Criticism of Gender Roles and the Ekumen
Posted by: Hunter in coursework, tags: The DispossessedI want to talk about the former of these two things because I feel like I have a lot to learn from everyone’s opinion on this, and the second because I think it offers a potential connection to Star Trek.
In his book Demand the Impossible, Tom Moylan presents a critical reading of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Part of his criticism lies in the contradictions of Le Guin’s egalitarian Utopia, especially in its presentation of gender and sexuality. Moylan sees the presentation of Bedap as being a shortcoming in the novel that undermines the idea of Utopia. Indeed, Bedap does seem rather unhappy with his situation. I believe, however, that Le Guin’s depiction of him (whilst, perhaps, somewhat “token”) was indeed deliberate, and aware of its implications. Bedap is a character outside the margins in a supposedly non-marginalising society. He is the one who is aware of the corruption of power on Anarres, and the one who makes Shevek aware of this. He is shown as being dissatisfied with the status quo; he is indeed a revolutionary. Le Guin’s message, then, may have been that such people are necessary for the continuation of rebellion, which is portrayed as a noble and desirable societal function. In such a light, figures such as the homosexual Bedap become a sort of sacrificial character; exposing their own hardship in the quest for betterment.
Why, then, does Le Guin include the passage with Shevek and Sadik with Bedap despondent? The immediate thought for me was that Le Guin’s perspective in the novel is of course reflective of her own personal one. She is an author with a husband (she took his name) and with three children. Her own experiences link parenthood, family and monogamy to happiness, and this is shown in the presentation of Shevek’s relationships throughout the text. A lot of the novel centres on the subversion of human impulse to create a mutually beneficial society, and perhaps this is an extension of that.
Where does Bedap fit in? My response to this is that Le Guin does not ever assert that Anarres has reached Utopia, indeed the need for revolution is still apparent. This is where, I believe, Moylan’s criticism was somewhat unfounded. He talks of “the utopian society of Anarres,” (Moylan, 95) and then of “the flaws in the utopia.” (Moylan, 95). This somewhat paradoxical last statement indicates the complexity of the situation, but at times Moylan treats it simplistically. At some points he writes as if he thinks that Le Guin intended Anarres to be wholly utopian, and then goes on to point out what’s not utopian about it. If we take the less simplistic view, we see Anarres as a work-in-progress. Bedap certainly has things better than he would have done on Urras, but in order for things to get better, he has to again incite revolution. Moylan also claims that “We read of no changes on Anarres due to his trip”(Moylan, 116), which is untrue because in Chapter 13 Skevek notes that “It seems there are more of them [supporters] than we I left.” (TD, 382).
I am also wary of the connection that Moylan draws between Shevek’s sexual experiences and his breakthroughs. We are told that Shevek has numerous other sexual relations, most of which only add to his feelings of stagnancy. Instead, it is when he makes an emotional and intellectual connection with someone that he takes major strides (his two professors included). As for Vea, I think that it is Shevek’s sense of disgust that is more important in that night being a tipping-point than the sexual aspect.
Finally, I want to talk about Moylan’s treatment of the Ekumen. This is a word that is not even mentioned in The Dispossessed, but Moylan takes it as part of the novel. His criticism is that Shevek’s findings result only in “a useful new product to benefit the hierarchy, the bureaucratic leadership of all the known worlds who can now set up a mega-bureaucracy of centralized power for the universe.” (Moylan,117). Within the context of the book, however, this is not at all the implication. Shevek shares his work to “save it from becoming a property of the Ioti.” (TD, 350). The stress is thus on commonality, transparency and mutual benefit, not the acquisition by government. I believe this is an unfair criticism of the book because it introduces ideas that are out of context.
Questions:
1) Do you think Le Guin passes a commentary on human nature in The Dispossessed? If so, is human nature depicted as part of the key to our happiness, or something that must be overcome to reach utopia?
2) Do you think Moylan ever sees Anarres as Le Guin’s failure to present a utopia, or is he aware that none of the societies in the book may be truly utopian? Is the book’s utopia simply the idea of “hopeful anarchism”?
3) Is it fair to bring the Ekumen into discussion of The Dispossessed? If so, what connections can be drawn to Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets? Or, if you’d prefer, Futurama’s Democratic Order Of Planets, DOOP?
Entries (RSS)
February 22nd, 2010 at 1:51 am
I think your first paragraph about Bedap’s role as a sacrifice was interesting because I’d never thought about it like that. It is possible that LeGuin wanted to portray him as a true revolutionary, which means that he must devote his entire life to his cause. Personally I like this interpretation if only because it gives LeGuin a bit more leeway in terms of her being a bigot, since I’d like to think that LeGuin wasn’t a famous feminist and also a bigot.
However, I do think that the fact that she drops Bedap’s storyline entirely after a relatively damning final scene might mean that she was deliberately critiquing the homosexual lifestyle. I do admit that Bedap leaving the novel depressed about the life he has leads the reader to think that she purposefully wanted to promote heterosexual norms.
As for human nature, I think she’s commenting on the malleability of human nature. For example, the people on Anarres must be taught to live the communitarian lifestyle, as we’ve seen with Shevek’s childhood and the teaching methods. Thus, maybe LeGuin is depicting human nature as something malleable that can be used in order to make a better utopia, so it is both something to be overcome (retaught) and the key to happiness.
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:46 am
Hunter-
I think this puzzle with Bedap and your question of whether Moylan sees that Le Guin doesn’t quite present a utopia in The Dispossessed kind of go hand in hand. I got the impression that Moylan realized that Le Guin wasn’t attempting to present a definitive utopia – he talks a lot about ambiguity (“Le Guin explores the “ambiguity” of utopian ideals and dystopian denials”) and the progression of a community to a utopia (in his mention of Anarres needing to be in a perpetual state of revolution to really follow through on the goals of its founders). He interprets Anarres as a society that could be a utopia, but is lost on the path towards this goal. The overall vibe I got from Moylan was that he didn’t think Anarres was a utopia, but those quotes you gave are indeed very misleading and contradictory of each other.
Regardless, I agree with you that Le Guin is very ambiguous about whether or not Anarres is a utopia, and I think this allows for another possible explanation of Bedap’s role in the novel. It seems that Le Guin’s portrayal of Bedap, especially in the scenes when he regrets not being able to lead a happy life because he can’t have children, is borderline ridiculous. His portrayed hopelessness is almost crazy in our current culture, a craziness compounded by the fact that Le Guin completely dropped Bedap in the end of the novel. The ends of his story don’t really tie up at all, much less into a happy ending.
If that is the case (that Bedap’s situation is near ridiculous), then it could be Le Guin is being satirical in her use of Bedap. Bedap’s struggle is a clear glitch in the pseudo-utopia and is one of a few things holding it back from being a full-fledged utopia. Perhaps Le Guin is using Bedap to point out the ambiguity of utopias – they seem so good, but there’s always a little something missing. That said, I think the 1974 readers probably wouldn’t have seen the situation as a ridiculous one, so perhaps Bedap is still a mystery. Do you think she was writing for a more liberal/progressive audience?
February 22nd, 2010 at 3:58 am
I agree with you as well Hunter that Bedap’s role could have been sacrificial and that perhaps Moylan’s critical analysis of Le Guin’s utopia might have been somewhat exaggerated. Personally, while I was reading the novel, I never could find the true utopia because I’m pretty sure that it didn’t really exist. Very similar to Shevek’s musing as a child about how a person could never reach their destination because half the distance is always left to be travelled, I think that everything that the Anarresti have done was ultimately a step in the right direction, but it will take an infinite number of more steps in the right direction to reach utopia. This could be why Le Guin subtitles the book “An Ambiguous Utopia.” If everything was as cut and dry as “Annares is the utopia, Urras is not,” Le Guin might as well not written the book. This ambiguity is essential to avoiding simple answers to complex questions, because in reality, complex questions call for complex answers. Unfortunately, I think Moylan puts this line of thinking aside in his analysis in order to create a more concrete conclusion that cannot really exist. That said, I guess I wouldn’t consider this book simply anything. For almost everything that you see on the surface, something more complex lies beneath that surface.
February 22nd, 2010 at 4:19 am
While I agree that Bedap is a sacrificial character, I would argue that his homosexual orientation must then be either token or deliberately negative. My reasoning is that Bedap’s marginalization in society is based on his dissatisfaction with the corruption and power structure of Anarres. His homosexuality is simply a character feature, in this context. If the novel had ended with Bedap merely present as a family friend, or without further mention of him, the extent of Le Guin’s comment on sexuality would appear to be supportive. However, Le Guin’s inclusion of the final scene with Bedap in her novel deals almost exclusively with Bedap’s regret.
Bedap’s unhappiness at the close of the novel is a consequence of his lack of, and inability to achieve a family. He is particularly saddened by scenes of Takver and Shevek’s parenthood. Not only does Bedap feel as if he lacks the bonds of family, but he says he feels it is “too late” for him to ever achieve it. Why would this be the case? In Anarresti society, there should be plenty of opportunity for a homosexual male to find companionship. The close bond of Takver and Shevek is a possibility for him, particularly now that he has achieved the revolutionary upheaval that previously consumed his life, and which we assume Anarres needs to return to dynamic progress towards Utopia. If Bedap was to be a purely sacrificial figure, his unhappiness might center around a lack of time to achieve other personal goals, but we know he is in his mid-forties like Shevek, who doesn’t seem to feel as if he is nearing the end of his life.\
The only true source of Bedap’s unhappiness must be his inability to have children. I like Hunter’s idea that Le Guin’s foundation for this is based on her personal experience. Rather than a criticism of the morality of homosexuality, this brings her into a more reflective realm. Le Guin finds her greatest happiness in her children, and thus inserts into her novel her inability to see a completely fulfilled life without them. I think that rather than being a bigot, Le Guin simply wants to vocalize her views on the subject. The same criticism could be applied to other individuals who chose not to settle down with a monogamous partner, or even those who simply choose not to have children, or end their care once the child is two. I will agree that Le Guin promotes heterosexual norms. However, while Bedap the homosexual being unhappy is likely more than coincidental, I don’t feel it is a particularly pointed attack, or even denunciation, of homosexuality.
February 22nd, 2010 at 9:41 am
Hunter, you do an excellent job of problematizing Moylan’s criticism of The Dispossessed. You point out a spot I also noticed where Moylan is simply incorrect, where he claims that Anarres has not changed since Shevek was on Urras, and where he brings ideas of the Ekumen out of context. (In fact, I needed to look up the word online when I found it in Moylan’s writing because I did not recall it from The Dispossessed.) While Carmen is right that Moylan realizes LeGuin does not try to argue for a perfect utopia in Anarres, I do think he distorts LeGuin’s vision of utopia.
Moylan admits: “LeGuin is beyond simple assertions of an ideal system, having seen the failure and compromises of revolutionary systems in twentieth century history in even the most well-meaning of political practices and social systems…For LeGuin, the primary social problem is the danger of centralization of power in an elite group and the reduction of the ideals of the revolution into a dogmatic ideology that itself inhibits further emancipatory activity” (100). The Odonian movement on Anarres is based on human solidarity and cooperation, and it must paradoxically undergo constant revolution in order to maintain itself in the same state. Perhaps a utopia could rise from these ideals, but LeGuin’s focus is not in trying to justify Anarres as a utopia, as Moylan rightly points out. Rather, she argues that stagnation in this society creates privileged positions for certain individuals and a loss of the sense of revolution.
However, even realizing that LeGuin does not see Anarres as a utopia, Moylan continues to distort LeGuin’s vision. In particular, he takes issue with LeGuin’s “choice of the bleak landscape as the site of a utopia” (102) since moral decisions will always be made only in the face of adversity, a context that Moylan draws on Fekete’s writings to claim weakens moral choices. However, LeGuin does not state that Anarres must have been a world of scarcity for Odonian society to work. Odo herself lived on Urras, but even with the abundance of wealth on the planet she felt it necessary to start her movement based on human solidarity. When Urras finally decided to deal with these revolutionaries, it was probably not too much of a loss to give the moon to the Odonians since the planet was extremely poor anyway. As long as the moon continued to provide ores and minerals, Urras would allow the Odonians to live there unbothered. Anarres was the place that the Odonians were given to try to distance the revolution from the planet, not the place that utopia must be set in order to work; the scarcity on the planet is simply something a utopia would have to work around.