I agree with Ada that language is important in this text. As Harvey mentions, the relation between power and knowledge is a central one in postmodernism. Theorists like Foucault and Lyotard attack the notions of meta-narrative and meta-language, emphasizing instead the existence of a plurality of \u2018power-discourses\u2019 and \u2018language games\u2019. The individual is at any given time in the cross-section of many different discourses or language games, many of which are connected to specific (institutional) contexts. According to Foucault, the codification of such discourses (or systems of knowledge) is often intimately connected to the exercise of social control and domination within the particular context covered by the discourse. Similarly to Lyotard\u2019s, his work emphasizes that those in command of communication are also in command of power. <\/p>\n
In le Guin\u2019s novel, the relationship between Orr and Dr. Haber can certainly be thought of in terms of a power-discourse: a language-game as well as a mind-game. From the very moment they meet, Haber has the upper hand. He is the jovial doctor, and Orr his malfunctioning (schizophrenic?) \u2018jellyfish\u2019 of a patient. The doctor\u2019s knowledge of the human brain and of technology is what constitutes his power over Orr. The unequal power relationship is manifested in the lack of communication between the two characters. For the whereas Orr looks to Dr. Haber for a reassuring and clarifying dialogue, what is offered him is a one-way communication in which the doctor holds the power of the word. Orr is silenced from the very beginning, and the more powerful Haber gets, the more difficult it is to speak up against him. Not until his position is beyond threat of any counter-argument, does the doctor enter into some sort of dialogue with Orr. But by then it is too late for Orr to engage in a verbal power struggle with his doctor. As the end of the great experiment draws near, the doctor indeed makes an attempt to completely nullify Orr\u2019s balanced personality (or what some of his colleagues would call his holistic adjustment) by representing it as a \u2018canceling out\u2019 of his entire person. In this sense it is possible to read Orr\u2019s increasingly eccentric dream-worlds as the mind\u2019s creative resistance to oppression. <\/p>\n
The more in control Dr. Haber gets, the more totalitarian and controlling he becomes. Not merely does his position in the world greatly improve through the manipulations of Orr\u2019s dreams, his physical appearance also changes. His voice becomes deeper and more commanding, his laughter hollow, and his whole character take on \u2018larger than life-size\u2019. Along with the ever greater sacrifices of innocent lives the doctor is willing to accept in order to create a state of \u201cTHE GREATEST GOOD FOR THE GREATEST NUMBER\u201d(132), these characteristics indicate that his ideology is crumbling while his thirst for power grows. Haber\u2019s \u2018benevolent\u2019 utopian state, in which there is no more war or racial conflicts, is nevertheless totalitarian, controlling and suppressing. The final dream-world before the crisis is a kind of combination between Orwell\u2019s 1984 (most of the legislation on which this society is founded is indeed reported to be from this year) and Huxley\u2019s Brave New World. It is definitely a capitalist society: Haber and his WPC are reported to control 90% of the world\u2019s trade. It is also a tough-minded society in which humans are considered Utilities (the HURAD), and it is growing tougher yearly. In this sense Haber\u2019s project of restoring the world has only led him into the Foucaultian trap of \u201creplicating all the multiple repressions of capitalism in a new form\u201d (Harvey, 46). In fact, the further his utopian project runs, the more the dream-worlds resemble the dystopia in which the novel begun. Why?<\/p>\n
To me, Orr and Dr. Haber represent two different world views. Orr represents a holistic view of life, in which the individual has a feeling of interconnectedness with the world, and does not seek to change it. Dr. Haber, who has \u201cthe quality of the will to power\u201d which \u201cis, precisely, growth\u201d (128), is a representative of capitalist society and \u2018progress\u2019. His urge for power and expansion takes us (the readers, as well as the dream-worlds) back to the nothingness from which it started. The reason for this, I believe, is the same as the reason why the basic geographic and environmental circumstances stay much the same throughout the novel. By having Orr claim that all the worlds of the text are dream-worlds he created just as earth was destroyed in a holocaust of nuclear war, pollution, and over-population, and by never letting the subsequent dream-worlds escape the destructive \u2018heritage of the last century\u2019, I think Le Guin is making a conservationist point. Unless we check reason (which Enlightenment freed from submission to God)\/ science, the human love of power will merely merge with the capitalist urge of growth and expansion to send us forever into slightly diverging \u2013 but similar – circles of death and ecological devastation. That is why the wildly imaginative sci-fi story is balanced \u2013 or has a dialogue with \u2013 the chapter epigraphs on Taoism. They function to reminderus of the limits of human knowledge and power, and to urge us to be at peace with the rest of the world. The link to Taoism may explain the curious turtles included at the end: In the I Ching, or The Book of Changes, the secrets of the future is revealed in the cracks of the tortoise shell. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I agree with Ada that language is important in this text. As Harvey mentions, the relation between power and knowledge is a central one in postmodernism. Theorists like Foucault and Lyotard attack the notions of meta-narrative and meta-language, emphasizing instead the existence of a plurality of \u2018power-discourses\u2019 and \u2018language games\u2019. The individual is at any … Continue reading Language, Capitalism and Turtles<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reflections"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/fall2005\/660\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}