Disciplined Identities: Western Author(ity) in Crisis in Penelope Lively's Cleopatra's Sister

 
Penelope Lively has gained increased critical attention in the past seven years, especially since the early 1990s, when scholars became interested in Lively's engagement with history and subtle but subversive experimental narrative strategies. [1] Her engagement with history and language, combined with a central concern with the experiences of women and other marginalized groups, place Lively in discussions of feminism and postmodern theories and fictions. [2] Mary Hurley Moran does a thorough and informed study of Lively's place in a tradition of Western women writers, explaining her movement from the early British feminist tradition of Doris Lessing and Marilyn French toward a feminism that is informed by recent philosophical interest in the relationship between language and power as represented in the work of Derrida and the French feminists, which puts her in the company of Margaret Atwood and Margaret Drabble (Moran, "Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger" 89). Most of the recent scholarship on Lively centers on her 1987 Booker Prize-winning novel Moon Tiger, which does, indeed, explore her central theme of history in the life of the protagonist, Claudia, whose historiographies, in contrast to those of her male colleagues are "personal" and "emotional" in tone, working contrary to a patriarchal model (90). [3]

Lively takes a new tack in her later novel Cleopatra's Sister (1993). In it she examines and deconstructs normalized sex and class hierarchies within British culture by juxtaposing the life stories of the novel's two protagonists, Howard and Lucy, with the history of a fictional "Third World" country. The characters' stories interweave and alternate, showing their development and the evolution of their curiosity, which leads them both to excel in interesting and successful careers in which they also act as cultural authorities. However, the chapters that discuss the political, mythological, and cultural history of the fabricated Middle Eastern country of Callimbia interrupt what seems to be a simple story of parallel lives that will, ultimately, intersect. By introducing this history to what otherwise promises to be a romance, the novel foreshadows the meeting of the pair as they travel to their unplanned destination in Callimbia, while it also disrupts the novel's primary focus on life in Great Britain in specific and the West in general. Just as the chapters on Callimbia interrupt the compatible narratives of the protagonists' lives, they mirror the jarring effect of the protagonists' confrontation with a foreign culture that is vastly misunderstood and under-represented by their own. Thus, though the novel remains consistent with of Lively's interest in history, it also looks outside of Western culture to question its assumptions as the protagonists scramble for meaning in a land where they cannot form a cohesive narrative from what they see. On both levels, the intrusive chapters on Callimbia within the context of the story reveal a concern with the potential of a resistance that is linguistic in nature as a means of investigating problematic cultural assumptions. The role of cultural authorities, as it appears in the form of the protagonists, resembles Hayden White's construct of the historian, while the disruption of their basic assumptions exposes the impossibility of Western "objectivity."

By accepting notions of history that arose in the 1960s, when White and other critics embraced history as a discontinuous and culturally saturated discourse, scholars and critics must concern themselves with the political potential and dangers of constructing history. Disrupting the authority of History, and, consequently, that of other authoritative disciplines, like science, calls previously accepted narratives, hierarchies, and facts into question. While no one discipline can lay claim to the Truth and exclude all that falls outside of its set of assumptions, since perspective plays such a great role in informing the construction of a narrative, cultural critics must also be aware of placing such an emphasis on perspective that all readings of events descend into the realm of radical relativism. Thus, a more complex model of understanding is necessary to prevent falling into either of the traditional humanist notions of History. Recent cultural critics, such as Linda Hutcheon, offer an alternative means of reading history that insists on scrutinizing the process through which "events" become "facts." Hutcheon's distinction between "fact" and "event" emphasizes the disjunction between what occurs and any representation of that event, given that the fact is always already a particular part or view of the event. The fact limits or frames an aspect of the event. By asserting this difference, the cultural critic is thus concerned with discussing the reasons events come to be understood in particular ways rather than assuming that she has access to the event itself. Ultimately, such a discussion requires the acknowledgement that the process of making history is a social and political endeavor. The process of producing and reproducing knowledge in the forms of science and journalism are enacted in Lively's Cleopatra's Sister as the lives of a paleontologist, Howard, and a journalist, Lucy, collide during their abduction in the war-torn country of Callimbia, a place both only know as Other or Third World. [4] Though both Howard and Lucy are authorities in the West, their faculties of reason fail them as they search for clues and (re)construct the events of their capture only to realize that naming and ordering the people and events around them lends them no power to locate their position or fate in any certain terms.

In a sense, Howard and Lucy have been "disciplined"; their training in their respective fields, science and journalism, has conditioned them to believe that ordering, naming, and identifying causes and effects grant them knowledge and, consequently, power. However, the idea that empiricism has the capacity to create order is problematic; judgement based on empiricism and reason assumes a definitive authority over the object, in this case the earth and politics. The scientist or journalist, then, like White's construct of the historian, becomes what White calls "a professional seeker of truth" in his discussion of the discipline of history. Similarly, the interpretations that the seemingly "objective" scientist or journalist (or historian) produces appear to be free from cultural biases. But, as White indicates, a certain "politics" lurks behind any label or meaning attached to any object, event or person:

 
In the above definition of the historian, politics are individual, and the historian can separate them from his work to provide "accurate," "objective" readings. Though a discipline may appear to have no politics at work, the very process through which a "professional" attaches labels, draws conclusions, and forms judgements carries a kind of "'politics' [having] to do with the kind of authority the interpreter claims vis-à-vis the established political authorities of his society, on the one hand, and vis-à-vis other interpreters in his own field of study or investigation, on the other, as the basis of whatever rights he conceives himself to possess and whatever duties he feels obliged to discharge as a professional seeker of the truth" ("Politics of Historical" 113). Thus, the very procedure by which Howard and Lucy act as scientist and journalist, respectively, asserts a certain authority.

White credits the nineteenth century with inuring various fields of study to "disciplines," shifting historical narratives laden with rhetoric and grounded in religion to "objective" and "factual" accounts that exist beyond the reaches of politics and social order. The "disciplinization" of history mirrors attempts in other fields to gain authority through "objectivity," such as in science and criticism, and, later, journalism. Like the historian, the scientist and journalist "'give[s] clarity, order, and form to an area of the historical record [or, in terms of Cleopatra'sSister, the event or object of scientific study] that was formerly obscure, disorderly and chaotic'" (Benedetto Croce, qtd. in Konstan 68). To make significant changes in the awareness of cultural authorities concerning their biases and assumptions, scholars and critics must consider the historical, social and political climate surrounding their interpretations and conclusions.

White's reconceptualization benefits critics who seek to challenge sex, race, and class hegemonies in its complication of notions of authority. However, some critics, like Peter De Bolla, charge White with turning away from the problems of textual representation in his recent work, such as "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality." De Bolla suggests that White's latest turn attempts a movement toward morality, and, thus, an exit from history and the world of politics: "White extends this point [that all narratives moralize the events they discuss] so that the act of narration itself is seen in terms of the 'impulse to moralize the events of which it treats'" (50). White's focus on "morality" poses a problem because he fails to situate it in a social and historical context. His turn away from a socially and politically grounded reading of different historical narratives also leads him to adjust his notion of the historian. As Gayatri Spivak explains in her critique of White, his view of the discipline of history results in "a tirade against the folly or knavery of the practitioners of the discipline" ("Politics of Interpretations" 121). Spivak's criticism redirects attention from the flaws of White's argument toward a more complex reconfiguration of the ways in which the role of the cultural authority, in this case the historian, can be understood; she complicates the idea of the cultural authority (historian) by focusing on the ways in which specific cultural and political forces shape the historian's records. Thus, the construct of the traditional historian changes from White's depiction of the faulty authority, who only needs to be enlightened as to the nature of the form of study, to Spivak's more complex construct of an authority who both produces and is produced by the discipline and the cultural systems within which she operates.

In "The Politics of Interpretations" Spivak broadens the notion of the historian, and other professions that act as cultural authorities, by highlighting the ways in which ideology shapes the perception of all participants in culture. Because the historian, journalist, and scientist live in culture, history and politics affect them:

 
According to Spivak, the historian's view requires awareness and contextualization in a specific cultural and historical moment. The historian's awareness, then, reveals cultural biases and assumptions rather than a revised methodology, as White asserts. White's deconstruction of the discipline of history in conjunction with Spivak's "broader" concept of ideology serve to illuminate the ways in which Howard and Lucy identify themselves in Lively's Cleopatra'sSister. Neither character can separate his or her identity from his or her experience or career.

Although Spivak's discussion in "The Politics of Interpretations" places cultural authorities squarely within a specific ideologically determined position, her essay "Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography" provides a notion of ideological crisis that promises a potential for a new awareness of how ideology affects any reading of an event. The Subaltern Group uses the term crisis to identify a moment at which "a subject (of ideology)" encounters such a different system of signs that it makes the production of definitions (or naming) impossible; the crisis, then, prompts a "revision or shift in perspective" ("Subaltern" 197). The moment of crisis, when a subject cannot identify a system of signs, generates a radical shift in consciousness; the subject cannot accept former assumptions, readings of events, and definitions of reality as natural or normal, and, thus, unquestionable. The subject, then, can no longer believe him or herself to be a transcendent agent, free of cultural constraints. Once a shift in sign systems distresses the subject, the subject is ripe for a shift in consciousness, a consciousness that allows the subject to understand that experience is always understood through a culturally-defined lens.

In Cleopatra'sSister, both Lucy and Howard function as cultural authorities who have the potential to change and to participate in social transformation. By analyzing how Howard and Lucy perceive their occupations as natural results of their individual dispositions, propensities, and abilities, the connection between identity formation and cultural indoctrination becomes clear. The novel enacts the process of socialization that determines Howard's and Lucy's perceptions of events and the ways in which they produce meaning in their lives. Although this analysis gives the protagonists little in the way of agency, their ability to understand events with an awareness of their cultural positions affords them the capacity to change their perceptions, specifically, by the end of the novel, when both acquire an idea of unrest in the "Third World" that challenges Western stereotypes.

The first half of the novel foregrounds the two protagonists' zealous pursuit of their careers. Howard, a paleontologist, and Lucy, a journalist, represent sources of authority in the West. The narrative illustrates the process through which Howard and Lucy accept their professions as their identities, a fusion that both enables them and limits their capacity to understand the experience that awaits them in Callimbia, when a newly-founded government takes them hostage. The narrative stresses how both characters believe that their dispositions as children ready them for their respective fields. Howard's first experience with a fossil, which he keeps and uses as a doorstop throughout his life, marks his initial interest in paleontology. Howard structures his reading of his life in terms of a narrative that adheres to Western concepts of logic, teleological action, and closure in that the events of his life, which he recalls selectively, culminate in his being a scientist. Because Howard gives reasons for his actions and emphasizes patterns of behavior that denote continuity, his version of his youth seems perfectly plausible, and his understanding of his life and his identity make sense to him. Begun at the point of encounter with the fossil and continued through his early curiosity, adolescent skepticism of religion, and pursuit of a career in science, Howard's life story is a cohesive unit full of meaning and teleological connections:

 
The narrator describes Howard in terms of "the archetypal child," evoking Jung's interpretive methodology of reading myths and legends. The narrator's employment of the term archetypal, however, takes it beyond the realm of the fictional and into that of the mythological and universal. Howard reads his discovery of the fossil on the shore in terms of an epiphany. He defines his discovery of the fossil as a moment at which he learns a Truth that will plot the course of his life. Thus, the narrator exposes that Howard identifies himself by using the conventions of a Western literary tradition.

Howard's own life story, shaped by conventions, contrasts with the narrator's version. From the first sentence of the novel, the omniscient narrator makes it clear that Howard's story neglects information that would make the events of his life contingent upon chance as well as upon whatever intelligence and personality traits that he possesses: "Howard Beamish became a paleontologist because of a rise in the interest rate when he was six years old" (3). One of many reasons that Howard finds the fossil depends upon his family's lack of funds for a vacation, which results in their vacationing closer to home. Merely finding the fossil does not account for his becoming a paleontologist:

 
According to Howard's story, his choices are solely individual, and Howard's construction of his story excludes many parts of his life as well as his awareness of his situation within the economic structure. The narrator goes on to explain that while Howard possessed particular abilities that allowed him the opportunities to excel in science, "the economic climate of the time and the action of the Chancellor of the Exchequer must be given their due" (4). Given that the text juxtaposes comments such as these with Howard's own account, the linear and unified understanding that Howard has of his life and himself are shown to be selective and incomplete.

Similarly, Lucy comes to identify herself with her career, but her sense of the origin of her identity, which would prepare her for journalism, remains less clear than Howard's in that she cannot locate one particular moment that shapes her life as a journalist. Lucy's sensitivity to her class status allows her to understand the ways in which social, and, especially, economic forces, shape her more than Howard does, though she still constructs a unified identity. Because her father left her mother poor and alone with three children, Lucy quickly becomes aware of her inability to control her circumstances completely and, quite literally, of her dependence on society in the form of welfare programs: "Lucy's childhood was dominated by mysterious and portentous incantatory words and phrases: the Family Allowance, the Supplementary Benefit, the Maternity, the Welfare, the Town Hall, the Rent Man, the Insurance..." (26). Her relationship to her career and her perception of herself, instead of being a positive, identifiable and inherent set of traits, hinges upon her awareness of the impact of economic and political structures on her beliefs. Her understanding of economic systems allows her to reject her mother's belief in predestination, a belief that curtails change by making the status quo seem inevitable. Unlike her mother, Lucy pursues her education and career to make changes in her own life and in the world. Lucy's option to be a journalist coincides with her perception of the ways in which politics and the social order must be changed; however, as the narrator indicates, journalism entails an array of possibilities, and not all of them precipitate social change: "There can be no profession more amorphous, more all-embracing. A journalist is he or she who castigates the rulers and who exposes the corrupt, but may also be one who investigates computer software, pig farming, makes of motorcycles, or who writes captions to the colour spreads in pornographic magazines" (68). So that she may write about what interests her rather than what she must write to make a living, she first takes the position of proofreader, and, as the narrator explains, her job at "the seed-catalogue publishers" must suffice until she can find a more influential position. However, even with this first job, Lucy explicitly identifies herself with her position. Her career is more important to her than how much she earns or how much power she wields: "'I am a journalist,' said Lucy—tentatively and defiantly..." (68). Lucy consciously conflates her identity with her career by defining herself as a journalist even though she holds a job that falls short of the work she most wants to do. Her drive to advance in the field, which she believes begins with her acceptance of the low-paying, low-powered job of proofreading the seed-catalogue, depends on her viewing herself as a journalist.

In that Lucy is socially aware and motivated and Howard is not, the protagonists differ in their perceptions of their roles in the world and of the structure of the world itself. Howard sees himself as independent to name fossil specimens that have not yet been identified, while Lucy sees herself as an agent who can, given the opportunity, increase public awareness of social injustice and prompt political change. The public's faith in the objectivity of the journalist and belief in its function to disperse facts reinforces and enables Lucy's claim to authority. The narrator explains the important role journalism plays in Western society: "It is a debased activity, and is also crucial and central to civilized society. If people do not receive reliable information about the world, they are imperilled. And [Lucy] now knew that what she wanted to be was one of the reliable providers" (67). Lucy's decision and identification of herself clears the haze from the identity she repeatedly failed to locate as a child. When she was young, she continually questioned her mother about her father and saw his traces in her life and in her body: "She remained welded to him, just as she remained welded to Luton [the place where she was born], but in the same formal and meaningless way. She entered his name on documents. She bore it herself. She had his freckles and chin" (22). Since Lucy cannot locate a definite origin in her family, she locates the unity of her identity in her disposition or determination to uncover injustices. She, like Howard, sorts the events of her life and uses the profession she chooses to solidify her identity: "It was a logical development of the role she had assumed as a child, when she had seen the beady-eyed critic of the bureaucrats who harassed her mother. She had grown up skeptical and iconoclastic. She felt equipped to make practical use of these valuable natural tendencies [emphasis mine]" (67). Though the sentence leads with social and economic reasons for Lucy's personality, it concludes with Lucy's understanding that she is uniquely equipped to assume the role of her family's financial manager. Like Howard, Lucy has constructed her life story around what she defines as her individual personality, and, in so doing, both believe in the Western notion of individualism, asserting a core identity or personality.

The narrative demonstrates the ways in which Howard and Lucy see themselves as unique individuals, separate from those around them, and this perspective empowers them to challenge authority. From the time that they are children, Howard and Lucy contest the authority of their parents. Howard defies his mother to "prove" the existence of "God" to him by refusing to attend a Christmas carol service, but his mother argues that church is important because of its social function. Nonetheless, Howard demands that she give him reason to believe in "God":

 
This passage demonstrates Howard's early identification of himself as a scientist, who must believe only things that can be proven; he logically maintains his point while his mother tries to divert the focus. Likewise, Lucy cannot comprehend her mother's attempt to personify the natural world. She demands reasonable answers to her questions:

 
Without regard to Maureen's possible motives for conjuring up such a story for Lucy, the narrator goes on to interpret Lucy's thoughts: "What Lucy meant was: your claim is impossible because the sun, patently, is not a sentient being. Whatever it may be—up there, wherever it may be—it is clearly not a conscious articulate creature like you and me" (23). In a more sophisticated voice, using terms like patently, sentient, conscious, and articulate, the narrator justifies Lucy's agitation by showing, through reason, that Lucy's feelings are only a result of her precocious mind. The narrator fully champions Howard and Lucy in these instances, showing that they "burst out" when the adults in their lives (their mothers) trivialize their own perspectives.

While Howard goes on to have similar experiences with his lovers (in his young adult life) and wife as he did with his mother, Lucy continues to battle primarily with her mother. Howard's first serious relationship ends when Howard realizes that Celia, his lover, is devoted to a Christian sect that usurps much of her time. When Howard thinks that her elusive behavior indicates that she may be having an affair, he is willing to stay with her. However, upon his understanding that she wants to include him in her church-related activities, he refuses to carry on the relationship. He still desires Celia, even after knowing that she practices a "somewhat idiosyncratic" fundamentalist religion. However, he no longer "love[s]" her: "He tried to analyze this unnerving process of the death of love. It was not so much a death, he decided, as a hideous mutilation, a fatal infection. He still lusted after her.... He also knew there was absolutely no point in them spending any more time together" (53). Again, Howard appears rational in contrast to the rather easily swayed Celia, who joins the religious group because a man whom she once dated introduced her to it. In the narrator's depiction of Howard, he makes his own decisions and structures his own life without bowing to the authority that comes from others' thoughts, values, or opinions. His conclusions appear to be reasonable, critically aware, and independent. Moreover, the narrator's focus on Howard's marriage to Vivien reveals that he surpasses her in intelligence, depth of understanding, and curiosity; for example, his intellectual excitement finds no match when he tells Vivien about a newly-found fossil. In fact, Vivien trivializes Howard's work, saying, "'Howard spends his time digging weird cartoon insects out of bits of rock'" (86). The narrator's reaction is consistent with Howard's: "He saw that along with her incuriosity went a lack of wonder, an incapacity to be astonished. Also, she could not conceive of work which was a compelling pleasure" (86). Once again, Howard emerges as rational and complex while Vivien appears simple: "She disliked social dialogue that was not inconsequential" (87). Howard, in contrast to those who surround him, is critical, thoughtful, intelligent and inquisitive.

According to the narrator, Lucy, similarly, cannot be considered a formless being shaped by the forces that surround her. Although the narrator indicates that her social position plays a part in determining her life and personality, Lucy by no means falls into the passive role that her mother plays. There is a clear difference between Lucy and her mother; Maureen perceives that "there [is] nothing to be done but grin and bear it.... She [is] the sort of person who makes oppressive regimes possible—to set her within a grander historical context" (25). Like Howard, and unlike Maureen, Celia, and Vivien, Lucy desires knowledge. Thus, far from being oblivious pawns, duped and programmed by an oppressive system, Howard and Lucy surface as the strongest characters in the first section of Cleopatra's Sister.

However, Howard and Lucy cannot grasp their experience in Callimbia or structure that experience in definite terms. Their inability to understand and order the events in Callimbia comes from their unfamiliarity with the ways in which the cultural and political climate of Callimbia shape meaning. Because the protagonists read events in Callimbia within the confines of Western ideology, they feel a sense of chaos and loss of meaning. Although Lucy and Howard blame themselves for not being informed enough about world affairs, ultimately their ignorance stems from their participation in and acceptance of Western logic. The Western imperialist subject defines himself like Howard and Lucy do—unified by a core personality. Howard and Lucy fail to see the full impact of social, political, and economic forces on their identities, and this failure blinds them to the fact that their own sign system is not universal or applicable to every environment. For instance, since they experience no severe civil unrest in Great Britain, the events they witness in Callimbia seem impossible. Their acceptance of Western culture as the standard leads them to define any cultural practice outside of the West as Other. Thus, the very qualities that Lucy and Howard find liberating within their own culture, their ability to name, define, and classify, limit them when they enter the world of the Other. [5] Because Howard and Lucy accept humanist values, grounded in Western thought, that allow authority to rest on "facts," labels, and categories without an awareness that these concepts are culturally constructed, they leave behind their ability to act as authorities when they leave the West.

When Lucy and Howard enter the "Third World," they do so as authorities; however, their new environment taxes their authority. As they journey toward Nairobi, their purposes are similar—to classify in the form of narrative specimens that are their objects of study. That they act as authorities, objectifying the natural and social worlds around them, parallels the West's objectification of the "Third World." They initially begin to objectify Callimbia in their attempts to define and fix the meaning of the event of their abduction. However, as Howard and Lucy grapple with understanding their positions as captives, the text draws attention to the particular "crisis" that they encounter. Howard and Lucy face a crisis of consciousness as they flounder in a system of signs that carry confused and unclear meaning for them. [6] The radical and forcible shift of sign systems, the presence of the insurgent, lays the groundwork for a potential shift in perspective for the British travelers. In Callimbia an ideological (op)position counters Howard and Lucy's Western system of signification and renders them unable to locate meaning in definite terms. In the sense that the abduction of the British travelers precipitates an upheaval of their sign-system, the Callimbians launch an insurrection. In this insurrection, however, the Callimbians seize power in terms of knowledge as well as by physical force. [7] Thus, they assume power by controlling cultural authority, which the British travelers check as they enter Callimbia.

When Lucy and Howard find themselves prisoners of the Callimbian government, their inability to understand their situation frightens them more than their physical restrictions. They cannot name who the soldiers are, identify if the guards are soldiers, or determine why they are held captive. They systematically ask questions concerning the identities of the soldiers, but their questions go unanswered, while their own system of identification fails them. The soldiers refuse to answer them and have uniforms that carry no meaning that they can discern. When Lucy tries to find consistency by looking at the races of the soldiers, she finds only the potential for meaning:

 
Although she knows something extraordinary is happening, exactly what her captivity means and why it happens are unclear. Just prior to this deliberation, Lucy says to a group of hostages, whom she identifies as the emergent leaders, that having a narrative would help to locate their position: "'If I knew more about what's going on here it would help.... What's the political situation? Is someone in control, or is it chaotic? If anyone's got a radio...'" (161). Here, the group's frustration stems more from their inability to name their experience through narrative than the physical restraints imposed upon them. In fact, most of the hostages forfeit the idea of exerting themselves physically against the soldiers:

 
Here, the group desires communication and understanding over physical action. That they desire radios, which the soldiers confiscated along with computers, and other forms of communicative device, underscores the power associated with labelling and defining events and objects. Communication would furnish the group with narratives to structure their experience within a framework that would allow them to believe in their ability to define and understand their situation. Since the soldiers/rebels refuse to explain the reasons for the group's detention, the group of British citizens struggles to reclaim their power of authority but, ultimately, cannot.

The British travelers' inability to define their experience following their capture rests upon the ways in which Western culture determines their sense of reality and meaning, particularly as it has "disciplined" them. That the hostages attempt to name their captors and predict their fate, in terms of how much power the British government is willing to exert for their release, is inextricably linked to how they name and understand themselves. Once the interpreter explains that their detention will be prolonged due to the refusal of the British government to comply with their request to send "some" expatriates back to Callimbia, the hostages realize that power lies entirely out of their hands. The hostages' initial reaction consists of a general refusal to believe that they as individuals have any involvement with their plight. However, Lucy's consciousness differs from the rest; she clearly sees that their experience has everything to do with who they are, given that they represent Britain:

 
Paradoxically, Lucy's conditioning to be logical, practical, and rational allows her to identify that she is not in control. Her awareness that this experience involves her allows her to think in broader terms than she would be capable of doing otherwise. She says to Howard, "'I'm a journalist.... I read newspapers rather closely. I've heard about things like this, often enough, just as you have. Sometimes it works out fine, quite quickly. Other times, it doesn't'" (194). Lucy's knowledge of other hijackings gives her the means to contextualize her experience, and it allows her to recognize her own limits; Lucy weighs her own experience in Callimbia against her recollection of similar scenarios she encountered in the news prior to her abduction. Contrary to the sentiments of the other hostages, who reject the idea that they are connected to the events around them, Lucy opens herself to a shift in consciousness. She formerly felt no need to understand the political relations between her own country and those in the "Third World" because her media silences the voices of the rebel group that initiates the coup. The politics of the "Third World" become lost or at least scrambled as Western journalists frame political upheaval in terms of Western culture. For example, any outbreak of protest in a "Third World" nation frequently appears in the Western-controlled media as the result of crazed individuals, who lack culture and restraint. [8] However, her abduction enables her to recognize that the politics of places, which she only thus far considered exotic, play an important role in her life as a British citizen. Although she travels extensively for her job, she, like most travelers from the West, only encounters those parts of countries that serve as entertainment or amusement. In response to the assumption that as a journalist she must know all about the political climate of Callimbia, she says, "'Not enough. I'm wishing now I'd paid more attention'" (220). Lucy realizes that her failure to pursue active engagement with world politics or to question the narratives that her culture produces makes her complicit with the actions of her culture.

Although Western logic blinds Lucy by leading her to accept the relationship between event and fact as unproblematic, Western rationality also furnishes her with the skills to question and doubt via her discipline. Lucy's desire to challenge the economic structure that reduced her mother to cowering before welfare officials makes her especially wary of authority: "She had not the slightest desire to be the officials and the mandarins who had harassed Maureen over the years, but she wanted to be in a position to point a finger at them" (63). Her pursuit of education and desire to expose injustice ready Lucy for a shift in consciousness, which is evident in her recognition of the connections between her personal/professional life and the world of politics. Lucy desires knowledge and insists on questioning instead of attempting to fit into the existing (capitalist) structure:

 
This desire to learn to be sensitive to power relations directs Lucy. Studying at York University "induce[s] a certain cynicism" in Lucy, and her understanding of "how the whole infernal [economic] system work[s]" enables her awareness of cultural and social forces.

Similar to Lucy's search for knowledge, the text champions many of the same qualities in Howard, such as curiosity and critical thinking. These qualities enable him to undergo a change in the ways in which he understands or gives meaning to his experience. Formerly, Howard searched for continuity or an origin in his life to explain the course he followed. However, following Callimbia, Howard refuses to impose order on his experience as he begins viewing his experiences as "contingent":

 
Even though Howard still dissects his experience, he refuses to impose upon it the narrative form in which he had previously captured the events of his life. At first, Howard discerns the source of his anxiety in his inability to name the truth of his predicament: "'What most disturbs me...is the guessing element. Not knowing what is hard fact and what is not. What's true and what isn't'" (198). However, Howard encounters two significant instances in which he realizes that knowing the "truth" of his circumstances does not necessarily grant him the power to change them, even if it were possible. The first instance occurs in the hotel room, when he witnesses from his window a man chased and killed by soldiers. As he spies this scene, he feels disoriented; the advertisements for familiar products on the street outside and the room to which he turns his attention following the incident appear unreal, because they are outside of their familiar context. He sees the "props" in his room as a "sham" that "were as reassuring, and useless, as the universal references in the street beyond the window" (178). The display of brutality he observes in the street amidst the advertisements brings him into crisis. He can no longer reconcile the events he witnesses: "He had again that sensation of being set aside, flung into some eerie purgatory parallel to the real world, and was afraid" (178). The sign-systems that order Howard's sense of reality become unstuck as he sees parts of his "normal," "harmless" world of consumerism serve as the setting for the soldiers' murder. Howard cannot synthesize all of the information he absorbs. No longer in command of his own destiny or identity, Howard realizes that the consumer culture from which he secured authority, privilege and safety in the past cannot comfort him; it is the very thing that unsettles him.

The second experience that leads Howard to recognize his inability to control his fate and opens him to a shift in consciousness occurs during his selection for execution that serves as an example to the British government for denying Callimbia its demands. His initial anger and physical reaction to the implication that he will, indeed, fall victim in an execution give way to his questioning the reasons for his abduction. This experience contributes to his understanding of the ways in which he has participated in his own dire situation. Emphasizing the point that Howard and his government are more closely bound than Howard had fathomed, the interpreter explains, "it is most unfortunate. You [Howard] should feel very angry that your government is so stupid and forces the Callimbian authorities to take these steps....I wonder if you have any idea of the atrocity of the things with which you are so complacently involved" (268-69). Howard as an individual can incur no blame, but he is ultimately culpable because of his complicity with his government's actions against Callimbia. Although Howard escapes execution, his fear and loss of control precipitate a shift in his awareness that challenges his tendency to impose order on his experiences and the events he witnesses.

The novel valorizes the parts of Howard's and Lucy's professional training that emphasize a search for knowledge and curiosity, but it suggests that Howard's and Lucy's approach to their professions is not the norm and that being educated does not necessarily entail the capacity to experience a change in consciousness. The novel suggests this difference through its depiction of the other British hostages with whom Howard and Lucy share quarters. Many of the characters in the group of British hostages remain unaffected by the events. Howard's experience of witnessing the death of the man on the street is the first incident that sparks his wonder about the lives of the people of Callimbia. However, when Howard joins the group for breakfast the next morning and hears people complaining about missing business opportunities and not having hot water or milk, he thinks that "in this city most of us had barely heard of until yesterday, there are people who are certainly not thinking about bath water or the value of their time" (179). In contrast to the rest of the group, Howard's experience of powerlessness leads him to consider the lives of the Callimbians who also suffer from the political unrest. Howard thinks of them not only in terms of how their situation is comparable to his own but also in terms of their greater suffering. The disparity between Howard's shift in consciousness and the complaints of the other hostages marks a potential in Howard's approach to the new information he receives. Where Howard reconceptualizes his role in his environment by empathizing with the Callimbians, the others persist in measuring their experience against familiar terms.

Similarly, as fear mounts concerning their fate, Lucy reflects on the lives of the Callimbian people caught in the center of this political unrest: "Somewhere out there, no great distance from us, other people are going through worse yet. Callimbians. People for whom last week is now some unreachable paradise of normality, just as it is for us" (255). By drawing a parallel between herself and the Callimbian people, Lucy begins a process of humanizing the Callimbian people in her thinking. She fashions images of the Callimbian people from what she knows of the soldiers:

 
Lucy's distance from the images she sees in the media of people living in a land of social and political upheaval shrinks. She also redefines her concept of history by seeing events and people as inextricably tied: "The people who were themselves the legacy of everything that had happened in this country, and who were now paying the price for being present, and in the wrong circumstances, at another climactic moment" (255). Lucy's understanding of the Callimbians' precarious position as the result of a culmination of historical events affords her the ability to broaden her conceptualization of her role in this event. The historical event, then, becomes a climactic moment, contingent upon past events and circumstances rather than an isolated and framed fact. Coming into contact with crisis in Callimbia generates feelings of "empathy and outrage" in Lucy and Howard while it shifts their focus onto the deficiency of their own knowledge: "'I used to write heated pieces about abuse of the planning laws. I'd get indignant about dog registration.'/We have lived luxuriously,' said Howard. 'Compared with most'" (256). Howard and Lucy, whom the text distinguishes from the rest of the group of British hostages, begin to reconfigure their sense of the complex relationship between Western ideology and its effects on lived experience. Their change of consciousness leads to their ability to act as they decide not to impose the ordering principles of narration onto this experience and as they come to assume some level of responsibility for their country's actions in international affairs, while the characters' own comments gesture past the ending as they desire to learn more and become more active in current affairs.

Cleopatra's Sister offers a qualified solution to the problem of agency cited recently by many cultural critics who mourn its loss in poststructuralist definitions of the subject. The change in Howard and Lucy does not point to a universal notion of the self in which the characters come to change through transcendence, as they would via an epiphany, a notion grounded in Western logic. In fact, their position as Westerners in Callimbia fails to provide them with the power to name and identify their experience and surroundings. That is to say that Western culture, then, cannot make normative claims in this text. However, all hope for change or critical distance is not lost; the characters' forced confrontation with an unfamiliar sign system distances them from their own assumptions, which, in turn, allows for the possibility of a shift in consciousness. This shift is a result of the crisis that is initiated when their attempt to enact their own familiar methods of understanding fails them, such as looking for consistency of dress and race among the soldiers or for reports from media sources.

Moreover, it is precisely their dedication to the practices of their respective disciplines, which have shaped their identities to the extent that the methodologies that they use in their respective careers influence the way in which they view other aspects of their lives, that jars them when their faculties fail in Callimbia. Within the very production of knowledge, then, lies the potential for disruption when those processes enter a different system. In other words, as Lucy and Howard re-enact their methodologies, which fail, in a new context, the means by which Lucy and Howard procure their "facts" become strange. Without the support of the Western context, dependence on the media or understanding conflict in terms of race, for example, Lucy and Howard's processes of assessment are revealed to be "hollow," as in the sense that J. L. Austin uses the term to discuss a performative utterance in a place where its context is removed, such as in a play. [9] Repeating these processes of gathering information and making claims becomes "hollow" in its failure to bring about a consistent account of events. As Jonathan Culler explains Derrida's notion of the performative utterance, he draws attention to the necessity of context and convention for the creation of meaning:

 
Likewise, the repetition of processes in Lucy and Howard's many faulty attempts to understand what is happening to them illustrates the limitations of any statement or assertion, which, in turn, highlights the difficulty with which anything can be "known" absolutely. This dependence on context at once exposes the cultural specificity of all knowledge, while it also makes clear that cultural difference must be recognized and respected for any new ways of understanding events to occur.

Cleopatra's Sister refrains from positing a universalized utopian vision and insists upon locating the potential for change in the space of conflict and confrontation between cultures and within culture while the violence of a drastic change in sign systems replaces physical violence. Howard and Lucy can change only when they face an alternative cultural system that resists their own. Their shift in consciousness, however, is not guaranteed in the sense that it would be with a Marxian model of false consciousness, as is evidenced in the inconsistency of the reactions of the other hostages. Rather, the prominent presence of the subaltern subject provides only a potential for a change in consciousness, a potential that is, nonetheless, unreachable without such a presence. It is this (speaking) subject, with a system of signs that challenges Western logic, that has the ability to strip the processes of signification from their context, a context that often normalizes them and makes them seem to be absolute. Cleopatra's Sister, with its insistence on contextualization and specificity, resists at once a gravitational pull either toward a model of the subject that is stable or one that is so restricted to individual experience that it falls short of acknowledging the broader implications of that experience. Lively's novel contributes to new theories of the subject by depicting identities that are undeniably "disciplined"; however, by revealing gaps in Western logic, it also indicates that there are spaces from which subjects themselves can change and make choices. And at a historical moment at which "Third World" countries are generally disregarded and misrepresented in Western media, especially in the way that Arab nations are demonized, it is useful to consider the limitations of the representations and the biases that produce them. In this sense, Cleopatra's Sister examines the present as much as it does history.

Works Cited

Culler, Jonathan. "Meaning and Iterability." On Deconstruction. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982. 110-134.

De Bolla, Peter. "Disfiguring History." Diacritics 16:4 (1986): 49-58.

Dukes, Thomas. "Desire Satisfied: War and Love in The Heat of the Day and Moon Tiger." War, Literature and the Arts 3:1 (1990): 75-97.

Hoda, El Sadda. "Egypt as Metaphor: Changing Concepts of Time in Forster, Durrell, and Lively; Proceedings: International Symposium on Comparative Literature." Images of Egypt in Twentieth Century Literature. Ed. Gindi Hoda. Cairo: U of Cairo P, 1991.

Hutcheon, Linda. "Historicizing the Postmodern: The Problematizing of History." A Poetics of Postmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge, 1988. 87-101.

Huyssen, Andreas. "The Search for Tradition: Avant-garde and postmodernism in the 1970s." Postmodernism: A Reader. Ed. Thomas Docherty. New York: Columbia UP, 1993. 220-36.

Jackson, Tony. "The Consequences of Chaos: Cleopatra's Sister and Postmodern Historiography." Modern Fiction Studies 42 (Summer 1996): 397-417.

Konstan, David. "The Function of Narrative in Hayden White's Metahistory." CLIO 11:1 (1981): 65-78.

Le Mesurier, Nicholas. "A Lesson in History: The Presence of the Past in the Novels of Penelope Lively." New Welsh Review 2:4 (1990): 36-8.

Lively, Penelope. Cleopatra's Sister. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.

Moran, Mary Hurely. Penelope Lively. New York: Twayne, 1993.

—. "Penelope Lively's Moon Tiger: A Feminist History of the World." Frontiers: A Journal of Womens's Studies 11:2-3 (1990): 89-95.

Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. In Other Worlds. New York: Routledge, 1988.

—. "The Politics of Interpretations." In Other Worlds. 118-33.

—. "Subaltern Studies: Deconstructing Historiography." In Other Worlds. 197-221.

White, Hayden. "Historiography and Historiophoty." American Historical Review 93:5 (1988): 1193-9.

—. "The Politics of Historical Interpretation: Discipline and De-Sublimation." Critical Inquiry 9:1 (1982): 113-37.

—. "The Rhetoric of Interpretation." Poetics Today 9:2 (1988): 253-74.

Yvard, Pierre. "Pack of Cards, a Theme and Technique." Journal of the English Short Story 13 (1989): 103-11.

1. Lively has written an extensive body of fiction since her first book in 1970. Children's literature constitutes the majority of her early work, and she won Great Britain's Carnegie Medal for The Ghost of Thomas Kempe (1973). She also won Great Britain's National Book Award in 1980 for her adult novel Treasures of Time. She has written at least eleven novels and one collection of short stories.

2. For an interesting and informative view of how Cleopatra's Sister benefits from an interdisciplinary reading, based on recent scientific theories, see Tony Jackson.

3. For more criticism on Lively, see Dukes, Hoda, Yvard, and Le Mesurier.

4. Insofar as the characters engage in a failed attempt to define their experience, the text employs a performative technique in that it displaces an action, namely defining experience, within a context that makes such a task impossible. This maneuver thus parodies Western logic so as to draw attention to its restricted efficacy and inability to transcend cultural boundaries.

5. Spivak reinforces this notion: "There is an affinity between the imperialist subject and the subject of humanism" ("Subaltern" 202).

6. The crisis initiates what Spivak calls a "revision or shift in perspective..." in which "the agency of change is located in the insurgent or the 'subaltern'" ("Subaltern" 197).

7. The violence perpetrated upon the British travelers occurs in terms of the disruption of their sign-system rather than physically. As Spivak explains, "A functional change in a sign system is a violent event" ("Subaltern" 197).

8. One recent example of this slanted representation occurred during the Gulf War when CNN and other networks painted Saddam Hussein as an insane tyrant, bent on bringing the Western world to its knees by controlling the Mid-East's oil supply. The image establishes that if Hussein were rational and logical, he would abide by current arrangements Western nations have with Middle Eastern countries. Thus, the actions surrounding the Gulf War lost their complexity as the media distilled the events to a story in which Hussein played the villain.

9. It is interesting to note that as Johnathan Culler understands the notion of the performative utterance, it is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish it from an affirmative claim. This is to say that any factual claim always contains within it the implication of a judgment or a claim to truth and falsehood. In the context of Cleopatra's Sister, this blurring of the line between judgment and fact is exposed clearly when Lucy and Howard fail to access, and thus assess, their experience.