TOWARDS REMEMBERING THE SUFI PHILOSOPHY: DECONSTRUCTION OF BOUNDARY OPPOSITIONS IN DORIS LESSING’S BRIEFING FOR A DESCENT INTO HELL

The aim of this article is to investigate how in her novel, briefing for a descent into hell, doris lessing deconstructs binary oppositions. in the novel, it is argued that the previous descenders of god are sent to earth to spread the sufi motto, “life is one”, but the humankind forget the given knowledge in the course of life. failing to perform god’s message, the society begin to act as individuals and create social boundaries gradually. in lessing’s novel, the main character, charles watkins, descents into madness and retrieves the sufi knowledge as the previous messengers did. his descend into madness enables him to explore the blind spots in ideologies and their impacts on his identity. although watkins has to return to his old habits and social life through electric shock in the ending, it can be argued that watkins acknowledges the importance of both the ordinary truth and the inner truth through his experience of platonic immanence and transcendence simultaneously. together with this, the letters sent to watkins would enable the readers to see and question the inner workings of ideological indoctrination of war, language, science and education. in this article, utilizing from platonic, jungian, irigarian and derrida’s similar theories on boundary oppositions, it will be argued that watkins undermines plato’s hierarchical dualism between phenomenal and material world so as to realize “transcendent function” in jungian sense and recalls the forgotten sufi doctrine called “oneness”.