Anticipating Apocalypse: Power Structures and the Periphery in Doris Lessing’s the Fifth Child and Ben, in the World

This article argues that unremitting conflicts between the power centres and the individuals from the borderline spaces of the society characterise Doris Lessing’s novels The Fifth Child and Ben, in the World. The paper seeks to further the argument by applying Michel Foucault’s early work on power and Zygmunt Bauman’s theory on liquid, thus postmodern, fear to manifest the implosion of the contemporary civilization that lives on global/local disparities and operates through subversive surveillance.