I’d agree with that. She certainly never says “never act,” but “be cautious about it” is pretty consistent. I call her anti-utopian, by which I don’t mean she’s against “the better” or even “the good” but rather “the perfect.” Folks do monstrous stuff for the perfect.
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Replying to @GiffordJames @arthur_affect and
right...but I think in a cold war context that kind of rhetoric is difficult to separate from anticommunism, right? like, "the problem with communism is the desire for a perfect utopia" is pretty standard liberal anticommunist rhetoric of the time.
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Replying to @mssilverstein @GiffordJames and
it wasn't exactly wrong! but the argument also occupied an ideological space that was not always right or good.
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Replying to @nberlat @mssilverstein and
This is actually what fascinates me. How critical perspectives all have a unique scotoma. To many Marxist readers, liberalism & anarchism are indistinguishable since their differences are invisible, & reactions to Le Guin fascinate me in particular for this reason.
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Replying to @GiffordJames @mssilverstein and
I feel like her positioning in the Dispossessed is somewhat different than in LOH...like I said, it doesn't have to be just one thing.
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Replying to @nberlat @GiffordJames and
I mean, George isn't an anarchist, right? He's not Shevek, with a principled opposition to authority and a call for constant revolution.
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Replying to @nberlat @GiffordJames and
He's about mystical balance vs. Haber's narcissistic destruction of all connections in the name of do-gooding.
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Replying to @nberlat @mssilverstein and
Maybe this is why I don’t see him as heroic. I genuinely see him as a bit of a putz who could easily fall into guru-ism. I’ve never felt the text compelled me to admire him. Shevek is deeply flawed yet clearly the reader’s vision into the book in a way I can’t see Orr.
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Replying to @GiffordJames @nberlat and
Then again, I’ve never liked Orwell’s protagonists, even when they’re Eric Blair!
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One of Orwell's friends once roasted him with one quote, "He chastises others for 'lapsing into self-pity', which was, of course, his own dominant emotion"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @nberlat and
I just look at how he interacted with George Woodcock & Alex Comfort. Wish we still read Comfort’s novels (rather than his illustrated books…).
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