Abjection and Sexually Specific Violence in Doris Lessing’s The Cleft

The article applies selected concepts from the writings of Julia Kristeva to the analysis of a novel by Doris Lessing entitled The Cleft. Published in 2007, The Cleft depicts the origin of sexual difference in the human species. Its emergence is fraught with anxiety and sexually specific violence, and invites comparison with the primal separation from the mother and the emancipation of the subject in process at the cost of relegating the maternal to the abject in the writings of Julia Kristeva. Lessing creates an ahistorical community of females (Clefts) from which the male community (Squirts) eventually evolves. The growing awareness of sexual difference dovetails with the emotional and intellectual development, as the nascent human subject gradually enters linear time viewed from perspective by the narrator of the novel, a Roman senator who hoards ancient manuscripts with the story of Clefts and Squirts. The article juxtaposes the ideas of Lessing and Kristeva, who have both cut themselves off from feminism, and have both been inspired by psychoanalysis. Primarily, Lessing’s fictional imaginary can be adequately interpreted in light of Kristeva’s concept of abjection as an element that disturbs the system. My interpretation of abjection is indebted to Pamela Sue Anderson’s reading of Kristeva, notably her contention that violence as a response to sexual difference lies at the heart of collective identity. Finally, the imaginary used by Lessing and Kristeva is shown to have stemmed from the colonial imaginary like the concepts of Freud and Jung

Growing together: expanding roles for social work practice in early childhood settings

In the United States, interest in early childhood development has grown dramatically over the past two decades and continues to expand. Increasing public support for programs and services that address the needs of young children and their families provides numerous opportunities for social work intervention. This article describes three major early childhood systems—early intervention, Early Head Start, and early care and education—and discusses ways that social workers can strengthen programs within these systems and improve outcomes for participating children and families. Social workers' understanding of and commitment to family-centered practice and cultural competence are highlighted. Opportunities for social workers to become involved in advocating for, developing, and leading high-quality early childhood programs and implications for social work education are also discussed.Accepted manuscrip

The Horizon Conquerors: Post-war London through Colonial Eyes.

Doris Lessing and V.S. Naipaul both arrived in London a few years after the end of the Second World War. This paper looks at their perceptions of the city as 'colonials', as seen from their fiction and non-fiction writings

The Modal Gap: the Objective Problem of Lessing\u27s Ditch(es) and Kierkegaard\u27s Subjective Reply

This essay expands upon the suggestion that Lessing\u27s infamous ‘ditch’ is actually three ditches: temporal, metaphysical, and existential gaps. It examines the complex problems these ditches raise, and then proposes that Kierkegaard\u27s Fragments and Postscript exhibit a similar triadic organizational structure, which may signal a deliberate attempt to engage and respond to Lessing\u27s three gaps. Viewing the Climacean project in this way offers an enhanced understanding of the intricacies of Lessing\u27s rationalist approach to both religion and historical truth, and illuminates Climacus\u27s subjective response to Lessing

The experiences of early childhood development home visitors in the Eastern Cape province of South Africa

BACKGROUND This article examines the development of early childhood development (ECD) home-visiting services in South Africa. AIM To examine the factors that could support the success of home-visiting programmes as well as to explore the experiences of bachelor’s-level home visitors rendering such services. SETTING This study was conducted in the Eastern Cape, a highly impoverished area of South Africa. METHODS It begins with a discussion of the emergence of home-visiting as a strategy for the delivery of ECD services in South Africa and a review of the literature on ECD home-visiting, particularly with highly vulnerable, impoverished families. Next a focus group conducted with a small sample of home visitors as part of a multi-faceted community assessment is described. The results are examined within the context of challenges facing this particular part of South Africa and the nation as a whole. RESULTS Four themes emerged as most prominent: (1) encountering the effects of extreme family poverty, (2) identifying high rates and multiple aspects of child maltreatment, (3) encountering scarce resources in high-need areas and (4) finding rewards and maintaining a desire to continue serving challenging populations. CONCLUSION This study provides a unique window on the challenges that ECD home visitors are likely to encounter when working with families living in extreme poverty, the resourcefulness that home visitors often demonstrate and the rewards to be found in this work.Published versio

Lessing and Emerson: Conscious Evolution and Ideal Reality

Although Doris Lessing writes during the twentieth century in England and Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote during the nineteenth century in America, they both explore the complexity of human existence through their work. Both authors visualize the possibility of an ideal reality, or human evolution, and believe human beings are capable of transforming ordinary, or actual, reality into ideal reality. The human potential for the creation of the ideal, however, depends on the development of that potential to its fullest extent. Lessing and Emerson believe only the individual is capable of completely developing human potential. Through a series of steps, or experiences, the individual develops his or her potential and ultimately becomes capable of transforming ordinary reality into ideal reality. In probing the more complicated aspects of human existence in their work, both Lessing and Emerson aim to instruct and educate readers. The two authors use their art to model their own beliefs and behavior as well as to effect transformation among all readers. Lessing and Emerson expect from readers active rather than passive reading--readers must alter their behavior based on what they read instead of merely reading a work and forgetting about it. The art of writing, for Lessing and Emerson, represents a vehicle through which they transmit their ideas and cause people to act, or to work for human evolution. Though Lessing and Emerson write from very different and very distinct environments, neither can easily be categorized as a certain type of writer. While Lessing expresses ideas mainly through fiction and Emerson through essays, both authors examine the various philosophical issues central to human existence. The authors transcend all categories in their attempts to explore and explain the human condition and, in transcending those categories, redefine the role of the artist. Art, for Lessing and Emerson, does not represent merely a form of entertainment. Art represents the human condition, and the two authors consider their art essential to the evolution of humanity. While Lessing and Emerson appear, on the surface, to be very different from one another--a twentieth-century English female novelist and a nineteenth-century American male essayist--they contemplate many of the same philosophical ideas important to people of any century or country. Emerson is regarded as one of the greatest writers/thinkers of the nineteenth century as a result of his ideas about the human condition. His ideas transcend all boundaries and hold meaning for all humans. Lessing\u27s career of exploring human existence aligns her with the transcendental Emerson, making her one of the wisest and most observant writers/thinkers of the twentieth century. Lessing\u27s vision transcends all boundaries and incorporates all of humanity, and ultimately points toward the evolution of the human race

Review: The Journal of Dramaturgy, volume 22, issue 1, part 1

Contents include: Editors\u27 Notes; The 2011 Lessing Award D.D. Kugler, You Might Be Pretty Good at This An Introduction by Geoff Proehl; The 2011 Lessing Award D.D. Kugler, An Introduction by Vanessa Porteous; he 2011 Lessing Award D.D. Kugler,Welcoming Failure, Acknowledging Subjectivity, Acceptance Speech; 2011 Elliott Hayes Award Introduction; 2011 Elliott Hayes Award Acceptance Speech; Journey to China. Issue editors: D.J. Hopkins, Sydney Cheek O\u27Donnellhttps://soundideas.pugetsound.edu/lmdareview/1043/thumbnail.jp

Body Narrative: An Analysis of the Symbolic Meaning of Hand in the Works of Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing was famous for her writing about women’s experience, however, her writing about body covered not only women but also men of varying age. Hand, as one of the body parts Lessing paid special attention to, was the best representation of Lessing’s thinking about violence and human nature. This paper argued that Doris Lessing, though usually wrote from women’s perspective, was a humanism writer instead of a prejudiced women artist since she spared much effort writing about the times and suffering people. The body narrative in the novels of Doris Lessing vividly revealed Lessing’s representation of the society and her optimistic attitude toward life though in difficult times

Ein "Traum vom Theater in Deutschland" : Heiner Müllers produktive Rezeption von Lessings 'Wie die Alten den Tod gebildet'

Dass dem abschließenden Lessing-Triptychon in Heiner Müllers "Leben Gundlings Friedrich von Preußen Lessings Schlaf Traum Schrei" eine eminent biographische bzw. autobiographische Dimension eigen ist, wurde von Müller betont. Die Forschung hat das gerne wiederholt. Wesentlich für diese Deutung sind die biographischen Parallelen zwischen Lessing und Müller

Grotesque maternity: reading "happiness" and its eugenics in Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child (1988)

This paper contexualises and reads Doris Lessing’s The Fifth Child (1988) as a criticism towards the Family Acts conducted by Thatcher’s government in 1980s Britain. The article principally draws attention to the main and minor protagonist’s “annomalous” bodies and their relation to ablism that underlies the British government in its utilitarian campaign to strengthen the values of “conventional families”. Lessing’s text shows the way in which society makes a mother be intimate to her child, simultaneously distancing them from society, and relating the child’s heath to the idea of “happiness”. To prove this close maternal relationship, first of all, we will look at the Family Acts that the Conservatives propounded in the eighties, and investigate the rhetorics involved in their justifying the blueprint of the “conventional family” (nuclear family, stable income, home purchase, moral for “healthy” reproduction and nurturing). Based upon this point, secondly, I will show how the couple Harriet and David internalise the “happiness” of the conventional family in Fifth, and the way in which their happiness is destroyed by the birth and growth of their fifth child, Ben, by the effect of the story’s Gothic narrative. Positioning Fifth in the neo-Gothic revival movement by women writers, I will argue how the Gothic narrative is employed in an effective manner in Fifth for blurring the boundaries of the bodies between mother and child: using the theories of Margrit Shildrick, I read it as the leakiness of the bodies in the text making readers uncertain as to who is the monster, the baby or the mother. The leaky maternal body, which represents the intimate physical relationship between the mother and the baby, and the Gothic narrative both lead to distancing the mother-and-child from society, as the mother/child are seen as monsters. Finally, this chapter will point out the narrative in which Ben is always closely associated with minor characters in the novel (the disabled and the unemployed). From these readings, Ben’s monstrous physicality and Harriet’s fixation on a “happy (conventional) family” shows Lessing’s accusation of the exclusive and utilitarian society that Thatcher made for Britain: behind the “happiness” that neoliberalism offers, the citizens in such utalitarian societies are asked to be productive and have able bodies, and especially for forming “happy conventional families”, mothers are asked to give birth to “healthy” children, who are productive for society at large