i PROGRESSIVE AND REACTIONARY ATTITUDES TOWARDS TECHNOLOGY IN TWENTIETH CENTURY LITERATURE, 1937- 2013. A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English Literature. in the University of Canterbury by Michael Gordon Ralph Potts. Student Number 21428772 Department of English, University of Canterbury 2014 ii Table of Contents. Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………1 Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..2 Chapter One: Orwell’s Troubling Syllogism.……………………………………………………………………47 Chapter Two: Blood and Soil: Cultural Identity and Locality in The Lord of the Rings……..76 Chapter Three: Anti-Technology and Over-Population…………………………………………………..106 Chapter four: Purification and Rebirth: Anti-technologism and Catastrophe………………….145 Chapter Five: Wildness and Wilderness: Edward Abbey and Anarcho-Libertarian Anti- Technologism………………………………………………………………………………………………………………...173 Chapter Six: Meaning and Modernity: Anti-technologism and the Fascist Aesthetic……….205 Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………241 Works Cited…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….271 iii Acknowledgements. I would like to gratefully acknowledge the help, support and advice I have received from family, friends, colleagues and my supervisors during the course of researching and writing this PhD. In particular, I would like to thank my parents, for their help, support, and advice, and my partner, Belinda Gibbs, for her understanding and support. I would also like to express my gratitude to my supervisors, Dan Bedggood and Philip Armstrong, not only for their advice and support, but also for their patience and for the cogent and helpful remarks and suggestions regarding my thesis and their efforts 1 Abstract. In this thesis I trace the origins, morphology, and attributes of a particular strain of anti- materialism in the Western literary and cultural imagination of the second half of the twentieth century. I demonstrate that this strain relies on what Raymond Williams termed “organic form”, the fallacious belief that human society can and should follow a set of rules which can be objectively deducted from nature. I argue that this anti-materialism should be placed within the context of a long established anti-enlightenment tradition. Through an analysis of such writers as George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, JRR Tolkien, Edward Abbey, James Howard Kunstler, Chuck Palahniuk, Brian Aldiss and others I show how a common feature of this anti-materialism is a distrust of, and reaction against, modern technology. More specifically, I am interested in this thesis with examining the way in which this reaction allows for a curious confluence and convergence of progressive and reactionary tendencies. I argue that anti-technologism is a distinct and detectable mood in Western literature, and I trace its origins and influences. Without claiming to provide a functionalist analysis, I consider the role of anti-technologism in Western literature which I see as broadly facilitating an exploration and discussion of themes of cultural vitality and cohesion in the increasingly cosmopolitan and technologically advanced societies of the West. In pursuance of this, I focus in each chapter on a particular aspect of anti- technologism, to draw out its defining characteristics. By reference to other fictional and non- fictional texts I analyse and situate these characteristics to show how anti-technologism is the survival and mutation of earlier dogmas. 2 INTRODUCTION. In the summer of 2011, Adbusters, a radically anti-consumerist magazine with an alternative Left, politically progressive editorial line (perhaps best known for starting the “Occupy Wall Street” campaign) ran excerpts from the newly translated work of Finnish environmentalist, Pentti Linkola. Adbusters introduced him as a radical voice on the environmental crisis whose work is “intentionally provocative”.1 Sandwiched between shots of industrial landscapes with a slogan asking “Is this the West?” the excerpt fitted in well with Adbusters’ avowedly anti-corporate, anti-materialist and anti-consumerist stance. Modern civilisation and overpopulation, the excerpt declared, weren't just causing environmental damage, but cultural homogenisation and loss of diversity as well: I’m not just talking about the suffocation of life due to the population explosion, or that life and the Earth’s respiratory rhythm cry out for the productive, metabolic green oases they so sorely need everywhere, between the areas razed by man. I also mean that humanity, by squirting and birthing all these teeming, filth-producing multitudes from out of itself, in the process also suffocates and defames its own culture (Linkola, excerpt from Can Life Prevail? 55). Provocative indeed. But what the introduction didn’t inform its readers of was that whilst Linkola shared their concerns about the environment, corporatization, cultural identity, and overpopulation, he arrived at this position not from an alternative Left analysis but instead from the Far Right and a belief that inequality and exclusion were natural and democracy and 1 For Adbusters and the launch of the Occupy movement see Jeff Sommer: “The War Against Too Much of Everything” New York Times. December 22, 2012. Web. 3 egalitarianism a sham. Rather than locating the source of the problem in exploitation, neo- colonialism, and inequality, Linkola, in the excerpted book, blames technology and liberal democracy which combined (he claims) have allowed overpopulation and fostered materialism, even as they weakened cultural identity. His website summarises his views: “Linkola is one of the few voices who advocates (1) No immigration (2) Downsize population (3) Kill defectives (4) Stop rampant technology” (Linkola “Ideas”). Hardly a creed that would usually merit inclusion in a progressive publication. Linkola, then, is no ordinary environmentalist, but rather a Far Right extremist for whom environmental degradation is a result of the degeneracy of the multicultural modern world.2 How was it, then, that such extreme right wing views were being aired without context or analysis in a supposedly progressive, anti-corporate magazine such as Adbusters? How did a publication that would never normally countenance giving such extremely regressive views a venue justify printing Linkola's “A Demographic Plan” which included the assertion that “the quality of the population must in all cases be taken into account” and therefore the right to have children must be “denied to homes deemed genetically inadequate” (59)? This is by no means an isolated or even particularly unusual case; I cite many more examples from literature and popular culture throughout this thesis where the most extreme reactionary ideals are explored within a putatively liberal, progressive setting. In every case, as I show in this thesis, it is antipathy towards technology and technological modernity that provides the justification for this otherwise inexplicable transfer of ideas from one end of the political spectrum to the other. What is it, then, about antipathy towards technological modernity that seems to license the 2 Indeed, as Adam Carter observes, “despite its claims that it is interested solely in unifying a variety of perspectives against the modern world” Arktos / Integral Tradition (Linkola’s publishers for the English language market) publishes Far Right and Fascist literature with an emphasis on neo-paganism, and has links to notorious neo-Nazis in Britain, Sweden, and New Zealand (Carter NP). 4 discussion and dissemination of extreme reactionary views within a progressive milieu? This question and the underlying issues and complexities have fascinated me for several years now. Born in 1972, I grew up against a background of widely held concern over militarization, environmental degradation, overpopulation, and social disintegration. As I started to develop a personal interest in these issues, I began reading The Ecologist, which billed itself as "The Journal of the Post-Industrial Age" and was one of the most influential publications dealing with such matters at the time (Wilson). Whilst it didn't strike me as unusual at the time, The Ecologist combined a progressive, broadly New Left stance on environmental, defence and business issues with what I later realised was a highly reactionary stance on societal organisation, one that blamed technology for its disruptive effects and was concerned above all else with the idea of social stability. Reviewing the collection of articles from the journal republished in The Great U-Turn (1988), for example, shows articles on "The Ecology of War" and "Can Pollution be Controlled?" next to "Education: What For?" which argued against universal education, and "The Fall of the Roman Empire" which argued that "foreign influences were undoubtedly the first cause of the changes which overcame Roman society" and drew numerous parallels between the fall of ancient Rome and modern Western civilisation (Goldsmith 9). The more I considered it, the more this disparity intrigued me and my initial researches led me to Meredith Veldman's Fantasy, the Bomb, and the Greening of Britain: 1945- 1980 (1994) which first got me thinking seriously about unacknowledged influences and the cross-pollination of ideas and beliefs from conservatism to the newly emergent ideologies of the post war period.3 3 I use both conservatism and reactionary interchangeably in this thesis to refer to an ideology and worldview which