At 11:50 9/4/97 +0400, you wrote:
--snip
> What I had in mind was some article written by Gregory Benford,
>"Reactionary Utopias" in a book (if I remember right) called _Storm
>Warnings_. I think his point is quite interesting:
>
> "_The Dispossessed_ reeks with Old Testament themes and images, using
>guilt as the principal social control. The founder, Odo, is the central
>saint of a communal society. Her pain and suffering during nine years'
>imprisonment _make possible_ the virtue of the later Anarres society ...
>The impiled lesson is that utopia will not arrive until man comes to grip
>with his own nature, which means in turn that a citizen is _born guilty_,
>must repay Odo's pain with his submission to the general will and
>society's precepts..." (p. 76)
>
You and Benford seem to "read in" this idea -- I'd like to see the
textual evidence for it.
> So a child in Anarres cannot become a citizen until he/she undergoes an
>implicit rite, I refer to the imprisonment game, symbolizing Odo's own
>pains; it was described in extreme detail in the book.
As I remember this, Shevek and several of his friends literally invented
this game -- it was not imposed from above (although the teachers did
act in authoritarian ways; e.g. when Shevek added a 'new' idea he was
accused of egoizing).
>This religious
>"first sin" theme seems to imply that Le Guin, as Benford claims, "avoids
>the problems of a real utopia".
In what way? I don't see that religion -- even a religion that theorizes
a "primal sin" -- avoids the _problems_ of a utopia; it problematizes
them.
> Following Terry Eagleton, questioning about a literary text's (in fact,
>writer's) "silences" would help us read the text deeper. And Benford says:
>
> "The principal ignored problem of Anarres is the problem of evil and
>thus violence... Guilt (social conscience) simply overcomes such
>discordant elements. In the middle of a drought in which people starve, no
>matter how evenly shared, somehow no one thinks of taking up arms with
>some friends and seizing, say, the grain reserves." (p. 77)
>
> So no criminals, no insane people, no naturally violent types.
The playwright who puts so much of himself into playing the
"beggarman" may not actually go insane, but he does get treated as
though he had. I don't think Le Guin sees Anarres as a Perfect Place.
>And I
>remember a prison camp in Anarres for unwanted people.
Here, I read the text to make an analogy to Solzhenitsyn's _Cancer
Ward_ rather than an actual prison camp -- adjudging those who fail
to follow the party line as "insane."
>Le Guin's silence, along with the ambiguity.
> Yet I do not mean to _blame_ her, I am not qualified to, for her
>ideological silences about violence (which, as Benford claims, continue in
>_The Eye of the Heron_). She is a science _fiction_ writer, for me one of
>the best, and the real world does not have to matter for her. Still,
>literary silences is a good point of discussing utopian literature.
>
Le Guin has plenty to say about violence: see the revolution on Urras;
see also _Left Hand of Darkness_ and _Four Ways to Forgiveness_ among
others.
If you want to write about _The Dispossessed_ I'd suggest re-reading
it rather than relying on Benford.
>Best Wishes,
>EMRAH
>
Martha Bartter
Truman State University
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