words that make a difference: Applying Hegel’s theories to Le Guin’s The Dispossessed

Every essay I undertake tests and expands my paradigm of understanding. It's fitting that they're called essays, derived from the French verb essayer: to try. Each project is an experiment in whatever philosophy of thought I'm engaging. Application is crucial to revealing the validity and complications of theory which would otherwise remain abstract.

In "The Caveats of Utopia: A Language of False-Certainty," I incorporated the philosophical work of G. W. F. Hegel through the medium of Ursula Le Guin's novel The Dispossessed. Part of Hegel's philosophy focuses on the human tendency to alienate and treat as "other" those people who threaten our state of being. That tendency permeates our system of language. We comprehend our world through language, and our system of vocabulary.  The names "me," "you," "here," and "there" spatialize our consciousness and uphold dialectics of sense certainty-understanding someone else through difference as opposed to communion.

The Dispossessed makes this conflict explicit in a science fiction narrative about two worlds at war; it renders the abstract theory into an accessible text. It was published in the twilight of the Cold War, when the identity of "communist" was enough to destroy your livelihood and family. In my essay, I note that, "The very way that the novel structures the identifications of the societies is structured upon ideological division: the societies are Annaresti and Urrasti-self and other, depending on which planet Shevek is on" (5). Vocabulary like Annaresti and Urrasti, Capitalist and Communist, enforce comfortable notions of static identity which inevitably lead to violence.

I believe that my work indicates the necessity of merging theory with practice. While my criticism is literary, I am informed by the marriage of theory and practice I've experienced in the Cinema and Screen Studies department. In this essay, I can extend that synthesis to cinema's predecessor: the narrative novel. Theory alone is not enough to bring about change.  Recognizing its operation in contemporary literature opens up our own experiences to fresh analysis, which can change the way we act and speak.