Representation in Lessing’s The Making of the Representative for Planet 8

Abstract

This dissertation is a discussion of Lessing’s The Making of the Representative for Planet 8 from postcolonial perspective as an exposure of how the colonizers represent native people through different discourses and hegemonize for their own benefit. Even though it is imaginary or fictitious, the native people represent nonwestern people and societies whereas Canopus as western colonizer. The narrator is a native who is nearly a slave and cannot critique the statements spoken by his masters. They are forced to create new place and again destroy it according the wish of the Canopus. The Colonizers have created discourse about the native that they are unable to guide themselves and the Canopus people are more advanced and superior, thus the representation is always misrepresentation. And the native people have internalized this discourse; so that they give consent to be ruled them by the Canopus.