A Study Of The Technological Writing In Ursula Le Guin's Fiction

Ursula K.Le Guin(1929-)is one of the few most famous contemporary writers of the genres of fantasy and science fiction in the United States.Among her dozens of literary awards,to mention just a few,she won the 1973 National Book Award for Young People's Literature for The Farthest Shore and the 1997 Pulitzer Prize for Unlocking the Air and Other Stories,plus five Locus,four Nebula,two Hugo,and one World Fantasy Award.Aiming at environmental protection,her works such as The Lathe of Heaven(1971),The Dispossessed(1974),The New Atlantis(1975),The Word for World is Forest(1976),Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences(1987),The Telling(2000)and The Changing Planes(2002)reflect the phenomena of techno-science and post-humanity in modern American society and the discourse of globalization,and offer critique of modern technological innovation and application.In the context of contemporary knowledge economy and(post-)industrialization,technologies are embedded in all aspects of social life such as politics,culture,ideology,military and national interests,characteristic of situatedness and showing unprecedented power.Inevitably man suffers from embracing technological progress while he enjoys the fruits of technology.In Le Guin's fiction,modern technology is motivated by the capitalist pursuit for profit,the nationalistic alert to colonialism and post-colonialism,and the pure belief in technological progress.Le Guin's technological writing puts its emphasis on the mutual shaping of specific technologies and social reality,coinciding with the experiential shift in the philosophy of technology since the 1980's.It involves genetic technology,medical technology,military technology,communicative technology,aerospace engineering,etc.,and also pays attention to issues such as the contrast and marriage of old technologies and modern technologies,the receptive strategy facing foreign technology and the impact of technological application on mankind and nature.Le Guin is not pessimistic about technology but positively and dialectically critical of it,with an appropriately healthy and conservative stance.This dissertation draws upon the theories of the philosophy of technology by American theorists represented by Don Ihde,Langdon Winner,as well as the ethics of responsibility in the technological age by Hans Jonas and the ethics of creativity by Brian G.Henning.Adopting the shared core of their thoughts to analyze Le Guin's five novels and two collections of short stories,this dissertation explores how the texts describe the breaking of the boundaries between man and animal,man and machine,body and non-body in the posthuman context,identifies Le Guin's technological ideal as not only holding fast to human essence and evolving together with technological progress but also balancing materialistic technology with human spirituality,and presents the dialectical thinking of modern technology from the perspective of Le Guinian western Taoism.In comparison with the posthumanist technological ideas,this dissertation also draws on the research findings in the philosophy of technology by western scholars and Chinese scholars for the purpose of representing issues such as the technological impacts on human body and animal life,the social positions of scientists,the social responsibility of technological elites,the triumph of old technologies over the modern technologies in wars,and the appropriate technological strategies by the party with less advanced technologies in absorbing foreign technologies.This dissertation holds that overly pursuing technological progress will bring disasters to the public,and that mankind should abide in the holistic technological outlook of Taoism.By taking the naturally developing route of technology,the technological risks can be avoided reasonably and man and technology can move forward in symbiosis and harmony.This dissertation consists of three chapters.Chapter one chiefly interprets Le Guin's technological stance of "weak anthropocentrism" and the influence of modern technology on human body and animal life in The Changing Planes and Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences.Through the technological narratives of the exaggerated genetic melting,The Changing Planes discloses the sufferings by the limitless development of genetic technology and other technologies.The "technological body"is embodied in the random mergence of the genes of animals,plants and people,undermining the human nature.Moreover,the experiment of "super-intelligence"harms subjects' dignity and the virtualized gothic scenes bring the tourists great shock and almost delirium.All these finally lead to Le Guin's call for using human spirituality as a counter-balance against the side effects of technology.On the other hand,Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences adopts allegorical empathy and the"becoming-animal" strategy by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to call for the role of technology in protecting animal life instead of killing or damaging animal life.Thus this chapter concludes that in modern society,technology has become a kind of"grand narrative" which creates a phenomenon called "technological body" to the inner world and produces beneficial and harmful effects on animal and plant lives to the outside world.Chapter two explores the roles of scientists in technological invention and application in The Dispossessed,The New Atlantis,and The Lathe of Heaven in capitalism,as well as the Taoist view of technological ethics.In the three novels,all the scientists devote themselves to scientific research and try their best to transform knowledge into technological innovation.However,in the sense of technological utility,they can be categorized into two kinds:one kind of scientists are willing to give their achievements to the whole mankind,while the other kind of scientists use technology to gain high status and the power of manipulating others.All the three works are about the "authenticity","justice" and "the sense of responsibility" with the purpose of building up the social mechanism in balance and healthy personality,setting the ethic boundary line for professional dedication and creativity and seeking the middle ground between technology and professionalism.Chapter three analyzes the contrast of foreign advanced technology and the aboriginal primitive technology as well as the receptive strategy in the discourse of colonialism and post-colonialism in The Word for World is Forest and The Telling.The Word for World is Forest tries to give publicity to anti-war ideology and lash out at the fact that with military power the colonists exploit and oppress the colonized,destroy their traditional culture and drive them to develop military technology.The Telling,set in the interstellar communication,reflects the technological colonization and cultural colonization in the history of the earth.To evade the spiritual captivity by the outside colonists,the party with less advanced technology misuses the resistant strategy of "technological leap" and causes great sufferings for its people.In response to these issues,Le Guin reemphasizes the Taoist technological ideas about balance and following the natural way of technological development.In Le Guin's technological writing,the technological catastrophes are usually caused by the extreme policies of technology and technological practice.The technological narrative avoids both the extreme worship of technology by the techno-determinists and also the complete denial of technology by people with technophobia.In her works,technologies are specific and appear in pluralism.They are closely interwoven with the political system,ideology and environmental issues.On the basis of acknowledging the intrinsic values of nature and taking the continual being of mankind as the ethic purpose,this dissertation explores the Taoist outlook of technological ethics,which has moral principles such as "entering Tao through technologies","Tao's controlling position over technologies" and "having technologies but being cautious in using them".It is also pointed out that Le Guin actually holds the values of weak anthropocentrism and opposes both the misuses and repel lence of technology,preaching the natural Taoist way of developing technologies and the limits of the technologies that harm environment and human bodies.Taking the ethics of responsibility into account,the dissertation points out that since overly-developed technologies usually bring disasters to man,mankind should follow the natural way of developing technologies,appropriately avoid the technological risks,and reach the harmony and symbiosis between man and technology;the inventors,users and policy-makers of technology should have some ideal Taoist personality to eradicate unruly desires by the aid of humility,justice and responsibility,to walk out of technological labyrinth,and to make technologies exist for the sake of man and all the lives.