papers, and supported me in writing my thesis over all these years. He has expanded my horizons by inviting me to join the panel he organized at the First International Deleuze Studies Conference at Cardiff University in 2008, followed by the Second at Cologne University in 2009. He has trained me to think originally and creatively. Although I remain in the labyrinth, trying to find my way out, I am now gifted with Ariadne’s ball of thread. Professor Chiu has aided me in cultivating my love of literature, especially Deleuzian thought, and encouraged me to persist, no matter what. I also express deep gratitude to Professor Wei-yun Yang, who has played the role of guru to me academically and spiritually. She has helped me cultivate a panoramic view of life, with a wide-spectrum state of mind, and led me into the encyclopedic universe of Doris Lessing, whose themes include communism, psychology, science, spiritualism, and mysticism. Professor Yang’s unswerving faith in me has been my lighthouse, guiding me through the dark, turbulent nights. As well, I express my heartfelt appreciation to Professors Chaoyang Liao, Han-yu Huan, Jiann-guang Lin, and Wan-shuan Lin for their warm spiritual support and for their inspiring questions and suggestions during my final oral defense. Their invaluable commentaries have provided unique perspectives and prevented my adoption of Deleuzian philosophy from becoming a methodological straightjacket. I am enormously grateful to Professor Chaoyang Liao’s spiritual and academic support.

viii

He always gives me constructive comments and warm encouragement.

Too, the fertile instruction provided by Professors Yu-cheng Lee, Hsiu-chuan Lee, Chen Chun-yen, and Frank Stevenson during my years of study at National Taiwan Normal University, and by Professors Patricia Haseltine, Pi-hua Ni, and E-chou Wu during my years of study at Providence University has intensified and deepened my interest in literature. Special thanks also to Professor Patricia Haseltine, who has been like a mother to me, guiding me whenever I encounter difficulties, and to Chairman Sun-chieh Liang, who has encouraged me to continue studying science fiction.

Heartfelt thanks go to Professor Dick Harrington for editing my dissertation drafts and supporting me academically and spiritually all the way! My work would not have been as authentic and clear in expression had it not been for his unfailing commitment to my success. I also thank my partners in the “Theory Study Group,” many of whom are already established scholars, for their insightful discussion of key issues in Deleuze’s oeuvre.

For sustaining encouragement and kind friendship, I am indebted to Yu-Chi Chiang, Bing-yong Chung, Sincere, Saul, Bolang, Niki, Joanne, Yi-jung Lin, Chen-hsiang Chiu, Yi-ren Chang, Rui-hua Tseng, Vince Shieh, and Mu-han, a lovely, helpful teaching assistant in the English Department, for helping me in administrative affairs. A particular acknowledgement goes out to Gordon for his unfailing support in the long process of my thesis writing. I much appreciate my colleagues’ warm support in my writing process, namely

Shan and Karen, for helping me carry my burden, and I especially thank my best friend, Hui-ling, for her generous assistance and constant faith in me. As a full-time teacher in a cram school, I have continued for all these years to persist in exercising my passion for literature and theory. True, teaching does rob me of time to crystallize my thought. Mine is a bittersweet process, supporting my family while also pursuing my professional dream. The abiding love of Father, Mother, and my siblings, Vincent, Jane, and Samuel,

ix strengthen my determination and enrich my life. I offer special thanks to Vincent, whose spiritual support propels me to leave the Waste Land in search of psychic integration and wholeness. We are brought together, not defeated, by hardship in life. Through hardship, I realize how lucky I am to be cared for and assisted by so many loving people.

I dedicate my thesis to my father, the hero of my life. Left with only four fingers, he never gave up fighting and transforming his sorrow into impetus. When I look at his painting, I am transfixed by the strength and determination of his life force. When I feel disoriented, his courage to overcome all difficulties inspires me. Although he is no longer with us physically, his spirit will live on in each member of our family. Father, without you, I would have been unable to fulfill my dream.

Table of Contents

Chinese Abstract i

English Abstract iv

Acknowledgements Viii

Table of Contents xi

Introduction 1

Chapter One The Paradoxical Relationship Between the Individual and the Species 41

Chapter Two The Survivors’ Becoming-City, the Cosmic Force SOWF, and the New Assemblage:

The Affective Relationship of the Survivors, the Cities, and SOWF 84

Chapter Three The Virtual Cosmic Memory: The Encounter Between the Virtual Past and the

Actual Present 133

Conclusion 176

Works Cited 191

Other Works Consulted 196

Introduction

It was clear I had made—or found—a new world for myself, a realm where the

petty fates of planets, let alone individuals, are only aspects of cosmic

evolution expressed in the rivalries and interactions of great galactic Empires:

Canopus, Sirius, and their enemy, the Empire Puttiora, with its criminal planet

Shammat. (Shikasta 2)

Early in Shikasta, to provide the reader with an “outer-space view,” a “long view,”

Doris Lessing reveals that the Canopean galactic messenger (Johor) can oscillate forward and backward in time and access the archived history of the colonized planet Shikasta for millions of years, including its relation to its colonizing planet Canopus. At heart,

Shikasta delineates how a God-like, “benevolent” galactic empire Canopus oversees the fate of Shikasta. The virtually immortal Canopeans supervise and record the history of

Shikasta from its Golden Age (Shikasta’s prehistory), through its fall in the “Century of

Destruction” (Earth's 20th century, when the Chinese occupy Europe and World War III breaks out), and on to its visionary, post-catastrophic future. It is the story of a paradise lost and, not regained per se, but organically reconceived and reconstructed, not rationally, but intuitively, in the complex flow of cosmic symbiosis, imperceptibility, and evolution.

As Gayle Greene asserts, in Doris Lessing: The Poetics of Change, Lessing complements this “long view” with “the near, the partial views” (159-160), the “inner-space vision” focusing on the inner growth and development of certain individual Shikastans as seen in the multiple archival records of Rachel, Benjamin, and Lynda. Understanding the paradoxical interplay of the cosmic, impersonal, “outer-space vision”—of Shikasta vis-à-vis Canopus—and the personal, earthbound, “inner-space vision”—of individual

1 beings—is critical for understanding this visionary novel.

Shikasta is paradoxical. On the one hand, its partial view of Earth, embedded in the contemporary socio-political milieu in which individualism is dominant, reveals the fallen state of Earth and of contemporary human beings. On the other hand, “the long view” of Earth, expressed in Lessing’s manifesto, reveals a new cosmos “where the petty fates of planets, let alone individuals, are only aspects of cosmic evolution” (Shikasta 2).

Its trajectory and composition are revolutionary, embodying the possibility of surpassing discrete identities, boundaries, and dichotomies. This dual vision of Earth is rendered through a cosmic colonial relationship.

How do we decode the dual vision of Earth rendered through this colonial relationship? How can/does Lessing reconcile the two seemingly contradictory strands: one the degenerating socio-political condition, the other cosmic evolution? Indeed, the conflict implies obstacles to implementing either the transcendental, ideal, utopian cosmic plan or the vision of a more immanent, dynamic cosmic evolution, in which the cosmos is “subject to sudden reversals, upheavals, changes, cataclysms, with joy never anything but the song of substance under pressure forced into new forms and shapes”

(Shikasta 4).

Lessing purports to discover a new utopian cosomos that transcends discrete identities and dichotomies and evolves. In Politipedia: A Compendium of Useful and

Curious Facts about British Politics, Nick Inman claims that Shikasta “passes from utopia to dystopia to utopia again” (Nick 333). At the same time, this new utopian cosmos is portrayed via a galactic colonial relationship. If Lessing envisions a world apart from socio-political conditioning, why does she portray the galactic Empire of Canopus, and, ironically, make it responsible for cosmic evolution? How can a cosmic colonial system trigger cosmic evolution? Why and how would this dichotomous colonial system aid in

2 its own surpassing? And why does Lessing seem to betray her anti-colonial stance? In defense of the cunning visionary, my dissertation explains her tapestry of oxymoronic complexity.

Her departure from the contemporary dilemma of geopolitics through delineation of a virtual utopia of cosmic evolution is often criticized as regressive and even treacherous, especially since the medium she employs to render utopia is a cosmic colonial relationship. Differing from those critics, I defend Lessing by reinterpreting her paradoxical, complex political ideas as rendered in this novel as a synthesis of all of her thought. Following her early period of passionate involvements in political affairs,

Lessing discovers R.D. Laing and for a time explores madness as a refuge from oppression. Eventually, identity and psychology give way to Sufism and the possibility of transcendence, followed by the realization that it is futile to fight for any belief from only one perspective—because discrete identities and conflicting dichotomies remain. This hard-won awareness crystallizes in Shikasta. Dichotomies—between the colonizer and the colonized, between the long view and the partial view, between cosmic evolution and socio-political embeddedness, between the fallen world (Shikasta) and the utopian society

(Canopus)—are reconceived with dual vision, which embraces dichotomies and their conflicts, allows them to pass into each other and interact in a symbiotic whole, thereby propelling cosmic evolution.

The paradox, this new symbiotic colonial relationship, this dual vision, which comprises much of Shikasta’s complexity, brings about the movement of the dynamic cosmos, a utopian cosmos based on “movement” rather than an “ideal” state or set of identities. Lessing’s dual vision reveals a transaction of forces rather than a display of fixed dichotomous identities or concepts. Interaction of the Canopean perspective and the

Shikastan perspective constitutes the transaction of cosmic evolution which points to a

3 dynamic utopia. Actually, the paradise of Canopus and Rohanda1 and the fall of Shikasta are interrelated because catastrophe and hope, utopia and dystopia, are complementary forces. Paradise exists only in the presence of lost paradise. For Lessing, utopia or paradise is never static but always dynamic. The whole is never complete but always in motion. The dual vision explicates the conflict between entropic collectivism and anarchic individualism in the “I-We” dilemma of utopian thinking. Decoding the relationship between Canopus, representing the long view of the earth, and Shikasta, embodying the partial view of the earth, reveals the rich complexity of Lessing’s dynamic utopia.

The dilemma of utopian writing is recurrent in Lessing’s works such as The Memoirs of a Survivor, Briefing for the Descent into Hell, Marriage Between Zone Three, Four, and Five, and The Making of the Representative in Planet 8, but gains further depth and complexity in Shikasta. In Identity in Doris Lessing’s Space, David Waterman points out that utopian aspiration is a major concern in Lessing’s novels, which are “rather less related to Orwell and Huxley than to Thomas More and Plato” (Von Schwarzkopf 107).

Waterman proposes the adherence to the utopia ideal of the collective identity and the intuitive understanding of the inherent laws and harmonies in Shikasta. He claims that “If the people of Shikasta are to return to a utopian state, they must develop a collective mind from the ruins of their civilization--not just any collective mind, but that prescribed by

Canopus” (Waterman 36). I agree to the concept of the utopian aspiration, but disagree over the points about the total embracing of the collective identity or the submission to the wholeness because oblivion of individual freedom for the operation of the collective often leads to entropic dystopia. Contrarily, misuse of individual freedom often leads to

1 Rohanda is Shikasta in its Golden Time. Rohanda is renamed Shikasta after its fall.

4 anarchy, which is not far from dystopia. One of the important issues in utopian writing is how to reconcile the opposite poles. Is it possible to find a utopia that is based on the dilemma of either falling into stasis or turning into anarchy and at the same time transcends the same dilemma? I argue that in Shikasta, through two contradictory but complementary strands, the utopian aspiration of Canopus and the dystopian depiction of

Shikasta, Lessing does find a way to reconcile the conflict between the two drives in utopian thinking, entropic collectivism and anarchic individualism. Lessing’s motif is different from the traditional utopian/dystopian motif in that her major character, Johor the galactic messenger, is androgynous and almost immortal, her cities are expanding, and her memories are evolving in accordance with Johor’s revision. Most special is that

Johor does not intervene in the fate of Shikasta in the form of only a galactic messenger but also in the form of a Shikastan incarnation, George Sherban. Canopus believes that the best way to save the planet is not through coercion and omnipotent intervention but through influencing the minds on the planet microscopically. That is why the galactic messenger is always asked to incarnate into the corporeal form of the targeted planet and lead a symbiotic life with the inhabitants. The small, gradual way is the best way.

Tension between the long view and the partial view, between the colonizers and the colonized, between the cosmic Master Plan and divergences from it, between Johor the virtual loyal colonizing galactic messenger and his alter ego, the actual George Sherban, a citizen of Shikasta—all such tensions must ultimately be resolved if Lessing’s vision is to be realized. The genre of science fiction makes possible such a resolution, for she can depict and surpass both local and galactic tensions with utopian artistry. Lessing explains that in the wide expanse of science fiction she was able to explore formal and thematic concerns differently; or, as she puts it, “I found a new world for myself,” where fates of planets and individuals are considered the expression of cosmic evolution (Shikasta 2).

Science fiction (space fiction)2, especially the subgenre of utopian science fiction, provides Lessing with a literary device to express the temporal movement that can figure the movement of dual vision and the spatial movement that can render the whole of cosmic evolution.

The leap to outer space enables Lessing to delineate an ethic and an aesthetic that embody new concepts of identity, space, and memory in a virtual utopian cosmos where discrete identities, boundaries, and dichotomies dissolve in interactions of becoming.

Science fiction (space fiction) enables Lessing to paint trans-individuals and trans-organic cosmic forces such as Substance-of-We-Feeling (SOWF) and the Lock, the messengers’ shuffling between different spatial-temporal coordinates, and virtually immortal life. Departing from “dogmatic pictures” of identity, space, and time, she realizes, with sci-fi artistry, Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical vision of the virtual penetrating the actual. If her main concern in earlier work is conflict between the individual and the collective,3 then her outer-space series goes beyond such dichotomies and portrays a virtual cosmic evolution in which actual political oppositions—indeed all oppositions—enrich the complexity of the virtual cosmos as a dynamic whole rather than impede cosmic evolution.

Why do I assert that Shikasta is a brilliant illustration of utopian writing? I propose

2 Lessing terms her outer space novels space fiction. 3 The confrontation of the individual with the collective is a recurring theme in Lessing’s novels. In “The Small Personal Voice,” Lessing describes the major theme in her series Children of Violence: “I was at pains to state the theme very clearly: that this is a study of the individual conscience in its relations with the collective” (14). Right from her first novel, The Grass is Singing, Lessing’s main concern has been the conflict between the individual and the collective in the context of colonialism. Realizing the futility of relying on external political means to solve conflicts between the individual and the collective, Lessing explores inner space and delineates the fragmentary state of subjectivity in her masterpiece, The Golden Notebook, and the inner space fiction such as Briefing For a Descent into Hell, The Summer before the Dark, and The Memoirs of a Survivor, in which the external tumults are paralleled by the inner state of madness. Overall in her earlier novels, Lessing depicts how the characters daringly confront the oppressive force of the collective and struggle with the crisis of their subjectivity in the form of madness or schizophrenia.

6 that Johor’s special role of observer, comparing and critiquing the two societies he travels, triggers the dialogue between two branches of utopian writing: the critical utopia and the critical dystopia.4 And the expansion of the spatial cartography, the cities, and the temporal configuration, the Archive, fuel the comparison and contrast between the degenerating dystopian and the inspiring utopia. Nevertheless, what Lessing attempts to create is not the replication of a pre-established utopian cosmos but a unique cosmos, where the divergent and incompossible elements, instead of being eradicated for the purpose of upholding Canopus’ cosmic Master Plan, are incorporated and reconceived in the system and where the infinite speed and recomposition replace the cosmos of

4 There are four branches of utopian writing: utopia, dystopia, critical utopia, and critical dystopia. Started by Thomas More’s Utopia, traditional utopian writing expresses the desire to search for a utopia, where the social system is based on an ideal political blueprint. Darko Suvin’s explanation of the crucial elements of utopian writing delineates the characteristics of traditional utopia. He proposes that a utopia must possess four characteristics. First, it must be a rounded, isolated locus. Second, the utopian society must be fully introduced in a panoramic way. Third, it is normally based on a formal hierarchic system. Fourth, an implicit or explicit dramatic strategy is employed to highlight the discrepancy between the utopian society and the real world (Metamorphoses of Science Fiction 50-51). Utopian writing is criticized by its self-imposing enclosure and the suppression of divergences owing to the total embracement of the ideologies set by the society. In response to the potential danger of a utopian society, dystopia is posed as a means of warning, which aims to propel human beings to change their behavior. Four representative works serve as the paradigm for dystopian writing: We (1924), by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1884–1937); Brave New World (1932), by Aldous Huxley (1894–1963); and Animal Farm (1945) and Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), by George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair; 1903–1950). In Demand the Impossible, Tom Moylan coins the term “critical utopia” to describe the blooming of utopian writings in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Moylan delineates the characteristics of a critical utopia: A central concern in the critical utopia is the awareness of the limitations of the utopian tradition, so that these texts reject utopia as a blueprint while preserving it as a dream. Furthermore, the novels dwell on the conflict between the originary world and the utopian society opposed to it so that the process of social change is more directly articulated. Finally, the novels focus on the continuing presence of difference and imperfection within the utopian society itself and thus render more recognizable and dynamic alternatives. (Moylan 10–11) How is the recognition of the limitations of the utopian tradition being achieved? It is achieved by self-reflexivity of the observer. Nevertheless, in Utopia and Machines: from Utopian Literature to the Posthuman, Nai-nu Yang proposes that the critical utopia is still enclosed in a boundary in order to keep a critical distance to itself in a system of autopoeisis (89). It is not until the proposal of the critical dystopia that the boundary can be transgressed. In Dark horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination, Baccolini and Moylan argue that traditional dystopias convey utopian hope outside their pages and it is perceptible only if we as readers can grasp the urgent message of warning revealed in the writings and thereby gain the chance to escape from the bleak vista of its pessimistic future. Nevertheless, Baccolini and Moylan further propose that hope is provided within the text in the critical dystopia. In the face of the enclosure caused by a dystopian society, the novel offers a “horizon of hope” within the text (Baccolini and Moylan 7).

7 per-established harmony.

I argue that Lessing’s Shikasta aims to reconcile the conflict between entropic collectivism and anarchic individualism, exemplifying many of the characteristics of the critical utopia and the critical dystopia. My reading does not focus on the details of the different branches of utopia, but on how a dynamic utopia can at the same time follow and transcend the “I-We” dilemma, the dilemma between individualism and collectivism in Shikasta. The degenerative colonized planet, Shikasta, represents the dystopian tendency of falling into anarchic individualism while the promising colonizing planet,

Canopus, symbolizes the utopian tendency of falling into entropic collectivism. “The near, the partial views” (159-160), the “inner-space vision” focusing on the inner growth and development of certain individual Shikastans, is in danger of falling into the trap of individualism; on the other hand, the cosmic, impersonal, “outer-space vision”—of

Shikasta vis-à-vis Canopus—requires the individuals, for the purpose of triggering cosmic evolution, to submit willingly to the cosmic whole, which, if not implemented carefully, always falls into the trap of collectivism. Lessing experiments with a new cosmic colonial relationship between Canopus and Shikasta in the hope of creating a new cosmos (chaosmos) that can escape from the dilemma of entropy and anarchy. The colonial relationship, on the surface, entails the dichotomous relationship between

Shikasta and Canopus and, seen from the virtual perspective, reveals the cross-fertilization between them, so that the dichotomy is transformed into a multiplicity, utopia/dystopia into a chaosmos. Lessing employs science fiction’s important utopia/dystopia motif to illustrate the limitations of traditional utopian thinking, revealed in the novel as the limitations of the cosmic colonial relationship. The cosmic Master

Plan that aims to proceed with pre-established harmony is rejected as an “ideal” blueprint, while its vision as a dream is preserved. Lessing appropriates the utopia-dystopia motif in

8 the hope of creating a chaosmos of multiplicity that escapes from the “I-We” dilemma of customary utopian thinking.

In the following, I will take a closer look at the novel through the perspective of utopia/dystopia and explore how the totalizing, idealized utopian tendency results in divergences, with the potential to crack open the ideal enclosure and lead to a new way of envisioning utopia. Most importantly, Johor’s poignant journeys of self-critical scrutiny and the spatio-temporal deterritorialization serve as the catalyst to transform the enclosed society and point to a dynamic utopia, a utopia based on movement.

The process from enclosure to expansion or movement in Shikasta reminds us of the utopian dilemma. In order to achieve the utopian ideal, the undesirable dissidences are erased; however, the discordances are necessary parts of the individual and the society. If utopia is destined to be poisoned and turned into an entropic state and if dystopia is doomed to be ruled by anarchy and chaos, then what can be imagined and what can be done? Lessing is intrigued by this question and pursues the potential dynamics behind the question itself. Though Canopus is a benevolent colonizing empire, it still constrains human possibilities by Bond and Necessity. The dilemma is critical in Utopian/Dystopian reading. In Reader in a Strange Land, Peter Ruppert proposes,

The crucial paradox, of course, is that if utopia retains its boundaries, if it

continues to exclude conflict, contradictions, and history, then it runs the risk

of congealing into Zamyatin’s entropic paradise, Huxley's world of mindless

pleasure, or even Orwell's fascist dictatorship; and if utopia tears down its

boundaries and opens its gates to history, change, and process, then it loses its

very identity and becomes indistinguishable from the social reality it tries to

displace. (122)

Ruppert here points out the paradox in any utopian thinking, which is caught between the

9 ideal and the fascist. To borrow Deleuze’s terminology, we can say that the possessive attitude toward self-imposing enclosure is similar to Deleuze’s idea of territorialziation; conversely, the collapse of the boundary, which leads to anarchy, resembles Deleuze’s concept of deterritorialization. The problem lies in the priority of the two terms. The process from territorialziation to deterritorialization should be continued with reterritorialization. This oscillation between territorialization and deterritorialization provides the utopian dream with vitality.

Deleuze and Guattari, in What is Philosophy, claim that “utopia is what links philosophy with its own epoch, with European capitalism, but also already with the Greek city” (99). Utopia, according to Samuel Butler, refers “not only to no-where but also to no-here” (100), destined to be closely entwined with the present political milieu. Deleuze alerts us to the danger of falling into the trap of authoritarian utopias or utopias of transcendence since they will lead to entropy of the society, stifling its inner dynamic movement. He proposes that we should distinguish between two kinds of utopia:

“authoritarian utopias or utopias of transcendence and immanent, revolutionary, libertarian utopias” (100). While utopias of transcendence seek political fulfillment,

Deleuze warns us not to consider utopias of immanence as only dreams that will never be fulfilled:

To say that revolution is itself utopia of immanence is not to say that it is a

dream, something that is not realized or that is only realized by betraying itself.

On the contrary, it is to posit revolution as a plane of immanence, infinite

movement and absolute survey, but to the extent that these features connect up

with what is real here and now in the struggle against capitalism, relaunching

new struggles whenever the earlier one is betrayed. (What is Philosophy 100)

Deleuze’s concept of utopia of immanence designates the conjunction with contemporary

10 social-political situations, such as capitalism. Utopia’s infinite movement and absolute survey on the plane of immanence not only deterritorialize but also reterritorialize the utopian forces.

In Critical Utopias, Bill Ashcroft points out the connection between imperialism and utopia in Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical thought regarding the Greek city state and the world market. He proposes that “we can begin to think about the relationship between imperialism and utopia by considering Deleuze and Guattari’s interesting contention that philosophical thought has truly flourished in two specific historical epochs: the

Greek city state and the world market” (3). The political and economic expansion of the

Greek city and the world market triggers not only utopian aspiration but also the inevitable form of imperialism in the two cases. According to Ashcroft,

These in turn correspond to two versions of utopia: product or blue-print utopia

corresponds as a mode of thought to the politically constructed immanence of

the agora, where the thrust of utopian thought is to arrive at collective

agreement about ‘the Good’ or ‘Justice’, ‘the ideal society’ and so on. Process

utopianism, on the other hand, corresponds to the deterritorialization

and decoding characteristic of the world market, where agreeing on

content is less important than identifying multiple forces of production

of the new that are active in a given socio-historical milieu. (3)

The “blueprint utopia” aims to establish a world of pre-established harmony, where the target is to “arrive at a collective agreement about the ‘the Good’ or ‘Justice’, ‘the ideal society’” (Ashcroft 3). The drive of the utopian dream is territorialized by collective consensus. In contrast to the blueprint utopia, “process utopianism” is imbued with kinetic energy in itself since its target is to deterritorialize and decode characteristics of the world market, capitalism in this case. What matters is not the agreement of a

11 pre-established form but the engendering of the “multiple forces of production of the new” that triggers the infinite movement of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. The two forms of utopia demonstrate “a paradox in the conflict between the irrepressible desire for utopia itself and utopia’s apparent fulfillment of desire” (Ashcroft 2).

How to reconcile the desire for utopia and utopia’s fulfillment of desire in a form that will lead to entropy is an important issue and dilemma in Lessing’s search for an immanent, virtual utopia. In Shikasta, Canopus’ aspiration of establishing an immanent utopia on Shikasta, which can trigger cosmic evolution, ends up turning it into an entropic, fallen dystopia, in which the inhabitants are stifled not only by individualism but also by collectivism. Lessing’s mission, paralleling Johor’s trajectory of mediating between the two contradictory poles, the desperate dystopia (Shikasta) and the promising utopia (Canopus), is to see the inescapable connection between imperialism or colonialism and utopia and, most importantly, discover from its own dilemma a way to reconcile or at least see the cross-fertilization between the two terms instead of being conditioned by its dichotomous logic. The cross-fertilization between Shikasta and

Canopus imparts to us one important message: utopia and dystopia are not two separate categories but entwined in an infinite process of deterritorialization and reterritorialization. Shikasta as a dystopia in the beginning is moving to its crystallization as a utopia while Canopus as a utopia is discovering its entropic tendency to stifle and territorialize cosmic forces via the cosmic Master Plan. The transactions and deterritorialization of cosmic forces work in a way that transcends the “I-We” dilemma of the cosmic colonial relationship and transforms its dichotomous pairs of utopia and dystopia, long view and near view, outer-space vision and inner-space vision, into a multiplicity that envisions neither the fall nor the fulfillment of utopia but a virtual chaosmos, turning it into the propelling force rather than an obstacle.

Johor’s (the Canopean galactic messenger’s) virtualization and his counterpart, George’s

(Johor’s alter-ego’s) actualization, as well as oscillation between the post-catastrophic expanding cities, which co-evolve with the mutating, divergent Survivors, and the ancient, geometric cities, which follow the pre-established colonial cosmic Master Plan, and between virtual past memory, which triggers the utopian aspiration, and Johor’s actual present memory, which is embedded in the socio-political milieu.

In Shikasta, Lessing’s depiction of the dynamism of the two societies, utopian

Canopus and dystopian Shikasta is revealed via the oscillation between the virtual and the actual regarding identity, space, and time.

Table 0.1

Utopia/dystopia motif: utopia (Canopus) and dystopia (Shikasta)

virtual post-catastrophic Johor's virtualization and virtual, impersonal past and expanding cities and actual the actualiaztiobn of his actual, psychological ancient cities based on counterpart, George present colonial Master Plan

One revelation is that Johor’s travels between Canopus and Shikasta enable him to

13 observe, with the utopian dilemma in mind, the colonial dilemma both from the perspective of a colonizer and from that of the colonized. He simultaneously adheres to and precedes/revises the cosmic Master Plan for the functioning of the Canopean Empire.

His travels between utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta enable him, as well, to perceive the dynamic movement of the virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution.

A second revelation regards Lessing’s juxtaposition of the ancient geometric cities and the post-catastrophic evolving cities on Shikasta. What do the two images of cities represent and what is the significance of the expansion or evolution of the Survivors’ cities? The ancient geometric cities are actualized in their precise fulfillment of the cosmic colonial Master Plan, the blueprint of the utopia, whereas the post-catastrophic cities are virtualizing themselves via their indiscernible relationship with the Survivors and the cosmic force Substsance-of-We-Feeling (SOWF). These two types of cities reveal the dynamic movement between the utopia and the dystopia, via the dissolution of spatial contours, which makes possible the emergence of a virtual chaosmos. The Survivors pass into the cities in the process of becoming-city, link with the cosmic force, SOWF, intuitively and organically build artful, accommodating structures, in divergence from the

Canopean colonizers’ design, and thereby propel cosmic evolution. The dissolving of boundaries enables a new assemblage, “We,” to be born.

A third revelation is that Lessing creates and conjoins two contradictory narratives regarding memory. One involves detailed, psychological memory, recording mainly the fallen dystopia, Shikasta, and the other involves impersonal, macroscopic memory, recording the aspiring utopia, Canopus. After Johor is skeptical of the legitimacy of his personal records of Shikasta, he, aided by the ape, the Giants, and the cosmic force (the

Lock), is able to explore and even transform impersonal memory, thus symbiotically revising cosmic evolution.

Illuminated by Deleuze’s theory of the virtual, Lessing’s appropriation of utopian writing, incorporating the long view and the short view, is indeed a fertile literary tool for creating thought-provoking allegory. Canopus’ galactic messengers, archival cosmic memory, and access to the cosmic force, plus Shikasta’s Survivors and cities in need of rebuilding—together, they dance a virtual cosmic dance and, for the wellbeing of all, generate a virtual chaosmos of symbiotic cosmic evolution.

Lessing challenges stasis, be it social, political, or psychic, throughout her life. She yearns to debunk the rigidity and hegemony of a static whole, whether it is represented as an Empire or as a psychoanalytical authority or as God. What Lessing endorses is a dynamic cosmos undergoing continual adjustment and readjustment: “This is a catastrophic universe, always; and subject to sudden reversals” (Shikasta 4). The transgression of the boundaries and the refusal to abide by teleology subvert the concept of wholeness. What Lessing has in mind is not a static utopia but a utopia on the move. It is a chaosmos of cosmic evolution. Nevertheless, cosmic evolution is not accomplished in a vacuum, where actual socio-political affairs are eradicated. Lessing’s depiction of a virtual chaosmos incorporates both the virtual and the actual. Virtual cosmic evolution is accomplished, not because of the elimination of actual socio-political embeddedness, but because of Lessing’s incorporation of the incompossible, divergent socio-political elements. In Shikasta, through depicting the virtual galactic messenger (Johor), the mutating Survivors, the expanding city, and the evolving archival cosmic memory,

Lessing shows us the evolving chaosmos and the potential of a reciprocal cross-fertilization between dystopian Shikasta and utopian Canopus, between Shikastans’ personal, earthbound, inner space vision and Canopus’s impersonal, cosmic, outer-space vision.

Lessing’s new vision of cosmic evolution, as rendered in Shikasta in particular and

15 the outer-space series in general, is thus very different from her anti-colonial and anti-totalitarian stance in her earlier novels. Right from The Grass is Singing, her first novel, Lessing has tackled political dilemmas and polemics in order to change the global phenomenon of inequality or totalitarianism. However, from Shikasta onward, she portrays a utopian cosmos in which the colonized is subsumed under the colonizer, the galactic Empire, and its cosmic Master Plan. Many readers have balked at this seemingly drastic change in political stance and style, disappointed that, starting with Shikasta,

Lessing no longer primarily explores the possibilities of individual freedom or escape through psychological subtlety and complexity of schizophrenic characters but, instead, portrays a cosmos in which planets as well as individuals should follow the god-like cosmic force. Mona Knapp observes the transition and posits that “Shikasta requires its figures to bow to authority, as Rachel, Ben, and hundreds of disciples blindly obey

George, and as Canopean emissaries obediently carry out their orders. In short, this and the following volumes of Canopus depict totalitarian systems but neglect to question the premises on which they operate” (Doris Lessing 139). Many critics, reading Lessing’s claim in Shikasta, allege that she supports monarchy and benevolent dictatorship.

Although Lessing still attacks the colonizing force by exposing how the colonized are manipulated and exploited, it cannot be denied that, in Shikasta, the ideal relationship between the two planets, Canopus and Shikasta, is depicted as a hierarchical, colonial structure. The submission to the cosmic force, represented by Canopus, is always in the

Canopean cosmic plan because the colonized, the individual, is expected to follow autonomously such totalitarian forces as the cosmic Master Plan and Necessity (Cosmic

Necessity), which guarantee the harmony and survival of the whole galaxy. Regarding

Lessing’s later works, her “outer-space” series, critics’ accusations of colonialism/totalitarianism are actually well founded. Indeed, she does spotlight the

16 colonizing power/totalitarian force rather than the colonized or the individual.

While Lessing’s earlier novels endorse anti-colonialism, in Shikasta, her appropriation of the utopian motif enables her to follow and transcend the “I-We” dilemma, the dilemma between individualism and collectivism or between the colonized and the colonizer in Shikasta. While individual differences do provide a way out of the dominant politico-social systems in Lessing’s earlier novels, in Shikasta, individualism is rendered as a kind of disease. Not that she now portrays individualism as pure evil, but, rather, for her, individual differences can no longer provide escape from social or political domination. Lessing’s virtual Chaosmos surpasses the politically antagonistic relationship between the individual and the collective or that between the colonized and the colonizer.

Now each term in the antagonistic relationship becomes a dynamic part in the dynamic whole.

The Virtual Chaosmos in Shikasta

Lessing’s concept of the utopia is not a static one that subsumes everything under a unity; instead, she invents a new cosmos where the interactions between the colonizer planet Canopus and the colonized planet Shikasta, between the long view of cosmic evolution and the partial view of socio-political embeddedness, between the utopian inspiration and the entropic dystopia, invigorate and transform the whole cosmos, which in turn revitalizes and renovates various beings in the cosmos. Various beings and existences interconnect and cooperate in triggering the comic evolution of a virtuala chaosmos. In Shikasta, Johor explains this interconnectedness: “We are all creatures of the stars and their forces, they make us, we make them, we are part of a dance from which we by no means and not ever may consider ourselves separate” (28). What Kassim

17 designates as “we” epitomizes the whole, covering the interrelationship between different planets and different beings.

Deleuze’s idea of the “virtual” can help us understand how a chaosmos is always in movement and involves the interrelationship among various beings. According to

Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus, the “plane of organization” always tries to plug the lines of flight or re-stratify the movements of de-territorialization while the

“plane of immanence” is constantly striving to extricate itself from the plane of organization (270). The plane of immanence cuts across or intersects multiple forms with different dimensions and brings into coexistence the heterogeneous elements it cuts across. It seems that the plane of organization is detrimental so that it should be avoided, and conversely the plane of immanence liberates us from the plane of organization.

However, if we pay more attention to Deleuze and Guattari’s subtle handling of the two planes, we can see the danger of prioritizing either side of the dichotomy since total immersion in the plane of immanence might lead to “a pure plane of abolition or death”

(270), while relentless rush to the plane of organization will probably result in lethargy.

To modify the tendency to go to extremes, they propose an eclectic way to deal with the two planes. After elucidating the characteristics and complexity of the two planes, they ask whether it is necessary to operate in a minimum of strata so as to extract materials, affects, and assemblages (A Thousand Plateaus 270).

The tension and reciprocity among the actual, transcendental, colonial plan(e) and the virtual, immanent cosmic forces, the Lock and SOWF, in Shikasta can be explained with Deleuze’s topography of the world: vacillation between the plane of organization, related to utopias of transcendence, and the plane of immanence, related to utopias of immanence, maps out the interminable trajectory of return and flight. Significantly, it is never a one-way movement but, rather, an incessant cyclical movement. The movement

18 from the striated plane of development to the smooth plane of consistency is free flowing rather than fixed. This oscillation explains the movement between the actual and the virtual regarding identity, space, and time in Shikasta. The dynamic structure cannot be orchestrated into an orderly, comprehensible, static picture, but, rather, a vividly dynamic cosmic choreography dazzling us with its mercurial metamorphosis and infinite potential.

Since Lessing and Deleuze are aware of limitations in grasping the vitality of the virtual, their endeavors to portray it deserve a close examination. My dissertation shows how Deleuze’s theory of the virtual illuminates Lessing’s virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution, triggered by the dynamic movement between utopian Canopus and dystopian

Shikasta discussed above.

Purpose of the Study

To date, there has been relatively little research conducted on Lessing’s Shikasta compared to the voluminous criticism of Lessing’s previous works, especially her masterpiece, The Golden Notebook. Her attempt to escape from the contemporary dilemma of geopolitics through delineation of a virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution is downplayed by many critics as a regressive, treacherous act. In my reading, what

Lessing reveals through her visionary leap into outer-space fiction is the creation of a virtual chaosmos that evolves along with the galactic messenger, the Survivors, the cities, the cosmic forces (SOWF and the Lock), and the cosmic Archive. Lessing depicts the possibility of a new, virtual world beyond our material world: “Look, look, quick!—behind the seethe and scramble and eating that is one truth, and behind the ordinary tree-in-autumn that is the other—a third, a tree of a fine, high, shimmering light, like shaped sunlight. A world, a world, another world” (Shikasta 133). This “another

19 world” is a virtual world where the interactions between the part and the whole, between the individual and the collective, between the partial view of socio-political embeddedness and the long view of cosmic evolution, are renewed by the utopia of cosmic evolution.

For Lessing, this chaosmos of cosmic evolution is virtual, creating new dichotomies, not by eliminating old ones, but by incorporating their divergences. This new world is never static but dynamic and ever-developing. It is a world of continual becoming, where dichotomies are transformed into the functioning multiplicity that recognizes them, fuels their conflicts, allows them to interact in a dynamic chaosmos rather than to battle for superiority, and thereby propels cosmic evolution.

Lessing designs this virtual, evolving chaosmos so as to transcend the differentiating binary systems of individual versus collective, the partial view of socio-political embeddedness and the long view of cosmic evolution, human versus nonhuman, inner psychology versus outer space, psychological time versus cosmic time, and colonial versus anti-colonial. My dissertation examines how, in Shikasta, Lessing, via the depiction of utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta, creates a virtual chaosmos that triggers cosmic evolution, in which the map can be redrawn of a new city, a new species, a new world order, and a new history. Deleuze’s theory of the virtual, which includes his ideas of individuation, becoming, percept, affect, chaosmos, and memory, helps me understand this ever-evolving chaosmos where the part and the whole become inter-related.

A Deleuzian reading of Lessing’s Shikasta enables me to make sense of Lessing’s world picture, her virtual chaosmos, with its virtual galactic messenger, cosmic forces, evolving cities, mutating Survivors, and cosmic memories, as portrayed in Shikasta. The virtual is different from the actual in that it exceeds consciousness, identity, or unity.

Simon O’Sullivan, in Art Encounters Deleuze and Guattari, proposes that “the virtual

‘designates a pure multiplicity’ which as such ‘radically excludes the identical as a prior condition’” (211-12). The virtual is undifferentiated difference that is constantly escaping from the hegemony of self-same identity. O’Sullivan goes on to describe the difference between the pairs of real/possible and virtual/actual: “The virtual then names a real place but one which has yet to be actualized. Whereas the real and the possible instigate a philosophy of transcendence, the virtual and the actual affirm immanence” (103). The virtual is potential and waits for actualization while the real and the possible designate the establishment of a concrete institution or identity. The former abides by “a logic of becoming (ontology of process),” which is related to utopias of immanence, while the latter abides by “a logic of Being (ontology of genesis),” which is associated with utopias of transcendence (103).

Lessing establishes in her space fiction, Shikasta in particular, a virtual chaosmos that will mutate and evolve by incorporating the divergent and conflicting fates of planets and individuals. The evolving chaosmos is closely related to Deleuze’s concept of utopia of immanence and his theory of the virtual since the dynamic cosmos is always differential and interacts with the actual. In the world Lessing now envisions, we still see the individualism, colonialism, and political hegemony of our own contemporary world, but with a twist: Lessing addresses our present-day geopolitical world from a new, cosmic perspective, so that our present-day political struggles are now seen as a single, tiny part of, or stage in, a much vaster process of cosmic evolution. She no longer renders the cosmos as mere background. She foregrounds it as an impersonal web of forces where free-flowing information and ideas are shared. We are now shown that all of our binary systems and our rigid oppositions can and will eventually enrich the complexity of the chaosmos and propel cosmic evolution rather than impede it.

In Shikasta, in order to create a new chaosmos envisioned from the perspective of cosmic evolution, Lessing employs special narrative structures, components, and techniques, including galactic messengers, mutants (the Survivors), a cosmic Master Plan, the cosmic forces (SOWF and the Lock), evolving cities, and a cosmic archive. Indeed

“space fiction” is an excellent genre for exploration of cosmic evolution. I choose not to focus on the elements of space fiction (science fiction) per se, but rather on the relationship of such elements to Lessing’s vision of this new, ever-evolving “virtual” utopia.

Lessing’s Vision of a Chaosmos Seen through a Deleuzian Lens

Why do I embrace the relationship of the part and the whole, instead of that between the colonized and the colonizer or that between the individual and the collective, to account for Lessing’s depiction of a new totalitarian/colonizing system in her space fiction? Yes, her primary concern in her earlier works is the conflict between the individual and the collective. But in Shikasta, her vision of the virtual chaosmos enables her to transcend that conflict. While her earlier novels feature a manifestly anti-colonialist stance, her outer-space series highlights a colonizer planet, Canopus, which is responsible for cosmic evolution. How then can/does Lessing reconcile the antagonistic relationship between the colonizer and colonized so as to trigger cosmic evolution? In Shikasta, the colonizer and the colonized are not opposed but play different, interacting roles in the same chaosmos of cosmic evolution. Neither the traditional division between the individual and the collective nor that between the colonized and the colonizer can help illuminate, except as background, the new cosmic relationships in Shikasta. In Lessing’s earlier novels, the entities in conflict are mutually exclusive dichotomies. From Shikasta

22 forward, utopia and dystopia are no longer separate entities but are mutually implicated with each other, rendering the utopian chaosmos dynamic, metastable, ever-becoming, without pre-established teleology. What Lessing envisions in Shikasta is no longer the politically antagonistic relationship between the individual and the collective or that between the colonizer and the colonized. Now the hierarchical relationship of the individual and the collective is replaced by symbiosis of the parts and the whole, as shown by the virtual messengers, the mutating Survivors, the expanding cities, and the evolving archive.

In Shikasta, instead of depicting the power of the heroic individual to make a difference in the dominating social or political system, as in her earlier novels, why does

Lessing spotlight colonial or totalitarian power, as represented by the cosmic Empire, and seemingly exile individual difference to the shadows? While Lessing’s earlier novels endorse anti-colonialism, why do her later works seemingly support a colonial or even an imperialistic system, to be administered by the Empire of Canopus, signifying the collective fate of the whole cosmos? In light of the virtual chaosmos, other questions arise: How can the colonial relationship help to trigger the cosmic evolution of a virtual chaosmos depicted in Shikasta instead of impeding its evolution? Is Shikasta indicating a return to the colonial system or a new cartography that needs the depiction of utopian

Canopus and dystopian Shikasta to see its twist? Deleuze’s concept of the virtual helps us see how the depiction of utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta works in the oscillation between the actual partial view that is conditioned by political dichotomies and the virtual, cosmic view that envisions cosmic evolution and, most importantly, how the utopian/dystopian cosmos can be transformed into a chaosmos of multiplicity, where the divergent and incompossible elements, instead of being eradicated for the purpose of upholding Canopus’ cosmic Master Plan, are incorporated and reconceived in the system

23 and where the infinite speed and recomposition replace the per-established harmony.

Lessing’s creation of a virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution is made possible by the virtual galactic messenger, the mutating Survivors, the cosmic forces such as SOWF and the Lock, and the cosmic memory. The process can best be explained using Deleuze’s theory of the “virtual,” which helps me grasp the trans-individual and even trans-organic aspects by showing how the “virtual” galactic messenger, the “virtual” mutating

Survivors, the “virtual” cosmic forces, and the “virtual’ cosmic memory contribute to

“real” cosmic evolution, which is beyond the “actual” world of dichotomies.

Both Lessing and Deleuze reconfigure the concept of the individual, who oscillates between going to dissolution and keeping a certain identity. That is why application of

Deleuze’s theory aptly illuminates Lessing’s portrayal of the unique galactic messenger,

Johor. Deleuze’s theory of individuation involves how, on the one hand, the individual is able to precede the species because the individual here is not an actual “subject” but a

“virtual” contingent being that serves as a part of coexisting Ideas. The virtual individual is connected with other Ideas so that s/he can transform the contour of the Virtual

Coexisting Ideas while the individual and the species are actualized. On the other hand, a particular grain, an actual individual, is able to influence the Virtual Coexisting Ideas because each contributes to virtual Ideas. Thus, the virtual individual can precede and influence the constitution of the species and the actual individual, and the actual individual can also change the contour of the species by instilling new elements into the

Virtual Coexisting Ideas. A consideration of the individual’s twofold dimensions in

Deleuze’s theories helps me explicate Lessing’s delineation of a new galactic messenger,

Johor, who oscillates between the realm of virtual and that of the actual so as to revise the cosmic Master Plan, connects to the cosmic force, SOWF, and thus triggers cosmic evolution.

George Sherban, conditioned by the geopolitical situation and Johor, who tilts toward the virtual because of his connection with the virtual cosmic forces so that he can revise the cosmic plan and thereby trigger cosmic evolution. Through Johor’s multiple identities, the paradoxical relationship between the individual and the empire can be manifested and the emergence of a virtual chaosmos is made possible.

Deleuze’s theory of individuation explains how the individual (Johor) precedes the species and determines the evolutionary trajectory of the species when he seems to follow the rules of the species. Individuation, the double movement of differentiation/differenciation, solves the conundrum that the individual paradoxically precedes the species, on the one hand, and follows the cosmic Master Plan of the species, on the other hand, since the individual embodies two entities at the same time: the virtual individual and the actual individual. The individual is not confined in a specific species, but virtually transcends different species such as stones, plants, insects, animals, and human beings because the virtual state helps him or her to be linked to all beings. In this way, the virtual coexistence of different beings, including individuals, enables the “virtual” individual to reconnect with the cosmic forces, SOWF and the Lock. In Deleuze’s

Difference and Repetition: Introduction and Guide, William James proposes that individuals will never be considered members of a species; instead, “they cross species and are a condition for the emergence of species through a process that Deleuze calls indi-drama-different/citation” (189). The process from the virtual to the actual is revealed

25 as that from differentiation to individuation to dramatization and to differenciation.

Concept

Actual Differentiation

Individuation

Dramatization

Virtual Differenciation

Table 0.2: The concept of indi-drama-different/citation

Individuation possesses both virtual and actual sides. The return to the virtual is an act of

“differentiation,” as Deleuze terms it, while the flight to the actual is “differenciation.”

On the one hand, Johor encounters the virtual intensities that trigger transformation of differential relations within virtual matter. On the other hand, Johor’s virtual intensities, or, rather, the intensities in relation to virtual Johor, have to be incarnated in qualities and extensities and manifest themselves through the actualized individual, George Sherban.

The virtual aspect of Johor, determines the trajectory of the species while his actualized counterpart, George, follows the rules of the species set by Canopus and lays bare the cracks in the system. Johor, in his virtual aspect, reveals how the virtual individual precedes the actual species and how the actual cosmic Master Plan has to be redirected and re-implemented by the virtual cosmic forces, SOWF and the Lock. On the one hand,

Johor, in his virtual aspect, is analogous to a crystal, referring to the larval, embryonic state of life. On the other hand, Johor, actualized as a Shikastan, George Sherban, is attached to the cosmic Master Plan and the extensities such as stellar alignments, architectural structures, and individual temperaments.

Deleuze’s theory of individuation helps to reconcile the paradoxical relationship

26 between the galactic messenger and his mother planet, Canopus, and offers one direction for the coevolution of the parts and whole. Johor is gifted with the utopian/dystopian vision because he is able to shuffle between utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta, observing the colonial dilemma from the perspective of a colonizer and that of a colonized at the same time. The infinite movement and cross-fertilization between utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta allow him to grasp the dynamic movement of a virtual chaosmos that involves cosmic evolution. Lessing’s lifelong involvement with contemporary movements such as Sufism cultivates her ability to delineate and appropriate the complex colonial relationship, to employ creatively the utopia/dystopia motif in utopian thinking, so that we can witness how the paradoxical relationship between the cosmic, long view and the local, partial view can be incorporated into the dynamic movement of a virtual chaosmos in symbiotic evolution.

In Chapter Two, I explain how the geometric cities in the ancient time epitomize the achievement of the colonial cosmic Master Plan, with their spatial alignments being determined by the plan and by stellar alignment. They symbolize the colonizer’s view of

Shikasta’s place in the cosmos. On the other hand, the post-catastrophic Survivors on

Shikasta diverge from the colonial pattern and bring about evolution of the cities via incorporation of divergences from the cosmic Master Plan that function within the trajectory and composition of cosmic evolution. What do the two images of cities represent and what is the significance of the expansion or evolution of the Survivors’ cities? The ancient geometric cities are comparatively actual while the post-catastrophic cities are virtual. Whereas the ancient cities are conditioned and actualized by the colonial cosmic Master Plan, the post-catastrophic cities are virtualized by their becoming relationship with the Survivors. The relationship between the colonial design of the actual cities and the development of the virtual evolving cities embodies Lessing’s depiction of

27 the “I-We” dilemma in her utopian thinking. The ancient cities follow the blueprint of the cosmic Master Plan and envision the utopian aspiration; however, the enclosure caused by the strict adherence to the cosmic Master Plan impedes the incorporation of divergences in the process of evolution, so that the cities degenerate and Shikasta is turned into an entropic dystopia, what Deleuze terms a “utopia of transcendence.” On the other hand, the post-catastrophic cities diverge from the cosmic Master Plan and expand in accordance with the mutation of the Survivors. The movement of infinite deterritorialization and reterritorialization enables the engendering of “utopias of immanence,” an evolving chaosmos. In the virtual chaosmos, the Survivors pass into the city (cities) in the process of becoming-city, form an impartible relationship with it, and, via intuition, revise the Canopean colonizers’ design. Lessing, via the two kinds of utopia, alerts us to the fact that the interactive movement of the two never stops, which triggers the emergence of a chaosmos of multiplicity.

In my reading, the Survivors, unlike Johor, do not interact with the city (cities) as architects that design and oversee construction. On the contrary, the Survivors pass into the city as if there is no boundary between the two. The Survivors’ becoming-city reconnects them to the cosmic force SOWF, gives birth to a “We” that involves coexistence of various beings, and thereby triggers cosmic evolution. Deleuze and

Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect, and chaosmos in What is Philosophy serve as an apt theoretical tool for explaining the process of becoming-city, becoming-SOWF, and the formation of a new order.

Before I proceed to explicate Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect and

Chaosmos in What is Philosophy, I first explore Deleuze’s idea of space, revealed in the term “any-space-whatever,” which is not a fixed space, but a space with movement. In

“Ahab and Becoming-Whale: The Nomadic Subject in Smooth Space,” Tamsin Lorraine

28 claims that in Cinema I, Deleuze’s “‘any-space-whatever’ is a spatial haecceity freed from conventional location within a totality to which all spaces can be related” (165).

Deleuze makes a distinction between movement and space by employing the concept of the movement-image inspired by Henri Bergson. For Deleuze, says Lorraine, “spaces covered by movement are divisible and belong to a single, homogeneous space while movement cannot be divided without changing qualitatively each time it is divided” (165).

Deleuze and Guattari develop an interrogation of space by revising the priority of “a uniform space of points,” which, according to Colebrook, is “a space that may be measured or striated precisely because any point in space is equivalent to and interchangeable with any other” (The Sense of Space 194). In A Thousand Plateaus, instead of proposing homogeneous space, Deleuze and Guattari propose the concept of haecceity to demonstrate the multiplicity of space, as explained by Lorraine: “A haecceity is a specific configuration of relations that is individuated not through an absolute location in a space-time experienced or thought as a totalized whole, but rather through the relations themselves” (Deleuze and Space 165). She says that space is not envisioned as an “absolute location” but constituted through the encounters, relations, and cross-fertilization among different elements. What constitutes multiplicity of space is not the subject but different elements. This aids my understanding of Deleuze and Guattari’s idea, in What is Philosophy, of the “normalization of space in the figure of a unified humanity” and their reconfiguration of the relationship between the individual and space

(Deleuze and Space 194).

In What is Philosophy, Deleuze and Guattari claim that “[t]he percept is the landscape before man, in the absence of man. But why do we say this, since in all these cases the landscape is not independent of the supposed perceptions of the characters and, through them, of the author's perceptions and memories” (169)? I cannot help but wonder

29 whether space can have its own life or movement that is beyond the grasp of human perception. Considering artistic works, such as Virginia Woolf’s novels, Deleuze and

Guattari wonder why authors eradicate the existence of the characters and the authors when the landscape is still dependent on their perceptions. The town couldn’t exist without human activities, and the mirror would lose its function were it not for the purpose of reflecting the old woman. For them, “This is Cezanne’s enigma,… ‘Man absent from but entirely within the landscape.’ Characters can only exist, and the author can only create them, because they do not perceive but have passed into the landscape and are themselves part of the compound of sensations” (What is Philosophy 169). In this way, the implementation of the conscious act upon space is replaced by an act of symbiotic co-creation, and the individuals created by the artists enter a zone of indiscernibility, within which the landscape and the individuals are indistinguishable and become part of the compound of sensations, the percept and the affect. When the cities and the architectural alignments reveal and connect with the cosmic force SOWF (affect), a new virtual “we” is formed and one aspect of the virtual whole of cosmic evolution is shown. Most importantly, chaosmos serves as the field where all the forms disappear because of its infinite speed. Under infinite speed, the contours of the cities, individuals and even the galaxy dissolve. Application of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect, and chaosmos illuminates the imperceptible relationship between the Survivors and the cities, highlights the divergences of the evolving cities, and shows the oscillation between the colonial ancient cities of utopian aspiration and the post-catastrophic cities of dystopian entropy.

In Chapter Three, I explore the evolving archive that records the dual vision of the long view of cosmic, impersonal memory and the partial view of local, psychological memory paralleling the mutation of the Survivors and the expansion of the evolving cities.

Critics charge that, given the fragmented structure of Shikasta, Lessing has somehow lost her subtle ability to craft narrative structure. In actuality, when we examine closely the narrative strands, we detect two strands of memory: one is a detailed, psychological memory while the other is an impersonal, macroscopic memory. Why does Lessing create such ambivalent narratives of memory? She designs this complex pattern of narrative structure, which may disorient some readers, in order to showcase the paradoxical relationship between the cosmic, impersonal, “outer-space vision”—of Shikasta vis-à-vis

Canopus—and the personal, earthbound, “inner-space vision”—of individual beings, who are embedded in the contemporary socio-political milieu in which individualism dominates. The two views echo Deleuze’s two concepts of utopia: utopias of transcendence and utopias of immanence. One involves the fallen dystopia, Shikasta, and the other involves the aspiring utopia, Canopus. After encountering the Shikastans, especially the ape and the Giants, Johor gains awareness that colonial archival records do not include galactic messengers’ and inhabitants’ personal, subjective accounts of their experiences and Shikasta’s history. Consequently, he resorts to impersonal memory, facilitated via his encounters with the ape’s and the Giants’ memories and the Lock.

The move away from personal, psychological memory to impersonal, cosmic memory does raise a myriad of questions: Why does Lessing employ the form of an

Archive that already entails the chronological narrative? Where and in what form is memory, recollection, stored? What does the new form of memory envision? Why does

Lessing strip us of the certainty that memory is anchored in the subjective brain and depict oscillation between personal memory and cosmic memory? What do multiple levels of memory entail? This chapter treats these questions, revealing how Johor’s oscillation between psychological memory and cosmic memory leads to a new vision of memory that records and revises the archival records.

The Archive embodies the interaction between psychological memory and cosmic memory. The mediator between the two kinds of memory is Johor since he is both an immaterial galactic messenger and a corporeal incarnation on Shikasta. He can shuttle between worlds and see different events from both macroscopic and microscopic perspectives. Why can Johor keep retrieving and revising cosmic memory? Because he is able to be incarnated as multiple beings at different times and places, and his long lifespan enables him to look at events from a macroscopic perspective and tune into cosmic memory, made possible by his encounters with the ape, the Giants and the Lock.

That is to say, Johor’s memory has its impersonal, cosmic scope. To understand the interaction between psychological and trans-individual sides of memory, I look to

Deleuze’s appropriation of the Bergsonian concept of memory in Bergsonism and Cinema

II, in which the ideas of the virtual presence of the past and the impersonality of memory are presented. This Deleuzian/Bergsonian perspective of memory helps make possible our understanding of Shikasta’s complicated structure of narrative, time, and memory, which is way beyond the relatively static depiction of individuality and memory in

Lessing’s earlier novels and reveals Johor’s oscillation between the virtual past and the actual present to propel cosmic evolution.

Deleuze’s concepts of psychological and ontological contractions in Bergsonism help us understand Johor’s delving into both the psychological lives of various individuals and the impersonal Cosmic Memory. The two-sided memory/time embodies how Johor possesses, at the same time, the long, cosmic view and the partial, local view, utopian aspiration and dystopian desperation. Johor oscillates between the two views, temporarily subverting spatio-temporal limitations so as to facilitate his intervention and interaction with the Archival cosmic memory matrix. With his revision of the archival records, another aspect of the virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution is portrayed.

Emancipation of time from its chronological order endows Johor with the ability to rewrite and reactivate memory and thereby generate cosmic evolution.

Deleuze’s appropriation of Bergson’s theory of memory enhances my understanding of how Johor not only intervenes in but also revises the virtual cosmic Archive. Bergson differentiates two kinds of memory. On the one hand, there is habit-memory, which involves attaining certain automatic behaviors by means of repetition, corresponding to sensory-motor mechanisms. On the other hand, there is true or “pure” memory, which is impersonal and collective. Pure memory is not subjective memory, as illustrated by

Bergson's famous image of the memory cone.

Figure 0.1: Bergson’s Memory Cone

The image of the inverted cone occurs twice in the third chapter of his Matter and

Memory (152, 162):

The image of the cone is constructed with a plane and an inverted cone whose

summit is inserted into the plane. The plane, “plane P,” as Bergson calls it, is

the “plane of my actual representation of the universe.” The cone “SAB,” of

course, is supposed to symbolize memory, specifically, the true memory or

regressive memory. At the cone's base, “AB,” we have unconscious memories,

the oldest surviving memories, which come forward spontaneously, for

example, in dreams. As we descend, we have different regions of the past

ordered by their distance or nearness to the present. The second cone image

represents these different regions with horizontal lines trisecting the cone. At

the summit of the cone, “S,” we have the image of my body which is

concentrated into a point, into the present perception. The summit is inserted

into the plane and thus the image of my body “participates in the plane” of my

actual representation of the universe. (Bergsonism 35)

Present perception is the contracted point of one’s body while the different regions with horizontal lines trisecting the cone represent multiple levels of the past. The present image of one’s body penetrates one of the planes of the past and participates in the actual expression of the cosmos. The virtual realm of the past serves as the background for the actualization of different experiences. In Bergsonism, Deleuze delineates two contractions—the intensive, ontological contraction and the translative, psychological contraction—and shows how translation turns the virtually coexisting levels into specific recollections. In order to retrieve memory, we must transform “intensive, ontological contraction—where all the levels coexist virtually, contracted or relaxed

(detendus)”—into “translative, psychological contraction through which recollection on its own level (however relaxed [detendu] it is) must pass in order to be actualized and thereby become image” (Bergsonism 64-65).

Deleuze’s appropriation of the Bergsonian concept of memory, an apt tool for probing Johor’s intervention in time/memory, helps us answer the question regarding where memory is stored. In Bergson’s and Deleuze’s view, memory is trans-individual and is stored, not in the brain, but in the virtual past. Memory refers, not only to empirical,

34 personal memory, but also to ontological memory that preserves itself elsewhere. As

Johor delves into trans-individual, impersonal Cosmic Memory, he enters a state where different levels of past memory coexist. The “virtual” Johor provisionally subverts temporal limitations so as to facilitate intervention into the Archival cosmic memory matrix, where the virtual co-existence of the past allows him to interact with the cosmic memory. His intervention in the cosmic memory through his multiple reincarnations and long virtual life helps generate the virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution.

Outlines of Chapters

Lessing creates a paradoxical cosmos, in which its partial view of Earth (embedded in the contemporary socio-political milieu in which individualism is dominant) and its

“long view” of Earth, expressed in Lessing’s manifesto as a propelling force of cosmic evolution. Lessing reconciles the two seemingly contradictory strands: one the degenerating socio-political condition, the other, the cosmic evolution. The different perspectives pass into each other and engage in the same process of becoming, a virtual chaosmos, propelled by a transaction of forces. In the language of Shikasta, interaction of the Canopean perspective and the Shikastan perspective constitutes the transaction of cosmic evolution. Decoding the relationship between Canopus and Shikasta, representing both the long view of cosmic evolution and the partial view of socio-political embeddedness, in terms of utopia/dystopia in the ongoing process of cosmic evolution, one can see the rich complexity of Lessing’s allegory.

The body of my thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter One reveals how the galactic messengers, namely Johor the protagonist, can shuffle between different worlds and different levels of reality and thus mediate between them. As a virtual agent who can

35 go beyond the limits of the individual by connecting with the virtual, Johor serves as the avatar of cosmic evolution and travels between utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta.

His oscillation between the corporeal and incorporeal role reveals a paradox: he both conforms to and diverges from the cosmic Master Plan. On the one hand, Johor is an immaterial galactic messenger assigned to fulfill his function in the colonial plan set by

Canopus; on the other hand, he is incarnated as a Shikastan, George Sherban, and his experiences on Shikasta trigger his seeing flaws in the Canopean cosmic plan.

Johor/George’s divergences from the cosmic plan show us that Shikasta is not a work that deals only with the total submission of the individual to the species or the Empire. Instead, the visionary novel reconfigures the concept of individual and species, showing their paradoxical relationship. My finding is that Lessing’s creation of this unusual, controversial character, the galactic messenger Johor, allows us to realize that individual divergences are crucial for the evolution of the galactic species and the multiplicity of life itself. Deleuze’s theory of individuation can help us understand how Johor, as a virtual individual, precedes the actual species, how the virtual cosmic forces, the Lock and

SOWF, spark revision of the actual cosmic Master Plan, and how such revisions propel cosmic evolution. Traveling between the two worlds, Canopus and Shikasta, Johor serves as the mediator who can acutely observe the defects in the two societies. Johor functions as the observer who is simultaneously the executive and the inspector who supervises and critiques his own position. Johor’s self-distancing leads to his self-reflexivity. Lorna Sage well argues that “Lessing’s Canopeans are guardians of difference (they immerse themselves in local conditions, incarnate themselves as historical individuals) and at the same time are subverters of the politics of difference” (The Alchemy of Survival 163).

Interestingly, the Canopeans are not only the safeguards of the utopian system but also the saboteurs of the very same system. Before Johor is reincarnated as George on

Shikasta, he saves Ben and Rilla and forced them to go back to Shikasta to assist the rescue mission. Johor’s recording and his subjective adding and editing of the archive reveal his doubts as to the perfect plan for an ideal society. Recollecting and editing the archival material consciously and skeptically becomes one way of subverting the ideology of Canopus. When Johor understands more about Shikastans, his wholehearted obedience to Canopus gradually evolves into skepticism, which entices him to claim, “I,

Johor, from this dark place, Shikasta the stricken one, raise my voice, but it is not in complaint but mourning, as these poor creatures mourn their dead who have lived so briefly that once a sheep or a deer would have lived deeper and longer, breathed more fully” (Shikasta 138). Johor’s critique results in his self-transformation that parallels the transformation of Shikasta and even Canopus.

Chapter Two explores Lessing’s juxtaposition of the ancient cities and the future post-catastrophic cities, of old static colonial design and of new intuitive evolutionary design. Her dual vision makes possible virtual symbiosis of the two forces, not despite that, but because the link to the cosmic force is always interrupted by conditioning of colonial, geopolitical “realities.” The two forces, the actualization of the ancient geometric cities via the colonial Master Plan and the virtualization of the post-catastrophic cities, form an indiscernible relationship, just as, in post-catastrophic

Shikasta, the Survivors form an indiscernible relationship with the cities, in both cases thereby connecting with the cosmic force SOWF. The transition from the ancient, entropic dystopian cities to post-catastrophic, promising utopian cities maps the divergences and mutations of the Survivors and their becoming-city, envisioning the cross-fertilization between both parties. The dissolving of boundaries between the cities and the Survivors helps form a new virtual “we” that encompasses different beings such as stones, plants, apes, Giants, Shikastans, and even Canopeans.

In Shikasta, Johor guides the marginal characters, such as the Survivors, to rebuild the city, and the Survivors’ indiscernible relationship with the city directs them to the virtual cosmic force, Substance-of-We-Feeling (SOWF). Only the Survivors remain to tell the story after the Age of Destruction. Before the catastrophe, they are mostly outcasts in fallen society, an entropic dystopia caused by strict adherence to the cosmic

Master Plan. The Survivors are dubbed undesirable and perhaps mentally ill because of their differences from normal people; however, their special ESP powers, such as telepathy and precognition, help them to adapt themselves to the post-apocalyptic world, survive the catastrophe, and finally evolve into a new species. The fixity and enclosure of the utopian cities are now replaced by the transforming cities with the potential of expansion.

Canopus’ messenger, Johor/George, leads the Survivors to rebuild the cities and form a new relationship with the cities and the cosmic force (SOWF) in the dynamic chaosmos. To explore how the entwined relationship of the Survivors, the cities, and

SOWF generates the virtual new assemblage, “We,” I turn to Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect, and chaosmos in What is Philosophy, namely their critique of

“consciousness as the genesis of space” (Colebrook 190) and their reconfiguration of the relationship between the individual and space. Their concepts aid our understanding of how the Survivors, in their artistic act of rebuilding, evolve and “become the city” instead of controlling the rebuilding via conscious implementation of a rigid cosmic Master Plan.

They also help illuminate that, when the cities and the architectural alignments are connected with the cosmic force, SOWF (affect), a new virtual “we” is formed and the virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution is enacted.

Chapter Three explains how Johor’s act of retrieving memories reshapes them, connecting individual memories to cosmic memories and thus revising cosmic evolution.

Johor emancipates memories from consciousness and retrieves the virtual cosmic memory, which enables past and present to interact in a new way and reveals the dual vision, transforming the trajectory of virtual but real cosmic evolution. Johor, both an immaterial galactic messenger and a corporeal incarnation on Shikasta, George Sherban, mediates between the two levels of memory, oscillating between different spatio-temporal coordinates, viewing events from macroscopic and microscopic perspectives. During his very long lifespan, he continually retrieves and revises the cosmic memory, being incarnated as various beings at different times and places, as shown in Chapter One.

Johor’s multiple beings tune into different levels of memory and ultimately make him the change-agent of the evolving cosmic memory. Deleuze’s treatment of Bergson in

Bergsonism and Cinema II, especially the ideas of the virtual presence of the past and the impersonality of memory, illuminates Shikasta’s complicated structure of narrative, time, and memory, which journeys way beyond the relatively static depiction of individuality and memory and reveals another aspect of the virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution.

Deleuze’s theory of the virtual memory helps us understand how the transaction between the actual present memory that is related to the dystopia, Shikasta, and virtual cosmic memory that is associated with the utopia, Canopus, contributes to the cosmic evolution and carries the actual world to a new level.

Lessing is much criticized for betraying her anticolonial stands. My dissertation, born of cross-fertilization between Lessing’s Shikasta and Deleuze’s theory of the virtual, reveals how conflicts between the individual and the collective, between colonial and anti-colonial, between the partial view of socio-political embeddedness and the long view of cosmic evolution, between human and nonhuman, between inner psychology and outer space, between psychological time and cosmic time, between dystopia and utopia, bring forth a new virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution, in which the individual does not

39 decline into conventional individualism, the collective does not decline into conventional despotic collectivism, and spatio-temporal contours are dissolved and reconfigured infinitely. In this novel, Lessing reconfigures the individual, space, and time in a virtual chaosmos, depicting their symbiotic evolution, their ongoing process of mutual becoming.

It is not the case that I simplistically apply Deleuzian concepts to Lessing. On the contrary, my methodology involves substantiating points of contact—indiscernibilities—between Deleuze and Lessing, explicating this complex vision of a new virtual chaosmos of symbiotic evolution, including the symbiotic interrelationship of essential virtual beings: the galactic messenger, the Survivors, the expanding cities, the cosmic forces, SOWF and the Lock, and the cosmic memory. What

Lessing and Deleuze create are not dogmatic images of thought but snapshots framed and clicked by the artistic hand. Artistic intervention enables us, as readers, to witness the infinite speed and beauty of utopian chaosmos.

Chapter One The Paradoxical Relationship Between the Individual and the Species

In Chapter One, I examine how Johor can simultaneously follow and precede the cosmic Master Plan set up for the functioning of the Empire of Canopus. The conflict between the utopian aspiration of Canopus and the dystopian degeneration of Shikasta, is revealed through Johor’s oscillation between the actual cosmic plan and virtual cosmic forces (the The Lcokand SOWF) as well as between the actual manifestation of Johor as

George Sherban, conditioned by the geopolitical situation and Johor himself, who tilts toward the virtual because of his connection with the virtual cosmic forces so that he can revise the cosmic plan and thereby trigger cosmic evolution. Through Johor’s multiple identities, the paradoxical relationship between the individual and the empire (species) can be manifested.

In creating Shikasta, Lessing express the desire to surpass dichotomies—for the colonized planet Shikasta to achieve liberation from its colonizer Canopus—“actual” conventional static boundaries and hierarchies must dissolve into “virtual” symbiotic, dynamic transactions, not of discrete, static identities, but of organic forces. To achieve such “virtual” re-scrambling surely requires a dual vision. Lessing’s brilliant sci-fi vehicle for the dual vision is her protagonist, the Canopean galactic messenger Johor, who embodies the two perspectives revealed as oscillation between his (the Canopean galactic messenger’s) virtualization and his counterpart, George’s (Johor’s alter-ego’s) actualization. He exemplifies not one, but at least five identities and, therefore, at least five perspectives. His multiple perspectives enable the transformation from the actual social or political dichotomies to a cosmic multiplicity, endow him with the ability to mediate between the contradictory views of utopian aspiration of Canopus and dystopian

41 desperation of Shikasta, and trigger the dynamic movement of a virtual cosmic utopia.

Johor is gifted with both the utopian and the dystopian vision because he is able to shuffle between Canopus (utopia) and Shikasta (dystopia), observing the colonial dilemma from both the perspective of a colonizer and that of a colonized simultaneously. The infinite movement and cross-fertilization between utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta enable him to grasp the dynamic movement of a virtual utopia that involves cosmic evolution.

As a galactic mediator, both “actual” and “virtual,” Johor shuttles among different worlds and levels of reality. His oscillation between corporeal and incorporeal roles embodies a paradox: he both conforms to and diverges from the Canopean cosmic Master

Plan. He is assigned to administer the Canopean cosmic Master Plan, and he is also incarnated as a Shikastan, George Sherban. As his experiences on Shikasta reveal flaws in the Canopean plan, Johor/George’s divergences from the plan, from his assignment, exemplify that Shikasta defies total submission of the individual to the species or Empire.

The novel reconfigures the idea of individual and species by showing their paradoxical relationship. Lessing’s creation of this unique protagonist indicates the essentiality of divergences in the multiplicity of life and in the evolution of galactic species. Deleuze’s theory of individuation illuminates how Johor, in his virtual aspect, precedes the actual species and how the “virtual” cosmic forces, the The Lcokand SOWF, spark revision of the “actual” cosmic plan, and how such revisions propel cosmic evolution and make possible the dynamic movement of a virtual cosmic utopia.

The conflict between utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta can be shown in the polemics regarding Lessing’s newly-crafted empire, Canopus. Lessing’s bold declaration

“Like it or not, fellow democrats, this is a hierarchical universe,” sparks much controversy (“Considering the Stars: The Expanding Universe of Doris Lessing’s Work”

128). Although Lessing establishes a complex context, her portrayal of the colonizing

Empire of Canopus does appear to endorse the colonizing mission. Rege points out,

“Critics of Canopus in Argos series [outer-space series] additionally point to the formerly anticolonial Lessing as seeming now to endorse the notion of the colonizing mission in the benign and superior Canopus' benevolent colonization of Shikasta” (127). Lorna Sage argues that even though Canopeans are classified as “good” colonizers who govern benevolently and turn “wars of words into silent symbiosis,” the inner imperative to reach something one should recognize and follow is still a colonizing pattern. Sage reaches the conclusion that they talk in a collective, in “a voice that says ‘we5.’ And ‘we,’ fairly clearly here is an imperial, imperative pronoun” (Kaplan and Cronan 165). Rege does not totally agree with such criticism, claiming that Lessing’s later works still aim to expose insidious exploitation by the colonizing power and the hypocrisy of once-colonized nations when they appropriate hierarchical structures and ironically continue to repress their own people after hard-won independence and departure of the colonizing force

(“Considering the Stars: The Expanding Universe of Doris Lessing’s Work” 127). Why does Lessing employ the colonial relationship between Canopus and Shikasta, between

Johor and the Shikastans, such as the ape and Giants? On the one hand, she talks about the submission to the cosmic Master Plan while, on the other hand, she portrays individual divergences positively. Johor laments the fates of Shikastans, and his encounters with the betraying Giants propel him to record the divergent actions and thus problematize the legitimacy of Canopus’ claim of what is right in their implementation of the cosmic Master Plan. What exactly does Lessing convey with her ambiguous delineation of the colonial relationship in Shikasta? She employs the two contradictory

5 This “we” is different from Lessing’s creation of a new assemblage, “We,” evolving along with the mutating Survivors, expanding cities and cosmic force (SOWF) after the catastrophe.

43 but complementary strands, the utopian aspiration of Canopus and the dystopian depiction of Shikasta, to express the paradoxical relationship between the individual and the species and find a way to reconcile the conflicts between the two drives in utopian thinking, entropic collectivism and anarchic individualism. But how then can Lessing’s protagonist, Johor, precede and revise the cosmic Master Plan and trigger cosmic evolution?

Critical allegations that the protagonists in Lessing’s space fiction lack individual difference undervalue Johor’s virtuality and cannot fully explain the special characteristics of the Canopean galactic messenger. In Identity in Doris Lessing's Space fiction, David Waterman’s analysis of Lessing’s space fiction based on identity formation cannot explain Lessing’s reconfiguration of the relationship among the individual, the collective, and the whole because Waterman’s idea of politics of identity focuses on the development of the subject’s identity. Similarly, in Fine-Tuning the Feminine Psyche,

Lorelei Cederstrom explicates Lessing’s novels by employing Jung’s theory of individuation, which also emphasizes the integration of the individual. What Lessing portrays is neither the integration of the individual nor the process of identity formation, but, rather, a virtual agent with the power to actualize cosmic possibilities and trigger actual cosmic evolution. Lessing’s Shikasta does not focus on the confrontation between the individual and the collective, but on the promising dynamic relationship between the two. She addresses the relationship between the individual and the collective on the level of the cosmic whole, depicting symbiosis of the individual and the collective, transforming the heretofore-static cosmic Master Plan and propelling cosmic evolution in a virtual cosmic utopia. Waterman’s and Jung’s theories fall short of illustrating the idea of her dual vision, the oscillation between the actual and the virtual, crystallized in the novel as the interplay between the colonizing immaterial galactic messenger, Johor, and

44 his incarnation, George, the colonized Shikastan. The oscillation gives birth to a dynamic utopia that realizes cosmic evolution. How, then, can Lessing escape from the collectivism caused by the colonial relationship and individualism resulting from the emphasis on individual differences?

Going beyond Waterman’s interpretation informed by identity politics and

Cederstrom’s interpretation based on Jung’s theory of individuation, I argue that Shikasta reveals Lessing’s depiction of the virtual relationship between the individual and the collective (the species) on the level of the “virtual” utopia. Deleuze’s theory of individuation (indi-drama-different/ciation) portraying the individual’s oscillation between the virtual and the actual informs the complex relationship between virtual Johor and actual George6. The distinction between virtual Johor and actual George is not so clear from the start and is further complicated as both of them shuttle between the actual and the virtual.

The reason why Lessing wants to create a “virtual” agent like Johor is that she expects the galactic messenger to be initiated into the realm of the possibilities of the cosmic force, which goes beyond the actual politics of confrontation or dichotomy, beyond the confrontation of the colonizer and the colonized. Johor, as the “virtual” agent, actualizes the possibilities of the cosmic force and serves as the mediator between the colonizer and the colonized, between the utopian aspiration of Canopus and the dystopian desperation of Shikasta. Johor’s role as the virtual galactic mediator or messenger thus enables him to revise the “actual” geopolitical situation and the actual cosmic Master

Plan, such that the force of comic evolution can be released. Johor embodies the mediation between Deleuze’s utopias of transcendence and utopias of immanence.

6 Johor and his incarnation are comparatively actual since they possess concrete identity. On the other hand, both of them possess the potential to become virtual. When I describe Johor as virtual and George actual, I mean they are more prone to be recognized in that perspective.

In Shikasta, how Johor revises the actual cosmic Master Plan and changes the actual geopolitical condition is illuminated by the paradoxical relationship between him, as individual, and his species, the Canopeans. On the one hand, Johor as a Canopean must submit to the cosmic plan set up by the Canopeans. On the other hand, Johor helps enact the evolution of the whole cosmos in general and the Canopeans in particular, so Johor can be said to precede the species. The paradoxical relationship between the individual

(Johor) and the species (Canopeans) can exist because of the dynamic movement of the virtual cosmic utopia. Gayle Greene, in Doris Lessing: The Poetics of Change, explicates the paradoxical relationship between the individual and the species as the “coexistence of

‘freedom’ with ‘necessity’ and obedience to the whole” (Greene 161). But Greene fails to explain how “freedom” can come out of “necessity” when the individual is obedient to

“the whole.” For us, the reason why the “whole” can produce “freedom” in “necessity” is that the “whole” is a “virtual whole,” made possible by the virtual utopia. If Lessing’s primary concern in her earlier works is conflicts between the individual and the collective, in Shiaksta she departs from and transcends that issue by dissolving the confrontation between the individual and the species in the virtual utopia, in the possibilities of cosmic evolution. In appearance, Canopus was the colonizing planet and Shikasta was its colony.

But in deep reality of Lessing’s “virtual” cosmos, all such dichotomies between the individual and the collective, between the colonizer and the colonized, dissolve in favor of symbiotic interaction of opposites. In Shikasta the old political antagonisms between the individual and the collective, between the colonizer and the colonized, no longer apply for the boundaries dissolve and are reconciled. The reconfiguration of the relationship between the individual and the collective, between the colonizer and the colonized, between individual divergences and collective totalitarianism, is the key to the role of Johor as the “virtual” galactic messenger.

Deleuze’s theory of individuation helps to reconcile the paradoxical relationship between the virtual galactic messenger and his mother planet, Canopus, and offers one direction for the coevolution of the parts and whole. Johor is gifted with a dual vision because he is able to shuffle between Canopus and Shikasta, observing the colonial dilemma both from the perspective of a colonizer and that of a colonized at the same time.

The dual vision allows him to grasp the dynamic movement of a utopia that involves cosmic evolution. Lessing’s lifelong involvement with political movements cultivates her ability to delineate and appropriate the complex colonial relationship, to employ the dual vision creatively, to reveal how the paradoxical relationship between the cosmic, long view and the local, partial view can be incorporated into the dynamic movement of a virtual utopia in symbiotic evolution.

Johor’s seeming lack of individual freedom corresponds to his “virtuality” and thus becomes an effective narrative device to render the “virtuality” of the individual and the cosmos. In Greene’s reading, Lessing depicts a cosmos where the essential characteristics of human beings—patience, endurance, responsibility—are viewed as heroic in the face of destined catastrophe. Although Greene attempts to glorify the individual’s dignity and courage and to recognize that the individual might be endowed with a certain range of freedom, she acknowledges difficulty in detecting psychological development of any character in Shikasta since the characters seem abstract and lacking individuality. Karen

Durbin argues that “there is little character development…and what characters there are prove difficult to care about” (“Doris Lessing” 40). Jeannette King also asserts this lack of individual development: “[T]his novel confronts us with an alien universe, and a disconcertingly remote narrator” (Doris Lessing 73), seemingly indicating Lessing's

“surrender of her belief in individuality, in a subjectivity privileged by its uniqueness, whereas we expect the resolutions of a Bildungsroman to provide the central character

47 with a highly developed sense of self” (34-35).

Indeed this lack of individuality can be seen in various characters, including Johor and Rachel. Betsy Draine proposes that “very little attention is given to Johor’s personal psychology and none at all to his devdelopment” (Substance Under Pressure 151). In the first section of the novel, Johor serves as the main archive recorder, who records, edits, and reveals to us the fall of Shikasta; nevertheless, from the second section of the novel on, “we lose the presiding consciousness of the novel: Johor is reborn as George”

(Greene 165). Although we are eager to identify with human consciousness here, Rachel cannot serve as an ideal character for us to gauge her development because what Rachel’s

“brief, unsatisfactory tale illustrates is how disastrous it is to identify with the individual and with the old conventions of heroism and histrionics” (Greene 167). In my reading, it is exactly this lack of psychological development that enables relationships between the individual and the species to be reconfigured so dramatically. It is the key to innovation in Shikasta, which challenges the fixed concept of subjectivity with the shifting of the presiding presence from Johor to Rachel to Kassim, on the one hand, and with the transformation of Johor’s identity from an immaterial galactic messenger to a soul in

Zone Six to an incarnated Shikastan (George Sherban), on the other hand. Furthermore, the identities of Johor, George, and Johor’s soul always exceed their respective boundaries, and the transgressions increase the complexity of decoding identities in

Shikasta. In my decoding, I avoid dwelling on characters’ psychological development and explore how expansion/concrescence of characters, especially Johor, reveals complex, paradoxical relationships between individuals and the species.

I focus on Johor to describe in some detail the lack of individuality and the coexistence of collective necessity and individual freedom. It is Johor’s divergence from

Lessing’s previous delineation of character development that enables the author to depict

Johor as a character who is able to deviate from the “actual” dominant cosmic Master

Plan, connect with the virtual force of the utopia (SOWF and the Lock), and trigger cosmic evolution. Johor’s lack of character development provides Lessing with a way to address the paradoxical relationship of the individual and the species. While many critics of Shikasta deplore Lessing’s depiction of colonialism and the lack of subjectivity, I focus on Johor’s special role as a virtual galactic messenger, a mediator between the individual and the species. Johor’s oscillation between the corporeal and the incorporeal embodies a paradox: he both conforms to and diverges from the cosmic Master Plan. On the one hand,

Johor is an immaterial galactic messenger assigned to fulfill his function in the colonial plan set by Canopus; on the other hand, he is incarnated as a Shikastan, George Sherban, and his experiences on Shikasta propel him to problematize that very Canopean cosmic plan. Johor/George’s divergences from the cosmic plan indicate that Shikasta is not a work that deals only with the total submission of the individual to the species or the

Empire. Rather, the novel reconfigures the concepts of individual and species so as to show the paradoxical relationship between the two. I propose that Lessing’s creation of such an unusual, controversial character, the galactic messenger Johor, enables us, as readers, to see that individual divergences are crucial for the development of the galactic species, the multiplicity of life itself, and evolution of the virtual cosmos (utopia). In explaining Johor’s unique characteristics, his role as a galactic messenger, his function in mediating the individual and the species, I employ Deleuze’s theory of individuation as a tool for understanding Shikasta, demonstrating how Johor, as a “virtual” individual, precedes the actual species and revise the cosmic Master Plan.

The Mediating Galactic Messenger: Johor’s Unique Characteristics/Multiple Identities

My focus in this section is Johor’s five identities in both the actual and the virtual

fields: (1) the galactic messenger who is subject to the cosmic plan, (2) the immaterial

galactic messenger who is androgynous, has a long lifespan, and can transcend the

spatio-temporal coordinates, (3) the incarnated George who is conditioned by the rules of

the species in gender and physicality, (4) the same George who is able to problematize

the marital relationship by recalling the ancient concept of high marriage, which echoes

Canopeans’ androgynous, harmonious relationship, and (5) Johor’s soul in Zone Six.

Table 1.1

Number Actual or Johor/George virtual

1 actual the galactic messenger who is subject to the cosmic

plan

2 virtual the immaterial galactic messenger who is androgynous, has a long lifespan, and can transcend the spatio-temporal coordinates

3 actual the incarnated George who is conditioned by the rules of the species in gender and physicality

4 virtual the same George who is able to problematize the marital relationship by recalling the ancient concept of high marriage, which echoes Canopeans’ androgynous, harmonious relationship

5 Virtual/actual Johor’s soul in Zone Six

Although Johor is conditioned by the cosmic plan because he is a messenger sent by

Canopus to warn and rescue the Shikastans, Johor’s unique multiple identities in the

actual and virtual fields make his relationship with Canopus paradoxical. He can

transcend the spatio-temporal coordinates because he is immaterial and has a long

lifespan. In his report, he talks about his lifespan indirectly: “It is thirty thousand years

since I was in Shikasta; 31,505, to be exact” (Shikasta 69). His life on Shikasta is only a

tiny part of her life so that his lifespan is nearly immortal. Another major characteristic of

Johor’s multiple identities is that he is androgynous. Shikasta is composed of multiple

archival records from various messengers, volunteers, eugenists, common Shikastans,

and many others. In one of the reports, A Note on Sexual Choice, Johor records,

Of course developed individuals with us are androgynous, to put it into the

nearest Shikastan terminology possible: we do not have emotional or physical

or psychological characteristics that are considered as appertaining to one sex

rather than another, as is normal on the more backward planets. (Shikasta 74)

Because Canopeans are depicted as naturally androgynous, their social, political, and mental structures are not conditioned by gender. In Identity in Doris Lessing's space fiction, David Waterman explains: “Androgyny is the model on Canopus…. (the concept of androgyny, as we have seen in Briefing, goes beyond its everyday sense of gendered traits, to mean equilibrium on a much larger scale)” (40). For Canopeans, the purpose of sexuality is not procreation, not maintenance of the species. In Shikasta, Johor claims

“that when sexuality was emphasized to ensure survival of species, this was perhaps overdone” (70).

When Johor is incarnated as George Sherban, however, he is conditioned by the rules of the species in gender and physicality. Married to Suzanna, the descendant of the ape that saved Johor in the ancient time, George fathers two children. On the surface, he

51 strictly follows the rules of the species regarding gender and procreation; nevertheless, he employs the ancient concept of high marriage to rectify the concept of sexuality on

Shikasta, dethroning the notion that sexuality is enacted to ensure the survival of certain species. He explains that marriage of two lovers in the ancient time depends, not on passion, but on physical, mental, and spiritual compatibility. In the ancient Golden Age, various beings are interconnected by the abundant supply of Substance-of-We-Feeling.

Their mating is not rash but follows cosmic flow and intuition, “a moving with, and through, these always changing flows of the currents (Shikasta 190). George (Johor) tells his lover and comrade Sharma Patel that the purpose of marriage is not merely “to have children” for the survival of the species, “but to enhance the cosmic harmony.” The Lock, the close bond, is present in high marriage:

When a man and a woman married, it was not "to have children" or not “to

make a family,” not necessarily, though of course children had to be born and

when they were, it was exact and chosen. No, these two would be chosen, or

choose each other, for they were born with the knowledge of how to do

this—because they were complementary, and this was judged always by how

they stood in relations to stars, planets, the dance of the heavens, the forces of

the earth, the moon, our sun. It was not even that they chose each other, rather

that they were chosen by what they were, where they were. (Shikasta 190)

The union is not decided by sexual desire or the drive to procreate, but rather by how the man and the woman function as significant nodes in the cosmic dance. In their roles as nodal points and turning points, their relations with all the elements—stars, planets, the cosmic trajectory, the forces of the earth, the moon, and the sun—contribute to cosmic wellbeing rather than to mere survival of the species, as George (Johor) describes:

When they “married”—and we cannot even begin to guess how that seemed to

them—their being together was a sacrament, in the sense that everything

contributed to the harmony. And when they mated, this was a sacrament, in the

true and real sense, used consciously and exactly to adjust, fuel, add to, lessen,

powers and currents. And what they ate was the same. And what they wore.

There could not be disharmony, because they were harmony. Everything, their

thoughts and movements . . . they were suspended, on this earth, between earth

and heaven, and through them flowed the lives of stars, and through them

flowed the substance of the earth to the stars...(Shikasta 190)

The individual is no longer depicted as a fixed subject but reconfigured as a fluid, heterogeneous entity floating in the cosmos. George’s concept of high marriage echoes the ancient Golden Age on Shikasta that tries to replicate the lives of the immaterial messengers. At that time, the cosmic force SOWF is abundant so that people are bathed in love and the The Lcokis established. The individuals in the ancient Golden Age on

Shikasta, like the immaterial messengers, are not confined to a specific species but connect with other species such as stones, plants, insects, animals, and human beings.

Individuals correspond to cosmic flow and function as mediators between earth and heaven. Through them flow the lives of all the elements. Through the perfect union of compatible lovers flow the currents between stars and the earth, Shikasta, the stricken one.

In Shikasta, Lessing creates a virtual, immaterial galactic messenger with multiple incarnations so as to highlight the interconnectedness of the individual and other beings, indicating that the individual is not merely a fixed subject but, rather, a fluid and contingent being who precedes the species. Kassim’s final line, “And here we all are together,” echoes the interlocked relationship of all the species on Shikasta. We no longer witness the dominating colonizer; instead, Lessing creates Substance-of-We-Feeling,

53 reminding us that “we” is now the virtual web of interacting beings embodying relationships among the galaxy, human beings, animals, plants, and stones.

Johor’s material embodiment as a Shikastan, George Sherban, and his immaterial, androgynous identity as a galactic messenger comprise a complex, controversial relationship. He can both follow and diverge from the rules of the species. On the one hand, Johor’ incarnation on Shikasta, George, seems to be subject to the rules of the species in gender and physicality. On the other hand, Johor’s immaterial, androgynous identity as a galactic messenger fosters, not survival of the species, but multiplicity of life and emergence of an affective “we” that complements the whole process of cosmic evolution. This affective assemblage is formed through Substance-of-We-Feeling. (I deal with the assemblage of “we” in a later chapter.) George’s (Johor’s) proposal of the concept of high marriage, which attempts escape from typical degenerate marriage, reveals the possibility of another kind of interplay among individuals, the species, and other beings as well.

Johor experiences conflict between his two key roles: the faithful messenger and the mediator between the individual and the species. He is torn between individual freedom and collective Necessity. When his partner, Taufiq, betrays Canopus and is lost to their enemy, Johor suffers from serious self-doubt, wondering if his life-long partner, alone, can withstand temptation by their enemies and survive the ordeal. Considering such self-doubt, Johor wonders whether Canopeans are capable of carrying out their cosmic plan without such crises in belief. Are they always correct in the exertion of their force and the execution of their cosmic plan? Is the cosmic plan actually a flawless survival guide for the whole cosmos? How can Canopus be so sure of the legitimacy of its omniscience after its numerous miscalculations regarding cosmic events? Johor’s involvement with the Shikastans unfolds these issues in a clear light. Seeing the event

54 from the inside out changes his colonial mentality and enables him to recognize that

Canopus’ decision- making is far from flawless. Shuttling between the two planets, Johor, as mediator, is gifted with the vision of seeing from both sides. Shadia S. Fahim observes,

“[H]is standing place between the Canopeans and the Shikastans makes him most suited for his role as mediator between the former and the latter” (165). When he sojourns in

Zone Six and joins the souls awaiting reincarnation, his mediating role between life and death shows another dimension of his multifarious identity. His process of reincarnation crystallizes the mediation between different zones, between life and death, between utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta, between an individual and a species.

Johor creates a paradoxical relationship with Canopus, the colonizer, and with

Shikasta, the colonized. On the one hand, he attempts to stick firmly to his mission and follows the rules of Canopus/the cosmic plan, which is destined to fail. On the other hand, his reliance on the Signature from Canopus indicates that he is already subject to the influence of Shikastans and tends to diverge from the cosmic plan. “I had not expected to have to do this so soon, but I took out the Signature from where it was hidden, and concealed it under my tunic, tied on to my upper arm. My mind cleared then, and I understood that in fact I had been changed without knowing it” (Shikasta 31). Johor’s desire to abide by the rules of the species is gradually quelled by immersion in the sufferings of Shikastans. After encountering the Giants and the Natives on Shikasta, his evolving empathy and sympathy lead him to diverge from the rules of the species/the cosmic plan. Johor’s imperialistic, colonizing mentality gradually evolves. He complains that the Shikastans are being made to suffer just because of stellar misalignments, for which they have no responsibility. As Johor comes to understand more about the

Shikastans, his steadfast obedience to Canopus morphs into skeptical questioning and lamentation about their misfortune: “I, Johor, from this dark place, Shikasta the stricken

55 one, raise my voice, but it is not in complaint but mourning, as these poor creatures mourn their dead who have lived so briefly that once a sheep or a deer would have lived deeper and longer, breathed more fully” (Shikasta 138). Johor’s self-transformation leads to transformation of Shikasta and even Canopus. He serves as a mediator who sparks transformation of both societies.

Johor’s mission on Shikasta leads to the awakening, not only of the Survivors, but also of Johor himself. He says, “It must be remembered that we servants of Canopus are also in the process of evolution, and our understanding of situations change as we do”

(Shikasta 166). Johor’s revelatory thinking highlights two key possibilities: fallacy of the

Canopean colonizing system and a revolutionary “default” in the individual. He notices that Canopus’ policies are established and executed, not by God(s), but by fallible beings who are still evolving. Canopus establishes the cosmic plan to confine variation, to preclude risk, and to enforce cosmic survival, failing to understand and accept that it, as a planet, is only part of the chain of evolution. It is only after it is too late to save Shikasta that Canopus becomes aware of its limitation. To the Shikastans, Canopus defends its miscalculations: “But we are, compared with the Majesties above us, of whom we are a part as you are of us, only small beings who have to submit, just as you do” (Shikasta 28).

With his doubts and new vision, Johor is torn between his desire to enforce the rules of the species and his impulse to diverge from the cosmic plan. Herein lies his gut-wrenching paradox, embodying the paradoxical relationship between collectivism and individual freedom.

What enables Johor to shuttle among five identities: the galactic messenger who is subject to the cosmic plan, the immaterial galactic messenger who can transcend the spatio-temporal coordinate, the incarnated George who is conditioned by the rules of the species in gender and physicality, the same George who is able to problematize the

56 marital relationship by recalling the ancient concept of high marriage, which echoes

Canopeans’ androgynous, harmonious relationship, and Johor’s soul in Zone Six? How can Johor simultaneously follow and precede the species? How do we decode his paradoxical relationship with Canopus? I address such questions by employing Deleuze’s theory of individuation. The complexity of the relationship between the virtual and the actual is a central issue in much of Deleuze’s contested polemics. Still, the application of

Deleuze’s theory of individuation to Shikasta provides telling analogies for Johor’s oscillation between the virtual and the actual, the species and the individual, between the utopian Canopus and the dystopian Shikasta. On the other hand, the textual complexity of

Shikasta embodies Deleuzian transcendence of the dilemma that the individual, once actualized, is doomed to fall into dualism of subject and object.

Deleuze’s Theory of Individuation: Indi-drama-different/citation

In Germinal Life: The Difference and Repetition of Deleuze, Keith Ansell Pearson argues that the species “is a transcendental illusion in relation to the virtual-actual movement of life, which is always evolving in the direction of the production of individuation” (62). Deleuze’s theory of individuation sheds new light on Lessing’s portrayal of the paradoxical relationship between the individual and the species. For

Deleuze, individuation is the double movement of differentiation/differenciation: differentiation refers to the process of becoming virtual while differenciation that of becoming actual. The movement allows the individual to break from the control of the species under certain conditions since the individual signifies two entities at the same time: the virtual individual and the actual individual. Thus, for Deleuze, the individual not only follows the evolution of the species but also precedes the species. Here, the

57 individual is not born just to enhance the survival of the species but to enable the multiplicity of life as well as cosmic evolution, which enables communication among disparate individuals/elements.

Deleuze holds that evolution develops, not according to a pre-established blueprint of the species, but aims at the changeability and potentiality of evolution itself. Survival of the species for Deleuze is not the aim of evolution; instead, evolution traverses species and organisms in order to enact its multiplicity. In Germinal Life: The Difference and

Repetition of Deleuze, Ansell-Pearson claims, “If Darwin’s theory of ‘descent with modification’ put an end once and for all to the theological doctrine on the fixity of species, then Deleuze’s thinking of radical difference also aims to expose the impossibility of the fixity of fields of individuation” (95). Deleuze overthrows the priority of species in proposing that the movement of evolution is not for “the sake of species and organisms,” but for creativity and difference. According to Deleuze, “[S]pecies and parts are not primary; they are imprisoned in individuals as though in a crystal. Moreover, the entire world may be read, as though in a crystal ball, in the moving depth of individuating differences or differences in intensity” (Difference and Repetition 247).

Table 1.2: The individual here refers to the embryonic state of life. It is virtual.

The concept Analogy

Individual Crystal

Embryo

The World Egg

The image of a crystal is employed to emphasize the generating characteristics of the

58 individual since the surface of the crystal is not where its limitation is but indicates where it starts to proliferate in response to the milieu. The virtual individual serves as the reservoir of infinite assemblages, which trigger the (trans)formations of the species and parts on the way to individuation or evolution. Most importantly, the crystal individual expresses the world through unfolding and actualizing differences. The individual here refers to the embryonic state of life, which is not a limited subject but rather a larval life form.

Deleuze further extrapolates from von Baer’s embryology and employs the image of an embryo to signify how the embryo manifests movements that transcend the limitation of the species. Deleuze argues that

an embryo does not reproduce ancestral adult forms belonging to other species,

but rather experiences or undergoes states and undertakes movements which

are not viable for the species but go beyond the limits of the species, genus,

order or class, and can be sustained only by the embryo itself, under the

condition of embryonic life. (Difference and Repetition 249)

For Baer, the embryo does not replicate the parts of the organism to which it belongs; instead, it traverses the boundaries of the species, genus, order, or class and serves as the

“phantasm of its parents” because “every embryo is a chimera, capable of functioning as a sketch and of living that which is unlivable for the adult of every species” (Difference and Repetition 250). The embryo precedes the development of the specific species since embedded within the embryo are infinite possibilities and divergences. Deleuze proposes that “the embryo is the individual as such directly caught up in the field of its individuation” and that “it is the individual which is above the species and precedes the species in principle” (Difference and Repetition 250). It is the species that is an illusion rather than the individual. What the individual signifies here is not the specific subject or

59 self but a fluid and virtual entity. Based on the above arguments, individuals shall never be considered as members of a species; instead, according to James Williams, “they cross species and are a condition for the emergence of species through a process that Deleuze calls indi-drama-different/citation” (Gilles Deleuze's Difference and Repetition 189).

Extrapolating the concept of individuation from Gilbert Simondon, Deleuze places emphasis on the process and claims that the process of individuation or indi-drama-different/citation is similar to that of an egg’s development:

The world is an egg. Moreover, the egg, in effect, provides us with a model for

the order of reasons (organic and species related)

differentiation-individuation-dramatization-differenciation. We think that

difference of intensity, as this is implicated in the egg, expresses first the

differential relations or virtual matter to be organized. This intensive field of

individuation determines the relations that it expresses to be incarnated in

spatio-temporal dynamisms (dramatisation), in species which correspond to

these relations (specific differenciation), and in organic parts which correspond

to the distinctive points in these relations (organic differenciation).

Individuation always governs actualisation: the organic parts are induced only

on the basis of the gradients of their intensive environment; the types

determined in their species only by virtue of the individuating intensity.

Throughout, intensity is primary in relation to organic extensions and to

species qualities. (Difference and Repetition 251)

Here, as we can see, Deleuze insists that it is through the intensive field of individuation that the species and organisms are induced. For Deleuze, the “intensive field of individuation” indicates the intensity such as temperature and humidity. This intensive field of individuation interacts with its milieu in a differential relation and determines the

60 direction of the species just as temperatures in different areas influence the nasal structures of the inhabitants. For example, normally people who live in hotter places such as Africa possess flat noses while those who live in colder place such as Russia possess high noses. In the process of individuation, intensity serves as the catalyst that propels the development from differentiation to individuation to dramatization to differenciation.

Individuation refers to a process, rather than something that is already there in the individual. There are three stages of individuation in which the intensity “actualizes” difference in multiple ways. The first stage, “differentiation,” signifies virtual multiplicities that distribute differential relations along with their singularities. The second stage is dramatization or intensities, in which difference of intensity expresses differential relations or virtual matter and incarnates the virtual multiplicities into spatio-temporal dynamisms. The third stage is differenciation: if the dynamism is revealed in species, it is specific differenciation, and if revealed in organs, it is organic differenciation. Therefore, differenciation includes actualized individuals, or species and parts. Individuation possesses both sides of virtual and actual or intensity and extensity.

The “virtual” aspect of difference in the first stage is dramatized in the second stage, the

“spatio-temporal” aspect of difference; in the third stage, the “specific” aspect of difference is actualized. Deleuze asserts that “Individuation does not presuppose any differenciation; it gives rise to it” (Difference and Repetition 247). Individuation does not limit the fulfillment of differenciation within a certain frame; instead, it multiplies and proliferates on its way to actualizing itself by determining differential relations. This is epitomized in Deleuze’s claim that “Individuation is the act by which intensity determines differential relations to become actualized, along the lines of differenciation and within the qualities and extensities it creates” (Difference and Repetition 246). Thus, intensities (differences) are actualized into extensities (repetition); the virtual is

61 crystallized into the actual; the differentiated is turned into the differenciated.

Since Intensity plays an important role in the process of individuation, I explain the concepts of intensity and extensity before exploring the relationships of individuation and intensity.

Table 1.3: The concept of indi-drama-different/citation:

The concept of indi-drama-different/citation:

virtual Differentiation

Individuation (Ideas)

Dramatization (Intensity)

actual Differenciation (quality and extensity)

In Difference and Repetition, Delezue proposes that “Difference in the form of intensity remains implicated in itself, while it is cancelled by being explicated in extensity” (Difference and Repetition 228). Difference is “inexplicable”; it is explicated only when it is cancelled. That is, when its multiplicity is turned into self-same Identity.

Moreover, intensity is enveloped and enveloping. It is implicated in itself and “continues to envelope difference at the very moment when it is reflected in the extensity and the quality that it creates” (Difference and Repetition 240). The importance of intensity in actualizing Ideas can be glimpsed by the following question regarding Ideas, proposed by

Delezue in Difference and Repetition: “How is the Idea determined to incarnate itself in differenciated qualities and differenciated extensities? What determines the relations coexisting within the idea to differenciate themselves in qualities and extensities?”

(Difference and Repetition 245) It is intensity that determines the differential relations of

Ideas and thereby turns virtual multiplicities into spatio-temporal dynamisms. For

Deleuze, “Intensity is the determinant in the process of actualization. It is intensity which dramatizes. It is intensity which is immediately expressed in the basic spatio-temporal dynamisms and determines an “indistinct” differential relation in the Idea to incarnate itself in a distinct quality and a distinguished extensity” (Difference and Repetition 245).

If intensity is the catalyst that triggers the actualization of Ideas, then what are the

Ideas that serve as the virtual matter to be actualized? To begin with, Deleuze’s concept of Idea is not a Platonic one. Deleuze claims that Ideas possess two sides: the virtual and the actual. Ideas are “pure virtuality” when the differential relations and the repartitions of singularities “coexist according to their own particular order in the virtual multiplicities which form Ideas” (Difference and Repetition 279). On the other hand,

Ideas are actual because “they are actualized in species and parts, qualities and extensities which cover and develop these fields of individuation. A species is made up of differential relations between genes, just as the organic parts and the extensity of a body are made up of actualized pre-individual singularities” (Difference and Repetition 279).

Ideas are incarnated as different species, parts, and actualized individuals according to the intensity or milieu they encounter. Consider the color white. Deleuze proposes, “The Idea of colour, for example, is like white light which perplicates in itself the genetic elements and relations of all the colours, but is actualized in the diverse colours with their respective spaces” (Difference and Repetition 206). The Idea of color is expressed or actualized through the intensity that determines the differential relations and transforms the Idea of color into different extensities (colors) in accordance with specific spatio-temporal conditions. With the example of color, we can perceive the oscillation between the virtual and the actual. If “Ideas contain all the varieties of differential relations and all the distributions of singular points coexisting in diverse orders

‘perplicated’ in one another” (Difference and Repetition 206), then we are led to the virtual sea of Ideas. If Ideas are expressed as a specific form, then we encounter the actual form of Idea. Deleuze calls “the determination of the virtual content of an Idea differentiation” and “the actualization of that virtuality into species and distinguished parts differencaition” (Difference and Repetition 207).

The interrelationships among individuation, intensities, and Ideas can help us understand Deleuze’s thesis that the individual precedes the species. If Platonic Ideas are

“virtual” models to be followed by “actual” worldly things, Deleuzian Ideas possess both sides: the virtual and the actual. They are virtual powers of differentiation, determined by the intensities and then actualized into species. In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze explicates the interrelationships among individuation, intensities, Ideas, and singularities in more detail. He delineates how individuation is influenced by the communicating intensities, how the differential relations are determined by the intensities, and how Ideas envelop all the varieties of differential relations and singularities.

Individuation is mobile, strangely supple, fortuitous and endowed with fringes

and margins; all because the intensities which contribute to it communicate

with each other, envelop other intensities and are in turn enveloped. The

individual is far from indivisible, never ceasing to divide and change its nature.

It is not a Self with regard to what it expresses, for it expresses Ideas in the

form of internal multiplicities, made up of differential relations and distinctive

points or pre-individual singularities”(Difference and Repetition 257-8).

For Deleuze, individuation is based partly on turning differentiation into the “external” pre-established cause or identity of the species. The differentiated part is constituted by

“internal” multiplicities, differential relations, and singularities. What the species is will be determined by how the virtual individual enacts multiplicities, differences, and

64 singularities via determining the intensity; simultaneously, the virtual individual never actualizes the intensities of the species without turning the intensities into the external properties of the actual individual. Here, we can understand differences from the two different perspectives of Individuation (Ideas): differentiation and differenciation. On the level of differentiation, difference is the mere power of intensities, while on the level of differenciation, differences become the extensities. When the individual refers to the virtual differential side, s/he can be connected with the Ideas that coexist in the enveloping and enveloped waves of intensities. It is these communicating intensities that enable the individual to transcend the boundaries of and enact differences in the species.

To put it in another way, on the level of differentiation, difference is the “difference of difference,” while, on the level of the individual, difference becomes the fold between internal difference and external difference because the individual oscillates between the virtual and the actual. When individuals are viewed in terms of their actual side, they follow the rules of the species; on the other hand, when they are viewed in terms of their virtual side, they are capable of transcending the limited rules of species established for certain species. The two concepts are compatible because of the double nature of individuation: differentiation and differenciation. The way intensity is explicated into extensity works in a similar mode to the way differentiation is turned into differenciation.

In short, the individual, on the one hand, follows the rules of the species, and, on the other hand, precedes the species since the individual here refers, not only to the actualized individual who abides by the rules of the species, but also to the larval, embryonic state of life. The “virtual” individual is not controlled by the species but evolves with the dynamic choreography of the assemblages in the cosmos. Now, using

Delueze’s theory of individuation, I explore the entwined relationship of Johor and the species.

Individuation of Johor and the Paradoxical Relationship of the Individual and the Species (the Collective)

In Shikasta, Johor oscillates between the incorporeal and the corporeal, depending on his milieu. His ability to transcend the spatio-temporal coordinate, his long lifespan, and his androgyny embody Lessing’s reconfigured concept of the individual in relation to the species. Why does Lessing create a character who, as previously mentioned, freely juggles at least five identities: the immaterial galactic messenger who can transcend the spatio-temporal coordinate, the galactic messenger who is subject to the cosmic plan,

Johor’s soul in Zone Six, the incarnated George who is conditioned by the rules of species in gender and physicality, and the same George who is able to problematize the marital relationship by recalling the ancient concept of high marriage that echoes

Canopeans’ androgynous, harmonious relationship? What can these seemingly contradictory identities reveal to us? How can Johor simultaneously follow and precede the species?

Though Johor appears governed by the rules of the species, in Deleuzian terms, he actualizes the virtual power of intensities of the species. The two levels of individuation, the double movement of differentiation and differenciation, in Deleuze’s theory, help explain the relationship between Johor and “his” mother planet, Canopus. On the one hand, when Johor is manifested as a virtual, larval state of life, which connects with the cosmic forces SOWF and Lock, he is moving towards differentiation. Johor describes the interacting currents, manifested on Shikasta as SOWF and Lock, which connects

Canopus and Shikasta with other planets. “Now we had to look outwards, away from

Rohanda--in the balances of powers elsewhere, among the stars who were holding us,

Canopus, in a web of interacting currents” (Shikasta 17).The interacting currents

66 virtualize Johor and enable him to connect with other beings. On the other hand, the virtual individual Johor is turned into the actual galactic messenger, Johor, and the

Shikastan, George Sherban. What is more, George is virtualizing himself through “high marriage” that exemplifies the disappearance of the boundary between the individual, earth, and heaven. Between the virtual and the actual is Johor’s soul. In Deleuzian terms, we can say that Johor’s intensity is fixed as extensity or the virtual differential relation is incarnated (dramatized) into actualized individuals by the process of “differenciation.” In the process of individuation or indi-drama-different/citation, both actualized individuals and the species are crystallized. In this way, the species evolves with the transformation of “virtual” individuals while “actual” individuals abide by the rules of the species/the cosmic plan. Evolution of the individual incubates the species, and the individual, undergoing creation, follows the rules of the species/the cosmic plan.

The virtual individual precedes the actual species (Canopeans) in Johor’s role as the galactic messenger. His encounters in various milieux result in doubts and divergences, which indicate to him the infeasibility of underplaying differences and inequalities by following the fixed rules of the species/the cosmic plan. Deleuze’s theory of individuation or indi-drama-different/citation involving the oscillation between the actual and the virtual helps us understand implicit mutuality in the relationship of the individual and the species.

In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze proposes that the difference or inequality between the virtual and the actual will be cancelled when virtual intensity is turned into actual extensity; nevertheless, the transformation is never complete because there are always remainders, which trigger transformation of the virtual and thus the actual. In

Shikasta, the remaining differences and divergences between the virtual and the actual enable Johor to move between the virtual (SOWF and Lock) and the actual (the role of

67 messenger) and transcend them at the same time. On the one hand, Johor as the virtual individual enacts the virtual intensities that trigger the differential relations within virtual matter. On the other hand, Johor’s virtual intensities have to be incarnated in qualities and extensities, such as the actualized individual, George, who follows the rules of the species.

The virtual individual, Johor, determines the trajectory of the species while his actualized individual follows the rules of the species set by Canopus. Johor as a virtual individual is a crystal or embryo—in a larval state of life. Johor as an actualized individual is attached to the cosmic plan and to extensities such as stellar alignments, architectural structures, and individual temperaments.

Tracing Johor’s life trajectory reveals how individuation works and how it points to the direction of the species’ movement. His process of individuation reveals that there is no fixed I or Self guaranteeing the existence of the cosmos but, rather, individuation envisioning the continual movement of virtual and actual. Viewed from the virtual side, the individual works in the mechanism of differentiation. The concept of the pre-personal individual is well explained by the Deleuzian distinction among the individual, the I, and the self in Difference and Repetition: “The individual is distinguished from the I and the

Self just as the intense order of implications is distinguished from the extensive and qualitative order of explication. Indeterminate, floating, fluid, communicative and enveloping-enveloped are so many positive characteristics affirmed by the individual”

(Difference and Repetition 257). Any reduction of the difference within the individual into the self-same identity is a sacrifice of the virtual. The individual here is not the I or the Self because s/he is attached to the virtual. In Johor, we cannot see an “I” or a “self.”

Johor’s incorporeal characteristics and undetermined sex challenge the idea of a fixed subject, and his ability to transgress the boundary of time and space emancipates him from pre-established spatio-temporal confinement. Embedded within Johor is the virtual

68 potential of the whole cosmos. He serves as the reservoir of infinite genetic possibilities.

Through him, we witness the whole dramatic cosmic dance.

Deleuze’s concept of embryo, closely related to his concept of individuation or the virtual, sheds new light on Lessing’s depiction of Johor’s virtual characteristics. Deleuze proposes that an embryo is analogous to an individual. The embryo does not replicate the parts of the organism to which it belongs; instead, it traverses the boundaries of the species, genus, order, or class because it is able to sketch “living” that is “unlivable for the adult of every species” (Difference and Repetition 250). The embryo (individual) precedes the development of the specific species and triggers the emergence of species through a process that Deleuze calls indi-drama-different/citation. In Shikasta, the

“virtual” Johor functions as the reservoir of infinite assemblages, which trigger formation of the species and parts on the way to individuation. Like the embryo, the “virtual” Johor can be incarnated into different embodiments that transcend his species. These embodiments paradoxically follow the rules of the species but at the same time diverge from them by means of mutation, made possible because the embryo (individual) is capable of incorporating sketches of unlivable and unimaginable life forms. Take one of

Johor’s embodiments, George Sherban, for example. On the one hand, Johor’s embodiment as a Shikastan transcends the hereditary rules of the species of Canopus. On the other hand, incarnated as a Shikastan, he develops beyond the capacity of a Shikastan.

“As our envoy or representative grew to maturity in the chosen culture, he, or she, would become notable for a certain level of perception and understanding demonstrated in conduct which was nearly always at odds with the local ideas and practices” (Shikasta

73). Rachel’s journal vividly reveals how George develops at an alarming rate and how he differs from normal Shikastans. When George is young, Rachel witnesses his unusual behavior at night: “But there were a lot of times I woke and George was awake. He was

69 usually at the window. I did not pretend to be asleep. I knew he would not be angry. I once asked him, Who are you talking to? He said he did not know. A friend, he said. He seemed troubled. Not unhappy” (Shikasta 139). Gradually, Rachel understands that

George is able to perceive or intuit things to which other people lack access. “Sitting in the moonlight that night on the wall, George said, There were thirty people there. I already knew from his tone what he meant” (Shikasta 139). As readers, we know from the foresight of the first part of the novel that he is not a normal Shikastan but a galactic messenger who serves as a savior. He develops extrasensory powers that enable him to communicate with Canopus. From this example, we realize that the “actual” individual, while adapting to the rules of the species, also mutates away from them. Johor’s status as an embryo of the species provides him with the possibility to escape from the confines of the species. The immaterial messenger can be seen as the virtual, embryonic individual who transcends the species, class, and genus and displays a life form that is not sketched in the cosmic plan/the rules of the species. As part of the virtual cosmic force, SOWF, and cosmic bond, Lock, Johor is able to influence the direction of the species. Johor, like the couple who undertakes high marriage, as delineated by George Sherban, serves as a bridge between heaven and earth. Through him flow the substances of stars and earth.

If Johor can serve as an embryo of the species, then he can be said to communicate with the intensities that determine actualized individuals. By communicating with the intensities and serving as the intersection of the forces, Johor can be said to precede the species. The cosmic events function as the intensities that transform Johor and thus awaken the intensities gathered in him, who serves as the nodal points of the enveloping intensities. In Shikasta, the virtual individual Johor withstands three galactic events: stellar misalignment, individualism, and Shammatan parasitism. The three events result in catastrophe, forcing Johor to travel to Canopus in an immature state. The three events

(intensities) transform Johor, and, in return, he changes the contour of the communicating intensities by instilling new elements into the virtual sea of Coexisting Ideas. In order to face the emergent situation on Shikasta, Johor is forced to find a body to incarnate instead of taking his time to adapt and mature. He is not equipped with adequate confidence but rather filled with doubt, fear, and nostalgia, which increase the difficulty of his task.

Since intensities envelop other intensities, they can communicate. Deleuze proposes that

“all the intensities are implicated in one another, each in turn both enveloped and enveloping, such that each continues to express the changing totality of Ideas”

(Difference and Repetition 252). Johor’s encounters with different milieux (intensities) further incubate multiple interweaving events (intensities). After he encounters the three communicating intensities (stellar misalignment, individualism, and Shammat’s parasitism), his double identities as insider and outsider help him discern the discrepancy between the colonial cosmic plan and the real situation on Shiksata. Such realization allows Johor to problematize the cosmic plan set by Canopus and diverge from his allotted position as the faithful messenger and recorder of Shikastan history. Johor’s confrontation with the intensities results in more actualization and divergences of the virtual, immaterial Johor. His encounters with the three catastrophic events transform him from a firm believer in the colonial system to a saboteur of that very system. His doubt, revealed through additional material in the archive, suspends the legitimacy of the cosmic plan and problematizes the authenticity of the archive regarding the fate of Shikasta.

Most importantly, Johor precedes the species because the communicating intensities enable different beings to coexist on the virtual level, and each fluctuation or transformation from the individual will definitely influence the trajectory of the species and thereby the cosmos.

While the intensities determine differential relations and incarnate virtual matter in

71 the actualized individual, the virtual individual is differenciated into the actualized individual. Johor’s life form is analogous to the embryo, full of infinite genetic possibilities. He oscillates between the virtual and the actual when he is embodied in different forms such as the galactic messenger, the Shikastan George, and the soul in

Zone 6. Here, Johor can be seen as both virtual and actual. The movement is not linear development from the virtual to the actual but oscillation between them. I now delineate the process of Johor’s different/ciation in terms of the relationship of Johor the messenger on Shikasta, George, and Johor’s soul.

First, I describe Johor’s identity as the galactic messenger between Canopus and Shikasta.

Johor can be said to be both “indeterminate” and “determinate” since he is partly immersed in virtual matter and partly assembled into different actual forms in accordance with the milieu. On Canopus, he can be viewed from two perspectives: Johor the virtual messenger who is able to transcend the spatio-temporal coordinate and Johor the actual messenger who is conditioned by the rules of the species/the cosmic plan. Johor can also be seen from two perspectives. He is a virtual individual who incorporates infinite assemblages of possibilities, and he is an actual individual because he is conditioned by the colonial rules and the cosmic plan. For instance, in order to be initiated as the galactic

72 messenger, Johor has to receive training, as a student, in “Canopean Colonial Rule”

(Shikasta 3), established by Canopus to facilitate the missions of galactic messengers.

How Johor matures from colonial student to galactic messenger is revealed through his relationship with Taufiq, his longtime partner and friend. Although they are considered interchangeable because they share similar backgrounds and characteristics, they are differently conditioned by the cosmic plan set by their species, as Johor observes:

It is not always realized that we are not interchangeable. Our experiences, some

chosen, some involuntary, mature us differently. We may have all begun on one

of the planets, and some of us even on Shikasta in the same way, and with not

much more to choose between us than between puppies of the same litter, but

after even some hundreds of years, let alone thousands, we have been fused,

baked out, crystallised, into forms as different as snowflakes are to each other.

(Shikasta 6)

Here, Johor emphasizes his differences from Taufiq caused by time and experiences.

Johor thinks that, although he and Taufiq are allegedly interchangeable at the beginning, they have become remarkably different after executing tasks on different planets “after even some hundreds of years, let alone thousands.” They are crystallized into different individuals because of diverse spatio-temporal dramatizations. When Johor and Taufiq are actualized as galactic messengers, they are alike since they belong to the same subgroup of the species, and yet they are different because enveloping and enveloped by different intensities. Being involved with different intensities in the virtual pool of coexisting Ideas has baked and crystallized them into different beings. There is a spatio-temporal gap between them. Taufiq, seduced by the ideology of their enemy,

Shammat, betrays Canopus, aggravating Johor’s self-doubt about his role as imperial messenger and causing Johor to react badly to the news that he is going to substitute for

Taufiq. Johor strives to strengthen himself, telling himself never to “go the way of Taufiq, my brother” (Shikasta 6). Johor asks himself poignantly, “If we are so close, and he is lost to us, temporarily of course, but nevertheless lost and part of the enemy forces, then—what may I not expect for myself?” (Shikasta 6).

Johor’s spatio-temporal uniqueness relative to Taufiq embodies the very core of differenciation: the same element can react differently and manifest itself differently in different milieux. Such is why Lucretius and Deleuze emphasize that no two eggs or grains of wheat are identical (Difference and Repetition 252). Though two eggs or two grains of wheat may seem identical, when viewed from the perspective of virtual Ideas, their environments bake and crystallize them differently. According to Deleuze, “All the

Ideas, all the relations with their variations and points, coexist, even though there are changes of order according to the elements considered” (Difference and Repetition 252).

Viewed in terms of the virtual, all beings coexist in the cosmos. Contrarily, while Johor and Taufiq encounter different intensities and react differently, they are able to change the differential relations between the beings. The originally identical elements’ differing reactions to encounters with intensities in their milieu have to do with their different

“sensations” that will drive virtual matter or Ideas on different courses. That is, differenciation has to do with individual ‘sensations.” James Williams offers a lucid account of how “sensations” are required to realize Ideas:

From the point of view of a dominant set of Ideas or actual categories of

species and things, a particular grain of wheat – a particular human – may seem

of little significance, as if it were replaceable by any other. But in terms of the

sensations of different individuals, that particular grain may be of great

significance to the expression of the whole of Ideas. There can be no limit in

principle on where sensations occur – they may even occur in a grain. Neither

can there be a hierarchy of sensations. To be part of a sensation and of the

expression of intensity and Ideas is enough and no external measurement of

value can stand as a more important determinant of significance. (Williams

194)

Viewed from the perspective of Ideas, the ensemble of differential relations, all elements coexist and seem to be interchangeable; however, when viewed in terms of the sensations of different individuals, each particular grain or individual becomes significant, each of its sensations contributing to the metamorphosis and evolution of the coexisting Ideas. In this way, on the one hand, the individual is able to precede the species because the individual here is not an actual “subject” but a “virtual,” contingent being that serves as a part of the coexisting Ideas. The virtual individual is connected with the other Ideas so that s/he can transform the contour of the Virtual Coexisting Ideas while the individual and the species are actualized. On the other hand, a particular grain (an actual individual) is able to influence the virtual coexisting Ideas because each contributes to the virtual

Ideas. Thus, the virtual individual can precede and influence the constitution of the species and actual individuals, and the actual individual can also change the contour of the species by instilling new elements into the virtual Coexisting Ideas. Regarding

Shikasta, Johor/George is able to precede the species because he is connected with the coexisting Ideas, the pool of genetic possibilities. Take the interrelationship between the sea and every drop of water as an example: the sea is the same while every drop of the sea ripples and surges in different ways. In Deleuzian terms, the Ideas coexist in the virtual zone and the incarnations of the Ideas into different sensations enact differences in their singular ways. That is why, sharing the same background, Taufiq and Johor develop differently in the process of cosmic evolution. The virtual messenger and the actual messenger (Johor) entangle with the species in a paradoxical way. While Johor is moving

75 toward the virtual, he is connected to the coexisting Ideas so that he can precede the species and enact differences in the rules of the species/the cosmic plan; on the contrary, while he is moving toward the actual, he is conditioned by the cosmic plan. Nevertheless, since the sensation of each “actual” individual is of great significance to the expression of the whole of virtual Ideas, the “actual” individual can also transform the virtual in its own singular way. Thus, the species will be molded by how the virtual individual enacts multiplicities, differences, and singularities by means of the determination of the intensity; simultaneously, the virtual individual never actualizes the intensities of the species without turning the intensities into the external properties of the actual individual. What’s more, in return, the actual individual transforms the virtual and thereby the constitution of the species.

Now I turn to Johor’s incarnation as George Sherban. The juxtaposition of the virtual messenger and the actual messenger demonstrates Johor’s oscillation between the virtual and the actual, between differentiation and differenciation. The relationship of the virtual Johor and the actual George, a citizen of Shikasta, embodies the paradoxical relationship between the virtual and the actual. For Deleuze, the virtual is what is ontologically prior to the actual but empirically after the actual. Johor’s “virtual” part has to be parasitic in his “actual” part since his “virtual” potentialities or intensities will not be manifested clearly until he assumes a certain role and becomes an “actual” individual.

For instance, when Johor is incarnated as an actualized Shikastan, George Sherban, the discrepancy between the virtual and the actual realm is exposed, causing metamorphosis of the virtual potentialities or intensities. Johor’s paradoxical relationship with one of his embodiments, George, reveals how the actual can influence the virtual. While Johor is incarnated as George, he is no longer immaterial and androgynous, but, rather, corporeal and endowed with a specific gender in accordance with the rules of the species. Johor’s

76 encounter with the cosmic plan in his incarnation as George reveals to him the obstacles that he, as a galactic messenger, has not experienced before, and this unexpected encounter transforms him. For the first time, he observes the cosmos from a microscopic, personal, local viewpoint. The flow that connects Johor the messenger to the cosmos is interrupted so that the actualized individual, George, can no longer freely transcend spatio-temporal limitations and is forced to live according to the cosmic plan set for the survival of the species. In Deleuzian terms, George, no longer connected to the coexisting

Ideas, is actualized as a concrete being. Unlike the galactic messenger, the Shikastans are not “moving on their star-waves, on star-time, planet-perspective” (Shikasta 28). The virtual, intensive Johor is turned into the actual, extensive George. Consider Deleuze’s concept of intensity and extensity:

Intensity is the uncancellable in difference of quantity, but this difference of

quantity is cancelled by extension, extension being precisely the process by

which intensive difference is turned inside out and distributed in such a way as

to be dispelled, compensated, equalized and suppressed in the extensity which

it creates. (Difference and Repetition 233)

Difference in intensity is turned into extensity by means of erasing the inequality. How the difference in intensity turns into extensity is demonstrated in Johor’s incarnation

(dramatisation). To complete his mission on Shikasta, Johor must choose a host with a specific gender. According to Deleuze, to be actualized from virtual potential “means to extend over a series of ordinary points; to be selected according to a rule of convergence; to be incarnated in a body; to become the state of a body; and to be renewed locally for the sake of limited new actualizations and extensions” (Logic of Sense 110).

Although George loses the virtual Johor’s ability to transcend the spatio-temporal coordinate and is thus conditioned by the rules of the species, he still influences the

77 virtual in many ways. First, George is incarnated as a savior on Shikasta, and his most important mission is to contact and assist persons whom Taufiq has failed to help.

George’s personal intervention changes the trajectory, not only of cosmic evolution, but also of the virtual Johor’s mental state. Second, to ease the tension between the first world and the third world, George employs the mock trial. His exposure of the crack in the society, by pointing out the third world’s replication of the villainous acts of the first world, prevents the third world from taking revenge on the first world. The subversion does not reverse the relationship between the first and the third worlds, but rather erases the boundary between them, essentially dissolving all opposition and enmity. This dramatic erasure of boundaries also brings about reordering of the social strata, which unavoidably changes implementation of the cosmic plan and sparks transformation of the virtual cosmic forces SOWF and Lock. Via George’s microscopic view of the political situation on Shikasta, the virtual Johor becomes able to see the limitations and possibilities of the regenerating plan, and, after the catastrophe, to question Canopus’ imperial stand. Johor matures from embracing Canopus’s cosmic plan to problematizing its legitimacy. The virtual Johor is thus transformed by the actual George. Third, after

Johor is embodied as the actualized individual, George, George’s intuitive recollection of the ancient concept of high marriage reconnects him to his own virtual self, which is connected to the cosmic forces,Substance-of-We-Feeling, and the Lock. The actual influences the virtual. George advocates linking up with other beings in accordance with the cosmic harmony proposed by Canopus. The physical union propelled by spiritual and mental compatibility parallels and enhances the virtual cosmic forces. Although Johor’s actualized incarnation, George, must abide by the rules of the species/cosmic plan, which legislate the course of Shikastans’ development, his transformations also influence, in return, the virtual Johor as well as the selfsame rules/plan.

Having discussed four identities of Johor/George, I now address Johor’s soul in

Zone Six,7 which also mediates between his virtual role and his actual role. When he is assigned the task of saving Shikasta from total extinction, his soul appears in Zone 6 awaiting reincarnation. His predecessor, Taufiq, has failed to fulfill his appointed task as a lawyer assisting certain Shikstans who, with proper assistance, would have had the capacity to change the fate of their planet. Seduced and corrupted by their enemy,

Shammat, Taufiq has betrayed both Canopus and Shikasta. When Johor receives the order to make up for what Taufiq has failed to do, it is already too late for him, as a virtual being, to adapt to the needs of Shikasta. He must find a bodily form, a host, so that he can replace Taufiq and save Shikasta. Johor enters Zone Six, the zone for reincarnation, as a soul awaiting the cycle of reincarnation. There, he encourages Ben and Rilla, the two leaders of the Giants, to enter the cycle of reincarnation once again, so that they can become his brother and sister on Shikasta. Ben is incarnated as Benjamin Sherban, who substitutes for George by taking the role of a national Youth leader and establishes the refugee camps as World War III destroys most of the planet. Rilla is incarnated as Rachel

Sherban, who observes and records George’s actions in and reactions to world events. It is through Rachel that we witness how George carries out political actions on Shikasta and reconnects with the cosmic forces, SOWF and the Lock. It is only through the assistance of Benjamin and Rachel that Johor/George can accomplish his mission.

Johor’s reincarnation transforms him from an immaterial, androgynous, virtual individual to an actual, flesh-and-blood individual with a specific gender, George, who is now brother to Ben and Rilla, also incarnated as Shikastans. George Sherban, dubbed

7 Johor can be interpreted from five perspectives: Johor the virtual and the actual messenger, incarnated George that is conditioned by the rules of species in gender and physicality, the same George that is able to problematize the marital relationship and provides Johor with a different viewpoint toward the cosmic events, and Johor’s soul in Zone Six.

Shikasta’s savior, is the leader of the Youth Armies. The virtual is turned into the actual, intensity into extensity, differentiation into differenciation. Deleuze’s concept of indi-drama-different/citation helps explain Johor’s experience of reincarnation. There are three stages of individuation. The first is differentiation or difference of intensity, wherein differential relations/virtual matter flow. The second stage is dramatization, which turns differential relations into spatio-temporal dynamisms. The third stage is differenciation, either “specific differenciation,” if the dynamism is revealed in species, or “organic differenciation,” if the dynamism is revealed in organs. Johor witnesses the pathetic yearning of the souls in Zone Six: “Two black flat stones marked the Eastern Gate, and assembled there were throngs of poor souls yearning out and away from Shikasta, which lay behind them on the other side of the dusty plains of Zone Six “ (Shikasta 6-7). Unable to overcome their fear and weakness, the souls return to Zone Six again and again. Johor knows the futility of their hope of rescue by Canopus’ spaceship and decides to persuade his erstwhile friends Ben and Rilla to try to reincarnate again. When Johor, Ben, and Rilla roam in Zone Six, they are souls close to the virtual, differential state, dramatized or incarnated into specific roles on Shikasta following “specific differenciation” or “organic differenciation.” Johor’s and Ben’s souls are dramatized into George Sherban and

Benjamin Sherban.

In a thundering dark we saw lying side by side two clots of fermenting

substance, and I slid into one half, giving up my identity for the time, and Ben

slid into the other, and lay, two souls throbbing quietly inside rapidly

burgeoning flesh. Our minds, our beings, were alert and knowing,

but our memories had already slid away, dissolved. (Shikasta 138)

From then on, they are conditioned by the rules of species and the specific spatio-temporal limitation.

What Johor witnesses and the nostalgia and chimera he encounters in Zone 6 suspend his faith in the imperialistic, colonizing mental power he possesses:

Zone Six can present to the unprepared every sort of check, delay, and

exhaustion. This is because the nature of this place is a strong

emotion—"nostalgia" is their word for it—which means a longing for what

has never been, or at least not in the form and shape imagined. Chimeras,

ghosts, phantoms, the half-created and the unfulfilled throng there, but if you

are on your guard and vigilant, there will be nothing you cannot deal with”

(Shikasta 5).

Johor is fully aware of the dangers of Zone Six. He needs to strengthen himself by holding the Signature, which symbolizes his connection to the Canopean Empire. He is trained as an objective messenger and problem-solver, but his new fragility stems from his empathy towards Shikastans. He is afraid to enter Zone Six since he knows that, since emotions are highly contagious, he will not be able to shed them. They are like the chimera that both fascinates and intimidates. And it is this very chimera that enables his deeper identification with the Shikastans, his deeper empathy, and transports him from the conditioning power of the “actual” cosmic plan/rules of the species to reconnection with “virtual” SOWF and Lock.

In Zone Six Johor becomes aware of the interconnectedness of all beings. Shikasta’s chimera lurks in Zone Six as the maelstrom of sand and the bubbles of illusion. He witnesses how the Shikastans are sucked down by the whirling sand of collectivity. He witnesses how the bubbles create illusions that each, together with its beholder, is unique, paralleling religion on Shikasta. Each sect, together with its practitioners, is deemed unique, whereas because they derive from the same spirit, they are much alike—and all somehow connected, although not dogmatically. Johor leads Ben and Rilla away from the

81 whirlpool and the bubbles, and helps them become faithful and brave enough to incarnate into Shikastans once again.

The process of reincarnation changes the trajectory of the cosmos and triggers cosmic evolution. Importantly, although Johor’s soul is assigned by Canopus to reincarnate as a savior on Shikasta, his soul can still precede the species because, in the limbo of Zone Six, how Johor’s soul fares with the other souls, such as Ben’s and Rilla’s, influences the fate of Shikasta and even Canopus. So do the whirlpool of sand and bubbles of illusion. After Johor witnesses the traumatic experiences of Ben and Rilla, his decision to recruit them as his brother and sister counters the original cosmic plan. Hence,

Johor’s soul simultaneously follows and precedes the species.

The process of individuation, indi-drama-different/citation, helps explain the paradoxical relationship of the individual and the species, in three iterations: Johor as the virtual and actual messenger, Johor and George, and Johor’s soul mediating between

Johor and George. The “virtual” Johor precedes the species while the actual George follows the cosmic plan set by the species. The process goes like this: the intensity determines the differential relations in the virtual zone and triggers the spatio-temporal dramatization that results in the differenciation of the species and the parts: George,

Shikasta, and Canopus. A similar trajectory can be seen in how the intensity incarnates the Ideas in the qualities and extensities. Importantly, the process of individuation goes, not only from differentiation to differenciation and from Ideas to intensity to qualities and extensities, but also the other way around. The virtual Johor determines the incarnation of

George while George, in turn, triggers Johor’s transformations by revealing the gap between the rules of the species and the wellbeing of individuals. This process of individuation is forming infinite assemblages with other beings in the cosmos, triggering the cosmic forces SOWF and Lock, and generating the whole of cosmic evolution.

For Lessing, in the actual geopolitical world, all of the binary oppositions based on individualism, colonialism, and political hegemony should not be erased as insignificant epiphenomena but rather should be treated as what they really are: minor happenings within the much greater process of cosmic evolution. The “rivalries and interactions” of our present-day politics worldwide “express” this much greater cosmic evolution, as

Lessing says in the prefatory. That is why Lessing delineates not only the virtual Johor but the actual George, whose geopolitical embeddedness within the contemporary world is observed and utilized by Johor significantly.

Lessing’s lifelong involvement with contemporary movements such as Sufism and communism cultivate her ability to delineate and appropriate the complex colonial relationship, to employ creatively the utopia/dystopia motif in utopian thinking, so that we can witness how the paradoxical relationship between the cosmic, long view and the local, partial view, between the utopian Canopus and the dystopian Shikasta, can be incorporated into the dynamic movement of a virtual utopia in symbiotic evolution via the figure of the mediating galactic messenger, Johor. The conflict between collectivism and individualism, between entropy and anarchy, between utopia and dystopia is reconceived so that the struggles no longer impede the dynamic movement of a virtual utopia but rather propel cosmic evolution.

Chapter Two

The Survivors’ Becoming-City, the Cosmic Force SOWF, and the New Assemblage:

The Affective Relationship of the Survivors, the Cities, and SOWF

Chapter Two is triggered by one question: Why does Lessing create two contradictory images of the city: the ancient geometric cities and the post-catastrophic evolving cities? The ancient geometric cites symbolize the colonizer’s view of Shikasta’s place in the cosmos, epitomizing the achievement of the colonial cosmic Master Plan, which determines city spatial alignments in accordance with stellar alignment. On the other hand, following the catastrophe on Shikasta, the Survivors’ building of cities occurs intuitively, organically, divergently from the colonial Master Plan and engenders cosmic evolution. The ancient geometric cities are comparatively “actual,” whereas the post-catastrophic cities are “virtual” or dynamic. While the ancient cities are conditioned and actualized by the cosmic colonial Master Plan, the post-catastrophic cities are virtualized by their becoming relationship with the Survivors and the dynamic cosmic force, SOWF. The relationship between the colonial design of the actual cities following the cosmic colonial plan and the development of the virtual evolving cities following the dynamic cosmic force comprises Lessing’s dual vision, a new vision of cosmic evolution that encompasses multiple dichotomies such as utopian Canopus and dystopian Shikasta, entropic collectivism and anarchic individualism, allows divergent, incompossible elements to revise architectural arrangements dictated by the colonial Master Plan, and thereby triggers the formation of a dynamic chaosmos.

This chapter explores Lessing’s juxtaposition of the ancient cities and the future post-catastrophic cities, of old static colonial design and of new intuitive evolutionary design. The two forces, the actualization of the ancient geometric cities via the colonial

Master Plan and the virtualization of the post-catastrophic cities, help form an indiscernible relationship between the Survivors and the cities. The transition from the ancient, entropic dystopian cities to post-catastrophic, promising utopian cities maps the divergences and mutations of the Survivors and their becoming-city, envisioning the cross-fertilization between both parties. The dissolving of boundaries between the cities and the Survivors facilitates the formation of a new virtual “we” that encompasses different beings such as stones, plants, apes, Giants, Shikastans, and even Canopeans.

These two portrayals of cities form a dual vision that illuminates the dynamic movement of the virtual utopia of cosmic evolution, made possible by the dissolving of spatial contours. The virtual dynamic force enables the Survivors to pass into the cities in the process of becoming-city, intuitively and organically build artful, accommodating structures, in divergence from the Canopean colonizers’ design, and thereby propel cosmic evolution. The dissolving of boundaries enables a new assemblage, “We,” to be born8. Employing Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect, and chaosmos in

What is Philosophy, I explore how the interplay between the actual, ancient, entropic dystopian cities and the virtual, post-catastrophic, promising utopian cities problematizes the conscious implementation of the architects’ blueprints for building the cities and reconceptualizes the relationship between the individuals and cities, between human and inhuman.

To address the conflict between the individual and his or her species, Lessing delineates how Johor and the Survivors revise the cosmic Master Plan. He guides the

Survivors, the new species, in establishing a new relationship with the cities, the cosmic

8 The new assemblage refers to the “We” of SOWF (Substance-of-We-Feeling). “We” signifies the choreography between the stellar alignment, the architectural arrangements, the individual temperaments and other beings. It is not the “we” of utopian I-We dialectic.

Master Plan, and the cosmic force SOWF. Johor and the Survivors’ transgressions represent divergences from the Empire’s cosmic plan and a view of co-evolution through the concept of SOWF: the cosmic force Substance-of-We-Feeling.

In my reading, the Survivors, unlike the ancient Giants, do not interact with the cities as architects who design and supervise construction. On the contrary, the Survivors pass into the city as if there is no boundary between the two. The Survivors’ becoming-city reconnects them to the cosmic force SOWF, gives birth to a “We” that involves coexistence of various beings, and thereby triggers cosmic evolution. Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect and chaosmos in What is Philosophy serves as an apt theoretical tool to explain the process of becoming-city, becoming-SOWF, and the formation of a new assemblage, “We.” Their concepts, namely their critique of

“consciousness as the genesis of space” (Colebrook 190) and their reconfiguration of the relationship between the individual and space, promote understanding of how the

Survivors, in the “virtual” act of rebuilding, evolve and “become the city” instead of monitoring the rebuilding via conscious implementation of an “actual” rigid cosmic

Master Plan. They also help illuminate that, when the cities and the architectural alignments reveal and connect with the cosmic force SOWF (affect), a new virtual “we” is formed, a key element of the virtual utopia of cosmic evolution.

After the degeneration of Shikasta, it is the Survivors who remain to rebuild the cities in Shikasta. The degeneration and reconstruction of Shikasta are part of the evolving process of the planet. The evil planet Shammat has abducted the cosmic force

Substance-of-We-Feeling, aggravating the “infective disease of individualism.” The

Survivors’ act of rebuilding the cities reconnects them with the cosmic force and triggers formation of a new assemblage: “We.” After the Age of Destruction, only the Survivors remain to tell the story of the history of degeneration of Shikasta. Before the catastrophe,

86 they are mostly outcasts in the society, dubbed undesirable and perhaps mentally ill because of their differences from “normal” people. Ironically, these very differences, namely their powerful ESP—especially telepathy and precognition—enable them to survive the catastrophe, adapt themselves to the post-apocalyptic world, evolve into a new species, and trigger the emergence of virtual chaosmos. The Survivors are led by

Canopus’ messenger, Johor/George, and, in rebuilding the cities, they form a new, symbiotic relationship with the cities and Substance-of-We-Feeling, a relationship that discloses the virtual chaosmos of cosmic evolution.

My discussion of how the relationship between the Survivors and the cities points to the virtual force of cosmic evolution distinguishes my interpretation of the relationship between the ancient cities and the Survivor’s cities from Claire Sprague’s interpretation.

She alleges that “the ordered, hierarchical, mathematical cities [of the ancient past] represent the perfection human life cannot achieve [at present]” and “in Shikasta in the near future” the cities will replicate the architectural ideals of the ancient cities

(Rereading Doris Lessing 171). Contrarily, I argue that the ancient cities and the near-future cities are far from identical. First, the ancient cities are not the perfect environments helping inhabitants move toward “beatitude,” as Sprague argues. Rather, the Shikastans decline, corrupted by the Degenerative Disease of Individualism. Second, the future cities are not replicas of the ancient cities, for the future cities evolve and expand rather than follow pre-established geometrical patterns.

In the act of rebuilding, the Survivors, neither draw nor follow a blueprint; they intuitively forego individuality and develop a symbiotic relationship with the city. Given this dynamic relationship, the city, as a living entity, (re)builds itself, rendering visible and palpable the cosmic force Substance-of-We-Feeling (SOWF). The Survivors pass into the city and become indistinguishable from it, foregoing conscious implementation

87 of the cosmic plan. Instead of being architects designing the city’s contours, they become artists mingling with their materials and with the artwork being born. Such organic interpenetration of the Survivors, the city, and SOWF precludes our distinguishing any boundaries. The Survivors are propelled by intuition. Attempts by critics to describe their psycho-spatial correspondence revert to representational dualism of subject and object, failing to discern how the Survivors, the city, and Substance-of-We-Feeling become indiscernible parts of the virtual chaosmos. This visionary symbiosis foreshadows

Lessing’s rendering of a virtual new assemblage, “We.”

Criticism of Lessing’s Spatial Images

In Lessing’s earlier novels, there is always a conflict between the individual and his or her milieu, between the microcosm and the macrocosm. One of the key ways for the individual to solve this conflict is to imagine ideal spatial images that always parallel his or her psychological developments. In Lessing’s The Four-Gated City, Martha Quest designs an ideal four-gated city that aims to incorporate human differences but ironically expels persons whom she detests, such as her parents. The spatial images reveal her psychological cartography. In Lessing’s The Memoirs of a Survivor, Shadia S. Fahim considers the carpet episode, the four-walled garden, and the iron egg as mandalas that activate “[t]he process of contemplation by inducing certain mental states which encourage the achievement of equilibrium between the levels of perception” (108). The various spatial images turn out to reflect the individual’s psychological cartography.

In Lessing’s Briefing for a Descent into Hell, however, the psychological cartography of the main character, Charles Watkins, is ambiguous: the milieu is both

88 psychological and “real.” On the one hand, Mandala3 Square in the ruined city reflects the protagonist’s spiritual explorations. On the other hand, the mandala city has its own physical reality. Although Watkins’ experiences in the mandala city might be brushed away as dreams or illusions in psychoanalytical discourse, his connection with the

Canopean spaceship and the briefing that summons him to remember his mission as a galactic messenger reveal another dimension of reality: the cosmic dimension. Viewed from the cosmic scope, the spatial image of the mandala city has its physical reality and interacts with Watkins. No wonder Claire Sprague, in Rereading Doris Lessing, reminds us of the danger of tilting totally toward the inner psyche. She claims that while “the houses in The Four-Gated city are mirrors of psychological reality” (159), they still possess a physical reality of their own. Chien-chou Chen, in Quest for Integration: Space and Psyche in Doris Lessing's The Four-Gated City, delineates the relationship between the individual and his or her milieu in terms of “the dynamics between psyche and space”

(4). The alignments of the spatial cartography mirror the configurations of the psychic topography. Chen claims that the purpose of analysis is twofold: “the one is to psychologize the space and the other is to spatialize the psyche” (4). In my reading, the reflective relationship between the psyche and space presupposes the importance of the protagonist’s evolution of consciousness and triggers emergence of an important question:

3 Jung frequently saw mandalas in the artwork of clients experiencing individuation. He compiled a list of the designs he observed, including the following: 1. Circular, spherical, or egg-shaped formation. 2. The circle is elaborated into a flower (rose, lotus) or a wheel. 3. A center expressed by a sun, star, or cross, usually with four, eight, or twelve rays. 4. The circles, spheres, and cruciform figures are often represented in rotation (swastika). 5. The circle is represented by a snake coiled about a center, either ring-shaped (uroboros) or spiral (Orphic egg). 6. Squaring of the circle, taking the form of a circle in a square, or vice versa. 7. Castle, city, and courtyard (temenos) motifs, quadratic or circular. 8. Eye (pupil and iris). 9. Besides the tetradic figures (and multiples of four), there are also triadic and pentadic ones. See C. G. Jung, Mandala Symbolism, (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1973) 77. Fig. 7 and Fig. 8 in the appendix are the pictures of pertinent mandalas.

89 is the framework of psycho-spatial correspondence in Lessing’s earlier works, as depicted above, an appropriate one for investigating the relationship between the Survivors and the cities in Shikasta?

The spatial images in Lessing’s earlier novels, whether they are embedded in the characters’ minds or have their own physical reality, can be said to be “subjective.” But the spatial images in Shikasta are different. They are not subjective, but are trans-individual and have their own lives as living entities realized in the symbiosis of the

Survivors, the cities, and SOWF. In Shikasta, the boundary between the psychological and the spatial are eradicated as the Survivors meld into the cities without conscious implementation of any pre-established plans, and the city develops as a living organism.

Here, the humans become inhuman and vice versa. The reconfigured relationship of the

Survivors and the city is far from psycho-spatial in correspondence since the psyche no longer controls the spatial cartography and human consciousness is downplayed. In

Shikasta, the two contradictory images of the city comprise Lessing’s dual vision and reconfigure the relationship between individuals and the cities. Building the ancient geometric cities involves the relationship between the Shikastans (the Giants and Natives ) and the cities, a relationship dictated by the cosmic plan of the Canopeans. Building the post-catastrophic cities involves the symbiotic relationship of the Survivors and the evolving cities infused with the dynamic cosmic force and not conditioned by human consciousness. Lessing’s leap to outer space frees her from the confinement of psycho-spatial correspondence. Her leap expands our horizon beyond earthly confinement, reconfigures concepts of the individual and the cities, reconnects the

Survivors with SOWF, and forms a new assemblage that transcends the boundary between human and nonhuman, explores a visionary relationship among the individual, space, and the cosmic force, and generates cosmic evolution.

Before analyzing the relationship of the survivors and the evolving cities, I examine in greater detail Lessing’s spatial images, as critics view them and as I view them. The motif of the imagined or ideal city recurs in Lessing’s works. As Claire Sprague posits, in

Rereading Doris Lessing, “[A]lthough all artists are architects in the larger metaphoric sense, few have been builders of imagined cities. . . . Doris Lessing . . . has, ‘among other things,’ been building houses and cities throughout her long career” (154-155). Many of the imagined or ideal cities in Lessing’s novels are geometric. Betsy Draine observes, in

Substance Under Pressure: Artistic Coherence and Evolving Form in the Novels of Doris

Lessing, “The geometric town, with a fountain and circular plaza at its center, is Lessing’s architectural ideal (present also in the utopian fantasies of The Four-Gated City, The

Memoir of a Survivor, and Briefing for a Descent into Hell)” (153). In addition to the spatial image of the geometric city, Lessing portrays another spatial image, that of mud huts, which originates from her childhood memory in Rhodesia. Sprague points out that

“[t]heir qualities of spontaneity and naturalness make these mud huts the antipodes of

Lessing’s magical cities—the four-gated city, the inner city of Briefing, and the geometrical city of Shikasta” (159); mud huts look “like natural growths from the ground, rather than man-made dwellings” (163). The harmonious relationship of the mud huts, the natural environment, and the individual pervades Lessing’s imagination.

There is a third kind of city image in Lessing’s works, which, according to Sprague, is “the Acropolis”: “Its existence destroys the binary opposition between the mud house and the geometrical city” (164). The Acropolis is neither totally organic nor over-ordered.

Unlike the natural mud house, the Acropolis is still framed by structures and thus can resist the wear of weather. It is not as ordered as the geometrical cities. Sprague provides a snapshot:

The Acropolis seems to follow the contour of the land rather than the imposed

order of geometrical shapes. Deliberately irregular, deliberately planned to

accommodate to the curve of the land rather than to the mathematician’s

instruments, these structures seem to be at once “natural” and mathematical.

(164)

The geometrical shapes are modified by the curvatures of the land so that the Acropolis is both spontaneous and geometrical, forming the prototype of the evolving city in Shikasta.

If the Acropolis metamorphoses owing to the curvature of the land, the evolving cities on

Shikasta deviate from their original shapes for multiple reasons, including curvature of the land, stellar alignment, and the Survivors’ mutation. The Acropolis can help us understand the cosmos in Shikasta where the cities are evolving and expanding rather than following scrupulously the patterns of over-ordered shapes. Lessing re-imagines and reconfigures the relationship of the individuals, the cities, and the cosmic force.

Development of the spatial image from the geometric cities to the Acropolis finds its realization in Shikasta’s ancient geometric cities and the future expanding cities.

Oscillation between the two images of the city propels cosmic evolution. The rendering of various city images in Lessing’s earlier novels and the organic development of the cities in Shikasta enlightens my investigation of the reconfigured relationship between the

Survivors and the cities after the catastrophe. The relationship of individuals (the

Survivors) and the city develop this new organic relationship from which is born the virtual chaosmos of cosmic evolution beyond earthly confinement and the correspondent psycho-spatial model. Both the Survivors and the city evolve with the virtual cosmic force. The Survivors lose their individualities in the act of rebuilding the cities, and human consciousness is downplayed, which, according to Colebrook, problematizes “the phenomenological idea of consciousness as the genesis of space” (The Sense of Space

190). Instead of serving as subjects representing homogeneous space, the Survivors,

92 driven by SOWF and the virtual force of cosmic evolution, become evolving participants in cosmic evolution itself. The replacement of human consciousness with intuition, in the

Survivors’ determining the design of the city, and the choreography of the individuals, the cities, and the Substance-of-We-Feeling, in an interpenetrating dance, embody a change of focus from the individuals’ psychological cartography to a new assemblage of “We” in this new virtual chaosmos of cosmic evolution.

We see this profound transition in the relationship between the Survivors and the cities after the catastrophe. Kassim, a Survivor and Johor-George’s adopted son, inherits

Johor-George’s mission as keeper of the galactic Archive, in which the spontaneous way of building the city is recorded. Betsy Draine argues that, when George and Rachel die, the Survivors are “in the consciousness of Kassim, one of the children rescued by George, from whose point of view we witness the rebuilding of the cities” (Substance Under

Pressure 165). Kassim says, “Take a simple thing like the shape of this town. There were no plans. No architect” (Shikasta 237). After the catastrophe, the Survivors rebuild the city spontaneously, without discussing plans or materials or contours of the site. They proceed by intuition. They improvise. Nonetheless, when Kassim observes the city from above, he detects a telling pattern:

…[y]et it grew up symmetrical and on the shape of a six-pointed star. I didn't

realize it was a star until I walked up out of the town very early one morning,

and when I looked down, trying to see if I could notice anything different, I

was able to see the star-shape. But no matter who I ask, no one seems able to

say anything about plans or a master plan or anything like that (Shikasta 237).

No one can explain to Kassim why or how the city develops in this star configuration. It just does, as a living organism It is not the product of human action but is a living being co-creating its own life with the Survivors and SOWF. There is no more cosmic Master

Plan or architect, just organic inter-relating parts of the virtual chaosmos of cosmic evolution.

Who Are the Survivors?

The Survivors are actually “elected” by Johor-George as the saviors of the city after the catastrophe, a new species who inherit Johor-George, the Link-Persons who spread among the Shikastans. The Survivors spark transformation of Shikastans so they can meet the needs of Canopus by “form[ing] a strong enough yeast to raise the whole mass to standards of decent and wholesome living in conformity with the general needs of

Canopus” (Shikasta 73). Lynda and Dr. Herbert are not the only Link-Persons who exist on Shikasta; in the ancient time, there are Link-Persons who can respond to and help recover the Lock between Shikasta and Canopus. However, as time goes by, the growing population in Shikasta results in the loss of SOWF, and the Shammat’s parasitic acts distort SOWF to the extent that fewer and fewer people are able to make contact with

Canopus via the conduit SOWF. Destruction of the connection between Canopus and

Shikasta via SOWF is aggravated still by wars, famine, and slaughter in the Century of

Destruction. It is not until the aftermath of the catastrophe that SOWF is again abundant enough for the Link-Persons to be able to develop their Capacities and survive. The

Survivors are chosen by Johor to return Shikasta to its state of harmony.

The first elected one among the Survivors is George’s brother, Benjamin Sherban.

Johor-George assigns Benjamin Sherban the task of caring for the abandoned children in the Youth Camp, who will become the Survivors after the catastrophe. The second elected

Survivor is Lynda Coldridge. Johor-George keeps in touch with her by means of telepathy, telling her and her psychiatrist, Dr. Herbert, to lead a group of Survivors, mad persons

94 and medical staff included, to the rescue camp founded by Benjamin Sherban. The

Survivors withstand the nuclear catastrophe because of their remarkable powers of intuition and ESP. Although they are labeled mad persons because their special Capacities, especially mental telepathy and precognition, deviate from those of normal people, their special Capacities enable them to survive World War III. After delineating the characteristics of the cities and the survivors and how they pass into each other on a textual basis, I resort to Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect and chaosmos to pave the ground for the exploration of both the entwined, complex relationship between individuals and the cities and how that relationship reveals hidden cosmic forces.

Deleuze and Guattari’s Concepts of Percept and Chaosmos

Philosophy, of the “normalization of space in the figure of a unified humanity” and their reconfiguration of the relationship between the individual and space (Deleuze and Space

194).

Deleuze and Guattari propose an ambivalent concept: the absence of man within the landscape. “This is Cezanne’s enigma,… ‘Man absent from but entirely within the landscape.’ Characters can only exist, and the author can only create them, because they

95 do not perceive but have passed into the landscape and are themselves part of the compound of sensations” (What is Philosophy 169). This proposition helps explain the dissolving of the boundaries between the individuals and his or her milieu. The implementation of the conscious act upon space is replaced by an act of symbiotic co-creation, and the individuals created by the artists enter a zone of indiscernibility, within which the landscape and the individuals form an indiscernible relationship and become part of the compound of sensations, the percept and the affect.

What is “percept”? According to Deleuze and Guattari, “Percepts—including the town—are nonhuman landscapes of nature (What is Philosophy 169). The absence of men reveals that the space is not a tabula rasa surface upon which human subjects create their histories. Deleuze and Guattari consider the landscapes, such as the moor in Hardy and the ocean in Moby Dick, as percepts rather than subjective or objective perceptions.

They allege, “The novel has often risen to the percept—not perception—of the moor in

Hardy but the moor as percept; oceanic percepts in Melville” (What is Philosophy 168).

Does it imply the total absence of men in the landscape? Deleuze and Guattari are not unaware of the existence of men in the landscape. For instance, they are aware of the fact that “Ahab really does have perceptions of the sea, but only because he has entered into a relationship with Moby Dick that makes him a becoming-whale and forms a compound of sensations that no longer needs anyone: ocean” (What is Philosophy 169). Captain

Ahab enters a zone of indiscernibility with Moby Dick and thus forms a compound of sensations in an act of becoming-whale. The whale is not the outside milieu that reflects the inner psyche of Ahab; instead, it is “nonhuman landscapes of nature,” from which men are absent because they “become with the world” rather than represent the world

(What is Philosophy 159). Ahab becomes with the whale rather than represents it. The whale is not an object and Ahab is not the perceiving subject because their subjective and

96 objective perceptions are wrenched away from them in the act of becoming. Ahab does not exist as a subjective perception but passes into the whale. Deleuze’s idea of “percept” can point to an idea of space, which has its own life and can help us understand the relationship between the Survivor and the evolving utopian city in Shikasta.

Another idea of Deleuze’s that can help us understand the “indiscernibility” between space (the city) and the individual is the idea of “affect.” Deleuze and Guattari define

“affect” as nonhuman becomings of men. They employ the example of Mrs. Dalloway to illustrate how the individual passes into the landscape and becomes imperceptible: “It is

Mrs. Dalloway who perceives the town—but because she has passed into the town like "a knife through everything" and becomes imperceptible herself. Affects are precisely these nonhuman becomings of man” (What is Philosophy 169). When Mrs. Dalloway dissolves her identity as a hostess and immerses herself in the town, she loses herself in the tumult and vibrations of the landscape and at this moment becomes nonhuman. She no longer feels the town through her “human” perceptions but dances with the atoms and molecules of the town. This act frees her from the conditioning of subjective perceptions. When one is no longer experiencing the landscape through subjective perceptions but through nonhuman becoming, one enters into the domain of affect, which is a zone of indiscernibility. It is only when one reaches the point that precedes the natural differentiation of all beings that one is able to encounter affect. According to Deleuze and

Guattari,

This something can be specified only as sensation. It is a zone of

indetermination, of indiscernibility, as if things, beasts, and persons (Ahab and

Moby Dick, Penthesilea and the bitch) endlessly reach that point that

immediately precedes their natural differentiation. This is what is called an

affect.” (What is Philosophy 173)

Affect passes through different beings and connects them in a zone of indiscernibility, in which plants, animals, and individuals encounter, embrace, or fight. The different interactions among the various beings constitute a dynamic cosmos.

In What is Philosophy, Deleuze and Guattari propose architectural examples to reveal how the individual passes into the landscape and how both constitute a zone of indiscernibility. They consider the house as the filter or selective membrane that makes possible the interactions between the inside and outside. Deleuze and Guattari posit, “Not only does the open house communicate with the landscape, through a window or a mirror, but the most shut-up house opens onto a universe” (What is Philosophy 180). The interrelationship of the inhabitants, the buildings, and the cosmos is described in detail by

Ronald Boque in Deleuze on Music, Painting, and the Arts:

The house “frames” the world, each side of the paradigmatic cube-house

serving as a picture frame or cinematic frame that carves out a chunk of space,

but the house also has windows and doors, frames that allow a communication

between inside and outside. The house in this sense is a filter that affords a

passage of forces into and out of the habitat. It is a porous, selective membrane

through which the inhabitant and the cosmos interact. (167)

The house has two functions: it frames the external world by carving out a spatial configuration and enables communication between the habitants and the cosmos. For

Deleuze and Guattari, the being of sensation is not the inhabitant “but the compound of nonhuman forces of the cosmos, of man's nonhuman becomings, and of the ambiguous house that exchanges and adjusts them, makes them whirl around like winds” (What is

Philosophy 183). This theory of sensation does not presuppose a conscious subject behind all phenomena; instead, the being of sensation is the trinity of nonhuman forces of the cosmos, of man's nonhuman becomings, and of the house. It explains how the

98 individual can pass into the landscape and become one with it and how the link between the individual and the house can trigger the connection between the individual and the cosmos.

The individual is able to pass into the landscape (house) because the individual and the house are stripped of their subjective and objective perceptions. Like the ocean percept in the example of Ahab, the house is no longer the background but the symbiotic collaborator in this act of becoming-house. The individual is stripped of his or her subjective perceptions and dissolves into the landscape (house), forming a zone of indiscernibility. Since the cosmos is the extension of the landscape (house), the link between the individual and the house enables the individual to be in touch with the cosmos. To be more specific, the individual can be connected to the virtual chaosmos because his or her identity is dissolved in the act of becoming-house. The individual and the cosmos are just like the folds of the house. When the house enfolds itself, the individual is manifested, and when it unfolds itself, the cosmos is shown in front of us.

This interconnectedness between human and nonhuman space enables the disappearing of the individual, the becoming-imperceptible of him/her. Keith Ansell-Pearson says,

I think the becoming-imperceptible is the point of fusion between the self and

his/her habitat, the cosmos as a whole. It marks the point of evanescence of the

self and its replacement by a living nexus of multiple interconnections that

empower not the self, but the collective; not identity, but affirmative

subjectivity; not consciousness, but affirmative interconnections. (Deleuze and

Philosophy 154)

The entwined relationship of the individual, the architecture (house), and the cosmos opens us to a “chaosmos(is)” where the individual does not represent the cosmos but delves into “the process of becoming-imperceptible, or merging with our environment, which Guattari expresses in terms of ‘chaosmosis’” (Deleuze and Philosophy 155). In this chaosmos(is), there is no hierarchy of the individual, the architecture, and the cosmos since they are composed of the same dancing atoms and become parts of the virtual chaosmos of cosmic evolution. Chaosmos is a field of infinite speed where all forms disappear. The contours of cities, individuals, and even the galaxy itself dissolve. Eternity lies in the moment that the artistic work stands by itself without intervention of subjective and objective perceptions. We become by contemplating the components of the infinite beings that we encounter. In shedding our subjective perception, we are enabled to launch adventures of becoming.

Application of Deleuze’s and Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect, and chaosmos illuminates the imperceptible relationship between the Survivors and the cities, highlight the divergences of the evolving cities, and discloses Lessing’s dual vision, the oscillation between the colonial ancient, dystopian cities and the new evolving, utopian cities. Now I apply Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect, and chaosmos in interpreting the

Shikastan Survivors’ Becoming-City.

The Survivors’ Becoming-City

Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of percept and affect foster understanding of the

100 interrelationship of the individual, architecture, and the cosmos. “Percept,” denoting an idea of space that has its own life, promotes further insight to the post-catastrophic cities the Survivors rebuild in Shikasta, and the idea of “affect” illuminates how the Survivors become-imperceptible and enter “a zone of indiscernibility” with the cities. Deleuze’s theory of sensation (percept and affect) sheds light on how Johor’s inheritors, the

Survivors, open into and become the city, SOWF, and the cosmos.

Johor leads the Survivors in rebuilding the cities without any commands or plans.

He just walks while the Survivors follow him silently. Kassim describes the scene:

In the evening he just walked away from the town and about three hundred

people followed us, though he had not said one word about their coming too. It

was cold that night, and it was wet and misty, and we were all pretty miserable,

but we walked on steadily with George and still not a word had been said about

what was happening. (Shikasta 239)

The wordless testimony of the act of rebuilding strips the subject and the object of their concrete entities and connects them to the cosmos in which Johor/George dwells. The

Survivors are becoming more and more like George because they mutate along with the expansion and transformations of the cities. As Kassim travels around Shikasta, he sees

“everywhere buildings are collapsing and not being rebuilt. All the centre was quite empty” (Shikasta 239). He can neither understand the purpose of the destruction nor exact an explanation from Johor-George, who tells him merely that “the new cities are functional” (Shikasta 239). Johor says, “Wait a little and you will see” (Shikasta 239). In my reading, the city becomes functional because the act of rebuilding subverts the old dichotomies between victim and persecutor, and between human and nonhuman, so that the parts are no longer separate from the cosmic whole and the link or the Lock is reestablished and invigorated among individuals, architectural arrangements, and stellar

101 alignment or cosmic force.

In Shikasta, the city is not the object to be “seen” or “perceived” by the human, but an object with its own life, which can grow organically and “dance” or “co-evolve” together with the individuals. The Survivors are not perceiving subjects, not architects that design rebuilding plans. The lack of blueprints for the cities distinguishes the

Survivors from the Giants and Natives in the ancient times, who measure architectural features so they correspond with stellar alignments. To accomplish this, they establish the

Lock, which is implemented by the cosmic Master Plan. But now, after the catastrophe, the Survivors establish a unique symbiotic relationship with the cities as artists who become one with the metamorphosis of the cities.

Only when Johor-George leads the Survivors, the mutant outsiders, to rebuild the cities do we witness a whole new way of connecting individuals and space, replacing the corresponding relationship between the Giants and the ancient cities. The Survivors’ act of rebuilding the cities is voluntary and intuitive, an act of becoming-city, during which the Survivors and the cities become “indiscernible.” Kassim records the amazing act of rebuilding:

There were about twenty of us doing this. Suddenly we all knew quite clearly

where the city should be. We knew it all at once. Then we found a spring, in the

middle of the place. That was how this city was begun. It is going to be a star

city, five points. We found the right soil for bricks nearby and for adobe. There

is everything we can need. We have already started the gardens and the fields.

Some of us go into the decaying town every day to get bread and stuff, to keep

us going. The first houses are already up, and the central circular place is paved,

and the basin of the fountain is made. As we build, wonderful patterns appear

as if our hands were being taught in a way we know nothing about. (Shikasta

102

239)

The relationship of the city to the Survivors is symbiotic because neither precedes the other. The Survivors “[s]uddenly all knew quite clearly where the city should be” without making any plans or building with subjective consciousness. The Survivors “become the city” in the artistic act of rebuilding it. In the process of becoming-city, they pass into the city. In “The Space of Man: On the Specificity of Affect in Deleuze and Guattari,” Claire

Colebrook notes that “the striving to think space or life in general needs to be carried beyond its human territory” (205). The percept’s relationship with the perceivers explains the evanescence of the subject (the Survivors) in the process of rebuilding the city. In

“The Paterson Plateau: Deleuze, Guattari and William Carlos Williams,” T. Hugh

Crawford appropriates Francois Zourabichvili’s explanation to explore the percept’s relationship with the perceiver:

[T]he relation to the landscape is no longer that of an autonomous and

pre-existent inner life and an independent external reality supposed to reflect

this life….it is somewhat ironic that the percept, which is at least provisionally

linked to perception, marks the moment when the self becomes imperceptible.

(74)

The elevation of the percept above human territory enables the self to pass into the landscape and thus become imperceptible. In Shikasta, the Survivors, like Ahab, metamorphoses with the organic city in an act of becoming-city, which is not a subjective or an objective perception but a percept that connects both in “a zone of indiscernibility.”

As the Survivors build, they observe that “wonderful patterns appear as if our hands were being taught in a way we know nothing about.” They are unaware of what contour the city will develop because they are not the dominating consciousness behind the act of rebuilding; instead, they pass into the city and evolve with it so that, not until the patterns

103 of the city have materialized, are they able to observe them.

How significantly different, despite seeming similarities, is this organic interaction from the relatively static relationship of the Giants and the geometrical cities in the ancient time, constricted by the cosmic Master Plan and its Canopean architects. Back then, the Natives, the ancestors of human beings, are under the guidance of the Giants.

They know that there is a harmonious interconnection between mental and spatial configuration, and that this interconnection is their link to divinity. The Natives can form a corresponding relationship with the milieu and galactic alignment. While arrangements of stones in the cities are determined by galactic alignment, each individual Native who is compatible with the city can be received into the city and form a symbiotic relationship with it. In the ancient time, a symbiotic relationship of human beings, the earth, and the galaxy is considered paramount. It is called “Necessity.” Shikastans, both Giants and

Natives, do everything out of Necessity instead of desire and greed. The perfect proportion of giving and receiving between the Shikastans and their milieu comprises a kaleidoscopic matrix of Necessity. The Shikastans’ building of the cities follows

Necessity, which places emphasis on the benefits of the whole cosmos instead of personal desire. The spaces, contours, and structures of the cities are pre-determined in order to reinforce the correspondence between galactic alignment and the Natives’ mental disposition, and are the foundation of communication between Canopus and Rohanda

(Shikasta’s name before degeneration):

The cities were established where the patterns of stones had been set up

according to the necessities of the plan, along the lines of force in the earth

of that time. These patterns, lines, circles, arrangements were no different

from those familiar to us on other planets, and were the basis and foundation

of the transmitting systems of the Lock between Canopus and

104

Rohanda…now poor Shikasta. (Shikasta 39)

The transmitting systems can be maintained only when the galactic arrangement, spatial patterns, and mental disposition are kept in balance. The Lockk is established but not complete because it needs “continuous care.” Right after the Lock occurs, the Giant mind is not directly attuned to Canopus’ wave but needs adjustment and readjustment.

The strict correspondence between the stones and galactic alignments is first maintained by the ceaseless efforts of the Giants. “They were measuring, by means of a device I was unfamiliar with, of wood and a reddish metal, the vibrations of a column of polished black stone that stood where two avenues intersected,” as Johor describes

(Shikasta 23). The maintenance of the Lock is strengthened by the creation of the new cities, and the Natives are taught to help the Giants to establish the cities and stone alignments as the transmitting system. The correspondence between the stones and galactic alignments is embodied by the cities’ geometrical shapes.

Each individual on Rohanda/Shikasta seems to enclose and express infinite possibilities in accordance with the symbiosis of his or her inner rhythm and outer milieu.

Nevertheless, as mentioned above, the actions caused by personal love or desire are not following the law of Necessity and should be expelled from the system. Are individual differences allowed to exist in the symbiotic relationship between the individuals and the ancient city even though they are not following the cosmic plan and Necessity? The degeneration of Shikasta provides the galactic messenger, Johor, with the chance to perceive the problematic nature of the cosmic plan. What appears to be a perfect symbiotic system is, in fact, a “transcendental” system based on the implementation of the cosmic Master Plan. The nature of the cosmic plan is exclusive since individual divergences are not incorporated into the system. If individual differences are not woven into the tapestry of the collective, the individual act will easily fall prey to the trap of

105 individualism. More importantly, the psycho-spatial correspondence between the individuals and the city implies the separation of the two and impedes the crossing of boundaries between them. Separation of the individual from the environment lays bare the isolation of the individual. When the Degenerative Disease of Individualism takes sway, the “perfect” symbiosis of the individuals and the city dissolves.

Although the evolving cities may seem to replicate the ancient geometrical cities, the expansion of the cities, for instance the scalloped edges of the Round City, illustrates the stark difference between the ancient geometrical cities and the evolving cities. After the catastrophe of World War III, which ends phase two, the cities become simultaneously mathematical and organic without being entirely conditioned by the cosmic plan and serve as the nexus between the inside and the outside, the Survivors and the cosmic force

SOWF. The interrelationship of the individual, the house, and the cosmos serves as an appropriate frame for explicating the relationship of the Survivors, the city, and the cosmic force SOWF in Shikasta.

Table 2.1 Percept and affect Individuals House percept Cosmic forces or (subjective affect perceptions) and the house (Objective perceptions) Shikasta The City percept SOWF Survivors(subjective perceptions) and the cities (Objective perceptions)

106

I first explore the relationship of the Survivors and the city. How can the city serve simultaneously as the concrete frame and the nexus between the individual and the cosmos? Because the city can be interpreted as both material and immaterial. In Deleuze on Music, Painting and the Arts, Ronald Bogue denotes the work of art as a material artifact and a being of sensation:

This suggests that although the artwork as material artifact (“house” in the first

sense of the term) is in relation with other material bodies and the physical

world and hence not isolated and self-contained, the artwork as “being of

sensation” is distinct from the material artifact, just as percepts and affects are

distinct from the perceptions and affections, experienced by human beings.

(169)

The material city frames the territory and supports the inhabitants. The inhabitants build a territorial house for themselves. The incorporeal city enables communication between the inhabitants and the cosmos. The house as a “being of sensation” is different from its material being just as percepts and affects are distinct from human perceptions and affections. In Shikasta, the Survivors and the cities are stripped of their perceptions and become indiscernible one from the other. The act of rebuilding the cities is analogous to what Deleuze and Guattari define as artwork-creating, through which the percept can be extracted from perceptions, and the subject is transported from subjective perceptions. In

Deleuze and Guattari’s artistic example in What is Philosophy, the affect is achieved by means of the art material. For them, “the aim of art is to wrest the percept from perceptions of objects and the states of a perceiving subject, to wrest the affect from affections as the transition from one state to another: to extract a bloc of sensations, a pure being of sensations” (167).

Deleuze and Guattari’s architectural example is an apt frame for explaining the

107 artistic relationship between the Survivors and the post-catastrophic evolving cities.

Bogue explains that “the concept of the house emphasizes the non-human dimension of the aesthetic. But the figure of the house suggests as well something of the artwork’s relation to human experience. In one sense, the house may be seen as the paradigmatic material artwork” (168). The house is both the material frame and the immaterial artwork.

The city is seen as a concrete support when it frames the territory for its inhabitants (the

Survivors) and becomes immaterial when it is perceived from the non-human dimension of the aesthetic. For Deleuze and Guattari,

Art in this regard is a functioning part of our inhabiting of the world, one of the

ways whereby we build a territorial home for ourselves, structure and orient

our bodies, frame and delimit space, but also a means whereby we

communicate with the outside, the artwork serving as a filtering membrane that

permits an interchange and circulation of forces across its surface. (Deleuze on

Music, Painting, and the Arts 168)

On the one hand, the territorial house orients us in the spatial coordinate and delimits space; on the other hand, it also enables us to communicate with the outside by serving as a filtering membrane. In Shikasta, the evolving city functions as the selective membrane that permits interchange between the Survivors and the cosmic force SOWF.

When the city undergoes a process of becoming-immaterial, it no longer blocks communication between the Survivors and the cosmos but, instead, enables interaction.

The evanescence of the material city and its becoming immaterial can be shown through the city’s becoming light and airy after the catastrophe, as Kassim observes: “Again these buildings are strange considering what we are all used to, of bricks and adobe and dried grass screens and lacquered paper. Everything is very light and airy” (Shikasta 237). The cities undergo a process of becoming-transparent or becoming-light as their immaterial

108 dimension is revealed via the Survivors’ act of rebuilding. The airy atmosphere of the buildings enables the Survivors to surpass the boundary between human and nonhuman and link to the cosmic force. Its link to the cosmic force can be felt but not described directly through the first city’s spot: “It is high up here, very high, with marvelous tall sky over us, a pale clear crystalline blue, and the great birds circling in it” (Shikasta 239). The city is close to the “crystalline blue” that implies the crystalline spaceship and Canopus,

Shikasta’s galactic mother.

After being stripped of the “perceptions of objects and the states of a perceiving subject,” the Survivors and the city are free from spatial limitation and dissolve into each other. The cities and the individuals lose their spatial contours in the act of becoming.

There is no longer human psyche that molds space; instead, the individual surrenders control of the patterns of the cities and evolves with the cities instinctively. The Survivors pass into “the landscape and are themselves part of the compound of sensations,” as

Deleuze and Guattari put it (What is Philosophy 169). The landscape (the cities) subsists in an instant that is transformed into eternity. The Survivors, as artists, enter eternity along with the cities—in defiance of our normal concepts of space and time.

In the process of becoming, the Survivors and the cities are elevated to the state of the indistinguishable. Deleuze and Guattari employ the examples of music and literature to delineate how the invisible force is rendered visible

(as music may be said to make the sonorous force of time audible, in Messiaen

for example, or literature, with Proust, to make the illegible force of time

legible and conceivable). Is this not the definition of the percept itself—to

make perceptible the imperceptible forces that populate the world, affect us,

and make us become? (What is Philosophy 182)

With the criss-crossing of percept and affect, the percept enables the imperceptible to be

109 perceptible and the illegible to be legible. In Shikasta, the act of rebuilding the cities connects the Survivors, and us as readers, with the imperceptible force SOWF, propelling organic, symbiotic evolution. Deleuze and Guattari say that “cosmic forces themselves are what produce zones of indiscernibility in the broken tones of a face, slapping, scratching, and melting it in every way, and these zones of indiscernibility reveal the forces lurking in the area of plain, uniform color (Bacon)” (What is Philosophy 182).

Cosmic forces engender zones of indiscernibility, and we glimpse cosmic forces via these zones. Cosmic forces dissolve boundaries between elements and connect them in new ways. In Shikasta, the cosmic force SOWF enables delimitation of and connection between different beings such as the Survivors and the cities. Their indiscernible relationship enables them to encounter SOWF and form a compound of sensation with it in an act of becoming-cosmos or becoming-SOWF, forming a trinity of the individual, the cities, and the cosmos. They are becoming-indiscernible because SOWF triggers them to surpass natural differentiation and form a bloc of sensation, a zone of indiscernibility. The transition from subjective and objective perceptions to percept and affect is accomplished because the focus is transferred from the individual to the cosmos. The transition is “like a passage from the finite to the infinite, but also from territory to deterritorialization”

(What is Philosophy 180).

This transition is vividly illustrated by Deleuze and Guattari’s example of the house in What is Philosophy: they consider “the artwork a territorial house opening onto the cosmos, a monument erected on a plane that constitutes a ‘universe’ (185; 196). Artists introduce their audience to the cosmos via the artwork, the house, in this case, which opens onto the cosmos, and, as Boque says, “when we become with the artwork, we, too, open to the cosmos and ‘become’ universe” (169). In Shikasta, in the process of becoming-city, the Survivors evolve with the landscape, the city. The territorial city opens

110 onto the cosmos as a living monument that constitutes a cosmos or a chaosmos(is). The city thus serves as the nexus that connects the Survivors and the cosmos or cosmic force

SOWF. The artwork is the city, and the artists are the Survivors. There is neither blueprint nor architect, but the artist that escapes from the subjective frame and dissolves into the artistic work, which transcends objective perception. When Kassim goes on to explore another city, he witnesses the same tendency of the cities to meld with the builders, saying, “[N]o one knows anything about plans or architects, it just grew up” (Shikasta

237). The cities grow up at the hands of the Survivors and the airy materials that embody stellar alignments. The Survivors rebuild the cities without planning. The city is organic in its symbiotic relationship with “patterns” in accord with stellar alignment and individual temperament:

It is beautiful, a circle, but with scalloped edges. The wavy edges are gardens.

It is made like the last one I wrote about. It has the same paved centre, a circle,

and a very beautiful fountain, with a basin, round, in a local stone, a yellowish

rose colour. The basin is shallow, a couple of inches, and the water trickles into

it in patterns, and there are patterns in the stone shining up from under the

water, and there are the same patterns in the roofing of the houses and the floor

tiles and everywhere. It is the most beautiful place I can remember. Again, no

one knows anything about plans or architects, it just grew up, or so it would

seem. (Shikasta 237)

The organic link among the Survivors, architectural structures, and stellar alignment is established when the Survivors intuitively rebuild the city and meld with and become indistinguishable from it. In Shikasta, the Survivors, as artists, pass into the city

(landscape) and become imperceptible. They are transferred into the percept and affect of the artwork. No longer does the subject represent the external world. The Survivors are

111 becoming-nonhuman and becoming-city. As well, they are becoming-Substance-of

We-Feeling. I next explore how SOWF functions in the evolving cosmos, how it interacts with the cosmic Master Plan, and how it sparks transformation of the virtual whole of cosmic evolution.

The Cosmic Force, SOWF

The cities and the Survivors are infused with SOWF as the act of rebuilding connects them. The cosmic force (SOWF), abundant in phase one, the ancient time, changes with each phase, just as the cities and their inhabitants change. In exploring the three stages of SOWF, I demonstrate its impact on the cities, their inhabitants (the individual), and the cosmic Master Plan. What exactly is SOWF and what is its function in Lessing’s visionary cosmos? What is its relationship with the cosmic plan? How does the interaction between SOWF and the cosmic plan influence the relationship of the

Survivors and the cities? How does SOWF influence the three phases of city development?

What does “We” of Substance-of-We-Feeling denote and connote?

Here is Johor’s original definition of SOWF: “Canopus was able to feed Shikasta with a rich and vigorous air which kept everyone safe and healthy, and above all, made them love each other….This supply of finer air had a name. It was called

SOWF—substance-of-we-feeling” (Shikasta 49). A “rich and vigorous air” is not just a natural air comprised of cosmic essence. This “substance-of-we-feeling” represents the energy of love whose function is to instill love in Shikastans so that they “love each other.”

When abundant, it bathes Shikastans in a safe, healthy milieu. In order to boost the development of Shikasta, Canopus enables continuous transmission of SOWF to Shikata.

However, SOWF is not always the force of love. In the second phase of cities

112 development, SOWF becomes distorted by Shammat’s parasitism, turning the Shikastans into purveyors of evil. It is not until the Survivors’ rebuilding of the cities that SOWF recovers its previous function as a cosmic force and circulates freely among the Survivors and the cities. SOWF can change not only the atmosphere of the cosmos but also its own nature. Ultimately, it is an immanent force of becoming that bathes everything in its wave and at the same time an immanent force that can be affected by everything in it. SOWF is not a state of being, but a “multiplicity, a becoming, a segment, a vibration,” to borrow

Deleuze’s description of the immanent force of becoming in a Thousand Plateaus (252).

Now I explore what purifies the cosmic force and enables it to transform the cosmic plan, the individuals, and the cities.

Affect Revealed in the Three Stages of the Development of SOWF

The three phases of human-city interaction reflect the three stages in the internal development of SOWF itself. In its first stage, recorded in the ancient time, the cosmic force is sufficient, enabling the relationship of the inhabitants (Giants and Natives), architectural arrangements, and galactic alignments to become harmonious so that the

Lock,9 a cosmic bond, is established and incorporates the minds of the Giants into the

Canopean system:

Shortly after that the Lock was established, and was a success, making

missions and special envoys unnecessary. The minds of the Giants—or to put it

accurately, factually, the Giant-mind—had become one with the mind of the

Canopean System, at first partially, and tentatively, but it was an ever-growing

and sensitizing current. (Shikasta 15)

9 Lock, exactly, is the bond between Canopus and Shikasta.

113

The Lock makes possible the free flow of information and ideas between the colonizing planet Canopus and the colonized planet Shikasta. Thanks to the Lock, the Giants can be linked to SOWF, and they evolve into a collective mind that can tune into SOWF, cosmic vibrations, what Lessing terms as Ur-mind, and communicate with Canopus:

The "mind" shared between Rohanda and Canopus did not mean that every

thought in every head instantly became the property of everyone at once. What

was shared was a disposition, a ground, a necessary mesh, net, or grid, a

pattern which was common property, and was not itself static, since it would

grow and change with the strengthenings and fallings off of emanations. If one

individual wished to contact another, this was done by a careful and specific

“tuning in.” (Shikasta 25)

The Lock enables common sharing of information and ideas between Rohanda (Shikasta) and Canopus. The Giants can tune into the dynamic cosmic “pattern” that traverses all the beings in the cosmos and communicate with Canopus. Everything seems so perfect when

SOWF makes the cosmos work harmoniously. However, the cosmic harmony created by

Canopus is nothing more than a “harmony” on the cosmic or transcendental scale, established from the point of view of the Canopean colonizers. The pre-established harmony by which Canopus colonizes the whole cosmos may cause personal suffering. In the first stage of the internal development of SOWF lies a discrepancy between the welfare of the whole cosmos based on wholehearted submission to the collective, called the Necessity, and the personal grief that results from separation of lovers in accordance with the vibrations of the cities. That is, the correspondence between individuals and the

Lock is based on a colonizing power that is transcendental and mechanical, which cannot incorporate individual differences or divergences created by personal love. Those born to be individuals who correspond to the circle-shaped city must separate from their lover if

114 their lover possesses a different temperament.

In Shikasta, basically, there is a reciprocal relationship between the cosmic Master

Plan and the cosmic force SOWF. The cosmic Master Plan generates the cosmic forces the

Lock and SOWF. Canopus feeds the Shikastans with the cosmic force and establishes the

Lock while the bond between the Natives and the Giants is adequately mature. The way

Canopus judges whether the Natives and the Giants are mature is by measuring the level of their adherence to the cosmic plan. The plan engenders SOWF, which is also conditioned by Necessity, and the cosmic forces SOWF and The Lock enrich and modify the plan. Ironically, because the cosmic Master Plan requires submission of individuals to the whole, it also hinders the cosmic force SOWF. The Shikastans’ activities in their daily lives, including such things as building and breeding, are regulated by pre-established rules, which are executed strictly according to the need of the Lock and the cosmic

Master Plan rather by the free flow of the energy of love:

There would be a careful, controlled building of new, well-sited cities, and

there was no shortage of places suitable for the Necessity. Natives who chose

to, and were considered suitable by general consent, might have several

progeny in the first hundred years of their lives. After that, while sex continued

as a pleasure and a balancing force, the breeding mechanisms became

inoperative, and they entered a long, energetic, vigorous middle age. (Shikasta

20)

The cosmic Master Plan limits the free flow of the energy of love because Canopus is not yet aware of the value of divergent elements in the cosmos and considers everything from an authoritative, hegemonic viewpoint. It is not until the galactic messenger Johor enlightens Canopeans about the value of divergent elements that they realize that

Canopus is not the center of the cosmos and deviations should be incorporated into the

115 cosmic Master Plan.

In the second stage of the internal development of SOWF, the divergences not only destroy the reciprocal relationship of the cosmic Master Plan and SOWF but also trigger modification of both. In the Golden Age, the ancient time, the stellar misalignments caused by Canopus’s neglect of cosmic alignment subvert the harmonious relationship of individuals, architecture, and the galaxy. Stellar misalignment sabotages the functions of

SOWF and the Lock, and seriously affects the reciprocal interaction of the transcendental cosmic plan and the immanent cosmic forces, the Lock and SOWF. The disconnection of the cosmic plan from cosmic forces results in the Century of Destruction. Shikasta degenerates for at least three reasons besides stellar misalignment: the Degenerative

Disease of Individualism, the Shammats’ parasitism, and a consequent dwindling of

SOWF.

Johor claims that “disobedience to the Master Plan was always, everywhere, the first sign of the Degenerative Disease” (Shikasta 32). The Giants’ refusal to leave Shikasta is an act of betraying the cosmic Master Plan. The idea of Individualism, the possessive “I,” disconnects individuals from the cosmic force SOWF and the free flow of information facilitated by the Lock. The Giants become so possessed by individualism that they forget the concept of enemy, ignore the existence of Shammat, which poisons the cosmic force, and remain too complacent even to receive warnings of lurking Shammatan agents. The

Shammatans thrive on the degeneration of the Shikastans. Johor observes,

“For one thing,” I insisted, "the more the Natives degenerate, the more

they weaken and lose substance, the better that will be for Shammat. Do you

see? The worse the quality of the Canopus/Shikasta flow, the better for

Shammat! Like to like! Shammat cannot feed on the high, the pure, the fine. It

is poison to them. The level of the Lock in the past has been far above the

116

grasp of Shammat. They are lying in wait, for the precise moment when their

nature, the Shammat nature, can fasten with all its nasty force onto the

substance of the Lock! (Shikasta30)

Degeneration of the Shikastans enables Shammat to tap the Canopean force SOWF, which is too pure for them to receive as is, and to destroy the Lock between Canopus and

Shikasta. Shammat seizes the opportunity to distort SOWF by employing the jetting column, Effluon 3, originally programmed by the Canopeans to send out love, and

“Shammat's agents prowled and lurked, feeding the spirit of hatred, antagonism, unreason, contention” (Shikasta 228).

SOWF is recovered in the third stage of its own internal development, i.e., in the third stage of the relationship between the Shikastans and the cities, because the

Survivors’ act of rebuilding the cities realigns the cities and the Survivors with the cosmos and reconnects them with the cosmic force SOWF. Because the population has been reduced to 1%, SOWF is sufficient to bathe all Survivors in the energy of love. The recovery of SOWF is predicted: “In due time—I did not say thousands upon thousands of years!—this trickle would become a flood. And their descendants could bathe in it as they played now in the crystal rivers” (Shikasta 49). Kassim describes how SOWF redeems the Survivors from the previous Century of Destruction: “And this will go on for us, as if we were being slowly lifted and filled and washed by a soft singing wind that clears our sad muddled minds and holds us safe and heals us and feeds us with lessons we never imagined” (Shikasta 240). The “soft singing wind” heals individuals from the woes and wounds of the previous ages and returns them to the connection with Canopus, which endows them with lessons and information. Betsy Draine says, “Like divine grace, the

Canopean substance-of-life washes away the human tendency toward error and provides the strength for conduct and belief in harmony with Canopean law” (Substance Under

117

Pressure 154). The cosmic force SOWF redeems the Survivors from their errors and fall and modifies the cosmic plan so that the relationship of the Survivors, the city, the cosmic plan, and SOWF can be reconfigured. In the Survivors’ relationship with the cities, divergent elements and the centrifugal force of the previous age are incorporated again into the cosmic Master Plan, and again SOWF blossoms. The cosmic plan is expanded and transformed so that it no longer controls the cosmic force SOWF and is instead modified by it. The static, mechanical, authoritative, colonizing cosmic plan allows itself to be at one with the fecund energies of symbiosis and love.

Having delineated the three stages of SOWF, I now explore how, in Deleuze and

Guattari’s conception, affect enables us to become with it. I have referred to SOWF as a

Deleuzian immanent cosmic force, which affects us by sweeping us into zones of indiscernibility. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of affect well decodes the relationship of

SOWF, the cosmic Master Plan, the Survivors, and the cities. Their idea of “affect” actually derives from Spinoza’s concept of “affect.” In Ethics, Spinoza defines “affect” as

"the modifications of the body whereby the active power of the said body is increased or diminished, aided or constrained, and also the ideas of such modification" (Spinoza 130).

For Spinoza, affect means the flow and oscillation of an intensive force. The active power of the body can be strengthened or diminished, and the ebb and flow of power are demonstrated in the body. In a similar line of thinking, for Deleuze and Guattari, the term

“affect” means “the ability to affect and be affected,” as the translator Brian Massumi defined it in his forward to A Thousand Plateaus:

AFFECT/AFFECTION. Neither word denotes a personal feeling (sentiment

in Deleuze and Guattari). L'affect (Spinoza's affectus) is an ability to affect

and be affected. It is a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage

from one experiential state of the body to another and implying an

118

augmentation or diminution in that body's capacity to act. L'affection

(Spinoza's affectio) is each such state considered as an encounter between the

affected body and a second, affecting body (with body taken in its broadest

possible sense to include "mental" or ideal bodies). (xvi)

We should distinguish “affect” (Spinoza's affectus) from “affection” (Spinoza's affectio).

“Affect” is not interpreted as a personal feeling but as a “prepersonal intensity” that passes from one state of the body to another. On the other hand, “affection” represents the actualized prepersonal intensity. When affect is captured by bodies, the affecting body is influencing the affected body. The body’s power to act determines whether the body is affecting or affected; if the body’s power to act is strengthened, it functions as the affecting body and vice versa. In Parables for the Virtual, Brian Massumi points out that affect oscillates between the virtual and the actual. He says, “The autonomy of affect is its participation in the virtual” (45). This refers to affect or the affecting power that is not yet captured by any bodies. On the other hand, the affecting body and the affected body signify affect’s connection to the actual. Massumi explains that “[a]ffects are virtual synesthetic perspectives anchored in (functionally limited by) the actually existing, particular things that embody them” (45). The prepersonal affect is embodied in subjective and objective perceptions just as Massumi describes: “Formed, qualified, situated perceptions and cognitions fulfilling functions of actual connection or blockage are the capture and closure of affect. Emotion is the most intense (most contracted) expression of that capture” (45). On the virtual side, impersonal affect surpasses the boundary between subjectivity and objectivity while, on the actual side, impersonal affect is captured and expressed as the individual’s cognitions and emotions.

Now I return to the question of how SOWF can influence individuals and make them become with it. The answer lies in viewing SOWF through the lens of affect. (1)

119

SOWF is the prepersonal intensity that bathes all the elements on Shikasta. (2) SOWF possesses the power to affect and modify the cosmic plan so as to incorporate different elements. (3) SOWF is “affected” and distorted by Shammat or Individualism, which is demonstrated as Taufiq’s and the Giants’ divergences from the cosmic plan. At this point,

SOWF is “affected” and corrupted by individualism. (4) SOWF is restored to its force after incorporating divergences. The mutual interaction between SOWF and the cosmic plan can be seen in the three stages of the internal development of SOWF itself.

Table 2.2: (How the prepersonal affect, SOWF, evolves with the other forces)

Stage Relationship

Stage One The cosmic plan conditions SOWF

Stage Two The divergences (stellar alignment, Individualism, Shammat’s

parasitism) distort SOWF and lead to the disconnection

between the cosmic plan and SOWF.

Stage Three SOWF modifies and affects the cosmic plan in a positive way.

In the first stage of the internal development of SOWF, even though the cosmic plan has to follow SOWF, the authoritative cosmic plan gradually conditions the free flow of

SOWF since, at this stage, Canopeans are not aware of the value of defects and are trapped in their own complacency, considering themselves the center of the cosmos. This complacent, enclosed attitude inhibits the free flow of SOWF. Also, the Canopean requirement of total submission of individuals to the whole further alienates individuals and disconnects them from SOWF. Johor describes Canopus’ complacent attitude, and, therefore, lack of awareness, in viewing Shikastans: “Their practical intelligence is

120 developing even better than expected, and this is a sound and healthy basis for what we plan when we establish the Lock” (Shikasta 14). The Natives have to submit to the genetic plan set by Canopus, and their practical intelligence is already calculated. Their lives and developments are programmed in advance. This ignorance of individual differences causes unhappiness that foreshadows the divergences of the Giants and

Taufiq later. In this way, the free flow of SOWF (affect) is conditioned by Canopus’ cosmic plan since the rules of the cosmic plan, such as genetic mandates, try to boost the population of Shikasta by experimenting on different species instead of allowing the population to develop naturally according to its correspondence with the cosmic force of affect, SOWF.

In the second stage of the internal development of SOWF, SOWF is distorted by cosmic deviations, such as stellar misalignments, the Giants’ refusal to leave Shikasta,

Taufiq’s betrayal, and Shammattan parasitism, all of which sap the supply of SOWF. In the ancient time of golden cities on Shikasta, the immanent flow of the Lock and SOWF are still functioning; nevertheless, stellar misalignment, Individualism and Shammattan parasitism turn the abundant age of Rohanda into the Century of Destruction, during which the cosmic Master Plan becomes ossified rules that subsume the virtual force of the Lock and SOWF. The cosmos under Canopean colonial control becomes a cosmos of pre-established rules allowing no room for heterogeneous, contingent elements. Stellar misalignments; degeneration of correspondence among individuals, the cities, and SOWF; the Degenerative Disease of Individualism; and the Shammatans’ parasitism—all these distort the cosmic force of love, SOWF, paralyze the cosmic Master Plan, and bring about the fall of Rohanda/Shikasta. The Shammatans, who have awaited the chance to corrupt

Shikasta for a long time, can finally prosper in this degenerate atmosphere. “On Shikasta there were enemies, wicked people, enemies of Canopus, who were stealing the SOWF.

121

These enemies enslaved Shikastans, when they could. They did this by encouraging those qualities that Canopus hated. They thrived when they hurt each” (Shikasta 49). The

Shammatans steal SOWF by manipulating the skill of Effluon 3, which is originally used to send out energy of love. They distort SOWF so as to turn the Shikastans into transmitters of evil forces. In Johor’s dream, he realizes that Shammat is the shadow that intercepts the “silvery cord of our love”:

But while I had been unconscious, I had had a dream or vision, and I knew now

the secret of the Shammat column. I saw the old Rohanda glowing and lovely,

emitting its harmonies, rather as one does in the Planets-to-Scale Room.

Between it and Canopus swung the silvery cord of our love. But over it fell a

shadow, and this was a hideous face, pockmarked and pallid, with staring

glaucous eyes. Hands like mouths went out to grasp and grab, and at their touch

the planet shivered and its note changed. The hands tore out pieces of the planet,

and crammed the mouth which sucked and gobbled and never had enough.

(Shikasta 46)

Shammat is parasitical, surviving by plundering the force from other planets. It robs the

Shikastans of their connection with Canopus by distorting SOWF and corrupts them. The

Giants and Natives deviate from their original symbiotic survival. The Giants build cities that fail to follow the stellar and stony alignments representing the cosmic plan, and the

Natives move into proportionally inappropriate cities. The incompatible relationship between the inhabitants and the cities (habitats) embodies the degeneration of Shikasta.

The Shikastans no longer follow the laws of Canopus and are possessed by Degenerative

Disease of Individualism.

When SOWF (affect), the free flow of prepersonal intensity, is captured or blocked by individualism and Shammat’s parasitism, its prepersonal property is eradicated. The

122 free flow of information, love, and symbiosis is intercepted by cosmic rules and corrupted by Shammatans. Although such negative divergences do trigger undesirable cosmic evolution, the negative power pumped into SOWF actually enriches SOWF and empowers it. The relationship of SOWF and negative powers, such as Shammattan parasitism and Shikastan Degenerative Disease, can be compared to the relationship of

“accord” and “discord” posited in Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of “concertation,” which denotes “the correspondence according to which there can be no major and perfect accord in a monad unless there is a minor or dissonant accord in another, and inversely”

(The Fold 134). Discords serve as the foundation of accords. Divergences are always suppressed by the cosmic plan, but their revolutionary forces cannot be undervalued because they are the foundation of the accords of SOWF, which the cosmic plan ultimately has to follow to make the cosmos evolve in a more dynamic and healthy way.

Undesirable elements such as the betraying Giants and Taufiq are dark shadows of society but also the promising foundation of SOWF.

In the third stage of the internal development of SOWF, which creates the third phase of relationship between the Survivors and the cities, the cosmic plan still functions but is forced to incorporate divergences and discord from the previous stage. Previously undesirable elements, such as madness, are incorporated into the cosmic system. In the ancient time, the Natives are unable to contact others via the skill of “tuning in.”

However, following the catastrophe, the descendants of the Natives, the Survivors, emerge with mutations that enable their “tuning in” telepathically. Lynda, one of their leaders, writes to Benjamin Sherban, explaining how she communicates with Johor via

ESP:

By then all the others will be trained in the Capacities. They will all live

until the rescue teams come and England is opened up again. I don't know

123

if George has told you all this.George just says this and that according to

what is necessary. Then he switches off. (Shikasta 232)

Lynda and Dr. Herbert lead a group of Survivors and teach them special Capacities such as telepathy and precognition. The catastrophic cosmos needs a new species that can adapt to the drastic changes and mutate in accord with the environment. Although they are children of the catastrophe that eradicates 99% of the population, they are the fortunate ones who survive and flourish. Because only 1% of the population remains, the force of SOWF is enough to connect the Survivors, the cities, and the cosmos. The link is accomplished by the evanescence of the Survivors and the cities in the zone of indiscernibility. The mutation of the Survivors and the organic growth of the cities reflect evolution of SOWF. The cosmic force resumes its state of love, but now with the power to accommodate divergence. It undertakes symbiosis with the Survivors, the cities, and the cosmic Master Plan. The power of affect, SOWF, is conditioned, distorted, and modified by the cosmic plan and divergences. Its intensive, pre-personal force is restored because it is no longer captured by possessive cognitions and emotions such as individualism, enmity, and suspicion. The virtual force of SOWF (affect) surpasses the boundary between subject and object, between subjectivity and objectivity.

Delineation of SOWF reveals Lessing’s visionary creation of a new cosmos and species. With the virtual traversing power of SOWF (affect), she depicts a cosmos where individuals are no longer trapped in the dichotomy of collectivism and individualism, of the cosmic Master Plan, and the Degenerative Disease. The new species and organic relationships on Lessing’s planet Shikasta give birth to a new assemblage. It rises above the long-standing dilemma of I-We in utopian thought. It transcends the boundaries between human and nonhuman. It embodies cosmic symbiosis of all beings and forces in perpetual evolution of interaction and mutual benefit. To advance understanding of this

124 cosmic assemblage, I now address the connotation of “We” in Substance-of-We-Feeling.

What Are “We”?

This identification with the collective, “I” become “we,” the “we” that

emerges triumphant at the last: “And here we are all together, here we are.”

The protagonist is finally the human race, about whom we learn to think

and feel differently. (Substance Under Pressure 173)

Lawrence’s landscape-images render invisible forces visible. But those

forces are not simply forces of light, for the landscape images

communicate with the fabulative images of a people-to-come. Through the

process of artistic creation, the immense vistas become saturated by the

heroic impulses of the collective rebellion. (Deleuze on Literature

175-176)

Lessing first expresses her idea of “We” via Charles Watkins in Briefing. Watkins laments, “Some sort of a divorce there has been somewhere along the path of this race of man between the ‘I’ and the ‘We,’ some sort of a terrible falling-away”—that has driven them “off centre, and away from the sweet sanity of We” (109). The individual’s separation from the “We” drives him crazy because he is possessed by the concept of “I,” individualism. Does Lessing’s delineation of “We” reveal her betrayal of the Left? Does

Lessing, as Josna E. Rege claims, fall into “a reactionary betrayal of the Left in her dotage” and “endorse the notion of the colonizing mission in the benign and superior

Canopus’ benevolent colonization of Shikasta” (“Considering the Stars” 127)? Does “We” refer to the collective power of the empire? Tracing Lessing’s transition from inner-space

125 fiction to outer-space fiction reveals her intention to link “I” and “We” dynamically in order to surpass the I-We dichotomy. By experimenting with and modifying the concepts of “I” and “We” in Shikasta, Lessing discovers the functions and dangers of

Individualism and creates the cosmic plan of a benign empire so as to showcase an improved way of living. Individuals (the Survivors) are no longer trapped in individualism, and the collective, “We,” links, not only to the empire, but also to a cosmic force that incorporates all beings: the Survivors, the cities, animals, plants and so on.

In the ancient time, the once fertile Rohanda (Shikasta) is populated by Giants who follow the cosmic flow, arranging stones and building the cities in accord with stellar alignment. After the catastrophe, when degenerate Shikasta is inhabited by Survivors who intuitively rebuild the cities in harmony with the cosmic force SOWF, their rehabilitation is not an innocent gesture of forgetting the past but a deliberate ceremonial practice of bearing in mind lessons from the past. Their reconstruction of the cities is not an act of imitating the original cities from the ancient time, but a process in which the past and the future interact. Fahim observes, “… we compare these cities to the early ones; however, we note a significant development. Whereas the Round City in the fable 'was a perfect circle, and could not expand,' the later one is 'a Circle but with scalloped edges,' significant of expansion” (233). The new cities do not replicate the ancient geometrical cities. The fixity and enclosure of the utopian cities are now replaced by organic cities with potential for revision and expansion. Architectural alignments no longer follow the fixed previous cosmic plan; instead, they embody the cosmic force SOWF and the cosmic bond, the Lock. As the cities “rebuild themselves” intuitively, patterns emerge, despite their being no pre-established blueprints. The new cities are rebuilt through co-evolution of the galaxy, architecture, and individuals. In Bergsonian terms, the survivors’ “duration” enters the “duration” of the stones and architectural structures, forming a significant event

126 that envisions the virtual whole of cosmic evolution. On the one hand, the stone cities are actualized in a specific spatial coordinate and exist in chronological time; on the other hand, the durations of the stone cities, the Survivors, and the galaxy are crisscrossing in indefinite Aion time. The Survivors establish new differential relations with the galaxy and the cities, and the three constitute a dynamic, virtual assemblage, transcending the spatio-temporal coordinate. The new assemblage is Lessing’s creation: “We.”

It is this new “We” that reconfigures the relationship of the Survivors, the cities, and

SOWF. When the Survivors pass into the cities, the landscape, they form an indiscernible relationship with the landscape. The zone of indiscernibility links them with the cosmic force. The Survivors are no longer their obedient ancestors, the Natives; the evolving cities are no longer the geometrical cities that adhere strictly to stony alignments. The cosmic force, SOWF, transforms itself by incorporating divergences. The mutative power of the Survivors and the divergent power of the Giants and Taufiq are incorporated into

SOWF, which, in turn, creates a “We” that allows the cities to expand and the Survivors to mutate. The mad persons’ (the Survivors’) rebuilding of the cities represents reconciliation of individual divergences and the new “We,” which now embraces divergences and heterogeneities, helping expand the horizon of the cosmos. This is a cosmos of new assemblage,” which can be epitomized by Kassim’s final line: “And here we all are together, here we are …” (364). Claire Sprague notices that this final line is echoed by Martha’s last line in The Four-Gated City: “Here, where else, you fool, you poor fool, where else has it been, ever …” (Shikasta 591; Rereading Doris Lessing 175).

Following Sprague’s idea, I argue that both lines place emphasis on the interlocked relationship of all species’ forming a new assemblage. In Lessing’s depicted world, “we” no longer refers to the governing human beings in the utopian I-We dialectic; instead,

“we” traverses the bounds of various species. In Shikasta, what “we” signifies in

127 substance-of-we-feeling is not the colonizing Canopean Empire or colonizing Shikastan leaders but the virtual “we” that precedes natural differentiations and includes the galaxy, human beings, animals, plants, and stones. The way this “we” works is analogous to

Spinozan-Deleuzian affect, which traverses various beings rather than being captured in specific bodies. In “Ahab and Becoming-Whale: The Nomadic Subject in Smooth Space,”

Tasmin Lorraine’s description illustrates the properties of traversing affect: “Pure relations of speed and slowness between particles imply movements of deterritorialisation, just as pure affects imply an enterprise of desubjectification…” (166). Impersonal affects are not captured by specific bodies since they entail a process of deterritorialisation and desubjectification:

Pure affects are intensities—capacities to affect and be affected—not yet

subjected to the homogenizing dictates of conscious awareness. Once an affect

is experienced as a feeling or thought, it has already undergone a process of

selection where some of its capacities have been emphasized at the expense of

others. (Lorraine 166)

Affect functions as the capacities to affect and be affected without being conditioned by the unifying consciousness that captures and expresses affect as a feeling or thought. “We” no longer indicate the static collections of specific parts but the fluid, contingent, heterogeneous choreography of multiple beings in the act of forming a new assemblage.

The reconnected relationship provides the Shikastans with the possibility of transcending the self-made prison and helps them evolve into awareness of the new assemblage. In

Shikasta, the mad persons tune into higher frequencies and enter the durations of other beings. The interval between life and death is revealed in the cosmic catastrophe. Those who survive the catastrophe form a new assemblage, “We,” sharing a new symbiotic relationship by entering the durations of other species. They share a state of singular life

128 that is free from the confinement of subjectivity and objectivity, of normal and abnormal, of human and inhuman, and of the compossible and the incompossible.

To explore Lessing’s new assemblage further, I compare “We” to Deleuze’s “a life” or “pure immanence,” which aids our understanding of how different beings are interconnected and constitute a common life. In Pure Immanence: a Life, Deleuze compares the life with a life:

The life of the individual gives way to an impersonal and yet singular life that

releases a pure event freed from the accidents of internal and external life, that

is, from the subjectivity and objectivity of what happens: a “Homo tantum”

with whom everyone empathizes and who attains a sort of beatitude. It is a

haecceity no longer of individuation but of singularization: a life of pure

immanence, neutral beyond good or bad. The life of such individuality fades

away in favor of the singular life immanent to a man who no longer has a

name, though he can be mistaken for no other. A singular essence, a life. (28)

A “singular” life can transcend “the accidents of internal and external life,”

“individualities,” “subjectivities,” “objectivities,” and point to a life of “pure immanence.”

This life of pure immanence is “beyond good or bad.” Furthermore, it is beyond life and death. As Deleuze puts it, the life is replaced by a life through a process of

“‘im-personalization’ in the interval between life and death” (Pure Immanence 14). The

Survivors get a “singular life” by going beyond their “individualities,” and their singular life enables them to transcend the boundaries between human and nonhuman, and help them tune into the durations of the assemblage and bathe in affect, the impersonal cosmic force.

129

Coda

In Shikasta, Lessing writes, “It was clear I had made—or found—a new world for myself” (Shikasta 2). Her visionary leap to outer space enables her depiction of a cosmos where the seemingly irreconcilable dichotomy of human and nonhuman, of the Survivors and the cities, of the ancient geometric cities based on the colonial Master Plan and the post-catastrophic evolving cities involved with the divergences of the Survivors, is revealed by her dual vision and reconciled by the cosmic force SOWF, the evolving, affecting power. As the Survivors pass into the landscape of the cities, the two entities, infused with Substance-of-We-Feeling, form an assemblage, a Deleuzian percept, whose components are indiscernible because they are becoming-one-another, transcending subject and object. The skeptic in me must ask, is Lessing’s compelling visionary vision so clear cut? Does “We,” in Substance-of-We-Feeling, actually signify—purely—the new symbiotic, evolutionary assemblage of the Survivors, the cities, the cosmic force, and other beings? Or does it still denote—as well—the collectivism in I-We dialectics? The

Survivors’ entering into other durations may imply that “We” refers both to the Survivors and to other beings. The final reference to the Canopean archival material reminds us of

Canopus’ cosmic Master Plan, in which “We” denotes collectivism. Is return to the age of

Canopean dominance just around the corner? Indeed “We” appears ambiguous and surely complicates my view of Substance-of-We-Feeling. I wonder whether Deleuze’s concept of affect can, in actuality, fully explain the energy of love. Because SOWF is the cosmic power with which Canopus recharges Shikasta, it is hard to determine exactly its property.

If SOWF is generated by Canopus, then it is comparatively transcendent; if it flows freely in the cosmos and evolves with Canopus and other planets without a transcendent source serving as the center of emission, then it can be viewed as an immanent force. In the final

130 section of the Archive, readers are referred to other sources, where SOWF is defined as

“the Canopean Bond (On Shikasta, "SOWF"); properties of, densities of, variations in effects on different species, complete absence of. (Shammat) (Physics Section)” (Shikasta

240). SOWF affects different species differently. Given that SOWF is generated by

Canopus, can it really be pre-personal and disinterested as with Deleuzian affect? If

SOWF is the cosmic force that Canopus appropriates to energize Shikasta, can the force be considered immanent? Will it be manipulated by Canopus and become a controlling force instead of functioning as “a prepersonal intensity corresponding to the passage from one experiential state of the body to another” (TP xvi). I am aware that Deleuze’s theory of becoming is never about becoming-molar. If it were, becoming-we would be an oxymoron. The non-skeptic in me is convinced that Lessing’s new assemblage—“We”—is not a molar or transcendent concept referring to the empire as a discernible entity but, rather, is an evolutionary choreography of indiscernible,

“non-existent beings” comprised of dancing atoms.

So, application of Deleuze’s theory of percept, affect and chaosmos illuminates the imperceptible relationship between the Survivors and the cities, highlights the divergences of the evolving cities, and showcases Lessing’s dual vision, oscillation between the colonial ancient cities and the new evolving cities. However, a discrepancy exists between the novel and the theory in that if chaosmos points to the power of subverting the cosmos by tearing apart the protecting shield so as to reveal what is underneath the screen of science, philosophy and art, then Lessing’s affective “We,” formed after the catastrophe, proposes constructive power, harmonious spiritual connection among different beings.

I concede that Deleuze’s theory and Lessing’s cosmos may not match exactly.

Nonetheless, in reading Shikasta, my employment of Deleuzian/Guattarian concepts of

131 percept, affect and chaosmos affords significant insight to Lessing’s new assemblage, involving the organic, evolutionary process by which the new species, the Survivors, transcend, either temporarily or eternally, the I-We dilemma of utopian dialectic and discover a new life of cosmic wellbeing via her brilliant but paradoxical delineation of the dual vision. They rise above the mires of individualism (the Degenerative Disease) and of collective hegemony (as in the cosmic Master Plan), of anarchy and entropy. They enter a zone of indiscernibility, where the dichotomy of subject and object, the barrier between subjectivity and objectivity, literally dissolves. From Lessing’s The Grass is

Singing to Shikasta, the subject encounters limiting conditions: colonial, psychological, social. By employing Deleuze and Guattari’s concepts of percept, affect and chaosmos, I am able to see in new light her various attempts to reach beyond the rigid relationship the individual and space (environment) grounded in the dichotomy of subject and object. In her flight to rise above the petty fates of individuals and planets, Lessing creates a virtual chaosmos where encounters among entities are embodied by living forces with zero domination of one over another. She depicts a virtual chaosmos of cosmic evolution, where pre-personal differentiation enables universal cross-fertilization and symbiosis of the Survivors, the cities, and the cosmic force replaces the dichotomous cosmic Master

Plan.

132

Chapter Three The Virtual Cosmic Memory: the Encounter between the Virtual Past and the Actual Present in Shikasta

It takes dizzying leaps backward and forward in time, offering a perspective of

ages and eons, then zeroing in on a few years in the life of one adolescent girl,

Rachel Sherban—tunneling in and telescoping out, taking both the “long view”

and “the near, the partial views.” (The Poetics of Change 159-160)

My Chapter Three examines Lessing’s creation and conjoining of two contradictory narratives regarding memory. One involves detailed, psychological memory, and the other, impersonal, macroscopic memory. After Johor is skeptical of the legitimacy of his personal records of Shikasta, he, aided by the ape, the Giants, and the cosmic force Lock, is able to explore and even transform impersonal memory, thus symbiotically revising cosmic evolution. Deleuze’s appropriation of the Bergsonian concept of memory aids in decoding the dual vision of memory: the empirical, personal memory and the ontological memory that preserves itself elsewhere than the brain. The “virtual” Johor provisionally subverts temporal limitations so as to facilitate intervention into the Archival cosmic memory matrix, where the virtual co-existence of the cosmos’ past allows him to interact with the cosmic memory. His intervention in the cosmic memory through his multiple reincarnations and long virtual life helps generate the virtual chaosmos of multiplicity.

The evolving archive that records both strands of Lessing’s dual vision—the short, partial view of local, psychological memory and the long view of cosmic impersonal memory—parallels mutation of the Survivors and expansion of the evolving cities.

Lessing designs this complex pattern of narrative structure to show the paradoxical

133 relationship between the cosmic, impersonal, “outer-space vision”—of Shikasta vis-à-vis

Canopus—and the personal, earthbound, “inner-space vision”—of individual beings, who are embedded in the contemporary socio-political milieu in which individualism is dominant. As mediator between the two kinds of memory, Johor is both an immaterial galactic messenger and a corporeal incarnation on Shikasta. He can shuttle between worlds and see different events from both macroscopic and microscopic perspectives.

Why can Johor keep retrieving and revising cosmic memory? Because he is able to be incarnated as multiple beings at different times and places, and his long lifespan enables him to look at events from a macroscopic perspective and tune into cosmic memory. To understand the dual vision, the interaction between psychological and trans-individual sides of memory, I look to Deleuze’s appropriation of the Bergsonian concept of memory.

Deleuze’s concepts of psychological and ontological contraction in Bergsonism help us understand Johor’s delving into both the psychological lives of different individuals and the impersonal Cosmic Memory. Two-sided memory/time provides us with the dual vision, embodying how Johor possesses the long, cosmic view and the partial, local view.

Lessing’s dual vision embodies Johor’s oscillation between the two views, temporarily subverting spatio-temporal limitations so as to facilitate his intervention and interaction with the Archival cosmic memory matrix. With his revision of the archival records, another aspect of the virtual whole of cosmic evolution is portrayed. Emancipation of time from its chronological order endows Johor with the ability to rewrite and reactivate memory and thereby trigger cosmic evolution.

The narrative structure of Re:Colonised Planet 5: Shikasta, unlike that of Lessing’s earlier novels, is relatively fragmented and multi-tiered, hence criticized by reviewers who appreciate the formalistic, thematic unity of her earlier work. Their criticism stems primarily from adherence to a dogmatic concept of individuality linked to a dogmatic

134 concept of personal memory, in particular an individual’s sense of the pastness of the past.

It is exactly such ideas that the narrative in Shikasta purposefully supersedes. Lessing depicts quite another version of memory, well illuminated by Deleuze’s treatment of

Bergson in Bergsonism and Cinema II, in which the ideas of the virtual presence of the past and the impersonality of memory are presented. This Deleuzian/Bergsonian perspective helps make possible our understanding of Shikasta’s complicated structure of narrative, time, and memory, which is way beyond the relatively static depiction of individuality and memory in Lessing’s earlier novels and reveals the revolutionary force of the dual vision to reveal Johor’s oscillation between the virtual past and the actual present to trigger cosmic evolution.

After encountering the Shikastans, especially the ape and the Giants, Johor becomes aware of the lack of colonial archival records, including his and other galactic messengers’ subjective records of Shikasta. To account for the fate of Shikasta and its inhabitants, he resorts to impersonal memory to complement personal narratives and memories.

Lessing’s Shikasta, the first novel of Canopus in Argos: Archives series, records the

“Personal, Psychological, Historical Documents Relating to Visit by Johor (George

Sherban),” as the novel’s subtitle indicates. Why does Lessing employ the form of an archive that originally refers to the cosmic colonial records made by the cosmic colonizer?

In the beginning of Shikasta, Lessing points out that Johor’s collected records serve as the colonial guidebook representing “Canopean Colonial Rule” for “the use of first-year students” (Lessing 3). However, Johor’s sudden awareness of the complicated cosmic colonial situation and of the lack of colonial archival records to reveal Shikasta’s doom in the cosmic catastrophe paves the way to another trajectory of time/memory: impersonal, cosmic memory. The ambiguity of the archive indicates the intensity and interplay between the two modes of memory.

135

This fragmented, multi-tiered narrative, shown as an Archive, is a brilliant literary device for rendering a multi-leveled temporality, brought about by multi-leveled memory, both personal and cosmic. Examining closely the narrative strands, we see mainly two strands of memory: detailed, psychological memory and impersonal, macroscopic memory. Complex narrative patterns in Shikasta create interaction between psychological memory and cosmic memory and form a dual vision that enhances cosmic evolution.

Johor, both an immaterial galactic messenger and a corporeal incarnation on Shikasta,

George Sherban, mediates between the two levels of memory via his dual vision. He oscillates between different spatio-temporal coordinates, viewing events from macroscopic and microscopic perspectives. During his very long lifespan, he continually retrieves and revises the cosmic memory, being incarnated as various beings at different times and places, as shown in Chapter One. Johor’s multiple beings tune into different levels of both strands of memory, form a dual vision that oscillates between the personal memory and the cosmic memory, and ultimately make him the change-agent of the evolving cosmic memory.

The fact that this novel, according to Gayle Greene, confronts us with a

“disconcertingly remote narrator” (Johor) and a “chronology that defies human comprehension” (163) confirms the counter-productivity of approaching the novel via chronological, psychological memory. The move away from personal, psychological memory and, in its place, the link with the cosmic memory does raise a myriad of questions: Why does Lessing employ the form of an Archive that already entails the chronological narrative? Where and in what form is memory, recollection, stored? What does the new form of memory envision? Why does Lessing strip us of the certainty that memory is anchored in the subjective brain or mind and depict oscillation between personal memory and cosmic memory? What do multiple levels of memory, revealed via

136 the dual vision, entail? This chapter treats these questions, showcasing how Johor’s oscillation between psychological memory and cosmic memory leads to a new vision of memory that records and revises the flow of the virtual whole of cosmic evolution.

Deleuze’s appropriation of the Bergsonian concept of memory, an apt tool for probing Johor’s intervention in time/memory via his dual vision, helps us answer the above questions. In Bergson’s and Deleuze’s view, memory is trans-individual and is stored, not in the brain, but in the virtual past. The question of where recollections are preserved is the initial point of their exploration. For them, memory is not triggered by the motor system of the brain, but by the power of the trans-individual memory to preserve itself. Memory refers not only to empirical, personal memory but also to ontological memory that preserves itself and is not stored in the brain. As Johor delves into trans-individual, impersonal Cosmic Memory, he enters a state where coexistence of different levels and beings subvert the boundaries between them, between human and inhuman, between subject and object. The “virtual” Johor temporarily subverts temporal limitations so as to facilitate intervention into the Archival cosmic memory matrix, where the virtual co-existence of the cosmos’ past allows him to interact with the cosmic memory. His intervention in the cosmic memory through his multiple reincarnations and long virtual life helps generate the virtual whole of cosmic evolution. Before exploring

Johor’s multi-tiered memory, I venture into Deleuze’s theory of memory.

Deleuze’s Appropriation of Bergson’s Theory of Memory

In Bergsonism, Deleuze addresses a key question: “Where are recollections preserved”

(54)? The question involves a “false problem” (54) because it presupposes that recollections are preserved in the brain. He points out that “[r]ecollection therefore is

137 preserved in itself”(54). How is such possible? Deleuze explains Bergson’s revolutionary theory of memory, which proposes that the past, instead of ceasing to be, “should not be said that it ‘was’ since it is the in-itself of being, and the form under which being is preserved in itself” (55). If the past “IS,” then, on the contrary, the present “was” because it passes ceaselessly. Deleuze demonstrates that Bergson’s ingenuity in the theory of memory lies in his revealing an organically entwined relationship of present and past:

The past and the present do not denote two successive moments, but two

elements which coexist: One is the present, which does not cease to be, and the

other is the past, which does not cease to be but through which all presents pass.

It is in this sense that there is a pure past, a kind of ‘past in general.’ (59)

Bergson treats “the past in general” (59) as “ontological memory” (56), storing recollections that escape us. When we search for certain recollections, Bergson proposes in Matter and Memory, we do not try to retrieve them from empirical, psychological memory but, instead, jump into the past in general:

While searching for a recollection, we become conscious of an act sui generis

by which we detach ourselves from the present in order to replace ourselves,

first in the past in general, then in a certain region of the past — a work of

adjustment, something like the focusing of a camera. But our recollection still

remains virtual; we simply prepare ourselves to receive it by adopting the

appropriate attitude. Little by little it comes into view like a condensing cloud;

from the virtual state it passes into the actual. (54)

Empirical, psychological memory denotes actual memory, while “the past in general” denotes virtual memory. It is only through virtual memory that actual memory is actualized. Here, we encounter a journey from the present to the past and then back to the present, paralleling the leap from the actual to the virtual and back to the actual. The

138 ontological priority of virtual memory means that we perceive recollections, not in ourselves, but, rather, in the virtual “past in general” (Matter and Memory 170). Here the

“past in general” refers, not to the particular past of a particular present, but to an ontological memory that encompasses all the virtual past memory.

Deleuze points out that the past (memory) is “virtual, inactive” (Bergsonism 55) and

“ontological” (56), while the present is actual and “pure becoming, always outside itself”

(55). He discusses the coexistence of the present and the past via the metaphor of a memory cone: “It is all our past, which coexists with each present. The famous metaphor of the cone represents this complete state of coexistence” (Bergsonism 59). It is easy to consider that each level of the memory cone contains particular elements of the past; however, Deleuze/Bergson rectifies the concept by proposing, “Each of these sections or each of these levels includes not particular elements of the past, but always the totality of the past. It includes this totality at a more or less expanded or contracted level”

(Bergsonism 60). Each level repeats all the past but with differences. Each repetition renews the whole plane instead of the specific elements on a single plane. Therefore,

“The whole of our past is played, restarts, repeats itself, at the same time, on all the levels that it sketches out” (Bergsonism 61).

For Deleuze/Bergson, pure past, memory, is not subjective but is

“virtual,”extra-psychological. Nevertheless, a crucial question is raised from the foundation: “How can pure recollection take on a psychological existence?” (Bergsonism

139

62). If “our recollection still remains virtual” (Matter and Memory 170), how then can we actualize it? Deleuze posits an important movement, translation, which helps to actualize the virtual past. The virtual realm of the past serves as the background for the actualization of different experiences. According to Deleuze/ Bergson, the process of translating the virtual past into present, actual, psychological memory is considered a

“contraction.” In Bergsonism, Deleuze describes the two contractions—the intensive, ontological contraction and the translative, psychological contraction—and shows how translation turns the virtually coexisting levels of the pure past into specific recollections.

We should be careful in distinguishing the two types of contraction. Ontological contraction refers to the extra-psychological coexistence of the past, which psychological contraction helps to actualize. The process of translative, psychological translation thus actualizes the virtual past and enables the past to progress toward the present instead of the present moving toward the past. I explain this difference later.

The process of contracting memory is crystalized by Bergson as the “memory cone.”

The image of the inverted cone occurs twice in the third chapter of Matter and Memory

(196, 211):

If I represent by a cone SAB the totality of the recollections accumulated in my

memory, the base AB, situated in the past, remains motionless, while the

summit S, which indicates at all times my present, moves forward unceasingly,

and unceasingly also touches the moving plane P of my actual representation of

the universe. At S the image of the body is concentrated; and, since it belongs

to the plane P, this image does but receive and restore actions emanating from

all the images of which the plane is composed. (196)

The present perception is the contracted point of the body while the different regions with horizontal lines trisecting the cone represent multiple levels of past. The present image of

140 the body enters one of the planes of the past and participates in the actual expression of the cosmos. The oscillation between the actual and the virtual, between the present and the past, bring to us a beautiful choreography of time/memory.

Where Are Recollections Stored? Johor and the Virtual Memory

As with Bergsonian/Deleuzean memory, in Johor’s recollections, there is interaction between individual (psychological) memory and ontological (extra-psychological) memory. The psychological domain of Johor’s memory involves his direct observations and records of events related to Shikasta while the ontological (extra-psychological) domain of Johor’s memory involves a cosmic memory, which is recorded via Johor’s oscillations among different spatial coordinates. Johor’s multiple identities, the virtual and actual Johor and the virtual and actual George, manifest the spectrum of psychological and ontological memory and the complexity of the dual vision that revises the cosmic Master Plan and thereby triggers cosmic evolution of a dynamic whole.

Below, I briefly summarize the twofold process of Johor’s recollection of the past.

Johor’s memory includes (1) his own detached, cold narrative of the colonial guidebook,

(2) his intervention into other beings’ memories, such as the ape’s and the Giants’, and (3) his link to the cosmic forces, SOWF and the Lock, which allow the sharing of information, ideas, and, most importantly, memory.

I focus on the gradual development from Johor’s personal memory to cosmic memory. The colonial guidebook sets a cold, detached tone that reveals limitations of the galactic messengers’, particularly Johor’s, personal memory. After discovering limitations of the colonial guidebook, Johor devises “additional material” so that “thoughts that perhaps fall outside the scope of the strictly necessary” can be recorded and gauged

141

(Shikasta 3). He warns himself against the purely psychological side of memory and tries to modify his memory by appropriating other beings’ memories such as those of the ape and the Giants. However, although Giant-Mind can help Johor locate one of the causes for the cosmic catastrophe, Giant-Mind is still imprinted with the subjective mode. It is not until Johor tunes into the cosmic bond, the Lock, that he finally enters the world where ideas, information, and memories are shared. Movement through these different stages resulting in access to the virtual memory triggers Johor’s and our insight that memory is not stored within the brain, but, rather, in pure recollection, the virtual past.

In the first stage, the actual Johor is assigned to record and collect material for the colonial guidebook, a compilation of documents intended “to offer a very general picture of Shikasta for the use of first-year students of Canopean Colonial Rule (Shikasta 12).

The original purpose of the archive is to educate such students about their colonized planet, Shikasta. When Johor is sent to observe and rescue the inhabitants of Shikasta, he records, in the archival material ordained by his mother planet, Canopus, how they evolve, decline, and face extinction. Johor’s recordings, based on his personal “actual” observation, involve individual memory. Since he is conditioned by the cosmic Master

Plan and colonial mission, his tone turns out be cold, detached, and matter of fact. Yet, at the same time, Johor’s archives are “virtual” since they come from outside and have to be constructed. The initial report delineates just basic facts of the Giants’ and the Natives’ lifespan, size, color, and mental powers. The detached tone cannot fully account for why

Shikasta is different and worth the trouble. However, the more he gets involved with the

Shikastans, the more he feels sympathetic toward the colonized species and finds that what

Canopus considers necessary research in the colonial guidebook cannot fully account for his experiences on Shikasta. Despite his role as colonizer, which necessarily fogs his ability to see Shikastans as they really are, Johor becomes aware of his limited

142 perspective to register what has really happened. While he works to record the past, he realizes that personal (psychological) memories are often ambiguous and unreliable, and he blocks out or at least modifies certain memories. He reports, “[W]hen it came near my mind and tried to enter I barred it out” (Shikasta 28).

During his encounters with the ape and the Giants, he gradually moves away from mere personal memory toward the collective memory, which, in Bergsonian/Deleuzean terms, is “the past in general.” When Johor approaches the dying ape, his own memories and the ape’s memories intertwine, creating a virtual, indiscernible relationship with the whole past, enabling his understanding of Shammat’s evil purpose on Shikasta.

Bergson/Deleuze’s crystal-image and the spiral circuit help us understand how Johor, with the help of the ape, crystallizes the memory of the Shammattans and detects their evil motivations, scheming, and deeds. His awareness actualizes the virtual memory of the Shammat's scheming via psychological contraction/translation, and Johor acquires the active power to change the present and the past at Point S on the memory cone. During his encounter with the ape, when he enters the state of death or dream in “the scene of life and death,” the boundary between Johor’s memory and the ape’s memory dissolves, and

Johor gains access to a more collective memory. As well, his access to Giant-Mind makes possible Johor’s further access to a more collective memory, enabling him to

“remember” a deeper cause for Shammat evil: the Giants’ naïve ignorance of their evil enemy’s very existence. As Johor enters Giant-Mind, the boundary between his mind and

Giant-Mind also dissolves. In this instance, Johor acts upon the present to prevent further degeneration. In his movement from the ape to Giant-Mind, awareness becomes action at

Point S on the Cone, signifying the savior’s participation in the composition and trajectory of the cosmos. His ensuing access to the Lock, the cosmic bond, propels him into “the past in general,” the more impersonal, cosmic memory that stores a cornucopia

143 of memories and life. Through Johor's creative differentiating action, we witness the evolving cosmos. I explain further Johor’s gradual movement from personal memory to impersonal, cosmic memory, immediately after this chart:

Table 3.1

•The ape  awareness of Shammat's motivation and scheme via the crystal image and the spiral circuit.

•Giant-Mindhow Johor actualizes the virtual memory of the Shammat's scheme through psychological contraction translation and gains the active power to change the present and the past at Point S in memory cone.

•The LockThe Lock as “the past in general,” impersonal, cosmic memory that stores multiplicity of memories and life. Through Johor's creative differentiating action, we witness the cosmos.

•The cosmos/cosmic evolution

Johor and Virtual Memory

The ape and the Giants are originally outcasts whose emotions, perspectives, and memory are supposed to be eradicated from the historical colonial guidebook. However, when Johor encounters them, he is alerted to the lack of colonial archival records and thereby initiated into the virtual, ontological, shadowy past. His observation and recording enable him to gain more understanding of Shikasta and thus become more involved in past events related to the planet. However, he is not drawn into “a compassionate involvement with Shikastans that goes beyond necessity,” as Gayle Green notes in Doris Lessing: The

Poetics of Change (172), because Johor is closer to becoming aware of a virtual engagement that always was and is not personal, not "compassionate," but enfolded.

144

Johor’s memory, via stimulation of the ape’s and the Giants’ memories, becomes more impersonal and collective and enables Johor to remember a past that is not recorded by his personal memory. The collective memory is not internal to Johor. Rather, Johor is internal to the collective memory/time because his omnipresent trans-individual identity as a galactic messenger enables him to travel in different times, shuttling between the present and the past. Johor’s encounters with the ape and the Giants alert him to the haunting, virtual, shadowy memory that comes along with actualized memory.

What is a virtual memory? In Cinema II, Deleuze employs the crystal-image to reveal the two trajectories of time. Time moves ever forward toward the future and ever preserves itself by falling back into the virtual, ontological past. Deleuze says,

Since the past is constituted not after the present that it was but at the same

time, time has to split itself in two at each moment as present and past… Time

has to split at the same time as it sets itself out or unrolls itself: it splits in two

dissymmetrical jets, one of which makes all the present pass on, while the other

preserves all the past. Time consists of this split, and it is this, it is time, that we

see in the crystal. (Cinema II 78-79)

Addressing Bergson’s Third Schema, Deleuze, in Cinema II, emphasizes the coexistence of the actual present and the virtual past.

145

Each present is accompanied by a virtual, shadowy past that is preserved by the simultaneous contraction of different memories. The gushing forth of the virtual, shadowy memory along with the actual present brings about the formation of an indiscernible relationship between the actual present and the virtual past (81).

In the process of Johor’s reminiscing and recording, we witness the same tendency of splitting time into two strands, the virtual past that preserves itself and the actual present that moves toward the future. Whenever Johor tries to record “the present,” that is, what happens at that time, he always finds a virtual, shadowy past that evolves along with the present but differs in kind and goes in a different direction. For example, when he tries to defend Shikasta, searching for the possible causes of the fall, his present action of describing and recording is always accompanied by the shadowy, divergent past recollections that are haunting and coexisting with the actual present. Johor’s exploration of the Shammat’s existence involves one of such shadowy, divergent memories. Johor exerts self-scrutiny by asking, “But how was it we did not know they [Shammatans] were there?” While he is reminiscing about past events so as to ascertain causes of the catastrophe, he realizes that “[t]he fault was partly ours—Canopus. . . . But it is this lower level of the Sirian Empire which is the key to this and other problems of

Rohanda/Shikasta; and my understanding of it is different now” (Shikasta 16). From the perspective of a galactic messenger, with the ape’s help, Johor is enabled to perceive what is previously invisible to him. Before meeting the ape, his blindness to the obvious cause of the fall, his unawareness of the divergent, shadowy nature of the catastrophe, or any event, causes him to forget the past. Neither noticing nor actualizing it, he renders it virtual—real but not actual.

Johor’s first virtual memory occurs upon entry into the ape’s memory, a move away from personal, actual memory to cosmic, virtual memory. His encounter with the ape

146 enables him to enter into the mentality of a colonized creature. The ape, embodying the most basic level of existence in the whole cosmic colonial system, is excluded from the cosmic plan. Johor’s encounter is his first step in problematizing personal, actual memory and reformulating cosmic, virtual memory. In order to understand what goes wrong in the cosmic plan, Johor must first “come to terms with the most basic elements of existence—the animal level” (Fahim 179). After the catastrophe, the Shammatans exert their degenerating influence on Shikasta. Johor strives to detect the source of degeneration and prevent Shikasta’s further decline. While seeking the source of evil, he meets an ape who has strayed away from his companions and suffered Shammatan abuse. This ape is a descendant of a Native in the ancient time. Johor describes him as “a shaggy creature . . . the size of a Native, but heavily furred, and I understood at once that he was the descendant of a Native who had strayed away long ago from his fellows and had not developed with the others” (Shikasta 44). The two become friends and support each other despite their differences in species, race, and language. With the help of his new friend, Johor

“remembers,” in the valley’s center, what the shimmering column that sickens him and causes him to reel signifies: one of the sources of Shikasta’s degeneration.

How do the shimmering column and the ape’s memory help Johor recall, from the virtual, shadowy memory, those unbearable images of Shammat’s evil attack on Shikasta?

The answer lies in Johor’s standing on the converging point of the virtual, dynamic relationship between the past and the present, between the virtual and the actual, in his locating or “remembering” the “past” source of Shikasta’s degeneration, i.e., the evil of

Shammat. In explaining the virtual relationship of the virtual past and the actual present, I employ Bergson’s crystal image and spiral circuit.

147

Table 3.2

Number Spiral Shikasta circuit

1 0 The perceived object itself

2 A Its virtual image-memory A

3 B’ Object-image (triggered by A)

4 B Memory-image (triggered by B’)

5 C’ Object-image (triggered by B)

6 C Memory-image (triggered by C’)

In Chapter Four of Cinema II, “The Crystals of Time,” Deleuze defines Point S on

Bergson’s memory cone as “a point of indiscernibility,” a “crystal image,” which is precisely constituted by the smallest circle of the past and the present, that is, the coalescence of the actual image of the present and the virtual image of the past: “the image with two sides, actual and virtual at the same time….this is a crystal image…” (67).

At Point S on the cone, the virtual past and the actual present coalesce. The present image of the body penetrates a plane of the past where the present and the past form a crystal image that “is an actual-virtual circuit on the spot” (Cinema II 80). Point S, the crystal image, signifies the innermost limit of Bergson’s first great schema, the spiral circuit. In

148

Chapter Four of Cinema II, Deleuze defines the crystal image as the “internal limit of all the relative circuits in the spiral circuit”:

The more or less broad, always relative, circuits, between the present and the

past, refer back, on the one hand, to a small internal circuit between a present

and its own past, between an actual image and its virtual image; on the other

hand, they refer to deeper and deeper circuits which are themselves virtual,

which each time mobilize the whole of the past, but in which the relative

circuits bathe or plunge to trace an actual shape and bring in their provisional

harvest” (80).

The innermost actual-virtual circuit, the OA circuit, refers to the crystal image that serves as the genetic element for the virtual memory-images and the actual shapes of the object-images. The leap into the virtual past and the harvesting of the actual object-image can go to infinity. In Matter and Memory, Bergson claims that in the spiral circuit,

all the elements, including the perceived object itself, hold each other in a state

of mutual tension as in an electric circuit. . . . the smallest, A, is the nearest to

immediate perception. It contains only the object O, with the after-image which

comes back and overlies it. Behind it, the larger and larger circles B, C, D

correspond to growing efforts at intellectual expansion. (127-128)

While the object O and its virtual image-memory A form the innermost circuit, the expanding circles B, C, D refer to the expansion of the virtual past. And each circle of B,

C, or D will disclose “the deeper strata of reality” symbolized by B’, C’, D’(MM 128) and point to “these causes of growing depth, situated behind the object” (Matter and Memory

128) in relation to the actual present.

The spiral circuit thus goes from O-A-B’-B-C’-CD’-D to infinity, enacting the infinite process of the encounters and relays of memory, forming different crystal images,

149 the OA circuit, as the innermost circuit and its concomitants, the expanding B, C, D, and the deeper circles of B’, C’, D. The entwined relationship between the present and the past, revealed through the crystal image and the spiral circuit, serves as an apt tool for analyzing Johor’s experience with the virtual past memory during his encounter with the ape. Below, I adumbrate Johor’s encounters with the actual and the virtual in a chart and explain it step by step.

Table 3.3

Number Spiral Shikasta circuit

1 0 The Column as the object

2 A Image of the past degeneration— Shammat steals the skill of Effluon 3, which is manifested as the shimmering column

3 B’ Deeper reality – this new object image triggers Johor to ask why Shammatans try to invite reprisal form Canopus and Sirius

4 B Because Shammatans try to steal and distort SOWF

5 C’ Why do they steal Effluon 3 for short term gain.

6 C The real cause is that Shammatans try to turn Shikasta into a transmitter of evil force, feeding itself and Shammat the distorted force.

After discussing Bergson/Deleuze’s ideas of “crystal image” and “spiral circuit,” I return to discussion of Johor’s standing on the converging point of different temporal lines while locating or “remembering” the “past” source of Shikasta’s degeneration, i.e., the evil of Shammat. In Shikasta, the Shimmering Column that Johor discovers at the center

150 of the valley is the present image of the degenerating, catastrophic object, which then coalesces with the virtual past, forming a crystal image with the virtual image. The actual image of the column takes Johor back to the virtual past and triggers his recollection of the past memory related to the column. I consider that the memory related to the column is virtual in the sense that it is shadowy and not recorded in Canopus’ colonial guide. I use the concept of the virtual to express its shadowy, unfulfilled aspect. Johor intuits the image of the past column via his connection with the ape, via the dream or the vision.

The crystal image of the catastrophe forms when the actual image of the

Shimmering Column, the cause of catastrophe, and its virtual image of past degeneration coalesce. He learns from the past memory that the column “was a substance recently invented, or discovered, on Canopus, Effluon 3” (Shikasta 45). Johor surmises that

Shammat “must have stolen it from Canopus” (Shikasta 45) since it is an advanced skill that Shammat certainly could not have acquired. Right here, convergence of the metal column, a present image of catastrophe, and the stolen gadget, Effluon 3, a virtual image of Shannat’s evil and the past catastrophe, forms a crystal image of cosmic degeneration/catastrophe illuminating the lurking, pirating Shammat. This image reveals the core of the problem and a major cause of the fall of Shikasta. Johor surmises that one cause for the cosmic degeneration is Shammat’s sabotage. The major one is that they must have stolen the skill of Effluon 3, which is manifested as the shimmering column as the present object-image, because their technology is not so advanced. Johor explains its properties:

Effluon 3 had the property of drawing in and sending out qualities as needed—as

programmed. It was the most sensitive and yet the strongest of conductors,

needing no machinery to set it up, for it came into existence through the skilled

use of concentrations of the mind. (Shikasta 45)

151

With the Shammatans’ “concentrations of mind,” Effluon 3 becomes the “strongest of conductors” pushing Shikasta down the slope of degeneration. With the crystal image as the starting point, more and more circles of recollections appear, which, in Bergsonian terms, become “the expanding circles B, C, D,” the memory images, along with “the deeper strata of reality” (Matter and Memory 128) relative to the actual stratum of

Johor’s role as a galactic messenger.

The innermost actual-virtual circuit, the crystal-image, of the present and past still cannot fully account for Shammat’s motivation although the circuit enables Johor to

“remember” roughly the evil of the Shammatans and the cause for Shakasta’s degeneration. Different circles of the spiral circuits involving Johor’s virtual memories or experiences emanate from the innermost circuit of the past and the present, provide Johor with more clues to the cosmic degeneration, and allow him to realize the actual cause of

Shikasta’s fall. We can say that the memory-image A, the memory of the evil Shammat, leads Johor to the deeper reality B’. This new object-image, B’, the new object image of the metal column, causes Johor to ask why the Shammatans try to invite reprisal from

Canopus and Sirius. He still cannot understand why the Shammattans “go to all this trouble – inviting reprisals from us, from Sirius (and possibly even from Puttiora, if this was, as it might well be, an act of defiance)” (Shikasta 45). His question regarding B’ triggers Johor’s memory of the distortion of SOWF, which reminds him of the

Shammatans’ attempt to steal and distort SOWF. Here, the distorting force of SOWF is associated with the object C’, the newly created object image, the shimmering column, that serves as the distorting transmitter. Nevertheless, the object-image C’ triggers Johor to ask an important question: Why do they steal Effluon 3 for “some short term gain”

(Shikasta 45). To answer this question, Johor is led from object-image C’ to memory-image C, which is needed to solve the riddle in Johor’s mind about Shammat

152 and enhance his understanding of Shammat’s scheme.

It is not until Johor gains the help of the ape and undergoes an experience of “life and death” together with the ape that Johor can grasp Shammat’s motivation and scheme.

Thus, the object-image C’ is complemented by the memory-image C, in which Johor realizes that Shammat appropriates Effluon 3 to send an evil force to Shikasta so as to infect the Shikastans, making them the transmitter of the evil force back to Shammat. So

Shammatan wickedness corrupts the Shikastans, transforming them into change-agents that feed themselves and Shammat the degenerating elements. Pathetically, Shammat employs the jetting column Effluon 3, originally programmed to emit love, to distort

SOWF and to emit hatred, enmity, and cruelty. Such is their real purpose: to turn Shikasta into the transmitter that feeds itself evil and fuels the degeneracy of the pirating

Shammat.

Johor detects Effluon 3, the evil column that distorts the cosmic force, SOWF. As he and the ape approach it, the galactic messenger lapses into a coma. The ape, risking his own sanity and life, saves Johor, and the two begin supporting each other. In the face of death,

Johor becomes able to view the cosmic Master Plan from a colonized animal’s perspective and memory.

The scene of “life and death” connects them, enabling Johor to see what he previously cannot see and to remember what he has forgotten: the Shammat’s

153 exploitation and massacre of the apes for no defensible reason and the sufferings of the colonized. Were it not for Johor’s entwined relationship with the ape, Canopus would never come to understand why Shammat would bother to establish a short-term transmitter on Shikasta. Shammat’s intent is not only to corrupt the Shikastans with

Degenerative Disease but also to trigger evil within Shikstans, making them the transmitter of the evil substance. The galactic messenger’s encounter with the ape enables

Johor to understand, not only the sufferings of the colonized, but also the evil force paralyzing the cosmic plan.

Transversal communication between Johor and the ape is made possible through their suffering from the same evil force, through their bodily interaction, and through their link in death and memory. Johor’s present memory of the Shammat is linked with the ape’s virtual memory of the Shammat’s evil deeds and scheme against Shikasta. After death connects them in a symbiotic way and sweeps Johor up in the sensation and memory of the ape, Johor is initiated into the world of the ape so that he is enabled to perceive things from the ape’s perspective: