多麗絲‧萊辛的作品總是關心人道問題，以及何謂人類。她最主要的觀點係在人類進化的過程中，人類文化總是企圖掩飾他們的天性以及原始的本性。萊辛對於人類身體的建構跟文明權力系統之間的關聯，跟傅柯的說法緊密相關。《浮世畸零人》中的主角班（Ben）經由他身體的展演，尋求世界上一個可以接受他與眾不同的身體的地方。班的身體總是被物化為他者，而他也因此被視為社會上的邊緣人。然而這個一直在移動中的身體，不管是被迫或是自願，總是改變著自己的外表，為的是可以跨越自己與其他主體之間的界線，也因此充滿了變動性與機動性。班的身體外表，像是米赫爾‧巴赫汀所提出的古怪的身體，因為偏離常軌而充滿了可能性。班的身體也如同伊莉莎白‧葛爾茲所說的，代表了一種媒介：他的外表由內在心理狀態所建構，於此同時，社會對於身體外表的刻畫也影響了內心。人類的身體因此交織了被文明生活同化的印跡。然而，如同傅柯所分析，自我與主體的維持主要係透過自我的監督而非身體的自我限制。班所需要的「被接受』與「被關愛」引領他靠近那些也有同樣願望的人。班特殊的身體外表，髣髴鏡子一般，反映出每個人潛在的慾望—無論是好的或者惡意的。他也因此跟許多不同的人發展出關聯性的關係。本文將探討萊辛如何將自然與文化、身體與文明之間的二元對立轉化成開放的可能性，並因此認知每個個體根本上的相互關聯性。班在這個世界上的故事，也是呈現與省思一個人在世界上的故事：視身體為物體的感知、主體建構的身分認同、以及由觀看及觀看的力量所形成的自我，構成一種身體的自我於世界上存在的重要經驗。

Doris Lessing’s writing has always concerned itself with human rights and the question of what it truly is to be human. One of her major perspectives is that in the process of human evolution, culture mostly requires people to stifle their instinct and primary nature. Her idea that the human body is constructed by the systemic power in relation to civilisation is, moreover, remarkably close to that of Michel Foucault. In Ben, in the World (2000), the protagonist Ben is in search of a position in the world where his difference could be accepted through the performance of his body. Ben being an outsider, his body is often deemed as an objectified otherness. However, this body on move, no matter reluctantly or not, is in the act of changing its appearance in order to cross the boundaries between itself and other subjects and is full of flexibility and mobility. Ben’s body reminds readers of Bakhtin’s interpretation of a grotesque body, which is full of possibilities for its deviation. Meanwhile,pretty similar to what Elizabeth Grosz’s description of body, it also represents a kind of medium: the appearance is constructed by the subject’s inner psychology and also by the outer social inscription on the body’s exterior influences over the psychical interior. The human body is seen to be entwined with acculturation and the civilian life. Nevertheless, as in Foucault’s analysis, selfhood and subjectivity are more profoundly maintained through individual self-surveillance rather than by physical constraint. Ben’s body, which needs to be “accepted” and “cared for,” opens up for himself the way to those who have the same wishes. Ben’s distinctive body figure is like a mirror which reflects everyone’s hidden desire of goodness or malice. It therefore develops relational positions with different people. In this paper, I will examine how the binaries of culture/nature and body/civilisation are represented by Lessing in a mode that opens up the possibility of recognising their fundamental interrelationship. Ben in the world is a representation of and meditation on being in the world: the perception of the body as object and the subjective constitution of identity and selfhood through that gaze and its power to shape the fundamental experience of be(i)n(g) a bodily self.