METAMODERN MODEL OF FEMINISM IN DORIS LESSING’S NOVEL “THE CLEFT”

Abstract

In the paper, the author has outlined the metamodern specificity, explicated through the system of ideas, as well as the manifestations of intertextuality (including paratextuality) in the novel “The Cleft” by Doris Lessing. The views expressed and substantiated by L. Miroshnychenko in her work in 2012, analyzing the novel of the British writer in the paradigm of the philosophy of skepticism, have been developed. It is emphasized that both the epigraph and the plot complex of “The Cleft” represent a system of ideas that cannot be considered through the prism of stereotypes, in particular in the feminist studies. It is proved that the British author seeks to bring the conversation about anthropological and ontological (defined by the “divine” nature) differences between men and women to a new level of understanding, which is typologically related to the post-postmodern world, including metamodernism as one of its trends. Metamodernism makes it possible to construct a world, in which subjects with fundamentally different positions converge, but each of them has the right to exist. In this case, it is argued that “The Cleft” is an example of an intellectual British post-postmodern novel. D. Lessing from the first epigraph sets a special intellectual dynamics in the novel, where neither the position of a man nor the position of a woman, in the end, rises above each other, but exists, asserting its own anthropological status, determined by various external and internal factors. The role of women and the role of men are marked by differences that have biological, psychological, anthropological, etc. nature, and, hence, the differentiation of the world into one in which feminine and masculine models function is natural in the novel. The masculine world is associated with travel, movement, the discovery of new territories, while the feminine discourse is marked by the motive of preserving space. Such positions, according to the narrator, have ingrained in the masculine and feminine differences. It is emphasized that the “The Cleft” deconstructs feminist approaches, which for the British author are simplified, schematic and stereotypical in terms of understanding the nature of women.