The Dispossessed: an Ideological Distopia

Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences (http://jss.gantep.edu.tr) 2013 12(1):123-133 ISSN: 1303-0094 The Dispossessed: an Ideological Distopia Mülksüzler: İdeolojik Bir Distopya Ela İpek Gündüz  Gaziantep Üniversitesi Abstract Ursula K. Le Guin, in her dystopian novel The Dispossessed creates two opposite worlds. Both worlds have contrasting ideologies: a non-authoritarian planet called Anarres, in which individuals experience freedom consciously and deliberately in their own terms (by the equal distribution of the power dynamics in an anarchic society), and its moon Urras with its authoritarian governmental system (both by a capitalist country called A-İo, and by a communist country Thu). Through her depiction of these reverse poles Le Guin achieves to mirror the failure of different kinds of governmental systems which are the practices of the ideologies. These administrative systems fail because they cannot obtain pursuit of human freedom and happiness. According to Le Guin, the ideological representations of the governments are doomed to failure because in spite of their being imaginary systems to create a sphere of happiness for human beings, they are apart from being ideal and they have misapplications. In this article, the systematic unconscious effects of ideology (in an Alhusserian sense) on social, economic and political issues and the influences of the governmental organization on alienating the individuals to themselves by restricting their creativity and trust for themselves will be highlighted with the help of Le Guin’s two opposite dystopian worlds. Therefore, although these two opposite worlds have different ideologies, in the end they both turn out to be distopias. Le Guin proposes a solution to the problem of searching human happiness within the ideologies (represented in the administrative systems) by replacing it with the individual (who could change himself, get rid of all the prejudices, transgress all the boundaries). Key Words: ideology, dystopia, hegemony, ideological state apparatuses, Ursula K. Le Guin Özet Ursula K. Le Guin Mülksüzler adlı romanında birbirine zıt ideolojilere sahip iki dünya yaratır. Biri, bir devlet düzeni olmayan Anarres adındaki gezegen (ki bu ülkedeki insanlar bilinçli ve istekli bir şekilde özgürlüklerini anarşik bir toplumdaki eşit şekilde dağıtılan güç dinamikleriyle tecrübe etmektedirler); diğeri de onun uydusu olan Urras’tır ki (Urras’taki kapitalist A-İo, ve komünist Thu adlı ülkelerle betimlenir) ve otoriter devlet sistemini  Gaziantep Üniversitesi, Fen-Edebiyat Fakültesi İngiliz Dili ve Edebiyatı Bölümü, e-posta: 124 The Dispossessed: an Ideological Distopia yansıtır. Bu iki zıt kutbu yaratarak Le Guin ideolojilerin uygulanmaları olan değişik yönetim biçimlerinin başarısızlıklarını yansıtmayı başarır. Le Guin’e göre, ideolojilerin temsil edildiği devletlerin başarısızlığı, insanlara ortak bir hayali ideal olan uzlaşma ortamını sağlayıp, onlara mutluluk dolu bir ortam yaratamamasıdır. Le Guin’e gore, ideolojilerin temsil edildiği devletler başarısızlığa mahkûmdur çünkü insanlara mutluluk sağlamak için oluşturulmuş hayali sistemlerdir ama ideal olmaktan uzaktırlar ve yanlış uygulamaları vardır. Bu makalede, sosyal, ekonomik ve politik bağlamlarda ideolojinin sistematik bilinçaltı etkileri (Althusser’in görüşleriyle), ve yönetimsel organizasyonların bireylerin kendilerine olan güvenlerini ve yaratıcılıklarını kısıtlayarak nasıl kendilerine yabancılaştırıldıkları Le Guin’in romanındaki distopik dünya yardımıyla incelenecektir. Böylece, farklı ideolojilere sahip bu her iki zıt dünyanın distopyaya nasıl dönüştüğü anlaşılacaktır. Sonuç olarak, Le Guin insanların devletin içinde mutluluğu arama sorununa, devlet düzenlerine değil de, (bütün sınırları aşabilecek olan) bireye odaklanarak, çözüm bulmaya çalıştığı görülecektir. Anahtar Kelimeler: ideoloji, distopya, egemenlik, ideolojik devlet aygıtları, Ursula K. LeGuin I. INTRODUCTION When the development of the term “utopia” is considered, Plato’s The Republic could be regarded as the first work devising an ideal society in which conditions are as equal and preferable for all citizens. It is a utopian world created for the welfare of the human beings by a well-structured social and governmental system. Whereas, Thomas Moore in Utopia proposes individual participation in politics against the governmental abuse of power. Afterwards, the concept of sharing and the collective good becomes the main theme of the utopias. However, current utopian texts turn out to be dystopian as a result of the impossibility of the utopias and even the dreams turn out to be the nightmares of the people 1 . Ursula K. Le Guin creates her novel the Dispossessed by using dystopia as a genre because utopianism has finished and with the definite examples from history such as America and Soviet Union (that were supposed to be utopias) turned into failures and dystopias. The socialist utopia of the Soviets became the totalitarian dystopia of Stalinism and the free/liberal utopia of America turned into hypocrite dystopia of capitalism (Kumar, 1987: 594). Le Guin attempts to depict these real dystopias with an imaginary anarchic one to show the ambiguity of the social order. Moreover, even the idealized anarchic society Anarres turns out to be a failure in the sense that still the system exploits the individual. Furthermore, Le Guin in her novel depicts the utopianist aspect of Marxism in the sense that Marx and Engels expect to have a kind of revolution through which individuals will experience a kind of self-realization by the removal of the exploitation of the capitalist systems, 1 exploringutopia.weebly.com Gündüz E.I/ JSS 12(1) (2013):123-133 125 but she reverses this expectancy by showing the revolutionized country Anarres as a dystopian world. Therefore, for Le Guin the solution is not focused on the administrative systems or the public in general; instead she emphasizes the importance of the individual efforts to understand the importance of the social welfare. Ursula K. Le Guin, in The Dispossessed imagines a non-authoritarian country called Anarres- in which individuals consciously and deliberately experience their potential of experiencing freedom by the equal distribution of the power dynamics in an anarchic society. In contrast, its moon Urras with its authoritarian governmental system – both by a capitalist ruling system of A-İo (representing USA), and by a communist system of Thu (representing) USSR – fails to create a sphere of happiness for human beings. Therefore, as Le Guin reflects in one way or another, consciously or unconsciously, the systematic unconscious effects of ideology (in an Alhusserian sense) on social, economic and political issues and the effects of the governmental organization on alienating the individuals to themselves by restricting their creativity and trust for themselves is inevitable. Therefore, her novel is titled as “an Ambiguous Utopia” (...truncated)