Author Archives: curtisc

The Dispossessed — My Thoughts

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Utopias are difficult to conceive.  We all have criticisms of the world in which we live and while it takes imagination and skill to successfully write a dystopia that captures the ways in which our current world is going awry the initial steps are easier – most of your readers will agree that something is amiss and many readers will delight in the exaggerations of the dystopian version of our world.  But utopias are harder.  Not because we do not all have visions of what a better world might look like, but because we recognize the ways in which one person’s vision of a better world in another person’s vision of a dystopia.   Beyond this stumbling block is the reader’s own immediate and likely constant questioning: this could never work! People do not act in these ways!  Nobody would want to live in that way!  This author’s failure to (properly understand waste management, appreciate early childhood education, endorse all varieties of sexual practice, abolish violence) means I can reject this book out of hand!   It is naïve! Continue reading →

Survey on problems — results

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We have discussed the ways in which utopian and dystopian accounts are often criticizing the structure/reality of the world from which they are writing.  In doing so these authors are diagnosing problems, sometimes by presenting a world absent those problems (or in a dystopia with that problem taken to its extreme).  When asked about problems that you would diagnose globally, nationally, regionally, in your community and in yourself the greatest moments of agreement were in the diagnosis of problems in the larger sphere.  For example, 15 people identified war/violence as an issue globally (with three of you identifying this as a problem nationally), 13 people identified poverty/hunger as a global problem (and this came up for 4 of you as a national, regional and local problem as well), and 13 of you identified environmental abuse as a global problem (and while sustainability came up as an issue on the smaller scale, this was the one global problem that was not repeated by multiple people on the smaller scale).  Likewise, when thinking nationally polarization was identified by 8 of you as a problem.  So there is some agreement about key problems.  On the other hand there is also a great degree of variation, particularly as people start to think about problems closer to home.  While issues around inequality came up multiple times the nature of inequality as a problem (class, education, race, gender, sexuality, religion) illustrates a wide array of concerns.  Economic problems ran from issues over taxation to the gap between rich and poor to greed/consumerism.

So what do we do with the results from this informal survey?  On the one hand you should recognize that agreement about big problems simplifies the life of the writer of dystopia – if lots of people agree that violence or poverty or environmental degradation or radical inequality are problems then to construct an imagined world of that problem taken to an extreme should be convincing.  But if we are in greater disagreement about the problems that are more immediate to us and to our own communities then it may be harder to move from an agreement about X being a problem to mobilizing to solve that problem.  Next up I will ask you what would be good to see in our community/nation/world – and I will ask you to think of this beyond the mere opposite of what you have here: no war, no poverty, no environmental degradation.

Omelas and Ecofeminism (Sarah H.)

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To gain an alternative perspective on The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas I read an article from The English Journal, “Through Ecofeminist Eyes: Le Guin’s The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” by Barbara Bennett. This was primarily because I had never heard of the term “ecofeminist.” You may be wondering the same. Ecofeminisim brings together ideologies of feminism and environmentalism stressing the importance that everything is interconnected rather than isolated. The feminist aspect identifies the current patriarchical system of hierarchy as perpetuating world problems, which leads into the environmental aspect, environmental degradation as a world problem. You may be confused as I was, what does this have to do with Omelas? Bennett, to be honest, is lacking in her argument. I see that Omelas is a metaphor for contemporary society and the hierarchy of humans rather than a community of equality, which is a key element of ecofeminism. The kid in the basement shows that there is a definite hierarchy that people largely accept as keeping their world going, rather than rejecting this cycle and looking for an alternative as a whole. However, there isn’t a clear environmental aspect. She argues that Omelas can be looked at Through Ecofeminist Eyes by defining the environmental aspect as more of a humanitarian one. The kid ultimately serves as the example of degradation of environment (more of the communal space for relations rather than the physical environment) because he is the result of the hierarchy and lack of community. Bennett’s perspective was interesting and she did pull out some key messages from Le Guin’s story such as Omelas serving as a metaphor for contemporary society and showing that cycles of bad are perpetuated by hierarchy and lack of community, and inversely can be changed if people choose to walk away. However, I felt the application of the term “ecofeminist” to Le Guin’s story to be generally confusing.

Welcome to Utopia (and Dystopia)

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The idea of utopia is both a cornerstone for political thought in general and is, in particular, a motivation for thinking about how to make the world a better place.  That does not mean that my (or your) utopian vision will be seen as desirable by others — this is part of what makes the idea of utopia frustrating and fascinating.  This semester we will be reading utopias from other times (More’s Utopia, Butler’s Erewhon, Bellamy’s Looking Backward) and more contemporary utopian visions (LeGuin’s The Dispossessed) and novels that seem to be both utopian and dystopian (Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake and Octavia Butler’s, Parable of the Sower).  In addition to these fictional utopian and dystopian accounts we willalso readtheoires about utopia and examine life in intentional communities — what some might consider lived utopias.  This blog will be a place for students to share ideas, insights, frustrations and wrestlings with the works that we read and the world in which we live.