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• W341710684 abstract "The tremendous social realities of our time are ghosts, specters of murdered gods and our own humanity returned to haunt and destroy us. The Negroes, Jews, Reds. Them. Only you and I dressed differently. The texture of fabric of these socially shared hallucinations is what we call reality, and our collusive madness is what we call sanity. --R. D. Laing, The Politics of Experience Doris Lessing's novel The Sirian Experiments is third in space-fiction series Canopus in Argos: Archives, and it is above all a political text, a severe critique of brutalities of colonialism and cybernetic hegemony. In this high-tech universe, Sirian empire justifies its biosocial and genetic engineering in usual way, based on technological superiority and notion of scientific progress. Those who do not possess advanced technology are, by definition, sub-human, and become object of experiments of title (see note 1). As Ambien, a senior Sirian administrator and protagonist of novel, evolves into greater objectivity, she comes to realize that Sirian identity, although bounded in space and time, is not fixed between poles of native populations and superior civilization of Canopus. The Other, which begins as a benchmark against which Sirius measures and defines itself, becomes a necessary part of whole to which Sirius also belongs. As Ambien continues her dissidence and constant questioning of status quo, she will finally seem an outsider even to her own Sirian culture, becoming in turn Other who pays a heavy personal price for her difference. True objectivity is exactly that, to examine one's own culture with same critical eye which one turns against another, and discovery of what R. D. Laing calls Human beings' [...] almost unlimited capacity to deceive themselves, and to deceive themselves into taking their own lies for truth (72-73). Ambien, by asking right questions about who she / Sirius is in relation to others, has at least begun to peel away insidious outer layer and perceive what is at core of these competing definitions of reality and their resulting influence on construction of identity. At first, Sirian identity is defined as a function of its relation to indigenous populations, as well as its relation with Shammat and Canopus, in dialectical fashion. Even though Ambien will come to see simplicity of such binary thinking, she needs to start from this fixed position and go all way through--it is part of her formation, and she cannot evolve into greater understanding if she does not complete all steps. But (much) later on, after she has achieved greater maturity and insight, Ambien will suffer an identity crisis of sorts, as Sirius becomes its own other which ultimately puts it on path to a more universal identification as a part of whole. If inferior native populations are considered barbarians, it is only within a larger context of what Lewis Mumford, in a critique of modern civilization, calls the active and passive barbarians (16), a definition which brings Sirians clearly into realm of barbarism as well, despite their inability to see themselves as such. Sirius, as a technologically-advanced society, finds that its people consider themselves to have evolved past certain kinds of work, and purpose of some of their colonial is quite simply to create a servant race. Indeed, Sirius finds itself in a situation which it has consciously created, and now finds it difficult to turn back: In early heady days of euphoria when we were so effortlessly and successfully--it seemed--surmounting every kind of technical obstacle, abolishing one by one different classes of unpleasant and degrading work--so we called it--intensive propaganda had gone into adjusting and setting minds of populations accordingly. …" @default.
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• W341710684 date "2008-01-01" @default.
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• W341710684 title "Who am I when the Other Disappears? Identity and Progress in Doris Lessing's 'The Sirian Experiments'" @default.
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