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Owning or Using

Page history last edited by Angela 9 years, 11 months ago

In the first half of the 20th century, Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Whorf developed a new way of evaluating the relationship between language and society. These linguists proposed that the structure of one’s language actually aids in shaping the thought processes of that individual. This idea is known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, an extreme version of which guides the development of “Newspeak” in George Orwell’s 1984. The idea that language controls individual thought is also a fundamental element in The Dispossessed. When the Odonians settle on Anarres, they invent for themselves “Pravic,” a new language that intentionally embodies the principles of the new society.

 

Today we're going to explore a bit about how the language is used, and then talk about how concepts of ownership or non-possession affect both Anarres and our current society.

 

 

'Using' or 'Owning'?

In The Dispossessed, the Anarresti are taught at a young age in their communal upbringing to say “the blanket I use” and “the father.” Use of my, your, his, or her is reserved for emphasis and is often derogatory, as the pronouns imply a sense of private property (“propertarianism”), which is odious to a system of anarchism. Although this absence is a deliberately-introduced feature, such constructions as “the hand hurts me” are not entirely foreign to natural languages: In German, for instance, die Hand tut mir weh (“the hand is doing hurt to me”) is an appropriate and grammatical way to express pain in one’s hand, although the influence of English has led to the acceptance of meine Hand tut weh (“my hand is doing hurt”).

This lack of singular possessives in the synthesized Pravic language, however, reflects the concept of mutual ownership, and Le Guin exploits this liberally throughout The Dispossessed. For example, Shevek’s daughter, Sadik, tells her father that he can “share the handkerchief I use”. Like a good young Odonian, she also refers to Takver as “the mother” and her bed as “the bed I sleep in”.  

On the other hand, when Anarresti do use the possessive, it's to emphasize the 'dirtiness' of the situation.  Shevek is taken aback by Mitis’s assertion that when he goes to work for Sabul, Shevek will become “his man”. Rulag denotes Shevek’s and Bedap’s group as “your syndicate” to express her disgust with what she views as Urrasti propertarianism.

--Walls of the Tongue: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed by Daniel W. Bruhn p.28

 

 

As you were reading the book, how did you feel about the way people spoke?

Was it interesting? Refreshing? Uncomfortable?  Disorienting?

 

Do you see any benefits in speaking like the Anaresti?  Any drawbacks?

If you could choose, would you live in a world where people spoke about 'using' or where people spoke about 'having'?

 

 

 

Does Property Interfere with Community?

As Odo put it succinctly, “To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.”  There is no robbery on Anarres as nobody owns anything to rob. “If you want things you take them from the depository.”

Chifoilisk said it slightly differently: “Where there’s property, there’s theft” . Theft breaks the bonds of human solidarity and forms a permanent impediment to open communication and community. The same is true of seeking after domination—as exemplified in the secretive Sabul, enclosed in the office he has appropriated for himself at the Institute. All of these things pit human beings against one another, and motivate them to use speech instrumentally to advance their purposes rather than simply to share. Power and property build walls, encourage a distorted perception of human nature as inherently competitive, inhibit trust, and therefore restrict the potential range of free choices.

                --The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed   p.297

 

Are human beings inherently competitive? Y/N

 

Does theft inhibit trust between people?

Does owning property therefore automatically inhibit trust between people?  

Does owning property create separation between people?

 

Does holding power or the exercise of power Inhibit trust between people?

Does it create separation between people?

 

Do you then agree or disagree with the bolded statement in the passage?

 

 

Privacy, Private Property 

Connected to the idea of privacy are the notions of possession, possessiveness, and exclusive ownership. Property can promote the same boundaries and isolating individualism that walls create. On Anarres, just as privacy is disavowed, there is no private property, no possessiveness, no territoriality. One shares. 

--The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed   p.137

 

Is privacy a basic human need?

Does privacy interfere with sharing?

Does lack of privacy interfere with people's self development?

 

Can you have privacy without ownership?

Does owning property necessarily create divisions between people, because of the idea of privacy?

 

 

 

Fully Realised Human Beings = Fully Realised Community?

[LeGuin is essentially arguing] that human beings are only fully realized in becoming free artists of themselves. Their potential is blunted when they are subject to political rule or the exigencies of the market. … The core of the argument is that the full realization of both … reason and creativity require an environment of genuinely open communication, an environment  which governments and markets necessarily stifle.

Le Guin’s novel persistently portrays private property and political power interfering with human self-realization by disrupting genuine community, undermining equality, and constraining freedom—in part by blocking open communication. Only a society which relieves individuals of property and relations of power can permit the kind of open communication which allows human beings to freely realize themselves.

--The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed   p.299

 

Do you agree or disagree with the bolded text?

 

How would private property and political power interfere with human self-realization?   With community?

How would open communication engender equality and freedom?

 

Are human beings only fully realised when they become free artists of themselves?

Does political rule or market rule blunt human beings' fulfilment?

Is genuinely open communication is stifled by governments and markets?

Is open communication the foundation of community?  

How is community created by equality and freedom?

 

 

 

 

 

I doubt we'll have time, but here are some other ideas to consider about owning:

 

Justifying Usefulness

Bedap spoke more gravely: “They can justify it because music isn’t useful. Canal digging is important, you know; music’s mere decoration. The circle has come right back around to the most vile kind of profiteering utilitarianism. The complexity, the vitality, the freedom of invention and initiative that was the center of the Odonian ideal, we’ve thrown it all away. We’ve gone right back to barbarism. If it’s new, run away from it; if you can’t eat it, throw it away!”  

--The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed   p.104

 

 

Did you play with toys as a child?

Are toys 'fake' and play a 'waste of time''?  

Is imagination important to self-reflection and self-realisation?

 

How do you justify the economic burden of the arts? 

What is 'useful' to a human being?

 

What does it mean, to say that someone is a 'real' adult?  

 

 

The Christian Construct: Severity is Moral & Spiritually Rich, Decadence is Spiritually Impoverished

For the Austrian architect and theorist, Adolf Loos, ornament was crime; on Le Guin’s Anarres “Excess is excrement”. Throughout the novel Shevek observes the “excremental” waste of the Urrasti, their excess of ornament and decoration, as symptomatic of their inner poverty. Like their fellow consumers on Earth they know “no relationship but possession.” By contrast the citizens of Anarres are materially impoverished but rich in humanity. The austerity and asceticism of Anarres is a material necessity, but one given a virtuous moral gloss.

 

But Le Guin introduces a third position to upset this apparently reasonable equation:

People in the small towns wore a good deal of jewelry. In sophisticated Abbenay there was more sense of the tension between the principle of nonownership and the impulse to self-adornment, and there a ring or pin was the limit of good taste. But elsewhere the deep connection between the aesthetic and the acquisitive was simply not worried about; people bedecked themselves unabashedly.

--The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed   p.104

 

Do you wear nail polish?   Does it seem beautiful or disgusting to you?

Do you wear jewelry?   Does it seem enjoyable to you or do you feel it's too much?

 

Is decorating the body spiritually impoverished?   

Is there a naturally superior moral position on decadence, possession?

 

'Restraint' in decoration is often depicted as 'being in good taste'

Does having good taste imply morality?  Does it imply superiority?  Does it mean you're a better human being?   Does having good taste imply being better at community? 

 

 

Aesthetics and Possessions, Luxury and Scarcity, Consumerism

Le Guin suggests that … it is only the conditions of material scarcity on Anarres that produce a corresponding ethical and aesthetic opposition to waste and excess. But there is nothing either “natural” or necessarily superior about these positions. On the contrary Shevek has to learn to curb the instinctive “propertarian” drives that come before he is taught Odonian communitarian ethics. …  The desire to possess appears to be a naturally consequence of aesthetic stimulation. 

 

At Oiie’s home we find Shevek approving of his host’s taste:  "A relative absence of furniture pleased Shevek’s eye at once: the rooms looked austere, spacious, with their expanses of deeply   polished floor. He had always felt uneasy amidst the extravagant decorations and conveniences of the public buildings in which the receptions, dedications, and so forth were held. The Urrasti had taste, but it seemed often to be in conflict with an impulse towards display—conspicuous expense. The natural, aesthetic origin of the desire to own things was concealed and perverted by economic and competitive compulsions, which in turn told on the quality of the things: all they achieved was a kind of mechanical lavishness. Here, instead, was grace, achieved through restraint."

 

What is striking in this passage is the suggestion that the desire to own things might be “natural.” This statement is at odds with the equation of possession with alienation and a provocation that upsets the notion of renunciation as liberation; it is a seemingly audacious claim that could not have been reasonably made within the broadly Marxian framework of anticonsumerist discourse or radical design theory. Yet placed within the discourse of science-fiction on a distant planet it enables a reframing of Utopian approaches to objects and aesthetics. … Whereas renunciation [is sometime equated with] with salvation and freedom, some of Le Guin’s characters achieve real aesthetic pleasure, satisfaction, and self-realization through their relationship to objects, even their possession, and against the dogma that would label them “propertarian.” 

--The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed   p.105

 

Is the desire to own things 'natural'?

Does the appreciation of beauty lead to the desire to own things?

 

Can you be enslaved by luxury?  

Can you be enslaved by scarcity?

 

Does luxury necessarily mean consumerism?   

Does consumption automatically imply luxury?

 

Does taking pleasure in owning objects make you a 'propertarian'?

Does renouncing ownership make you 'virtuous'?

Is aesthetic pleasure consumerist or anti-consumerist, or something else?

 

Is dispossession deprivation or liberation? 

Is possession bewitchment or ownership?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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