The Dispossessed

I think about a meme I once saw all the time. It said “explaining patriarchy to a man is like explaining to someone who has never heard of a skeleton that there are bones inside your body.” Well, that sentiment applies to a great many things, including explaining that capitalism is a failed experiment to most anyone on our earth today.

Yes, this novel is set between two worlds, one a capitalist society, and one an anarcho-communist. But to reduce this story to that is doing it a great disservice.

170 years after a group of anarchist revolutionaries leave their planet to settle on the moon, a man from this isolated society is invited as a guest back to the home planet.

Le Guin masterfully conveys that poignant, profound feeling of excitement, homesickness, exhaustion, and self-discovery that comes with traveling. Evokes the universal experience of going to a foreign place and committing thousands of tiny faux pas. What a brilliant way to do your world building. It manages to convey the differences in the two societies, while also characterizing Shevek, our protagonist, as he reacts to each new, perplexing interaction with his earthly hosts.

The order in which this story is told, the way she reveals information about the protagonist as the narrative bounces back and forth through time, is nothing short of genius. And for a story about a physicist whose field of study is time, how wonderfully fitting.

Every now and then, a sentence in this book made me stop reading and just look at it, blown away by the emotional impact a few words in a certain order could have on me.

One theme I love is when she points out that an explorer is only an explorer when they return home to share what they have learned.

Does the definition of a trip between planets change based on whether it is a one-way “emigration” of sorts, or if it is meant to be a trip back home at the end? Which one is self-serving egoism and which is for the good of society?

This is my second Le Guin book, and it exudes that same melancholy feeling of standing on the brink of understanding, but never getting there. It’s just like life. I will never understand everything. There will always be more mysteries. There will always be pain and sadness that accompany all the beauty and joy of existence. Her stories are achingly beautiful and they haunt me long after I have finished reading them.

When the protagonist saw the moon, his home, rise in the sky from the earth, the sentence “The light of his world filled his empty hands” made me cry.

And that’s not even touching on the other themes such as feminism, anarchy, science and the pursuit of knowledge, solidarity, and the fact that our protagonist seems to be neurodivergent enough to never fit in to any of the societies he’s lived in.

I am so glad Le Guin gave us this book.

Ursula K. Le Guin: The Dispossessed (Hardcover, 1991, Harper Paperbacks) 4 stars

Slightly dated but still brilliant - as in other books, le Guinn makes you question society and suggest other ways of living together

I have no words. I just wanna go live on Anarres now. I'd accept all the challenges, to live a truer life, a free-er life, in many ways.

I'm shocked at how much Le Guin makes you care about her characters with so few words of description. I feel like her prose is very terse, but again, very much effective. Not a word too much, not one less.

Also, this is the kind of reads that I truly love. Not just entertaining but that makes you think, and see things differently. They enrich you, and leave you emotional at the same time.

Den Roman habe ich vor allem deshalb mit in den Urlaub genommen, weil er das "Leitbuch" dieser Bookwyrm-Instanz ist und ich herausfinden wollte, was denn dahinter steckt. Vielen Dank an die Admins für den Hinweis auf das Buch, sonst hätte ich es sicher nicht gefunden!

Als 3. Generation Ost habe ich das Buch zunächst als Reflexion des kalten Kriegs und als Vergleich zwischen Ostblock und westlichem Abendland gelesen. Vor allem haben mich die Probleme auf Anarres angeregt -- wie kommt es zu Machtstrukturen, obwohl Macht gerade nicht gewollt ist, wie kann eine solche Gesellschaft (Hungers)krisen überstehen, wie kann eine solche Gesellschaft mit anderen, aggressiveren Gesellschaft in Kontakt sein?

Neu für mich war in dem Buch der wiederholt auftauchende Begriff des Anarchosyndikalismus. Ich erinnerte mich vage an einen Essay von Noam Chomsky ("What is the Common Good?"), wo dieser über diesen Begriff sprach und dabei Rudolf Rocker zitierte, in etwa "Anarchismus ist kein feststehendes, in sich geschlossenes Gesellschaftssystem, sondern eine bestimmte Richtung in der geschichtlichen Entwicklung der Menschheit – einerseits die Befreiung des Einzelnen aus dem Zwang von Staat und Gesellschaft, andererseits der enge Zusammenschluss der Menschen auf freiwilliger, unabhängiger Basis." Ich glaube, Ursula Le Guin geht es mehr um diese Richtung der Menschheit statt um den Ost-West-Konflikt.

Und so lassen sich auch die Gedanken des Buches auf andere Bewegungen wie z.B. die Befreiungstheologie in Südamerika übertragen (ein Beispiel das Chomsky nannte).

Beim Lesen des Romans war ich viel im Kopf, im Denken unterwegs. Ähnlich fühlte ich mich beim Lesen von Ayelet Gundar-Goshen.

Das Buch ist nicht idealistisch, sondern widmet sich umfassend der Frage, was alles schiefgehen kann. Das erinnert mich an ein Interview mit Miranda Fricker bei Sternstunden Philosophie, wo sie sagt: "Ich bin geradezu besessen von Dingen, die schiefgehen [...], denn um zu verstehen, wie wir Menschen gut miteinander umgehen können, [...], müssen wir unser Scheitern verstehen. Wir scheitern nämlich nicht zufällig, sondern weil das Scheitern bereits in der Struktur unserer Praxis angelegt ist."

I'm have only read this once before and remember thinking it was heavy which - while not putting me off re-reading - meant it never floated to prominence on my to-read list. This time I found it, not "lighter" per se, but something, certainly. Overall, it meant that I really enjoyed it in ways I wasn't expecting.

Structurally, I liked the interweaving twin timelines (in a book about the physics of simultaneity and the past, present and future being present together was a nice touch). And this theme was interesting to see having just read The River Has Roots and its riddles relying on the acceptance of a past, present and future.

But so much to think on freedom.