DORIS LESSING’İN THE FIFTH CHILD VE BEN, IN THE WORLD ADLI ESERLERİNDE İTAATSİZ BEDEN VE DÜZEN MEKANİZMALARI

Year 2024, Issue: 61, 137 - 149, 22.03.2024

Erkin Kıryaman

https://doi.org/10.30794/pausbed.1336327

Abstract

Doris Lessing tarafından kaleme alınan The Fifth Child (1988) ve Ben, in the World (2000), Lovatt ailesi içerisinde aykırı beşinci evlat olarak tanımlanan Ben Lovatt’ın trajik hikâyesini anlatır. Ben’in annesi olan Harriet’in gebeliğinden başlayarak doğumundan sonra Ben’in kendi odasına kapatılmasına odaklanan ve 1960lar Londra’sında geçen The Fifth Child, Ben’in benliğinin güç ve tecrit aracılığıyla ideolojik olarak inşası etrafında seyreder. Nitekim Ben, in the World, öyküyü ana karakterin on sekizinci yaşından devam ettirir ve yaşadığı toplumun bir üyesi olmaya zorlanan sosyal bir dünyada, Ben’in sosyal bir ben ve sosyal bir beden olarak hayatta kalma mücadelesini yansıtır. Bu iki eser, kendi ailesinden ve yaşadığı toplumdan dışlanan ve ailesine ve topluma karşı yabancılaştırılan Ben’in maceraları olarak telakki edilse de bu anlatılar aynı zamanda Ben’in bedeninin ötekilik ve yabanıllığa dair söylemsel mekanizmalar vasıtasıyla inşa edildiği sosyal çevreleri de gösterir. Ben’in ötekileştirilen kimliği ve bedeni, Lessing’in bu eserleri içerisinde norm dışı bedensel ilişkiler ve insan dışı betimlemeler tarafından öne çıkarılır. Bu bağlamda, bu çalışma, ailesel, sosyal ve kurumsal güç mekanizmalarıyla düzenlenmeye zorlanan Ben’in itaatsiz bedenini tartışmak amacıyla iki anlatıdaki Ben’in bedensel gezingelerine odaklanmaktadır.

Keywords

Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child, Ben, in the World, Beden, Regülasyon, Düzen Mekanizmaları, Aile, Toplum

THE UNRULY BODY AND THE REGULATORY MECHANISMS IN DORIS LESSING’S THE FIFTH CHILD AND BEN, IN THE WORLD

Abstract

Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child (1988) and Ben, in the World (2000) narrate the tragic story of Ben Lovatt who is identified as the anomalous fifth child in the Lovatt family. Set in London in the 1960s, with its focalisation on Ben’s early childhood, from his mother’s pregnancy to his confinement into his cot after his birth, The Fifth Child navigates through the ideological construction of Ben’s self through power and isolation. Ben, in the World, on the other hand, maintains Ben’s story from his eighteenth year and presents his strife for survival in a social world in which he is forced to be a member of society with his social self and social body. While both works can be regarded as the adventures of Ben, who is isolated and alienated from his family and society, they also draw social environs in which Ben’s body is constructed via the discursive mechanisms of otherness and wildness. Ben’s othered self and body are foregrounded by abnormal corporeal relations and unhuman depictions throughout Lessing’s fiction. In this sense, this study focuses on the trajectories of Ben’s body in these narratives to discuss Ben’s unruly body which is forced to be regulated by the familial, social and institutional mechanisms of power.

Keywords

Doris Lessing, The Fifth Child, Ben, in the World, Body, Regulation, Regulatory Mechanisms, Family, Society

References

• Anievas Gamallo, I. C. (2000). “Motherhood and the Fear of the Other: Magic, Fable and the Gothic in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child”. Theme Parks, Rainforests and Sprouting Wasteland: European Essays on Theory and Performance in Contemporary British Fiction. (Eds: R. Todd and L. Flora). Rodopi, The Netherlands. 113-124.
• Benveniste, E. (2007). “Subjectivity in Language.” Identity: A Reader. (Eds: P. d. Gay, J. Evans and P. Redman). SAGE Publications, London. 39-43.
• Brown, N. and Gershon, S. A. (2017). “Body politics,” POLITICS, GROUPS, AND IDENTITIES, 5/1, 1-3.
• De Vinne, C. (2012). “The Uncanny Unnamable in Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World,” Names A Journal of Onomastics, 60/1, 15-25.
• Foucault, M. (2005). “The Political Investment of the Body.” The Body: A Reader. (Eds: M. Fraser and M. Greco). Routledge, London. 100-104.
• Foucault, M. (2003). The Birth of the Clinic. (Ed: R. D. Laing and Trans: A. M. Sheridan). Taylor & Francis e-Library.
• Foucault, M. (1984). “The Body of the Condemned.” The Foucault Reader. (Ed: P. Rabinow). Pantheon Books, New York. 170-178.
• Foucault, M. (1984). “Docile Bodies.” The Foucault Reader. (Ed: P. Rabinow). Pantheon Books, New York. 179-188.
• Foucault, M. (1984). “Right of Death and Power over Life.” The Foucault Reader. (Ed: P. Rabinow). Pantheon Books, New York. 258-272.
• Fraser, M. and Greco, M. (2005). “Bodies and social (dis)order.” The Body: A Reader. (Eds: M. Fraser and M. Greco). Routledge, London. 67-71.
• Fraser, M. and Greco, M. (2005). “Introduction.” The Body: A Reader. (Eds: M. Fraser and M. Greco). Routledge, London. 1-42.
• Freud, S. (1955). “The ‘Uncanny’.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. XVII (1917-1919): An Infantile Neurosis and Other Works. (Trans: J. Strachey). The Hogarth Press, London. 218-253.
• Gindin, J. (1962). “Doris Lessing’s Intense Commitment.” Doris Lessing. (Ed: H. Bloom). Chelsea House Publishers, Philadelphia. 9-26.
• Haraway, D. J. (2005). “The Biopolitics of Postmodern Bodies: Constitutions of Self in Immune System Discourse.” The Body: A Reader. (Eds: M. Fraser and M. Greco). Routledge, London. 242-246.
• Heffernan, J. A. W. (2004). Museum of Words: The Poetics of Ekphrasis from Homer to Ashbery. The University of Chicago Press, London.
• Hillman, D. and Maude, U. (2015). “Introduction.” The Cambridge Companion to the Body in Literature. (Eds: D. Hillman and U. Maude). Cambridge University Press, USA. 1-9.
• Kristeva, J. (2007). “Revolution in Poetic Language.” Identity: A Reader. (Eds. P. d. Gay, J. Evans and P. Redman). SAGE Publications, London. 69-75.
• Lessing, D. (2000). Ben, in the World. Flamingo, London.
• Lessing, D. (2001). The Fifth Child. 2001. Flamingo, London.
• McClintock, A. (2005). “Soft-Soaping Empire: Commodity Racism and Imperial Advertising.” The Body: A Reader. (Eds: M. Fraser and M. Greco). Routledge, London. 271-276.
• Raefipour, N. (2012). “Ben, A Stranger in The Dark Society of Mirrors,” Epiphany, Journal of Transdisciplinary Studies, 5/1, 70-82.
• Rahimnouri, Z. (2022). “Unfolding the Obscure Image of Ben in Doris Lessing’s Ben, in the World,” Epiphany, Journal of Transdisciplinary Studies, 15/2, 9-34.
• Sullivan, D. and Greenberg, J. (2011) “Monstrous Children as Harbingers of Mortality: A Psychological Analysis of Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child,” Literature Interpretation Theory, 22/2, 113-133.
• The Nobel Prize in Literature (2007). NobelPrize.org. Nobel Media AB 2019. Retrieved June 28, 2019, from https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2007/summary/.
• Tiger, V. (2009). “The Nobel Prize: The ‘Fixing’ of Doris Lessing.” Études britanniques contemporaines, 36, 93-102. Retrieved November 26, 2021, from https://doi.org/10.4000/ebc.3721.
• Tomalin, C. (1994). “Hordes Go Past.” Doris Lessing: Conversations. (Ed: E. G. Ingersoll). Ontario Review Press, Princeton. 174-178.
• Turner, B. S. (2012). “Introduction: The Turn of the Body.” Routledge Handbook of Body Studies. (Ed: B. S. Turner). Routledge, London. 1-17.
• Turner, B. S. (2002). Regulating Bodies Essays in Medical Sociology. Routledge, London.
• Whittaker, R. (2001). Modern Novelists: Doris Lessing. St. Martin’s Press, New York.
• Winnicott, D. W. (2004). “Mirror-role of Mother and Family in Child Development.” Identity: A Reader. (Eds: P. d. Gay, J. Evans and P. Redman). SAGE Publications, London. 144-149.
• Winnicott, D. W. (1964). “What about Father?” The Child, the Family, and the Outside World. Perseus Publishing, Cambridge. 113-118.