Doris Lessing's The Making of the Representative for Planet 8, published in 1982, is the fourth work of science fiction in her series Canopus in Argos: Archives. This novel depicts vividly how the residents of Planet 8 face death collectively. Reading death in the light of Lessing's oeuvre, we are led to one important question: if, in Lessing's early novels, she places emphasis on personal fate and death, one is left questioning why she depicts not only personal but also collective death in her later novels, such as The Making, even associating them with colonizing policy. This article investigates Lessing's purpose in portraying death in The Making. I first explore how the Representatives encounter personal death and transform it into impersonal death, which crystallizes them into a new life-form, a cosmic life-form that connects them with other beings. Deleuze's extension of Blanchot's concept of impersonal death into that of "a life" as impersonal can help us understand how death serves as the conduit to impersonal life, forcing the Representatives to think anew and making possible a mystic vision of interconnected life. Next, I explore why Lessing envisions a cosmic life after death. What can this cosmic afterlife teach us? If impersonal death implies the erasure of all the residents' individualities while making them into one collective life-form, will it become another dystopian unity, where differences are eliminated for the benefit of the whole? How can all the dying beings retain their differences while converging into one unity? Deleuze's concept of "duration" helps us understand the paradoxical relationship between a collective life-form (one) and individualities (differences) as well as how different beings are interconnected in the virtual one and how, in this virtual field, differences are maximized rather than minimized or erased.
從萊辛外太空五部曲當中的第四部曲《第八號行星代表的產生》一書中,我們可以看見一種新的倖存者模式,他們不再是分離的個體,而是集體的、結晶化的、穿越死亡界線的代表們。筆者認為小說處理的是有關生命新樣態如何超越死亡域外並與其它物種生成的問題。在小說裡,當代表們/倖存者面對冰風暴的死亡威脅,他們無處可逃,瀕臨滅絕。面對死亡的絕對命令,星球的人們分化成兩種,一種在冰風暴的死亡威脅下成為非人,另一種則是帶領星球生命邁向結晶化之宇宙生命的代表們。代表們在死亡的那一刻與山川、冰雪和死去的族人(非人)融合,更與高等智慧生命體-加諾波斯星球的使者喬荷-結合,所有的物種真正打破疆界,融為一體。令人好奇的是,萊辛為何從早期偏向探討個體轉向刻劃集體?在《第八號行星》中,她為何不僅探討個體死亡,也擴及集體的死亡?更特別的是她竟背棄反殖民的原則,描繪宇宙殖民政策下,個體放棄生命求取整體存續的必要性。本文將由此提問出發,企圖找出萊辛創造此涵納差異的宇宙新生命樣態的意圖所在。論文第一部分利用德勒茲的死亡與生命的相關理論處理無人稱死亡如何帶領代表們進入一無人稱生命形式。第二部分則探討萊辛描繪一個死後的宇宙生命之用意。當集體新生命樣態成形,死去的個體如何保有其個體性?我主張萊辛所創生的宇宙新生命樣態能提供我們一個檢視整體與差異共存的可能性。而德勒茲的綿延理論幫助我們檢驗《第八號行星》中集體生命體與個體差異間的弔詭關係,使我們得以探見不同的生命型態如何在潛態的世界中相互交纏,互相生成,使差異不再因整體的利益而被抹除,反而被交纏的生命型態極大化。