The Dispossessed: an Ideological Distopia

• Main Author: Ela İpek Gündüz
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Gaziantep University 2013-06-01
• Series: Gaziantep University Journal of Social Sciences
• Subjects: ideoloji; distopya; egemenlik; ideolojik devlet aygıtları; Ursula K. Le Guin; ideology; dystopia; hegemony; ideological state apparatuses
• Online Access: http://dergipark.gov.tr/jss/issue/24236/256926?publisher=gantep

Ursula K. Le Guin, in her dystopian novel The Dispossessed creates two opposite worlds. Both worlds have contrasting ideologies: a non-authoritarian planet called Anarres, in which individuals experience freedom consciously and deliberately in their own terms (by the equal distribution of the power dynamics in an anarchic society), and its moon Urras with its authoritarian governmental system (both by a capitalist country called A-İo, and by a communist country Thu). Through her depiction of these reverse poles Le Guin achieves to mirror the failure of different kinds of governmental systems which are the practices of the ideologies. These administrative systems fail because they cannot obtain pursuit of human freedom and happiness. According to Le Guin, the ideological representations of the governments are doomed to failure because in spite of their being imaginary systems to create a sphere of happiness for human beings, they are apart from being ideal and they have misapplications. In this article, the systematic unconscious effects of ideology (in an Alhusserian sense) on social, economic and political issues and the influences of the governmental organization on alienating the individuals to themselves by restricting their creativity and trust for themselves will be highlighted with the help of Le Guin’s two opposite dystopian worlds. Therefore, although these two opposite worlds have different ideologies, in the end they both turn out to be distopias. Le Guin proposes a solution to the problem of searching human happiness within the ideologies (represented in the administrative systems) by replacing it with the individual (who could change himself, get rid of all the prejudices, transgress all the boundaries)