LeGuin – American Postmodernism

Reconfiguring the Past

Well, it is very late, and I am wondering why it has taken me so long to come up with something to write about concerning Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Perhaps, it has something to do with not actually liking the novel that much. Don’t get me wrong, it is a fine literary achievement, but for some reason it doesn’t “strike a chord” with me (but I will leave my personal taste out of this discussion).

More importantly, I am struggling with the postmodern-ness of the novel (and of Toni Morrison in general). So it is a relief to see that as a class, we seem to be struggling together. I keep trying to find a postmodern entry into this novel but have found little success, and so my last resort is to attempt to situate Beloved with the other postmodern texts we have read up to this point. Obviously, this is no walk in the park either…but I did find one thing that could prove useful, but could also prove worthless.

In Kimberly Chabot Davis’ essay “Postmodern Blackness,” she discusses the interaction between past and present in Morrison’s Beloved:

One way to free oneself from the horrors of the past is to reenact and reconfigure the past in the present, as Sethe does with an icepick at the end of the novel, attacking not her own children this time but the white man Bodwin, whom she perceives as a reincarnation of her slave master Schoolteacher. (251)

Could we not consider this idea (reconfiguring the past in the present) in terms of Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven? I believe a comparison with Le Guin’s novel depends on how one reads the ending of Beloved. As Davis explains, some critics see the ending as a positive resolution; however, Davis “find[s] that the last chapter denies such a simplistic closure. Morrison ends the novel with the word “Beloved,” suggesting that the past is a lasting presence, waiting to be resurrected. […] Although the ending suggests partial healing, the spectre of the past reamins, waiting to resurface” (251).

To reinforce her claims, Davis turns to Hutcheon who I think can be used also to consider The Lathe of Heaven:

the past is not something to be escaped, avoided, or controlled. . . the past is something with which we must come to terms and such a confrontation involves an acknowledgment of limitation as well as power. (251)

So to try to pull this shaky argument together: Sethe’s icepick maneuver is comparable to the chaotic ending of Dr. Haber’s effective dream in The Lathe of Heaven. These resolutions are not perfect. Instead, the endings demonstrate an “acknowledgment of limitation”: Sethe cannot erase the past by stabbing someone with an icepick, and Dr. Haber cannot alter the wrongs of the past by changing the world’s present condition (Note: his attempt to do so results in chaos. Had it not been for George reaching the “off” switch, the world would have been staring into the eye of an apocalyptic disaster.)

Alternatively, both novels demonstrate the failing attempts to reconfigure the past through the present: Beloved in terms of a personal, familial past and The Lathe Heaven in terms of a broader world history.

Well what exactly does all of this tell me? By placing Beloved alongside a postmodern text, can a claim of postmodernism be made for Morrison’s novel? I’m not sure. As was stated in Davis’s essay, Beloved‘s ending can be read several different ways. If we read the ending as a positive resolution, then I can see the case being made against a postmodernist reading. Either way, a comparison between the two novels certainly raises questions about the reconfiguration of the past through the present, and whether or not this can be achieved.

Harvey on Genre vs. Characterization in Postmodernism

In “The Condition of Postmodernity,” David Harvey attempts to define postmodernism in relation to modernism, and in myriad cultural contexts, including literature, architecture, psychology, and art. In his definition, Harvey discusses the blurring of genres, and specifically mentions the postmodern tendency to dissolve the “boundary between fiction and science fiction” (41). This is definitely true of The Lathe of Heaven, a novel that cannot fit into either/or category of science fiction/postmodern literature. LeGuin’s novel is most striking in its ability to use science fiction to cause disorder and confusion in reality as we know it. However, as opposed to the reality featured in Crying of Lot 49, which defies any sense of reason and is completely fragmented, the reality in The Lathe of Heaven is more believable, and also more ordered. Though George’s prophetic dreams do influence reality, this pattern is more noticeable, and therefore, expected in the novel.

Jennifer asks in the first post on this topic whether all science fiction novels can be considered postmodern. While it is definitely a valid and interesting question, Harvey posits in his article on “Postmodernity” that while “modernist literary critics do tend to look at works as examples of a ‘genre’ and do judge them by a ‘master code’ that prevails within the boundary of the genre, [the] ‘postmodern’ style is simply to view a work as a ‘text’ with its own particular ‘rhetoric’ and ‘idolect,’ but which can in principle be compared with any other text of no matter what sort” (44). If I understand this correctly, I think Harvey is specifically drawing attention to postmodernists’ attempts to eschew “genre” as we know it; therefore, we cannot really classify any postmodernist work as “science fiction” or any other genre. Though this seems easy enough to digest in theory, it becomes problematic in practice to shy away from categorizing literary works for the purposes of comparison and analysis. On one hand, postmodernism is fragmentation and chaos, as Harvey defines it; and on the other hand, in order to legitimize its impact, we need to understand postmodernism logically, and in terms that we can easily decipher and comprehend.

Leaving the genre debate aside, it becomes easier to think of postmodernism as a way to propagate equal representation: “The idea that all groups have a right to speak for themselves, in their own voice, and have that voice accepted as authentic and legitimate is essential to the pluralistic stance of postmodernism” (Harvey 48). Hence, when discussing postmodern literary works, such as The Lathe of Heaven, it becomes apparent that issues of racial construction, for example, are called to be eradicated. Dr. Haber states that we should have “no more color problems. No question of race […] Nobody in the entire history of the human race has suffered for the color of his skin” (LeGin 129). Additionally, “characters no longer contemplate how they can unravel or unmask a central mystery, but are forced to ask, ‘Which world is this? What is to be done in it? Which of the mysteries is to do it? Instead” (Harvey 48). This shift in focus from genre to characterization, and their influence on/perception of reality is a defining feature of postmodernism. The effect of this shift in focus is striking: “to break (deconstruct) the power of the author to impose meanings or offer a continuous narrative” (Harvey 51). Therefore, instead of the focus being on how LeGuin weaves the plot to create a work of science fiction, the focus shifts to how the characters—George Orr, Dr. Haber, and Heather—develop throughout the novel, and whether or not their respective dreams/ realities materialize and coincide.

Order vs. Chaos…A Draw?

Early in his book entitled “The Condition of Postmodernity,” David Harvey addresses a key identifier of the movement from modernism to postmodernism. Paraphrasing from McHale, Harvey explains that the postmodern novel “is characterized by a shift from an ‘epistemological’ to an ‘ontological’ dominant. By this [McHale] means a shift from the kind of perspectivism that allowed the modernist to get a better bearing on the meaning of a complex but nevertheless singular reality, to the foregrounding of questions as to how radically different realities may coexist, collide, and interpenetrate” (Harvey 41). While reading this section of Harvey’s argument (and a number of other parts), I was continually brought back to Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Lathe of Heaven. Indeed, her novel deals with the very basic concept of reality, and its subsequent manipulation. George Orr, the appropriately named protagonist, has dreams, and these dreams tend to alter his and the world’s reality (or perhaps the world is stuck in a cycle of Orr’s dreams). Whichever the case, Le Guin is reasserting the common question of dream vs. reality. What is reality, and what is dream? If these dreams alter reality, then is the new reality merely a dream? etc…until confusion ensues for both the reader and the characters in the novel.

The juxtaposition between George and his psychiatrist, William Haber, further illuminates the postmodern qualities in Lathe of Heaven. If George Orr’s mind represents a sort of fragmentation and chaos, Dr. Haber serves as the overarching orderattempting to ‘right’ the ship. According to David Harvey, however, “postmodernism swims, even wallows, in the fragmentary and the chaotic currents of change as if that is all there is” (Harvey 44). Quoting Foucault, Harvey’s argument suggests that postmodernism “prefer[s] what is positive, and multiple, difference over uniformity, flows over unities, mobile arrangements over systems. Believe that what is productive is not sedentary but nomadic” (44). And indeed, it is with a representative image of this ‘nomadic flow’ that Ursula K. Le Guin chooses to begin the novel: “Current-borne, wave-flung, tugged hugely by the whole might of ocean, the jellyfish drifts in the tidal abyss. […] in the deep sea there is no compass but nearer and farther, higher and lower, the jellyfish hangs and sways;” (Le Guin 1). When re-reading this opening passage, I am reminded of George (or perhaps more specifically, his world-altering dreams). Throughout the novel, George and his ‘power’ are continuously at the mercy of Dr. Haber, whom strives to use Orr’s dreams as a tool (or lathe) for sculpting a sort of Utopian society. George opposes Haber’s manipulation of his dreams, and also opposses Haber’s desire for perfection. Perhaps this opposition is better understood through George’s role as a postmodern character. George (chaos) rejects Haber’s plans (order) because his Utopianism is a kind of meta-theory, and this “broad interpretative schema” like all meta-based ‘pratice’ is rejected by postmodernism.

Thus, in the end, does Le Guin suggest chaos over order? I don’t believe so. Consider George’s life pre-Haber; he was unable to function. The chaotic dreams had consumed his life and affected the lives of those around him. Instead, George settles for (or is given) a compromise through synthesis. As Harvey might suggest, this synthesis comes in the form of collage, or a jumbled patchwork of the varying realities created by Haber through George’s dreams, and at the end of the novel, both George and Heather are left to live life in this synthesized reality.

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