{"id":187,"date":"2009-02-10T19:28:55","date_gmt":"2009-02-11T00:28:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=187"},"modified":"2009-02-11T13:03:14","modified_gmt":"2009-02-11T18:03:14","slug":"the-signifier-and-signified-in-the-lathe-of-heaven","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/?p=187","title":{"rendered":"The Signifier and Signified in The Lathe of Heaven"},"content":{"rendered":"

Let me start off by saying that I genuinely enjoyed The Lathe of Heaven<\/em>.\u00a0 <\/span>I was trying to verbalize to a friend just what it was that attracted me about this particular book, and I found myself describing my fascination with Le Guin\u2019s complex layering of new worlds, especially since these worlds are both purposefully and accidentally created.\u00a0 <\/span>This calls to mind the following excerpt in Harvey\u2019s article:\u00a0 <\/span>\u201cWhereas modernists had presupposed that there was a tight and identifiable relation between what was being said (the signified or \u2018message\u2019) and how it was being said (the signifier or \u2018medium\u2019), poststructuralist thinking sees these as \u2018continually breaking apart and re-attaching in new combinations\u201d<\/em> (49).\u00a0 <\/span>Just as Haber attempts to control George Orr\u2019s dreams and manipulate the present, he constantly fails (despite his confidence that he has succeeded) in creating a better world.\u00a0 <\/span>In \u201creality\u201d (which sounds so out of place when a describing a book like this), Haber is attempting to exert power through his own message (or \u201csignified\u201d) which he mediates through Orr\u2019s dreams (which act as the \u201csignifier\u201d), and yet, the outcome is never what Haber intends.\u00a0 <\/span>Postmodernism focuses on the continual \u201cbreaking apart\u201d of what is intended and what is understood, and so does Le Guin\u2019s story.\u00a0 <\/span>Haber believes he can make the world a better place, but it is his medium, Orr\u2019s dreams, which no one can control.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Orr himself realizes his own role in this complex re-working of past, present, and future.\u00a0 <\/span>After killing off billions of people in an attempt to rid the world of \u201coverpopulation\u201d (60) and stopping the war on Earth only to start another between humans and aliens, Orr says, \u201cOut of the frying pan into the fire\u2026 Don\u2019t you see, Dr. Haber, that\u2019s all you\u2019ll get from me?\u00a0 <\/span>Look, it\u2019s not that I want to block you, to frustrate your plans\u2026 Your own ideas are sane and rational, but this is my unconscious you\u2019re trying to use, not my rational mind.\u00a0 <\/span>Maybe rationally I could conceive of the human species not trying to kill each other off by nations, in fact rationally it\u2019s easier to conceive of than the motives of war.\u00a0 <\/span>But you\u2019re handling something outside of reason.\u00a0 <\/span>You\u2019re trying to reach progressive, humanitarian goals with a tool that isn\u2019t suited to the job\u201d<\/em> (86).\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The disconnect between the signified and the signifier is not the only important factor in this story; the fact is that the \u201cnew combinations\u201d of what is meant to change about the world (the \u201cproblem\u201d) and what actually changes (the \u201ccure\u201d) just creates another problem in its place.\u00a0 <\/span>Orr understands that his dreams serve as the medium for Haber\u2019s ideas, and he is able to see that the repercussions are far too vast to continue on this downward slope.\u00a0 <\/span>In the end, Orr is able to settle happily into a much-adjusted world.\u00a0 <\/span>Heather Lalache says, \u201cI thought you could change the world.\u00a0 <\/span>Is this the best that you could do\u2014this mess?\u201d (175), and though she is fairly unaware of how much worse it had been and how much worse it could get, the reader should sense that this is<\/em><\/strong> the best he could do.\u00a0 <\/span>Neither he nor Haber really could control the medium, as it is an irrational unconscious which has created these multiple worlds, and so this end to the nonsense, the aftermath of all the horror Haber has done, is actually a gift.\u00a0 <\/span>When postmodernism began to recognize a creator\u2019s inability to control the received message, they also invited a whole slew of science fiction that toys with the more metaphorical meaning of a creator, its creation, and its reception in the world.\u00a0 <\/span>This is especially true in The Lathe of Heaven.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

As a sidenote, I wanted to point out that after reading Harvey\u2019s section on technology, in particular the \u201cthe proliferation of television use\u201d(61) after having also read about postmodern art, I could not stop thinking about a piece I saw last year at the Smithsonian American Art Museum which combines television and art in a way I have never seen otherwise.\u00a0 <\/span>Nam June Paik\u2019s \u201cElectronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii\u201d depicts each of the fifty state proportionally with various sized televisions which continuously roll representative footage of each state.\u00a0 <\/span>For example, \u201cThe Wizard of Oz\u201d plays on the televisions that constitute Kansas and \u201cOklahoma\u201d plays, obviously, on the Oklahoma screens.\u00a0 <\/span>This piece really forced me to question how television can serve as an art medium in a more abstract and meaningful way than just as the way we watch \u201cLost\u201d or \u201cAmerican Idol.\u201d\u00a0 <\/span>Check it out, either with this link or in person if you get the chance!<\/span><\/p>\n

For a more interactive site & information on the exhibit itself, look here: <\/span>http:\/\/americanart.si.edu\/collections\/interact\/zoom\/paik.cfm<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

For digital images, look here<\/span>:\u00a0http:\/\/www.waymarking.com\/waymarks\/WM4438<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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Let me start off by saying that I genuinely enjoyed The Lathe of Heaven.\u00a0 I was trying to verbalize to a friend just what it was that attracted me about this particular book, and I found myself describing my fascination with Le Guin\u2019s complex layering of new worlds, especially since these worlds are both purposefully … Continue reading The Signifier and Signified in The Lathe of Heaven<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16,38,28,35,21,30,29,34,13,11],"class_list":["post-187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-week-4-le-guin","tag-harvey","tag-horror","tag-lathe-of-heaven","tag-reality","tag-science-fiction","tag-signified","tag-signifier","tag-space","tag-technology","tag-television"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=187"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":219,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187\/revisions\/219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.samplereality.com\/gmu\/spring2009\/660\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}