On Thu, 28 Aug 1997, Janice E. Dawley wrote:
> > SF utopias, to be good fiction, to have literary value -though "literary
> >value" is dangerous waters- must not be in _stasis_. They must not lose
> >their dynamism. Take Orwell's _1984_: The time seems stopped at 1984,
> >nothing moves, nothing changes. Even for a so-called "totalitarian"
> >communist society, be it in 20th century or in 24th, stasis is improbable.
>
> _1984_ was a dystopia, not a utopia. The extreme rigidity of the future
> society was part of what made it so frightful. It's not likely that such a
> society could exist, but the book nevertheless points out possible end
> results of certain trends by exaggerating reality.
I agree with you for the wrong usage of the word "utopia" here, but I do
not think it is that important: _1984_ is another cornerstone in the
tradition of literary creations of "non-existant worlds".
> >Or take the wonderful _The Dispossessed_, Le Guin's masterpiece (by the
> >way, is she still an anarchist, or an utopian socialist?): A most
> >essential part of an organized society, social control, is mostly ignored.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by social control. If you mean coercion by means
> of a police force, no, Anarres does not have social control. But if you
> mean peer pressure and communal expectations, Anarres does have social
> control. I recall that children from very early on are taught to share and
> are criticised harshly for being materialistic. In all of her works, Le
> Guin emphasizes the power of other people's approval or disapproval to
> shape an individual's behavior. She takes pains to show the downside of
> this means of social control -- simple-minded conventionality and
> suppression of difference -- but I do think she prefers it to hierarchical
> styles of governing.
>
> >Why do not the masses revolt during the periods of hunger? What prevents
> >them from crime? In Anarres, it seems that some mystified virtues of the
> >human nature, like "freedom", "sharing" has been turned into a kind of
> >religion. Anarres's fate seems to rot in stasis.
>
> As far as revolt -- who would they revolt against? There is no government!
> Crime in general is a more vexing question. I can't remember if Le Guin
> really took the issue on, as did Marge Piercy in _Woman on the Edge of
> Time_ or Slonczewski in _A Door Into Ocean_. In both of those books, people
> who are violent or antisocial are encouraged to seek healing and if
> behavior does not improve are shunned. When it comes to murder, the authors
> diverge -- murderers on Shora are exiled to distant rafts, but in
> Mattapoisett they are simply killed. This approach takes for granted a
> society based on small villages where people's behavior can be fairly
> closely monitored by those around them -- for an industrialized economy
> based in cities, it obviously has its drawbacks. But for both of these
> authors, cities in themselves are an invitation to social collapse.
I agree that I have not quite been able to explain myself in "social
control": I tried to question the lack of crime in Anarres; Le Guin seems
to link all the causes of crime or anti-social behaviour to the existence
of a materialist, capitalist society. Things are not that simple. But
surely, social control in the way you put here, exists in the novel; my
point on revolting is not well-thought. Still, the founder's spirit, and
the assumed collective conscious seem to me to swing above the people like
Democles's Sword.
> Finally, I think one of the major concerns of _The Dispossessed_ is whether
> a society like the one on Anarres could survive, given human nature. There
> are signs of change (for the worse) in the book, so I did not perceive that
> the society was in stasis. It certainly is an "ambiguous utopia."
>
> -- Janice
Of course one cannot say that she was supposed to do this or that, so Le
Guin did not have to draw the picture of a workable, perfect society. But
still I am doubtful about the dynamism of the rural solace of Anarres,
left to their own, could they survive?
All in all, your point is better put than mine. Thank you.
EMRAH
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