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Before Utopia: the Function of Sacrifice in Dystopian Narratives

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Before Utopia: the Function of Sacrifice in Dystopian Narratives Before Utopia: The Function of Sacrifice in Dystopian Narratives Maria Varsamopoulou Abstract The aim of this study is to illustrate the ways in which the practice and logic of sacrifice in dystopian narratives is anti-utopian. There is a dearth of research on the dystopian fiction, very little which investigates ethical issues and none which consider sacrificial ethics. In the first half of the thesis, the concept of dystopia is delineated against definitions of utopia, concrete utopia and utopian literature. In the second theoretical chapter, major and minor theories of sacrifice are examined for their normative bias in order to question their function in practice. Two important literary examples are read in light of a cross section of sacrifice and utopia: the influential story of Isaac's near sacrifice by Abraham in Genesis 22, and Ursule Molinaro's The New Moon with the Old Moon in her Arms, a literary depiction of the ancient Greek sacrificial ritual of the 'pharmakos'. The works chosen are canonical examples of the genre and in each a different aspect of sacrifice is foregrounded. In George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, the structure of sacrifice and the rigid hierarchy it imposes engenders perpetual violence. In Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, women's sacrifice of reproductive freedom renders them commodities which cannot sustain friendships. In Octavia Butler's Kindred, the scapegoating of women slaves prevents vertical relationships as a result of the severing of mothers from their offspring. In the final chapter, Ursule Le Guin's 'The Ones who Walk Away from Ornelas' and Lois Lowry's The Giver foreground the cost of utopia based on a sacrificial ethics and problematises the relationship between self and community. The questions of genre, gender, and ethics intersect at the anti-utopian function sacrifice performs in the totalitarian societies fore grounded in the various manifestations of dystopian fictional worlds. The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together ...seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space. Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities A man must dream a long time in order to act with grandeur, and dreaming is nursed in darkness. Jean Genet I rebel - therefore we exist. Albert Camus, The Rebel Contents page number Introduction Part One: Theoretical Foundations Chapter One: Defining Dystopia 23 Chapter Two: Re-Defining Sacrifice 59 Part Two: Literary Case Studies Chapter Three: George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four 101 Chapter Four: Katherine Burdekin's Swastika Night and 126 Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale Chapter Five: Octavia Butler's Kindred and Ursule Molinaro's The New Moon with the Old Moon in her Arms 148 Chapter Six: Ursule LeGuin's 'The Ones Who Walk Away from Ornelas' and Lois Lowry's The Giver 182 Conclusion 200 Bibliography 204 Acknowledgements I gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the State Scholarship Foundation of Greece (I.K.Y) without which this project would have never begun. Thanks to the postgraduate community ofthe University of Nottingham and to the members of the European Utopian Studies Society for their advice and encouragement. Also thanks to my supervisors: Dr. Laura Chernaik for her input at the early stage of my research and her inspiring conversations; to Dr. Susan Billingham for her meticulous readings and responses to my chapters; and to Dr. Celeste de Berniere for her unwavering enthusiasm for my work. Special thanks to my friend Andie Mahr, who alerted me to Lois Lowry's remarkable novel, The Giver, whose inclusion in this work has made a crucial contribution to its conclusion and overall argument. This thesis is dedicated to my family: my father Tassos, whose love of letters is unsurpassed; for my mother Sophia, whose great inner strength sustains us all; and for my brother Nick for his unique understanding of matters intellectual and non. Last, but not least, for my sister Evy, who assisted in so many practical issues, kept me on track when I faltered, read with interest the many versions of my chapters, provided emotional sustenance which is unquantifiable and believed in me. Introduction Utopia, Dystopia, Sacrifice The title Before Utopia, designates both the spatial and temporal aspects of the conceptualisation of this research project. It is motivated by the question of how one proceeds to utopia, from the vantage point of dystopia, or how one proceeds towards the future, from the present. At the same time, faced with the anticipation of utopia and the reality of dystopia, it asks how can one proceed in one's own time, to seek out utopian spaces which will relieve, inspire and motivate a change in the specificity of our geographical place. In short. these are questions of perception. of locating and understanding what. in the here and now, is dystopian so that in the search for utopian spaces, we can avoid, deliberately and critically, those structures, practices and ideas that inevitably return us to dystopia. In the conjecture between utopia and dystopia lies the concept. or perhaps. force of anti-utopia which draws utopia and dystopia together into a process where the two spatio-temporal concepts overlap, and sometimes merge, leaving the reader to apprehend utopian choices in dystopian spaces. As a compass that directs us towards utopia, dystopian fiction provides a useful medium through which anti-utopian forces can be identified by the reader and examined for their power in the struggle for utopia. The process of journeying toward utopia via dystopian fiction takes the reader, like its protagonists, through a minefield where the struggle between utopian and anti- utopian forces is a struggle between life and death, hope and despair, desire and fear. At times, the evidence presented en route is in the form of the texts which at times focus on the content, and always involve the function of certain motifs. Levitas has called "archaeological" that utopian method which is 'based on a mixture of evidence, deduction, and imagination, representing as whole something of which only fragments exist. With the help of the coordinates suggested in the subtitle - the junction of sacrifice in dystopian narratives - rather I Ruth Levitas, 'The Imaginary Reconstitution of Society: Utopia as Method', in Tom Moylan and Raffaella Baccolini, (eds.) Utopia, Theory, Method: The Use Value of Social Dreaming (Oxford & New York: Peter Lang, 2007), p. 61, pp. 47-68. Two doctoral theses which approach the utopian function of dystopian fiction from the opposite direction are Ildney Fatima De Souza Cavalcanti's Articulating the Elsewhere: Utopia in Contemporary Feminist Dystopias (University of Strathclyde, 1999) and Elizabeth Mahoney's Writing so to Speak: The Feminist Dystopia (University of Glasgow, 1994). than searching for utopian signposts in the narrative's form or content. this work will approach the search for utopia via a different course, that of the function of sacrifice. By examining different aspects of sacrifice in dystopian narratives, this thesis will follow the trajectory of the anti-utopian forces impacting upon the protagonists of the novels. Related to the main question 'what is the function of sacrifice in dystopian narratives?' there are four other questions. First, what are the generic conventions which foreground aspects of sacrifice in the novels? All the novels portray totalitarian societies where sacrifice is a dominant motif. It is in these types of dystopias where sacrifice is at the forefront of the narrative as a structure, logic and practice. Second, what difference does gender make in terms of its impact on women's sacrifices? Following Orwell's example, the novels focus on the female point of view to illuminate the variety of sacrifices women are subject to. Third, how does the scapegoating of female slaves contribute to the understanding of sacrifice in the context of the master ~ slave relationship in terms of complicity, genealogy and maternity? Fourth, what is the 'cost' of utopia, when the terms of exchange posit that for the benefit of the majority, the sacrifice of at least one individual is the necessary foundation? In this case, while utilizing many of the usual conventions of dystopian fiction, the desire for totality in seemingly good societies veers dangerously close to the totalitarianism of classic dystopian narratives. A unifying thread in the novels is the perspective of the disaffected protagonist who is also the voice of the potential sacrificial victim. Presented as less alienated than other characters, the novels dramatize their protagonists' effort to resist, change and/or escape from their oppressive societies, whether to another place or another time. The narratives commence as their protagonists experience an existential crisis: having perceived the oppressive reality of the society they inhabit, they find it impossible to continue existing in good faith under such conditions of self-alienation and alienation from others. Knowing that any resistance leads to death, they nevertheless choose to risk their lives rather than continue making the sacrifices demanded of them, However, this puts them at risk of becoming sacrificial victims in the absolute sense, i.e., physical and not merely psychic death. In short, in their persistence to avoid victimization on one level, they risk becoming victims on another, though the risk they take is deemed preferable to the living death they have endured thus far. 2 Jean-Francois Lyotard differentiates between 'victim' and 'plaintiff when he uses the term 'differend' to foreground the difference in discourse between the two." A victim is constituted when the damage which has been done to them is accompanied by the 'loss of the means to prove the damage".' These 'means' include basic liberties, the freedom to speak in public and the right to testify to the damage done or.
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