Writing the Future

In The Disposessed, the utopian revolution on Anarres was meant to be “a permanent one, an ongoing process” (p. 176) but by the time of Shevek’s life, the society has become static. Bureaucracies are given power in times of emergency, but when the emergency is over that power is not revoked. The desire for societal approval saps individuals’ willingness to challenge any aspect of their lives. As Chris Ferns puts it, “the future is something which they believe has been attained and, in their efforts to ensure that it does not revert to the past from whose contradictions it emerged, they are in the process of transforming it into something more sterile, lacking in the transforming vision and energy that was once capable of imagining the genuinely new” (p. 258).

Thus, from Ferns’ point of view, Shevek’s trip is successful because it “restore[s] the possibility—on both worlds—of genuine change” (p. 259). Because the revolution on Anarres was so isolated from the society on Urras that it was meant to revolt against, both planets are stuck in stasis, each convinced of its own superiority. Only Shevek, by breaking the barrier between the societies, can re-start revolution on both planets. Ferns seems to consider Shevek himself to be central to this process, and he connects Shevek’s individual “freedom from fear of the genuinely new” (p. 259) to his individual approach to time and physics.

This focus on Shevek is interesting to me in light of Tom Moylan’s criticisms that “the activists in the novel who might most reflect the various movements of the late 1960s—anti-war activists, ecologists, school reformers, anarchists, working-class and poor, Third World revolutionaries—are displaced to the margins” (p. 113) in favor of “a type of commitment that revolves around a single redeemer, a vanguard intellectual, and a dominant male” (p. 109). Moylan seems to suggest that in life, revolutions cannot be brought about by a single person, and that LeGuin is again undermining her own ideology by showing us a revolution that is not a dynamic, continuous social movement, but rather a single individual carrying out a single action.

I think that there is more to the revolutions on Anarres and Urras than just Shevek’s actions. Bedap’s group of friends existed long before Shevek’s involvement with them, and in fact seem to have carried out much of the work of the Syndicate of Initiative without Shevek’s input. The revolution on Urras, as well, significantly pre-dates Shevek’s involvement and acts independently of him, organizing an immense general strike. However, I agree with Moylan that these other revolutionaries were not given attention proportional to their impact. Although we know they must have been there, to set the stage for Shevek’s actions, the book does not linger on their activities, so that what we see of revolution remains focused on Shevek.

What do you guys think? Who is really most important to the revolutions in The Disposessed? Does anybody take issue with characterizing either of them as revolutions? What does a revolution look like?

In The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, Le Guin creates a setting of two diametrically opposed planets. The protagonist, Shevek, is from the anarchist and separatist Anarres. Shevek wants to travel to the archist mother planet Urras to rekindle social revolution on Anarres, bring social revolution to Urras, and to advance his knowledge and theory of physics. By the close of the novel it seems probably that he has achieved the first goal, and he has definitely achieved the last. However, despite the time he spends on Urras, he fails to create meaningful change there. In fact, by the close of the novel I was left feeling as if Shevek had merely given up on Urras, and moved on.

First, although Urras is originally portrayed as a binary opposite to Anarres, there are many cases in which Le Guin deliberately problemitizes or blurs the presumed differences. By establishing commonalities between the planets, Le Guin creates an expectation for the traveler Shevek to advance both societies. Shevek finds Oiie’s family particularly redeeming within Urrasti society, and is moved to participate in a majority revolution of the poor. These acts seem to support my expectation as a reader that the protagonist will find a way to aid both societies.

When the revolution on A-IO fails, Shevek flees to the Terran embassy. He has no further contact with any revolutionaries before leaving the planet, and claims Urras is hell, that it is impossible to change those who do not wish to change.  I fail to understand how this realization fits in with the rest of The Dispossessed. It seems that the large revolution indicates that the oppressed majority is ready for change. Furthermore, what is the purpose of such a lengthy sojourn in Urras if Shevek is ultimately there only to spur change on Anarres and complete his physics theory? Is Urras merely an explanation for the extradition of the new physics theory of a novel composed around the set-up for the technological novum which defines Le Guin’s chronologically later books? The inconclusive future for Urras seems to split Shevek’s three goals, while attaching importance in relation to her overall megatext to the completion of his physics theory, and to the novel itself in the furthering of Anarres’ social movement. Any change in Urras is minimal, and the marginalization of this element of the novel leads to an overall feeling of disconnect in the work.

How do you reconcile Shevek’s Anarresti ideal of constant revolution with him giving up on Urrasti reform?

Do you see further significance in the inclusion of Urras in the novel, or do you think the same themes of the novel could be expressed in an equally effective manner in another setting foreign to Anarres?

Is there some purpose in leaving Urras’ future unfinished in the novel?