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The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's the Dispossessed

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The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin's the Dispossessed 05-235 (01) FM.qxd 9/12/05 2:16 PM Page i The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed 05-235 (01) FM.qxd 9/12/05 2:16 PM Page ii 05-235 (01) FM.qxd 9/12/05 2:16 PM Page iii The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed Edited by Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman LEXINGTON BOOKS A Division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham • Boulder • New York • Toronto • Oxford 05-235 (01) FM.qxd 9/12/05 2:16 PM Page iv LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200 Lanham, MD 20706 PO Box 317 Oxford OX2 9RU, UK Copyright © 2005 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The new utopian politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The dispossessed / edited by Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7391-0862-X (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 0-7391-1086-1 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Le Guin, Ursula K., 1929- Dispossessed. 2. Le Guin, Ursula K., 1929—Political and social views. 3. Politics and literature—United States—History—20th century. 4. Political fiction, American—History and criticism. 5. Utopias in literature. I. Davis, Laurence, 1967- II. Stillman, Peter G. PS3562.E42D576 2005 813'.54—dc22 2005011066 Printed in the United States of America ∞ ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. 05-235 (01) FM.qxd 9/12/05 2:16 PM Page v Contents Editorial Note vii Introduction ix Laurence Davis Part I. Open-Ended Utopian Politics 1 The Dynamic and Revolutionary Utopia of Ursula K. Le Guin 3 Laurence Davis 2 Worlds Apart: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Possibility of Method 37 Simon Stow Part II. Post-Consumerist Politics 3 The Dispossessed as Ecological Political Theory 55 Peter G. Stillman 4 Ursula K. Le Guin, Herbert Marcuse, and the Fate of Utopia in the Postmodern 75 Andrew Reynolds 5 The Alien Comes Home: Getting Past the Twin Planets of Possession and Austerity in Le Guin’s The Dispossessed 95 Douglas Spencer Part III. Anarchist Politics 6 Individual and Community in Le Guin’s The Dispossessed 111 Dan Sabia v 05-235 (01) FM.qxd 9/12/05 2:16 PM Page vi vi Contents 7 The Need for Walls: Privacy, Community, and Freedom in The Dispossessed 129 Mark Tunick 8 Breaching Invisible Walls: Individual Anarchy in The Dispossessed 149 Winter Elliott Part IV. Temporal Politics 9 Time and the Measure of the Political Animal 167 Ellen M. Rigsby 10 Fulfillment as a Function of Time, or the Ambiguous Process of Utopia 181 Jennifer Rodgers 11 Science and Politics in The Dispossessed: Le Guin and the “Science Wars” 195 Tony Burns Part V. Revolutionary Politics 12 The Gap in the Wall: Partnership, Physics, and Politics in The Dispossessed 219 Everett L. Hamner 13 From Ambiguity to Self-Reflexivity: Revolutionizing Fantasy Space 233 Bülent Somay 14 Future Conditional or Future Perfect? The Dispossessed and Permanent Revolution 249 Chris Ferns Part VI. Open-Ended Utopian Politics 15 Ambiguous Choices: Skepticism as a Grounding for Utopia 265 Claire P.Curtis 16 Empty Hands: Communication, Pluralism, and Community in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed 283 Avery Plaw A Response, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti 305 Ursula K. Le Guin Further Reading 309 Index 311 About the Contributors 321 05-235 (01) FM.qxd 9/12/05 2:16 PM Page vii Editorial Note In print continuously since its original publication in 1974, The Dispossessed has appeared in a variety of differently paginated editions. All references to The Dis- possessed in this book have been standardized to the recent (and identically pagi- nated) 387-page HarperCollins paperback editions. The following table, which includes some of the most readily available editions of The Dispossessed, is meant to assist those readers who do not have a 387-page edition of the novel. Gollancz Harper HarperCollins cloth & Row Harper & Row Avon pbks. 1974, 1991 Granada cloth book club cloth pbk. 1991, 1994, Millennium pbk. 19741 19742 19753 2001, 20034 pbk. 19995 19756 chap. pp. pp. pp. pp. pp. pp. 1 1–22 1–22 1–20 1–25 5–24 9–28 2 23–55 23–55 21–50 26–62 25–54 29–58 3 56–80 56–79 51–73 63–90 55–77 59–81 4 81–111 80–110 74–101 91–125 78–105 82–109 5 112–136 111–134 102–124 126–153 106–128 110–132 6 137–169 135–167 125–154 154–191 129–159 133–162 7 170–205 168–203 155–187 192–232 160–193 163–195 8 206–238 204–235 188–217 233–270 194–223 196–225 9 239–270 236–267 218–246 271–307 224–253 226–254 10 271–295 268–292 247–269 308–335 254–276 255–277 11 296–309 293–306 270–282 336–351 277–289 278–290 (continued) vii 05-235 (01) FM.qxd 9/12/05 2:16 PM Page viii viii Editorial Note Gollancz Harper HarperCollins cloth & Row Harper & Row Avon pbks. 1974, 1991 Granada cloth book club cloth pbk. 1991, 1994, Millennium pbk. 19741 19742 19753 2001, 20034 pbk. 19995 19756 chap. pp. pp. pp. pp. pp. pp. 12 310–334 307–331 283–305 352–379 290–312 291–313 13 335–341 332–338 306–311 380–387 313–319 314–319 1. New York: Harper & Row, 1974. 2. New York: Book Club Edition, Harper & Row, 1974. 3. New York: Avon, 1975. 4. New York: HarperCollins pbks. (HarperPaperbacks, 1991; HarperPrism, 1994; Eos, 2001; Perennial, 2003). 5. London: Gollancz, 1974; Gollancz, 1991; Gollancz Millennium, 1999. 6. London: Granada, 1975. Note: The full title of the book has varied. The 1974 Gollancz edition and the 2003 Perennial edition list the title of the book as The Dispossessed: A Novel. The 1991 and 1999 Gollancz editions read simply The Dispossessed. The 1975 Avon edition has on its cover a subtitle or banner: “The Magnificent New Epic of an Ambiguous Utopia.” The others listed above read The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia on their title pages. 05-235 (01) FM.qxd 9/12/05 2:16 PM Page ix Introduction Laurence Davis First published in 1974, Ursula K. Le Guin’s powerful utopian novel The Dis- possessed: An Ambiguous Utopia immediately received widespread acclaim, includ- ing both the Hugo and Nebula awards. More recently, the influential social and political thinker André Gorz commented that The Dispossessed is “The most strik- ing description I know of the seductions—and snares—of self-managed commu- nist or, in other words, anarchist society.”1 To date, however, the radical political ramifications of the novel remain woefully under explored. In The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed, the first ever collection of original essays devoted to Le Guin’s novel, we aim to help right this state of affairs. Among the pertinent questions we consider are the following. Is Gorz’s characterization of the novel an accurate one? To what extent may The Dispossessed be read as an anarchist, ecological, anticapitalist, or revolutionary utopia? Which political themes emerge most strongly from the story, and to what extent do they engage with contemporary political debates or important ideas in the history of political thought? To what extent does Le Guin’s “ambiguous utopia” represent a challenge to traditional models of utopian literature and thought? Does it have anything distinctive to say about the relationship between literature and politics, history and politics, science and politics, or art and society? Does the book have anything distinctive to say about the relationship between in- dividuality and community, or about the nature and role of politics in general? In what ways does the work challenge the reader’s sense of conventional temporal re- lationships? What connections does it suggest between conceptions of time and ideas of human freedom? What roles do moral, social, and political conflict play in the story? Is it fair to describe The Dispossessed as a “dynamic,” “pluralistic,” or “revolutionary” utopia? The scholarly core of the book is composed of sixteen chapters grouped in six major sections, each of which focuses on a particular aspect of the novel’s politics. ix 05-235 (01) FM.qxd 9/12/05 2:16 PM Page x x Laurence Davis As editors of the volume, Peter Stillman and I are particularly pleased to note not only the exceptional quality of the individual contributions, but also the many stimulating ways in which they speak to one another. We are also delighted to draw the reader’s attention to the concluding essay by Le Guin, written specially for this volume, in which she reassesses the novel in light of the contributors’ analyses and the development of her own thinking over the past thirty years. The book opens with chapters by Laurence Davis and Simon Stow on the “open-ended utopian politics” of The Dispossessed. Both tackle head-on a question that recurs throughout the edited volume, specifically the extent to which Le Guin’s “ambiguous utopia” poses a challenge to prevailing models of utopian lit- erature and thought premised on an association between utopia and the idea of perfection.
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