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bloodygranuaileI have been on an Ursula K. Le Guin kick but I have not been on a “keeping on top of my social calendar” kick, so I reread The Dispossessed mostly in the week after the book club we were supposed to have on it. (In keeping with this winter’s inability to do things in a timely manner, I also renewed the book after finishing reading it so that I don’t have to walk to the library in 23-degree weather and will drop it off sometime in the next two weeks when I’m either already in the car or it warms up.)
The Dispossessed is such a much-discussed classic of leftist sci-fi that it’s hard to think of anything new to say about it. It ought to be endlessly discussable since there’s just so much going on there, but having missed the opportunity to discuss it in a group, trying to have thoughts about it on my own now seems to be sort of missing the point (perhaps egoizing, as the Anarresti would say). If the book has a theme it seems like it would be something like “doing utopia is hard,” but that makes it sound very flat. Duh, doing utopia is hard (although sometimes you do meet folks who seem to expect otherwise). It’s a very profound and sensitive exploration of the limits of politics in fulfilling personal psychological needs, the ways in which people can misunderstand and fall short of ideals, the development and enforcement of social norms, and what is the proper weight to give one’s neighbors’ opinions. It’s much more complicated than merely “people misunderstanding leftist theory and being assholes about it” although there is a little of that, too. I also like it because it explores some things that I think some leftists brush off as being strawmen and other leftists do actually make assumptions about but don’t examine: things like, what is the responsible way to be a solitary, weird, introverted person in a cooperative society? Where do “political ideals to live up to” end and “telling people what personality to have” begin? Is it really that more enlightened to live in a big pile of other people, or is it OK to want your own room just so that you can be alone in it? Le Guin is able to very unflinchingly look at the flaws of a society run entirely–and, mostly, successfully!--on anarcho-communist principles, but never falls into the trap of framing it as that the problem is that they have Gone Too Far or that Urrasti society, for all its comforts (for the privileged, at least), is any better or ~also valid~ or whatever mealy-mouthed shit it’s apparently obligatory for anyone writing about liberatory politics to include. Anarres has problems because ekeing out a living on the barren moon they’ve been banished to, in a tiny community cut off from the rest of the species, made up of ordinary working people who are, after all, merely human beings, is extremely difficult, and fuckups happen.
And how do you know what even are the fuckups, sometimes? All of Shevek’s reasons for wanting to leave his little colony and unbuild walls, to not be cut off from the rest of humanity, to share scientific knowledge, are all good ones, but he eventually decides that going to Urras to be kept as a pet anarchist at a capitalist university was a mistake. But was it inherently a mistake to want to do the things he wanted to do? Or was the mistake just being unprepared for the obstacles to doing them–underestimating the power of the capitalist university to co-opt and tame radicals? I don’t know! Like I have thoughts, but I don’t know; there’s too much going on here to really know it all after only reading the book twice.
Anyway I hope I will read this again in another five years and be able to get more things out of it. I don’t reread books very often but this one is absolutely worth revisiting every few years if you’re active on the left (and possibly also if you’re inactive on the left).
The Dispossessed is such a much-discussed classic of leftist sci-fi that it’s hard to think of anything new to say about it. It ought to be endlessly discussable since there’s just so much going on there, but having missed the opportunity to discuss it in a group, trying to have thoughts about it on my own now seems to be sort of missing the point (perhaps egoizing, as the Anarresti would say). If the book has a theme it seems like it would be something like “doing utopia is hard,” but that makes it sound very flat. Duh, doing utopia is hard (although sometimes you do meet folks who seem to expect otherwise). It’s a very profound and sensitive exploration of the limits of politics in fulfilling personal psychological needs, the ways in which people can misunderstand and fall short of ideals, the development and enforcement of social norms, and what is the proper weight to give one’s neighbors’ opinions. It’s much more complicated than merely “people misunderstanding leftist theory and being assholes about it” although there is a little of that, too. I also like it because it explores some things that I think some leftists brush off as being strawmen and other leftists do actually make assumptions about but don’t examine: things like, what is the responsible way to be a solitary, weird, introverted person in a cooperative society? Where do “political ideals to live up to” end and “telling people what personality to have” begin? Is it really that more enlightened to live in a big pile of other people, or is it OK to want your own room just so that you can be alone in it? Le Guin is able to very unflinchingly look at the flaws of a society run entirely–and, mostly, successfully!--on anarcho-communist principles, but never falls into the trap of framing it as that the problem is that they have Gone Too Far or that Urrasti society, for all its comforts (for the privileged, at least), is any better or ~also valid~ or whatever mealy-mouthed shit it’s apparently obligatory for anyone writing about liberatory politics to include. Anarres has problems because ekeing out a living on the barren moon they’ve been banished to, in a tiny community cut off from the rest of the species, made up of ordinary working people who are, after all, merely human beings, is extremely difficult, and fuckups happen.
And how do you know what even are the fuckups, sometimes? All of Shevek’s reasons for wanting to leave his little colony and unbuild walls, to not be cut off from the rest of humanity, to share scientific knowledge, are all good ones, but he eventually decides that going to Urras to be kept as a pet anarchist at a capitalist university was a mistake. But was it inherently a mistake to want to do the things he wanted to do? Or was the mistake just being unprepared for the obstacles to doing them–underestimating the power of the capitalist university to co-opt and tame radicals? I don’t know! Like I have thoughts, but I don’t know; there’s too much going on here to really know it all after only reading the book twice.
Anyway I hope I will read this again in another five years and be able to get more things out of it. I don’t reread books very often but this one is absolutely worth revisiting every few years if you’re active on the left (and possibly also if you’re inactive on the left).