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
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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.
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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,
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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
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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.”