Canopus in Argos: Archives. Re: Colonised Planet 5 Shikasta. Personal, Psychological, Historical Documents Relating to Visit by Johor (George Sherban) Emissary (Grade 9)87th of the Period of the Last Days by Doris Lessing
Summary: A disturbing allegory, centered around a planet called Shikasta, which bears remarkable similarities to Earth. Through time, a higher planet, Canopus, has documented the progress of Shikasta and tried to distract its inhabitants from the evil influence of the planet Shammat, but the Shikastans continue to hurl themselves toward annihilation.
About the Author: A British citizen born in Persia (now Iran) and raised in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Lessing met her second husband at a Communist party meeting. She obtained fame with the publication of The Golden Notebook, which gained a passionate following in the feminist movement. Throughout her life, Lessing has been drawn to systems for improving human experience -- first Marxism, then the psychiatry of R. D. Laing, then Sufi mysticism. But her yearning for a single, transcendent truth coexists with a sharp awareness of the contradictory mix of vanities, passions, and aggressions that make up most human lives.
Analysis: Although it may be uncertain if Doris Lessing wishes, in either her introduction to Shikasta or in the actual novel, to draw a distiction between "science" and "space" fiction, such a distinction may be worth making in the service of illuminating the novel. Space fiction, as a literature, posits a way of seeing; a way of seeing, interestingly enough, that can be related to the Marxism, understood in the widest sense, that Lessing has moved away from. As with any materialist understanding, space fiction's origins as a relatively new genre must be grounded in a change of matter's organization. That is, the technology of space exploration. As Lessing writes in her introduction, "Some Remarks:" "What a phenomenon it has been--!
science fiction, space fiction--exploding out of nowhere, unexpectedly of course, as always happens when the human mind is being forced to expand: this time starwards, galaxy-wise, and who knows where next." Space fiction, as a literary way of seeing, is the attempt to . . . what? Catch up with the technology that forces us to see new things? Cope with such new sights? Or put a "human face," through art, through the imagination, on what is ultimately inhuman? Perhaps all three. Or perhaps all three alternatives are really the same enterprise.
But what is this way of seeing that space fiction, and Shikasta, offer to us? Lessing has already said above, but let us continue with the quotation: "These dazzlers have mapped our world, or worlds, for us, have told us what is going on and in ways no one else has done . . ." We will need, later, to expand this understanding of "what is going on." For now let us say that the vision that space fiction offers us is exactly that of space, and the "worlds," including our own, which both occupy and constitute this space. This is what it means to "map." In other words, for space fiction, the individual is not the "atom," the most basic element, of reality. This concept applies to the processes which move space. The individual only deserves mentioning in that he is an entity, an entity usually witnessed within a social context, which goes into the composition of his planet. As Lessing says about her writing the novel: "But as I wrote I was invaded with ideas for other books, other stories, and the exhilaration that comes from being set free into a larger scope, with more capacious possibilities and themes. 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 . . ." This concern for processes over individuals, and the sight of individuals dominated by these processes (thus being a part of these processes), is a position which can also be traced back to the influence of Marxism.
Lessing's understanding may present a problem for some writers and readers of science fiction. That is, if Lessing's vision is truely a scientific one, which I think can be reasonably argued, then many writers of science fiction are not, in fact, writing science fiction; and many readers are in search of something which science fiction, strictly, should not be able to provide them. For example, some science fiction has been concerned with individualism. This being the praising of the lone hero as he, for example, attempts to overcome a crushing state apparatus, or attempts to assert his will in either this world or an alien one. Heinlein's writing is an example of this. Some readers have sought out science fiction just for this very reason. This reverence for the individual either satisfys some psychic desire, or it justifies values already held. For the reasons given above, this theme is contrary to the "science" in science fiction. I suppose it could be argued from this that some science fiction has merely appropriated and restated pre-science fiction themes. But if science fiction is, truly, akin to any literature that has come before it, perhaps this should be the school of Naturalism. One of the best examples of Naturalism is Stephen Crane's The Red Badge of Courage. In his novel Crane is so unconcerned with the individual that he refuses to give his protagonist a name. This is because nature is unconcerned with individuals. And at the end of one's reading it is clear that for Crane courage is not a matter of individual choice, but the same instinctual processes that move other animals. From all this we could say that for Lessing science fiction has really yet to come to itself.
How does Lessing constitute earth, Shikasta, in space and in relation to other planets? Shikasta has been fostered primarily by the more powerful planet, Canopus. But Shikasta has also been influenced, though perhaps to a lesser degree, by Sirius and Shammut. We do not know much about Sirius' presence on Shakasta, other than they are performing experiments of some kind (most likely, since the third book in the series is titled, The Sirian Experiments, we will learn more later). Shammut's influence, it is clear, is to be associated with evil. At one point in the novel this is termed as the "Degenerative Disease." (note what Lessing writes of this "disease," and how it relates to what we have said about individualism: "To identify with ourselves as individuals--this is the very essence of the Degenerative Disease, and every one of us in the Canopean Empire is taught to value ourselves only insofar as we are in harmony with the plan, the phases of our evolution"). Here is revealed one of the more interesting aspects of Shikasta: Lessing's continual movement from a physical, scientific, vocabulary to a metaphysical one and back (with the metaphysical category understood in an interesting, untraditional, sense). If Shammut is an evil influence, then Canopus must represent divine goodness. "What the Natives [those on Shikasta] were being taught was the science of maintaing contact at all times with Canopus; of keeping contact with their Mother, their Maintainer, their Friend, and what they called God, the Divine," writes Lessing. And so earth is poised between the two forces of good and evil (note I have not used the word here, "choice").
The way Canopus has influenced Shikasta, besides the very physicality of itself as a planet, is through its representives. Perhaps the most profound way, as a planet, Canopus demonstrates its influence is as Lessing tells us: "Canopus was able to feed Shakasta 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--the substance-of-we-feeling--. . ." Lessing further tells us: "The little trickle of SOWF that reached this place was the most precious thing they had, and would keep them from falling back to animal level. I said there as a gulf between them and the other animals of Shikasta, and what made them higher was their knowledge of SOWF. SOWF would protect and preserve them." Again, the meeting of the physical and the metaphysical. Evolution as the result of both physical and moral processes.
As for Canopus' representatives, here is where we meet Johor of the novel's title (it is this character's reports, "personal, psychological, historical documents," in a sense, letters, which compose the novel; which makes use of a well-known technique of nineteenth century fiction. See, for example, Frankenstein, Dracula, or Dostoevsky's Poor Folk). But there is also another, shall we say, "messager" who interests us, Taufiq. This character, however, comes under the influence of Shammut and the egoism spawned by the Degerative Disease. For some time Taufiq works against the plans that Canopus has for Shikasta. But by the novel's conslusion Taufiq has been reborn, in the sense of reincarnation, as one who serves Canopus in its attempts, in Shikasta's final days, to save some members of the human race.
It is through Johor's efforts on Shikasta that we, again, have a meeting of the metaphysical and the material. Just as J.R.R. Tolkien was striving, in The Lord of the Rings, to find the actual events underlying Celtic mythology, so Lessing is concerned with the events behind Semitic or Biblical mythology. As Lessing writes in her introduction: "Shikasta has as its starting point, like many others of the genre, the Old Testament." But the events do not just lie behind the Hebrew Bible. The actions of Canopus are the source for all mythology. "Yes, I do believe that it is possible, and not only for novelists, to 'plug in' to an overmind, or Ur-mind, or unconscious, or what you will, and that this accounts for a great many improbabilities and 'coincidences,'" writes Lessing. Perhaps this "collective unconscious," as Jung referred to it, is also another move in Shikasta against the individual ego. And later: "The sacred literatures of all races and nations have many things in common. Almost as if they can be regarded as the products of a single mind. It is possible we make a mistake when we dismiss them as quaint fossils from a dead past." In this way we can come to see Johor and Taufiq as angels. Other examples of mythological elements accounted for are, in the order they appear in in the novel: Hell, ghosts, giants, the Titans, Paradise, a transcendent realm revealed in music and mathematics, sin, prophets, the Oneness of being, David, the name of God, Sodom, Lot, the giving of the Law, Sinai, divine beings mating with humans, Noah and his laws, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in Eden, the tower of Babel, Abraham, the "last days," by my reckoning.
Shikasta, given the novel's conclusion, can be charaterized as a work of eschatology. This decline of earth is not, however, the result of a choice of evil. Rather, as we have seen before, it is the result of processes occuring in space. As Johor tells us: ". . . the cause of this crisis was an unexpected malalignment among the stars that sustained Canopus." The flow of the SOWF has been interrupted; and so also its moral influence on earth. Here, I would maintain, Lessing engages in social criticism of the late 1970s. This being a critique of capital, in league with technology, to create a permanent population of the unemployed. Along with this is a worldwide economic crisis brought about through the wasting of resources in creating a state of "permanent war" (something Orwell understood). This population of the unemployed is made up mostly of the young. A critique of states and their attempts, in various ways, to control this population. A critique of this population itself and its "herd" mentality in forming itself into "gangs" who make a fetish of destruction (not without state sanction). Here we are reminded of Graham Greene's famous short story, "The Destructors." And a critique of doctrinaire Communism, here of Chinese origin.
At Shikasta's conclusion, as befitting a novel concerned with processes, life must give itself over to death; and death becomes a preparation for rebirth. The majority of the human population has given in to the course of death, signified by the lack of SOWF, and destroyed itself. But Johor and Taufiq, reborn as George Sherban and John Brent-Oxford, have been preparing for a survival of a remnant of humanity. Intellectually this is revealed at the trial of the white race, represented by Brent-Oxford. Brent-Oxford's "defense," though surely this is no defense but a lesson given, is that cruelty and exploitation do not exclusively reside "outside" those who pass judgment. "'I want to ask all of you present: Why is it that you, the accusers, have adopted with such energy and efficiency the ways you have been criticising?,'" asks Brent-Oxford. Evil is not limited to the province of the "other." It is such that the subject may participate in it--and to the extent that the subject is ignorant of this, the evil is that much more potent. Such non-thinking, which is actually indicitive of non-being, is, as Hannah Arendt observed, the ground of evil. Here, I think, is a lesson for our time as well: when many are too comfortable with pointing out, in a sweeping manner, the evil of other cultures and religions, and thus labeling them as "terrorists."
Of course, as Lessing has tried to inform us, evil is part of the make-up of the cosmos. There can be no world without it, perhaps because it allows for the very possibility of goodness. Or perhaps to imagine a world without it would be to limit the world. Perhaps, then, the question should be (and perhaps Spinoza understood this in his Ethics): to the extent that one can choose, which side do you want to be on?
And so the rebirth of earth begins. Here are the thoughts of George Sherban's son, Kassim: "I can't stop thinking of them, our ancestors, the poor animal-men, always murdering and destroying because they couldn't help it. 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. And here we all are together, here we are . . ." The son as the personification of the beginning.
Henry A. Jimenez
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