Anarchy, Sex, and Ursula K. Le Guin
To step into the world of
Ursula K. Le Guin is to be transformed, to reside in multiple worlds and bodies, to lay bare the most indisputable assumptions of human civilization as we know it. Two challenges in particular posed by Le Guin’s work still charm my still-life nights, namely, her anarchism and her blurring of sexual boundaries. Instead of moving from an explanation of one to the other, I will examine both aspects of her work together because they are inextricably tangled. And for good reason.
Le Guin's anarchism is not the big-business or gun-heavy type, which is not to typify it as "feminine" or "soft", but only mark a few boundaries from the start. In her prefatory comments to “The Day Before The Revolution” in
The Wind’s Twelve Quarters, Le Guin writes:
“Odonianism is anarchism. Not the bomb-in-the-pocket stuff, which is terrorism, whatever name it tries to dignify itself with; not the social-Darwinist economic 'libertarianism' of the far right; but anarchism, as pre-figured in early Taoist thought, and expounded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. Anarchism's principal target is the authoritarian State (capitalist or socialist); its principal moral-practical theme is cooperation (solidarity, mutual aid). It is the most idealistic, and to me the most interesting, of all political theories."
So what attracts her to anarchism is its fascination with the power relations underlying social structures and conventions. Rather than wax poetic about private defense, Le Guin prefers to place financial relations in just another category of social relations.
In an interview with Nick Gevers, she described the books of
The Earthsea Trilogy as "in large part, fictional studies of power". While the first three see power mostly from "the point of view of the powerful", the second three see power "from the point of view of people who have none, or have lost it, or who can see their power as one of the illusions of mortality".
Like Michel Foucault, Le Guin traces power relations through sexual and social institutions as well as the more popularly-examined political and economic institutions. This leads to an exploration of biological and political sexual roles that calls into question our current patriarchy and the constraints it imposes on our intellectual, social, and personal freedom. Le Guin thinks:
"We are so good at making life difficult for ourselves, not least by inventing almost impossible customs. Monogamous lifelong heterosexual marriage is such a peculiar institution that it hardly seems to need to be made fun of. But of course if you make marriage even harder than it is, involving four people instead of two, and homosexuality as well as heterosexuality, it gets even more interesting. At least, it does to me. But I find all cumbersome cultural constructs and customs interesting. I am an anthropologist's daughter, after all."
Defending the "sedoretu" from an attack of impracticality, Le Guin asks how monogamous heterosexual marriage is any more "practical". Isn't it only practical because we live in a society organized by institutions built around this very idea of one-man-and-one-woman-united-in-holy-patrimony? She suggests that her own forty-eight year marriage might be chalked up to "luck and a bit of practice".
Where Le Guin's position/s begin to befuddle is also where they begin to duel, sometimes even contradict, each other. For example, after saying that anarchism is "the most idealistic" and "the most interesting" political theory, she turns around to state:
"All ideals are positively dangerous. All idealists are dangerous: Pol Pot, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Jefferson, Lenin, Osama Bin Laden, Francis of Assisi. What is endangered, and how it is endangered may, however, vary. And there may be a difference -- a subtle one, a crucial one -- between idealists and ideologues."
This is not a case of self-nullifying arguments-- Le Guin would be the first to admit the danger of her own ideals, as well as those of others-- but a normative question about what it might be better to risk, given an assumption of loss.Consistency doesn't compensate for a lack of substance, as I learned by listening to the political arguments favoring a war on Iraq, and the fact that many of Le Guin's works are formulated as thought-experiments excuses (maybe even explains or justifies) her decision to sacrifice consistency or transparency to what she dubs "process".
As noted by
Margaret Atwood in a recent review, Ursula Le Guin usually doesn't "concoct her worlds: she finds herself in them, and then begins to explore them". In Le Guin's own words: "First to create the differences...then to let the fiery arc of human emotion leap and close the gap: this acrobatics of the imagination fascinates and satisfies me as almost no other". Like Foucault, Le Guin toys with process, with the "getting there", with the meticulate description of the path so that we might better understand why we chose it (or why it was chosen for us, or institutionalized, etc.)
Also in a manner resembling that of Foucault, teething happily on her chains, Le Guin revels in the study of that which constrains us as human beings. When asked
in an interview by Slawek Wojtowicz where and when she would most like to live, Le Guin doesn't miss a beat: "Right now, right here. Why? Because this is where I am and when I am and my "being" is here and now. I think the fact that we have no choice in this matter is extremely interesting and important."
I could not agree more, and feel compelled to note the similarity between her views and that of
Romanian dissident Nicu Steinhardt, whose preferred his periods of imprisonment under the communist dictatorship to the false freedom of life in the "worker's paradise". Realizing and accepting his chains helped Steinhardt overcome them mentally, or see beyond them, which is often the most precious freedom in that it depends on nothing (or little) outside of one's self. To know one's limits is to be familiar with one's limitlessness.
Let's return for a moment to the quotation in which Le Guin names her intellectual influences as early Taoist thought, and anarchism as expunded by Shelley and Kropotkin, Goldman and Goodman. The influence of Taoism should be considered in the context of her political commitment to pacifism, her intellectual commitment to understanding, and her personal commitment to fascination.
In
an interview with Mother Jones Le Guin says:
"I read Lao-tzu and the Tao Te Ching at 14. My father had it around the house in the old edition with the Chinese text. I sneaked a peek and was and remain fascinated. Taoism is still an underlayer in my work. It begins talking about what we can't talk about -- an old mysticism that intertwines with Buddhism and is practical and not theistic. Before and beyond God. There's a humorous and easygoing aspect to it that I like temperamentally and that fits in with anarchism. Pacifist anarchism and Lao-tzu have a lot in connection with each other, especially in the 20th century." By flirting with mysticism, Le Guin's speculative archaeology and anthropology of possible worlds retains its fluidity.
Mary Shelley's influence, whose
Frankenstein is considered by many to be the first "science fiction", is more direct, for it can be ascertained in the ethical questions teeming through Le Guin's work. Atwood remarks that Shelley's work asked a question popular to sci-fi ever since, namely, "what is the price that must be paid by Promethean Man for stealing fire from Heaven?". Insofar as this question deals with the problematics of power in human society, Le Guin's clever strategy is to disguise the problem in such incredible form that we are surprised, almost disappointed, to find how much it explains.
