Anticipating Apocalypse: Power Structures and the Periphery in Doris Lessing’s the Fifth Child and Ben, in the World

• Authors: Muhammad Saiful Islam
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This article argues that unremitting conflicts between the power centres and the individuals from the borderline spaces of the society characterise Doris Lessing’s novels The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World. The paper seeks to further the argument by applying Michel Foucault’s early work on power and Zygmunt Bauman’s theory on liquid, thus postmodern, fear to manifest the implosion of the contemporary civilization that lives on global/local disparities and operates through subversive surveillance.

Keywords

EN

elimination of the unregistered other; fear of the unknown; globalisation; intertextuality; resistance

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Romanian Journal of English Studies
• Year: 2013
• Volume: 10
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 278-292

Dates

published

2013-03-01

online

2013-02-22

Contributors

author

Muhammad Saiful Islam

• King Khalid University

References

• Bassnett, Susan. 1998 (1993). Comparative Literature: A Critical Introduction. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
• Bauman, Zygmunt. 2006. Liquid Fear. Cambridge: Polity Press.
• Bronte, Charlotte. 1995. Jane Eyre. New Delhi: UBS Publishers’ Distributors Ltd..
• Caldwell, Gail. 1988. “Lessing's Child of the Century” in Boston Globe [Boston, Mass] 03 Apr: A16. [Online]. Available: http://search.proquest.com/docview/294455245?accountid=30902 [Accessed 2012, April 30].
• Clark, Alex. 2000. “Books: Growing Pains: Alex Clark Finds Lessing's Sequel as Freakish as its Hero: Ben, In the World by Doris Lessing 178pp, Flamingo, pounds 16.99” in TheGuardian [London (UK)] 17 June: SATURDAY8. [Online]. Available: http://search.proquest.com/docview/245518119?accountid=30902 [Accessed 2012, April 30].
• Collins, Cornelius. 2010. “A Horizontal, Almost Nationaless Organisation”: Doris Lessing’s Prophecies of Globalization” in Twentieth Century Literature, 56(2), 221-IV.[Online]. Available: http://search.proquest.com/docview/814872588?accountid=30902 [Accessed September 30. 2012]
• During, Simon. 1993. Foucault and Literature, Towards a Genealogy ofWriting. London: Routledge.
• Eagleton, Terry. 1996. The Illusions of Postmodernism. Oxford: BlackwellPublishers Ltd.
• Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. (Trans.) Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books.
• Hall, Stuart. 2007 (1995). “Cultural Identity and Diaspora” in The Post-colonialStudies Reader. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (Eds.). London: Routledge, pp. 435 - 438.
• Heaney, Seamus. 1999. Beowulf. London: Faber and Faber.
• Hoffmann, Gerhard. 2005. From Modernism to Postmodernism Concepts andStrategies of Postmodern American Fiction. Amsterdam: Rodopi.[WoS]
• Jackson, Peter. 2005. King Kong. US release date, 5 December, 2005. Available:
• http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0360717/ Janmohamed, Abdul R. 2007 (1995). “The Economy of Manichean Allegory” in The Post-colonial Studies Reader. Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths and Helen Tiffin (Eds.). London: Routledge, pp. 19 - 23.
• Kline, Betsy. 2000. “Lessing’s ‘Fifth Child' Grows Up in Sequel” in PittsburghPost - Gazette [Pittsburgh, Pa] 03 Dec 2000: G-9. [Online]. Available: http://search.proquest.com/docview/391245919?accountid=30902 [Accessed 2012, April 30].
• Leassing, Doris. 2007. The Grass is Singing. London: Harper Perennial Modern Classics.
• -------------------. 1988. The Fifth Child. London: Jonathan Cape Ltd.
• -------------------. 2000. Ben, in the World. London: Flamingo.
• McLean, Barbara. 2000. “Lessing's new Frankenstein” in The Globe and Mail [Toronto, Ont] 19 Aug: D.11. [Online]. Available: http://search.proquest.com/docview/384392542?accountid=30902 [Accessed 2012, April 30].
• Meirelles, Fernando. 2002. City of God. O2 Filmes. US release date: 14 November 2002. Available: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0317248/ [Accessed 2012, October 1].
• Mengham, Rod. 1999. “Introduction” in An Introduction to ContemporaryFiction: International Writing in English since 1970. Rod Mengham (Eds.). Cambridge: Polity Press, pp. 1 - 9.
• Schapiro, Nancy. 2000. “In Lessing's Sequel to "Fifth Child," Genetic Throwback Meets 21st Certury” in St. Louis Post - Dispatch [St. Louis, Mo] 23 July: F.10. [Online]. Available: http://search.proquest.com/docview/404029054?accountid=30902 [Accessed 2012, April 30].
• Weeks, Brigitte. 1988. “Doris Lessing's Chilling Tale of a Stranger in the Family” in The Washington Post [Washington, D.C] 20 Mar: x03. [Online]. Available: http://search.proquest.com/docview/307011774?accountid=30902 [Accessed 2012, April 30].
• Yeats, William Butler. 2000. W. B. Yeats: Selected Poems. Timothy Webb. (Eds.). London: Penguin Books Ltd.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/rjes-2013-0027