Science fiction encourages people to think concretely about what their ideals involve. In the case of The Dispossessed Le Guin challenges the reader to consider the ramifications of separating from a greater society to create another. The solidity of Le Guin's vision and the complexity of her thinking is no surprise to a seasoned reader of science fiction. In this paper I aim to juxtapose Annares against Urras in order to highlight the necessity of permanent revolution the novel allows us to see in both societies. I believe Le Guin uses the two opposing societies to tell a larger story of permanent revolution through challenging the concepts of possession, class systems, and hierarchical organizations of culture.
Le Guin suggests the need for permanent revolution to counter such threats as an incipient bureaucracy and a tendency toward dominance games. Marx used the term “permanent revolution” to describe the strategy of a revolutionary class to continue to pursue its class interests independently and without compromise, despite overtures for political alliances and the political dominance of opposing sections of society. In Can the Subaltern Speak? Spivak explores contemporary relations of power and Western intellectual discourse through representation and the political economy of global capitalism. In place of Earth's global capitalism I will be exploring Urras and Annares' relationship with themselves and each other. Urras and Anarres each view themselves as establishers of the good society.
The Dispossessed develops two parallel and dependent stories alternating with one another. One on the anarchist moon of Anarres, the other on the capitalist world of Urras. The Anarres story works by flashbacks in the life of the physic...
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...force of permanent revolution. This revolution requires becoming aware of how much we desire stability, how easily we internalize the domination of others, and how much we believe that we lack the power to act on our own. “You cannot take what you have not been given, and you must not give yourself, You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit or it is nowhere (Le Guin 301). Humanity is capable of great harm, even when the larger society doesn't teach harm. With great effort, desire, and positive social models humanity is capable of a cooperative and wholly beneficial social structure, it only takes some revolution.
Works Cited
Le Guin, Ursula K. The Dispossessed. New York: Harper Perennial, 2003. Print.
Spivak, Gayatri C. Can the Subaltern Speak? Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988. 271-311. Print.
In Peter Winn's Weavers of Revolution, a factory in Santiago, Chile fights for their independence against the Chilean government of the 1970's. While this rebellion is going on, presidential elections are taking place and Salvador Allende is the presidential candidate which represents the common people. The relation between Allende and the people he represents is a unique one because at first this class, the working class, helps and supports Allende to become president, but then both parties realize their different plans for the future and the working class actually contributes to the downfall of Allende's presidency.
The Yarur textile factory played an important role in Chilean politics, and was the central role for the uprisings and downfalls in Chilean history. Its first key component was that it represented an economic empire based of paper and cloth that used these resources to gain political power through the aspect of having wealth. The second element of the Yarur factory that gave its importance in Chilean politics was that it represented a monopoly of Chile’s political capital. In Weavers of Revolution, Peter Winn depicts the relationship between a “revolution from above” and “revolution from below” and how the workers of the Yarur textile factory faced an on-going struggle between the working class and the government. Winn focuses his analysis of the Chilean road to socialism around the Yarur textile factory because it is through the modernization and changes of political, economic, and industrial policies that ultimately led to the workers movement to bring about a revolution.
As Rand refutes a principal concept of socialism, she illustrates multiple counts of insubordination and social class structures. Socialism’s attempt to remove class structure fails miserably. The most prominent demonstration of rebellion rises from Equality 7-2521 and his emotions and desire for knowledge. After being denied by the Council of Scholars, Equality 7-2521 rashly breaks a window and flees “in a ringing rain of glass” (Rand 75). Equality 7-2521’s actions illustrate the ‘working class’ rebelling against the ‘elitists’ though this society attempted to eliminate social structures. Furthermore, Equality 7-2521 was not alone in rebelling against ‘the brotherhood’, Liberty 5-3000 followed his example. Unsatisfied with her life and the suppression of emotion, she followed Equality 7-2521’s example and “on the night of the day when we heard it, we ran away from the Home of Peasants” (Rand 82). The rebellion of the two members reflects the means of a social rev...
In conclusion, the two short stories as compared and contrasted above, depict the degradation of social norms caused by poverty. The two sets of characters’ reactions to this abasement are different, and both prove ineffective attempts to overcome or cope with the situation.
The Dispossessed takes as its novum a general theory of time, illustrated by the paradox of a rock thrown at a tree, a rock that can never reach its target because "there's always half of the way left to go" (Le Guin 26). Shevek, Le Guin's protagonist and formulator of the general temporal theory, sees himself as one who "'unbuilds walls'" (Le Guin 289), as the "primal number, that [is] both unity and plurality" (Le Guin 30) crossing interfaces. Walls abound in The Dispossessed: the wall between Anarres and Urras (Le Guin 1-2), the wall that separates one individual from every other (Le Guin 6), the wall of social conscience (Le Guin 287), the wall between men and women (Le Guin 14-16), the wall of time--Zeno's paradox--the limit that prevents the rock from striking the tree (Le Guin 26).
Through his photographs and mastery of writing, Jacob Riis gives readers a clear insight and alerts the audience how much the ignorance of the higher social class has hurt their fellow man and themselves. Through How the Other Half lives, we can see that in absence of the contribution of Riis, the upper and middle class had not seen anything else but the shiny side of poverty that they often read about in the papers or saw on the street at times. Through How the other Half Lives, Riis not only exposed the dark side of America of the 18th century but also gave poverty a face and humanity.
The theory that this essay will be about is the theory by Michael Foucault which states “power is everywhere”, and also the theory that goes along with Foucault’s that is, “every interaction has a struggle for power” (Bakhtin) as said by Russian philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin. The theory means that whenever two people meet, at some point in their conversation one will try to become the alpha male. This all stems from Fidel Castro’s communist ways in Cuba. Everyone who lives in Cuba are all forced to believe in no religion and everyone is supposed to be the same and bow down to their dictator. Therefore, this causes rebellions to occur in which people want more power than the others so they try to fight against the communism ways, these rebellions are led by power thirsty individuals which usually ends in death or being sent to isolation.
...rchal values, women have equal access to jobs, and a man's job does not determine where the women live. Many other feminist values of the later 60's early 70's are characterized by the Anarres utopia; there is no emphasis on physical beauty, women do not have to reshape or decorate their bodies (i.e.) women don't shave their body hair and little or no jewelry is worn. Along with the many feminist values anarchism values are also employed in Leguin's utopia. Anarres was built on the protest and revolution against centralized government. The view that, "most of humanities problems came from living under governments" was prevalent thought out the entire novel. Urras was perceived and quoted as "HELL" by people on Anarres. The overall theme "a man can not be free while living in the walls (or rules) of government underlies and structures the entire novel.
The narrator portrays her degrading identity through her cultural detachment from Europe and Africa. The novel does not only tell the story through the exile she has suffered. At times, the narrator’s nocturnal writing offers the reader her inner thoughts, but it also displays her initiative to confide within her exile through nostalgia and lyricism. An analysis of multiple passages - regarding writing and geogra...
The poem “Exile” by Julia Alvarez dramatizes the conflicts of a young girl’s family’s escape from an oppressive dictatorship in the Dominican Republic to the freedom of the United States. The setting of this poem starts in the city of Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, which was renamed for the brutal dictator Rafael Trujillo; however, it eventually changes to New York when the family succeeds to escape. The speaker is a young girl who is unsophisticated to the world; therefore, she does not know what is happening to her family, even though she surmises that something is wrong. The author uses an extended metaphor throughout the poem to compare “swimming” and escaping the Dominican Republic. Through the line “A hurried bag, allowing one toy a piece,” (13) it feels as if the family were exiled or forced to leave its country. The title of the poem “Exile,” informs the reader that there was no choice for the family but to leave the Dominican Republic, but certain words and phrases reiterate the title. In this poem, the speaker expresser her feeling about fleeing her home and how isolated she feels in the United States.
The Mexican Revolution was brought on by, among other factors, tremendous disagreements among the Mexican people over the dictatorship of President Porfirio Diaz. During his span of reign, power was only concentrated in the hands of selected few. 95 percent of the rural population owned no land, while about one thousand families owned almost all of Mexico. Injustice was everywhere, in the cities and the countryside alive the underdogs follows the rise and fall of Demetrio Macias and his band of rebels during the Mexican Revolution of the early nineteen hundreds. This novel informs and offers us the history of the Mexican Revolution and the impact it had on the people of Mexico protesting against Federal officials, the people living in low standards
Over the course of this class, we have focused on four main theories for viewing the different facets of world politics: realism, liberalism, radicalism, and constructivism. Each theory has its own merits and appeals to my way of thinking for distinct reasons. I appreciate the attempted focus on rationale and “calling things what they are” attitude of realism. Realists do not attempt to sugarcoat how they see the anarchic system at work. They acknowledge the “dog eat dog” mentality and account for it when trying to act in the interest of their state. Also, I understand the argument that radicals have against our economic system. I have seen the exploitation of the have-not’s for the profit of the elites in several different contexts. Indeed, I find it understandable that they would feel that the economy is the main factor at fault. It does regulate a lot of interaction between states. Constructivism raises valid points as well. It is worth it to consider how much of what we believe about the world around us is what we believe, simply, because we have been taught so by others.
Huntington defines revolution as the result of a state in which rapid mobilisation of new groups and social change is taking place while the necessary organisational organs are unable to appease the wants of the people and provide change at a matched pace 430*. The effect of such mass mobilisation and the significant increase in political participation intends to destabilise the current political institutions within the state. During phases of modernisation, Huntington suggests that such expansion should be matched with similar paced development of political institutions in terms of their complexity and autonomy in order to minimise and contain the effect of modernisation by political institutions*. Huntington equates modernisation with political decay and therefore suggests criteria by which political institutions can attempt to maintain political relevance. These criteria include; complexity, autonomy, coherence and adaptability. It is suggested by Huntington that if a...
Throughout the three books which compose the series it is easy to see examples of class struggle, ruling class ideologies, and revolution. I intend to focus on these
Society is highly stratified when considering social classes i.e. - upper class, middle class, lower class, and working class citizens. That being said, not everyone has the same access to the superstructure; thus creating tension. The largest problem when considering structure and agency is the constant struggle and negotiation of power inequality. Among the asymmetry of power are two major disparities; class and gender. Thinking as a critical theorist, one must consider the individual’s participation in the public sphere; “The word means a false view of the world that is in the interests of the powerful citizens in order to keep the subordinate classes oppressed” (Habermas, 10). Though the public sphere is virtually a democratic sphere where ideas can circulate and opinions are formed there are certain restrictions when referring to lower classes and women and thus how their agencies as individuals are limited.