An Ambiguous Utopia

Ursula K.Le Guin is an important figure in American science fiction,fantasy,feminist writing,and children’s literature.Her novel The Dispossessed:An Ambiguous Utopia has won both Hugo Award and Nebula Award.It presents two planets namely Urras and Anarres which orbit each other.In her description of the Anarres,Le Guin explores the advantages and challenges faced by an anarchist Utopian community.On the one hand,the community clings to the mutual aid principle and aims to create an equal and free society through erasing private property,breaking the family unit,and abandoning the marriage system.On the other hand,the community embracing egalitarian principles becomes rigid and intolerable to change.Based on the paradoxical challenges confronted by the Anarres Utopian community,this paper adopts Foucault’s theory of disciplinary power and aesthetics of existence to analyze the power operation and aesthetics of existence in Anarres,which will help to further understand Le Guin’s thoughts upon the construction of Utopia and the fate of humanity.This paper consists of three parts:the introduction,the three body chapters,and the conclusion.The introduction part mainly combs the existing researches of the ambiguous Utopian Anarres at home and abroad and points out that few scholars have studied the ambiguity from the perspective of Foucault’s disciplinary power.Then this part introduces Foucault’s theory of discipline,discourse,and aesthetics of existence to illustrate the theoretical feasibility.Chapter One discusses Le Guin’s description of the anarchist Utopian Anarres.This part can be divided into two parts:the construction of the anarchist Utopia and the disciplinary power in Anarres.Chapter Two focuses on the exploration of the specific operation of the disciplinary power imposed on body and discourse in Anarres to reveal that although the disciplinary power indeed consolidates people’s anarchist ideas at the early period of the construction of the Utopian community,it affects the cultivation of individuals’ independent wills and the society’s long-term creative development.Chapter Three deals with the resistance to power suggested by Le Guin in the novel.Based on Foucault’s aesthetics of existence,this part studies the resistance to discipline imposed on body and discourse by way of the development of "self" and the practice of revolutionary spirit.The conclusion part summarizes the specific manifestations and positive meanings of the ambiguity of the Utopian Anarres and then points out that Le Guin enriches the connotation of anarchism and Utopia through the construction of an ambiguous Utopian society.