Onze site gebruikt cookies om diensten te leveren, prestaties te verbeteren, voor analyse en (indien je niet ingelogd bent) voor advertenties. Door LibraryThing te gebruiken erken je dat je onze Servicevoorwaarden en Privacybeleid gelezen en begrepen hebt. Je gebruik van de site en diensten is onderhevig aan dit beleid en deze voorwaarden.
A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras--a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart. To visit Urras--to learn, to teach, to share--will require great sacrifice and risks, which Shevek willingly accepts. But the ambitious scientist's gift is soon seen as a threat, and in the profound conflict that ensues, he must reexamine his beliefs even as he ignites the fires of change.… (meer)
themulhern: Two opposing cultures collide in both works. Urras = The Empire but their opposites (Annares and The Culture) have very little in common. Annares is determined by scarcity, the Culture by its lack.
Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed won pretty much all the awards for best science fiction novel in 1975. The title refers to the inhabitants of Annares, the moon of the planet Urras, populated many generations earlier by the emigration/expulsion of a revolutionary anti-authoritarian movement. The Annaresti view the larger Urrasti homeworld as their moon, so the system could be taken as a dual planet--they are in any case two worlds.
The novel begins with the departure of an Annaresti physicist Shevek for an unprecedented journey to Urras. After that, chapters alternate between those on Annares, giving Shevek's biography from childhood to that point of going to Urras, and those on Urras, detailing what transpired when he went there. Urras is a highly civilized world that resembles a stabilized 20th-century Earth in many ways, while Annares is a harsh frontier utopia fulfilling the revolutionary program of Laia Asieo Odo. Le Guin invented Odonianism by synthesizing ideas from Kropotkin and Goodman, along with a dollop of philosophical Taoism.
Odonian culture rejects hierarchy, the "state," egotism, and property. The Annaresti speak Pravic, a language constructed for their society and expressing its values. They have created a world in which no one is materially wealthy, but where everyone is entitled to shelter and food, and the most sought after prize is fulfilling work. They suffer with a small amount of egalitarian bureaucracy. Their sexual mores are libertarian, with the sole customary constraint of privacy, rooted in their communitarian ethos: It is rude to exhibit the enjoyment of sexual intimacy in front of those who lack it.
Much of the book concerns intellectual culture and the vagaries of academic prestige. In these respects, in its biographical structure, and in its imaginative remove from our own society in order to examine our difficulties, it reminded me of Hesse's final novel The Glass Bead Game.
The science-fictional setting is well in our future, and the "Cetian" humanity of Urras and Annares is not derived from our Earth. There are however a few contacts with Terran ideas and eventually even a few Terrans themselves, thanks to the Hainish starfarers who have connected some of the worlds in our part of the galaxy.
The Dispossessed is full of real conflicts and some momentous events, but the overall pace of the book is rather sedate. It offers a lot of food for thought, and despite a fairly plain prose style, its literary artistry is substantial. It would be an excellent choice for a reading group. I imagine it has featured frequently in academic courses on science fiction, and it wouldn't be out of place in creative curricula for political theory or social science.
A story contrasting two opposing societies separated by space and ideology. Shevek is caught in the middle, trying to sort out how the two can reconcile. There is a hint of advanced technology in the book, which is why I picked it up, but the theory behind the technology plays a bigger role than the device itself.
Świetne jeśli chodzi o relacje człowieka ze społeczeństwem jako całością, zwyczajami, oczekiwaniami, polityką, ale już poszczególne postacie poza głównym bohaterem trochę płytkie - to jest miły gość, to jest niemiły gość, to jest gość który z wierzchu jest niemiły ale w środku jest miły, a ten znowu jest na odwrót. ( )
Being an obnoxious outlier is ever so invigorating to my little selfdom. I would normally consider myself fairly easygoing and versatile, and thus I give out one-star reviews sparingly, reserving those lucky contestants for books which lack for me at least one meritorious quality, but congratulations to Le Guin for achieving this brilliant honour. There is a certain amount of attention to tedium and exasperation that must be observed in proper proportion to make it onto my list of woes without a single redeeming quality, and the Dispossessed is welcomed comfortably with open arms into a company with similar unpleasant interests. ( )
Doch wollte Le Guin mit den Habenichtsen und ihrem Planeten weder ideale Menschen schildern, noch eine ideale Gesellschaft. Zu deutlich zeichnet sie die Schwächen und Mängel beider. Nicht nur die Urrasti, auch viele der Menschen auf Anarres sind hab- und machtgierig, intrigant und Karrieristen, obwohl es dort offiziell weder eine Hierarchie noch Eigentum gibt. Doch dafür werden die Anarresti gelegentlich "gezwungen, auf eigenen Wunsch für einige Zeit wegzugehen", weil die Gesellschaft sie andernorts braucht - oder auch, weil sie einem Mächtigeren im Weg sind. "Ein Paar, das eine Partnerschaft einging, tat dies in voller Kenntnis der Tatsache, dass es jederzeit durch die Erfordernisse der Arbeitsteilung getrennt werden konnte." Es gibt Zwangsarbeit, und Dissidenten werden schon mal zur "Therapie" auf einsame Inseln verbracht, und schon im ersten Teil des Romans stellt Shevek resignierend fest, "dass man für niemanden etwas tun kann. Wir können uns nicht gegenseitig retten. Nicht mal uns selber."
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
For the partner
Eerste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
There was a wall.
Citaten
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
You shall not go down twice to the same river, nor can you go home again. That he knew; indeed it was the basis of his view of the world. Yet from that acceptance of transience he evolved his vast theory, wherein what is most changeable is shown to be fullest of eternity, and your relationship to the river, and the river's relationship to you and to itself, turns out to be at once more complex and more reassuring than a mere lack of identity. You can go home again, the General Temporal Theory asserts, so long as you understand that home is a place where you have never been.
Like all power seekers, Pae was amazingly shortsighted. There was a trivial, abortive quality to his mind; it lacked depth, affect, imagination. It was, in fact, a primitive instrument.
Nobody's born an Oxonian any more than he's born civilized! But we've forgotten that. We don't educate for freedom. Education, the most important activity of the social organism, has become rigid, moralistic, authoritarian. Kids parrot Odo's words as if they were laws--the ultimate blasphemy! (p.168
We have no government, no laws, all right. But as far as I can see, ideas never were controlled by laws and governments, even on Urras. If they had been, how would Odo have worked out hers? How would Odonianism have become a world movement? The archest tried to stamp it out by force, and failed. You can't crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. But refusing to think, refusing to change. And that precisely what our society is doing! Sabul uses you where he can, and where he can't, he prevents you from publishing, from teaching, even from working. Right? In other words, he has power over you. Where does he get it from? Not from vested authority, there isn't any. Not from intellectual excellence, he hasn't any. He gets it from the innate cowardice of the average human mind. Public Opinion! That's the power structure he's part of, and knows how to use. The unadmitted, inadmissible government that rules Ordonian society by stifling the individual mind. (p. 165)
What's the good of an anarchist society that's afraid of anarchists? (p. 379)
Laatste woorden
Informatie afkomstig uit de Engelse Algemene Kennis.Bewerk om naar jouw taal over te brengen.
A bleak moon settled by utopian anarchists, Anarres has long been isolated from other worlds, including its mother planet, Urras--a civilization of warring nations, great poverty, and immense wealth. Now Shevek, a brilliant physicist, is determined to reunite the two planets, which have been divided by centuries of distrust. He will seek answers, question the unquestionable, and attempt to tear down the walls of hatred that have kept them apart. To visit Urras--to learn, to teach, to share--will require great sacrifice and risks, which Shevek willingly accepts. But the ambitious scientist's gift is soon seen as a threat, and in the profound conflict that ensues, he must reexamine his beliefs even as he ignites the fires of change.
)
)
)
The Dispossessed - by Ursula K. LeGuin
5
The novel begins with the departure of an Annaresti physicist Shevek for an unprecedented journey to Urras. After that, chapters alternate between those on Annares, giving Shevek's biography from childhood to that point of going to Urras, and those on Urras, detailing what transpired when he went there. Urras is a highly civilized world that resembles a stabilized 20th-century Earth in many ways, while Annares is a harsh frontier utopia fulfilling the revolutionary program of Laia Asieo Odo. Le Guin invented Odonianism by synthesizing ideas from Kropotkin and Goodman, along with a dollop of philosophical Taoism.
Odonian culture rejects hierarchy, the "state," egotism, and property. The Annaresti speak Pravic, a language constructed for their society and expressing its values. They have created a world in which no one is materially wealthy, but where everyone is entitled to shelter and food, and the most sought after prize is fulfilling work. They suffer with a small amount of egalitarian bureaucracy. Their sexual mores are libertarian, with the sole customary constraint of privacy, rooted in their communitarian ethos: It is rude to exhibit the enjoyment of sexual intimacy in front of those who lack it.
Much of the book concerns intellectual culture and the vagaries of academic prestige. In these respects, in its biographical structure, and in its imaginative remove from our own society in order to examine our difficulties, it reminded me of Hesse's final novel The Glass Bead Game.
The science-fictional setting is well in our future, and the "Cetian" humanity of Urras and Annares is not derived from our Earth. There are however a few contacts with Terran ideas and eventually even a few Terrans themselves, thanks to the Hainish starfarers who have connected some of the worlds in our part of the galaxy.
The Dispossessed is full of real conflicts and some momentous events, but the overall pace of the book is rather sedate. It offers a lot of food for thought, and despite a fairly plain prose style, its literary artistry is substantial. It would be an excellent choice for a reading group. I imagine it has featured frequently in academic courses on science fiction, and it wouldn't be out of place in creative curricula for political theory or social science.