Debating Capitalist Modernity

As one of Ursula K.Le Guin's most realistic critiques of western world,The Left Hand of Darkness(1969)highlights a wide range of contentious issues of the late 1960s and the early 1970s.Significantly,Le Guin's critical narrative is indebted to Tao Te Ching,a Chinese classic of Taoism which she studied and translated.Following Edward W.Said's critique of Orientalism,this thesis studies Le Guin's translation of Tao Te Ching and her utopian narrative in The Left Hand of Darkness,exploring how Le Guin's idea of Taoism questions and reshapes the discourses on the political ideas,gender roles,as well as ecological visions of the modern WestFirst,bringing to light the correlation between western tradition of anarchism and the Taoist wei wu wei(not doing or inaction),Le Guin envisions the nation of Kaihide featuring its anarchist communism and the transnational coordinator of Ekumen to criticize capitalism's tendency to restrict human liberty,accumulate property and seek violence.In response to the Radical Movement's calls for racial equality and protests against internal colonialism,Le Guin activates the Taoist mode of "balance and integrity" by imaging an egalitarian intercourse between the advanced planet of Terra which alludes to the postwar America and the relatively backward planet of Gethen on behalf of the unprivileged nations.Then,the acknowledged feminist writer destabilizes the real-world system of procreation and Enlightenment dualist tradition through the fictional representation of an androgynous planet informed by Taoist interplay of yin and yang,echoing feminism's claim of right for working women in the 1960s.Her idealized androgyne reminiscent of the Taoist "wholeness of being" is also a trenchant critique of the heterosexual norms in her age when gay and lesbian movements sprang up across the United States.Third,in line with the environmentalists' urge to protect open space,preserve natural resources and protest against the Vietnam War in the 1960s,Le Guin embraces the Taoist pursuit of world peace,rejection of excess and advocacy of sustainability in building her utopia to criticize the consumerist fervor in the affluent postwar America.Sticking to the anti-technological and anti-progress insight of Lao Tzu,she further opposes modernity's attempt to win domination over nature through advanced technology and emphasizes on Taoism-derived moderation in developing and utilizing technology.