race/gender/science fiction - Response 4

Limits of the Imagination

supergoat — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 06:06:04 +0000

Ursula Le Guin paints a world in her book "The Left Hand of Darkness", that is almost impossible to imagine, and that's what makes it so interesting. Le Guin's alien world of Gethen is one of perpetual winter, filled with a people much like our own. The primary difference between our species and theirs is that they are all of a neutral sex, with the exception of a few days a month, where they decide which sex they want to be. This difference seems silly, and almost impossible to us, for the duality of male and female is so ingrained in our lives.

When the main alien character, Estraven, is first seen, it is in the context of a large parade with the nation of Karhide's king. A "king" that is without, and with no desire for, a queen. Estraven serves as the sort of "right hand man" of the king, giving advice to Genly, the male protagonist earthling. It is virtually impossible for us to imagine these characters initially as anything but male. There is absolutely nothing resembling sexual tension between Genly and Estraven in their early interactions, and it seems no different than any interaction between two males. The social positions occupied by many of the characters are those that we would typically associate with male, such as a "king", and so we have to constantly remind ourselves that the characters are actually gender-neutral.

Le Guin's use of masculine pronouns for all the characters makes it even harder to break out of the normal male image. This appears to be an issue Le Guin was trying to avoid, as a future short story called "The Winter's King" about the same world was published with both all male, and later with all female pronouns. However, the decision to use "he", no matter its intentions, again forces the reader to constantly remind themselves of the true gender neutrality of the aliens.

Psychologically it is easy to understand why it would be so hard for people to grasp this concept. If I asked you to think of images of ten different women, and then of ten different men, it would not be a difficult task. However, if I were to ask you to picture ten different gender-neutral people, it would not be easy at all. The concept of being both and neither gender at the same time is like nothing we encounter in our everyday lives. Le Guin challenges us to imagine an alien race that is just like us, and yet far from us at the same time.

As if it wasn't hard enough to imagine how the humanoid aliens looked, their lack of gender comes along with a lack of sexual drive. Le Guin seems to tie this lack of sex drive to other properties of the culture, such as its slow technological advancement, and its utter lack of wars, of even the word war. Lets be honest, no sex drive, technology rush or war? Sounds like a pretty boring world. The inhabitants of Gethen lack the motivation to improve their technology past what they believe they need, as shown with their centuries old heater design, which could easily be improved upon, but it is felt that it is good enough. Video games will never be as good as they could be, and cars will never be as energy efficient as possible. The satiety with life is a concept that humans cannot relate to.

The world of Gethen is similar to ours on the surface, but radically different underneath it. Le Guin challenges our imaginations like no other author I have ever read, and sheds light on just how ingrained some concepts, such as sex, are.

language and meaning in the left hand of darkness

coffeeandcherrypie — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:51:23 +0000

The Left Hand of Darkness may be about gender, and it may be about weather, but it's also very clearly about the schism between words and real world referents. The vocabulary that LeGuin uses to describe this poststructuralist phenomenon is "veneer." This comes up first during the description of Argaven's jingoistic speeches, in which he advocates for war without, we are told repeatedly and in a way that starts to grate by the end of the book, being able to say the word "war." Ai points out that it's interesting, then, for Argaven to be so concerned with notions of capital-T "Truth," given the fact that his oratory consists in large part of deception: "He talked a great deal about Truth also, for he was, he said, 'cutting down beneath the veneer of civilization'" (102).
This pretty much sets Ai off. He really does not, evidently, appreciate hearing Argaven talk about truth or, we find out, about "veneer": "It is a durable, ubiquitous, specious metaphor, that one about veneer (or paint, or pliofilm, or whatever) hiding the nobler reality beneath. It can contain a dozen fallacies at once" (102). Genly Ai's complaint, then, is that the "veneer" argument--the argument about an obfuscating something-or-other that's always blocking from view the true nature of things--is itself a bit of empty rhetoric, something that nobody if pressed is really sure what to make of. Here, Ai proves himself wrong even as he delivers a deft criticism. There is, clearly, an obfuscating something-or-other, a "veneer," but it has to do with language; with metaphor, perhaps; with one's ability to say what one means; not with, as Argaven too-broadly claims, "civilization."
The book gives two very elaborate and drawn-out examples of how language comes to obscure meaning. The first of these is the concept of "shifgrethor." LeGuin throws out a lot of made up words to stand in for objects and ideas in the community of TLHoD, but this is the only one that strikes me as sort of ingenious. The only definition of "shifgrethor" we are ever given doesn't really completely square with how the word gets used in conversation between characters--but this is perhaps because the term is only obliquely defined, is defined as, in a sense, indefinable--"prestige, face, place, the pride-relationship, the untranslatable and all-important principle of social authority" (14). Great. So we have a narrator who's in the unique position to tell us that there's an "all-important principle" that governs everything going on in the weird universe of this book, but who's also totally unable to really accurately say what it is or what it might mean in practice. It turns out usually--though definitely not always; "shifgrethor can be played on the level of ethics," too (106)--to mean something like the secret rules that govern conversation, something like etiquette. The conversation at Genly's dinner with Estraven--which is the ostensible context and impetus for Genly's first defining "shifgrethor"--gets revisited several times in the book, with the common realization between the two characters that neither really had any idea at the time what the other was saying.
The other salient example is the phenomenon of mindspeech, which is, of course, alien to Gethen, but which Genly Ai introduces at least to Estraven. The experience turns out to be wildly uncomfortable for Estraven, whose socially ingrained mode of communication involves what Genly Ai charitably calls "reserve" (255). The idea is that all Gethenians are going to hate mindspeech because it doesn't allow for falsification, for the sort of rhetorical play that "shifgrethor" necessarily entails. This tells us two things: (1) socially, and specifically with respect to Gethenian cultures, lying is a lot more comfortable than telling the truth, and pure meaning sort of sucks; and (2) objectively, throughout the universe of TLHoD, it's the transmutation--transubstantiation?--of ideas into words that allows for the fucking up of meaning.
Genly Ai observes all of this about Gethenian culture. He observes that obfuscating rhetoric is absolutely the cultural norm. He also points out one really weird counterexample--of Kundershaden, the prison, he says: "[i]t is what it looks like and is called. It is a jail. It is not a front for something else, not a faÃ§ade, not a pseudonym. It is real, the real thing, the thing behind the words" (166). Aside from the fact that this seems to be making a sort of stupid and demonstrably false assumption about how language signifies, what I find really interesting here is that the only physical, cultural counterexample that Genly seems to be able to hit upon is a prison. I'm not really sure what to make of this. In his experience, the only thing that is cold and hard and not covered up by the play of language is the locus of state power.

response 4

Its_Knucklepuck_Time — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:27:36 +0000

I really enjoyed The Left Hand of Darkness. It was a pretty entertaining novel for me - the journey across the Ice was a bit of a bummer because too much of it was devoted to purely describing them pulling the sledge across various areas, but other than that, it was good. I liked the political intrigue, the numerous backstabbings and the excitement that comes from following two characters who are running for their lives. However, after reading this novel as an action/adventure sort of story, I realized that I had not really thought about the impact that the androgynous nature of the Gethenians has on the meaning of the story. During my reading of the novel, I felt like this did not have that great of an effect on the overall story. After all, the biggest issue in the story was Genly Ai and Estraven's efforts in securing an alliance between Gethenians and the Ekumen. The androgynous nature of Gethenians was mentioned throughout the story, but it seemed more like a side note than anything else, as if it was briefly touched upon during breaks in action before being forgotten again. Now, after reconsidering the story after having read it, I realized that the androgynous nature of Gethenians does have a great effect on some aspects of the story. I guess ultimately the effect of having androgynous characters is to shock readers out of creating gender roles for genders. In my opinion, Le Guin accomplishes this specifically by continually referring to Gethenians as "he". By doing this, she can lull readers into thinking of all Gethenians as men before writing about some feminine characteristic of a character that will contrast greatly with the image that the reader has built up to that point. This effect happens notably throughout the story. In one memorable instance, the king becomes pregnant. So, not only are Gethenians mainly referred to as "he," but the ruler of the country is also referred to as a king, as a male. Thus, when strongly masculine characters, like the king, suddenly become pregnant, the reader is presented with an extremely strong dichotomy that really forces the reader to think about the dual nature of the characters. If Le Guin had constantly switched between referring to characters as "she" and "he" and frequently reminded the reader of the dual characteristics of the character, I think the characters would not have been as shocking. She decided to use the technique of establishing a singular firm image in the readers' minds and then completely twisting it to get the maximum shock value. Another instance of feminine characteristics suddenly appearing to disrupt a masculine image is when Genly Ai and Estraven have a heart-to-heart conversation while traversing the ice. According to Genly Ai, "â€¦I saw then again, and for good, what I had always been afraid to see, and had pretended not to see in him: that he was a woman as well as a man. Any need to explain the sources of that fear vanished with the fear; what I was left with was, at last, acceptance of him as he wasâ€¦I had not been willing to give it. I had been afraid to give it. I had not wanted to give my trust, my friendship to a man who was a woman, a woman who was a man" (248). Thus, even the Genly Ai had fallen into the trap of seeing the Gethenians as simply men instead of dual beings. This passage was sort of mind bending for me because I kept wanting to think of Estraven as a man who, well, occasionally turns into a woman from time to time instead of him being both man and woman all the time. Now, since Estraven is both man and woman all the time, it puts a very different spin on his character. I could no longer peg him as a certain gender; instead, I just had to see Estraven as a living being. Ultimately, I feel that this was one of Le Guin's goals â€“ once we remove the issue of gender from people, how do we feel about them? I think the conclusion reached is that they really are still the same as us.

To oppose is to maintain, and blue eyes

Kamin — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 18:17:19 +0000

The issues of duality, competition, war, and progress bring to mind the Jane Elliott "blue eyes" classroom study. That link is knowledgeable, but not the most approachable, so let me summarize. In order to teach a lesson on discrimination to a homogenous Iowa elementary school classroom, she began an experiment where she declared children with blue eyes 'better' than the others. After a short speech about the weaknesses of brown eyed children, she continued with the day's lesson, taking every chance to confirm the blue eyes assumed superiority and call out brown eyes' negative behavior as representative of their kind.

The implications are wide (and the study has its critics, of course), but I wanted to focus on the measurable changes in performance that accompanied the experiment. By the end of that first school day, measurements of math, vocabulary, and reading proficiency all showed major change from where the students were one week before: the brown eyed students' scores fell drastically (e.g. regressing from a 3rd to a 1st grade reading level) and the blue eyed scores rose dramatically (e.g. improving the a 5th grade reading level).

One interpretation I buy into states that this only happened because our children learn at an early age that there are better and worse groups of people in our world. Classification, competition, and discrimination are functions used by our society, because they have positive effects for the 'better' group! So how do we break out of this system?

I turn to what Le Guin says in The Left Hand of Darkness: "To oppose something is to maintain it. [One] must offer an alternative" (153). A critique of the current system is pointless without proposing other options. From the very introduction of the book she describes the importance of "the imagination" (i). An alternative biology, interactions with other species, the general concept of a science fiction tale about the futureâ€¦ all of these are metaphors geared toward imagining different futures in order to change the present.

I think we've already begun a good discussion on exactly what alternative Le Guin offers. In her world, "There is no division of humanity into strong and weak halves, protective/protected, dominant/submissive, owner/chattel, active/passive (94). The total breakdown of the classify/compete/discriminate system does slow the society down in some ways â€“ Genly often describes the Gethenians as slightly slower, weaker, and less advanced (50, 103) â€“ but best achieves Le Guin's ultimate value of civilization (something like 'the open trade of ideas, techniques, material goods/technology, and culture' based on pages 34-35, 103, and 137-138). Maybe 'achieves' is the wrong word. I think Le Guin is offering this future with hope, painting it in a good light. However, the 'good'/'bad' judgment here is definitely process-oriented, not result-oriented, as based on 50, 102, and 259.

P. S. Final reason I love this book? Le Guin gets special relativity right. Amazing.

Being Other in the Other's eyes

blacklace — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 12:25:52 +0000

There is a fascinating interplay between light and dark, and the role of shadows in "The Left Hand of Darkness." Perhaps most interesting is the concept of shifgrethor, a code of honor amongst the Karhidians, which "comes from an old word for shadow" (247). There is also, among the Handdarata, a focus on the "un"--that which seems to be the opposite of what is. In many respects, the Karhidians seem to be defined more by what they are not, by what is unseen, and by what traditionally is thought to obscure. It is a society that thrives through the unknown, through the unspoken ("Secrecy in Karhide is to an extraordinary extent a matter of discretion, of an agreed, understood silence--an omission of questions, yet not an omission of answers" (287.).

Perhaps this is just human nature, perhaps it is a result of the weather, perhaps it is a result of a society of kemmering, not static sex assignments. Whatever the underlying reasons are, though, this shadow life is something that the primary narrator, Genly Ai, does not understand for the bulk of the story, and which separates him from the others around him. Likewise, this keeps others from truly understanding or questioning him. It is not until Genly and Estraven have been a long while on the Ice that this cold wall between them begins to break down.

Throughout the text, the reader is presented with Genly's arguably problematic gendered perceptions of the world around him, ascribing his own frame of reference to a people that defies and in many ways destroys that frame of reference.

Yet there is also something deeply unsettling about Genly for the inhabitants of Winter. There is King Argaven's political fear and distrust of Genly's differences (34-40), and likewise his physical differences are noted by other characters over the course of his story. It is not until Estraven and Genly have escaped to the Ice, though, and a friendship based on sheer mutual survival begins to develop, that we get any insight into how Genly is perceived, not as The Alien Envoy, but as an individual who is different. Estraven's comments on gender at this juncture are perhaps the most interesting in the entire novel.

Estraven's comments on Genly fall into two categories: the physical and the spirit, as it pertains to the body. When Estraven himself is in kemmer, he reflects on Genly, musing "A strange lowgrade sort of desire it must be, to be spread out over every day of the year, and never to know the choice of sex" (232). This sentiment seems to get to the heart of the conflict between the two depictions of sex and gender. Estraven, when speaking of "the choice of sex," means choosing male or female, not being arbitrarily assigned to one for all of life. This flux between physical states of being seems to hearken back to the predominance of shadows in the Karhidian culture. The flux between being sexed and androgynous also bears with it a very strong cycle of emotion, with the intensity of sexuality while in kemmer, and the utter lack of a sex drive when not.

Yet reading the phrase "the choice of sex," as one Genly's breed of humanity, I first read it as "the choice to have sex, or not have sex." Were the phrase uttered by Genly instead of Estraven, this would be a valid interpretation, as the Gethenians are as captive to their expression of sexuality by time as we are by sex assignment.

Estraven also ties Genly's sex to his physical and spiritual (not religious, but of the spirit) abilities. He says "There is a frailty about him. He is all unprotected, exposed, vulnerable, even to his sexual organ which he must carry always outside himself; but he is strong, unbelievably strong. I am not sure he can keep hauling any longer than I, but he can haul harder and faster than Iâ€¦To match his frailty and strength, he has a spirit easy to despair and quick to defiance; a fierce impatient courage" (227-8). Given Genly Ai's fairly constant comment on the slowness of life, evolution, and time on Winter, Estraven's understanding of Genly is particularly profound. He has seen in an example of one what that one could not understand in an entire world. Yet even this understanding of Genly's spirit is seen through the filter of the Gethenians. Where Estraven sees frailty and physical vulnerability, our society has placed virility and strength. Even when there is a deep personal connection between individuals, they are both still coming to one another from such different perspectives as to never be able to truly understand one another. Though Genly spends much of the end of the book speaking of the universal human spirit, of "serving Mankind" (293), not just one nation or race, there are still deep differences between the races.

Perhaps the most telling indicator of the split between the Gethenians and Genly is that Estraven, in his times of deep emotion, of mind-connection, and in death, returns Genly's love for him by displacing his brother, Arek, onto Genry Ai, particularly in the mind-connection, where it is impossible to tell lies.

While this might paint an initially bleak picture of the hope for understanding between Peoples at first glance, in between the arguments, running as a thread throughout, is the desire and hope for understanding. Though this understanding might be doomed to be imperfect, on both sides, there is the effort, and the emotions created are very real. We may never be able to walk in the Other's shoes, but there is the hope of walking along side him, and recognizing that he too must wear shoes, different though they may seem.

The feminism of Genly Ai

roseblack — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 11:43:08 +0000

While my experience with this may not be universal, I found myself somewhat alienated by Genly Ai's perspective on the events he related. I was much more drawn in to the narrative on those occasions when it was related by Estraven. The factor that drew me out of Genly Ai's perspective was consistently his insistence on applying his particular conceptions of gender to the Gethenians he encountered. Estraven, unfettered by the need to place his world into inapplicable terms, is better able to focus in on the more flowing parts of hte story.

The main problem, for me, of his mental gendering (beyond the much discussed pronoun) was the rather disturbing set of qualities he seemed to apply to the female gender. It wasn't that his notion of masculinity wasn't disturbing, however, most of the time, when he attempted to explain or describe characteristics, it was in terms of his image of the feminine, which of course makes sense, as what he needs to relate and explain is the unfamiliar. The easiest example is that he "â€¦thought of him as [his] landlady, for he had fat buttocks that wagged as he walked, and a soft fat face, and a prying, spying, ignoble, kindly nature." (48) He also conflates femininity with a flabby sort of softness in his descriptions of the Orgota. Aside from that commonality, what he tends to interpret as feminine varies drastically, except that it always seems to pertain to relatively negative characteristics. The "landlady's" geniality is cancelled out by his volubility, and his tendency to show of Mr. Ai's room to tourists. He states (235) that women aren't mentally subnormal, but without conviction, as though he can't quite find another way to explain his society. It seems that the Envoy, and by extension, the Ekumen which he represents, isn't so advanced as one might expect of this egalitarian, Federation-like entity.

What, then, is the purpose of this alienation? Certainly, there's value in the alien narrator, as he takes us along in his explorations without the vehicle world-exploration appearing forced. More importantly, however, he makes our judgments for us. Genly Ai is a human like us, and while it's comforting to think that we would be better able to take the people of an unfamiliar society (different sexually, racially, culturally as well) on their own, appropriate terms, most people probably couldn't. Thus, the perspective we find ourselves critiquing and drawing away from is a representation of our own. While our critiques on the application of gender-roles to un-gendered individuals seems unconnected to our world, LeGuin is showing us a situation in which the human need to group doesn't just fail to be useful, but interferes with the ability of the thinker to do his job. In saddling us into the head of another human, LeGuin asks us to take the message back a step further, to examine how our applications of gender roles and ideas may be hindering us now, in ways that an alien would immediately see.

So much to think about when ur stuck in the ice...

drawercat — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 10:35:06 +0000

I'm still interested in what happens in this novel in terms of race, and the representation of racial issues in the future. We might of tried to touch on it in class, but the overwhelming struggle over the meaning and the philosophy of gender in society was definitely something that took over. It clearly has for almost all readers of the novel, down to the feminist writers who proclaimed that Le Guin's use of the male pronoun was the number one most anti-feminist act of all time. I'm not sure how many people shared my first impression, that race is something of a stagnant, bypassed, non-issue; but as we've seen from Starship Troopers, race can be expected to take on a number of different appearances and undergo a number of different transformations in its manifestation in any brave new sci-fi world. So I was/am suspicious that more is going on here in terms of racial politics than meets the eye. I'm of the opinion that talking about gender separately from race is inherently problematic, since all aspects of identity (but I would say these two in particular) are inextricable from one another. They all intersect.
Since one of the things that third-wave feminist literature (of member of which group this novel is ostensibly a part, according to its retrospective classification by people other than Le Guin) is reacting to is the failing of second-wave feminist literature to extend a critique of gender to other social structures, I tend to presume a consciousness in the work of the ways in which gender cannot stand alone from an issue like race. But where do we see this in the work?
On the one hand we certainly have some of the Star Trek "federation" model of race-overcome in Le Guin's universe, at least in the abstract and far-off body of the Ekumen. Genly's elegant turn of phrase is not unfamiliar: "we come all colors" (39). Genly himself is (to me) a typical Le Guin protagonist in that he is revealed to be dark-skinned, presumably of African descent, several pages into the novel. Surprise, he's not Caucasian! I think one of the passing comments in class was very accurate: Le Guin does do a certain recognizable amount of messing with what she knows are going to be the reader's assumptions, and revealing them to the reader in such a way as to make us unable to deny the systems that inform our reading of any text. It's interesting to me here that Genly's race is one of the "unsettling revelations" she chooses to make, in a style similar to that in which it was casually dropped in that "...even in a *bisexual society* the politician is very often something less than an integral man..." (20).
On the other hand, we still have what seem to be remnants of bizarre racial stereotyping worked into the novel, though in some cases I think I'm willing to put it down to less-than-conscious decisions by the author. I'm not the only person to notice the Gethenian specific inability to differentiate between the "l" and "r" sounds, or the Chinese-imperialist-style royal city-within-a-city (as evidenced in various places on the blog so far). Bizarre referencing of "oriental" stereotypes, it feels like. These are only a few instances of several when I felt a correlation between a familiar stereotype and Le Guin's fleshing out of the people of Winter in detail. There's also the King's fascination with not only Genly's "sexual perversion" but his skin color, which is a troubling icon of difference to the King, alongside Genly's maleness.
It's also important, I think, to keep in mind the *literal* presence and intersection of race and gender here. To Genly Ai and the world he represents, the people of Winter are literally a different *race* of human. The manifested differences in gender and sex, as well as various other less-novel physical traits of the Gethenians are in this way categorized as *race* differences. It's just an interesting thing to try and pick apart, since the Ekumen feels in many ways like a believable future for humanity. Race isn't actually easy to define now, and I could easily see it undergoing a transformation of meaning and definition faced with a new and changing universe.
On a slightly different note, I enjoyed the book immensely, especially since its purpose seemed to be to disrupt the reader. I think I love this book simply as an exercise in breaking down societal givens, rather than a treatise on the inherent nature of man (human) or an attempt to solidify any one problem with modern society by reflecting it in dystopia or utopia. It's open-ended, and though we see through Genly Ai's eyes, it is much easier to experience the world with a sense of wonder and perhaps discomfort that feel much easier to separate from the protagonist's own rationalization of the world than say, The Handmaid's Tale, in which we cannot seem to escape Offred's head and social isolation. Interesting, since both main characters narrate their own stories precisely as stories, and both tales are conceived of as direct reports which stand as evidence for a past, unreachable experience. I can't seem to grasp at why that is, except perhaps that the literal unseating of a gender (or sex?) dichotomy is the more novel to us, the more confrontational and the newest frontier to the reader themselves.

Weather Versus Ambisexuality in The Left Hand of Darkness

DeusExMachina — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:40:22 +0000

Ursula Le Guin, though she makes a big fuss out of the "thought-experimental" nature of her novel, and explicitly says that she's not trying to make a political statement such as "we damned well ought to be androgynous" - but even so, she seems to intentionally pad levels of ambiguity â€“ maybe even excuses, plausible deniability â€“ into any possible "message" of her novel.

One of the biggest features of Gethenian society that seems to contain a hidden moral supposition is this: "they [do] not go to war" (48). The clarification: "they behaved like animals, in that respect, or like women" (48) â€“ the mention of women especially hints that Gethenians are incapable of going to war because they are too feminine, and women don't go to war. (Personally, I don't take that for granted, but for the sake of argument, I'll let it go.) The problem is that their peculiar androgyny is not the only defining feature of Gethenian culture â€“ they also live in probably the coldest environment among the novel's known inhabited planets. It is a well-supported theory in life outside this novel that geography and environment are determining features of culture (see: "Guns, Germs, and Steel"); and that makes it believable that the Gethenian inability to mobilize is the result of their weather. Consider: going to war is an enormous undertaking; oftentimes in the past, wars had to be postponed during winter months. Part of what made Hannibal an amazing general is that he managed to cross the Alps, which are snowy all year round, and even then his army suffered massive losses. The Gethenians would have to face that sort of weather everywhere, almost all the time; war would be a massively wasteful, unproductive undertaking for them, in comparison to our wars (and that's assuming that real wars are productive!). It's impossible to rule, therefore, that their androgyny is what makes Gethenians unwarlike; but it's also impossible to rule out that possibility.

Even within the novel, "it seems likely that [the Gethenians are] an experiment" (89). But what kind of experiment are they? If they were meant to be set up in opposition to other humans, then the experiment is critically flawed, because there is no strict control â€“ there are two variables, ambisexuality and extremely cold weather. For a realistic scientific experiment, the constraints are too loose, for the reasons I've already spelled out. However, the idea that Gethenians exist on account of "human genetic manipulation" (89) is a convenient one for avoiding difficult issues such as proposing that such an evolution from humans is possible, likely, or natural. Otherwise, one might suppose that Ursula Le Guin was suggesting that humans would eventually become this way; or that humans could just have easily turned out this way. But instead, she sets down the opposite notion: that this sort of thing is nigh-impossible, and exists by mere contrivance. She calls attention to the falseness of the situation in such a way that it seems to discredit value judgments of any kind. The Gethenians are not explicitly better or worse, by any standards, than normal humans; they are just different.

And this sort of thing is all over the novel. It's almost as if Le Guin knows she's treading on sensitive ground here, and so she restrains herself from making any claims that could be construed as outrageous. Whether in doing so, she undermines the meaningfulness of her novel or allows it to be all the more insidiously thought-provoking is anyone's guess.

buddhism in le guin's "left hand of darkness"

surrealistic — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:32:31 +0000

Since the religion that I most closely identify with is Buddhism, I was pleasantly surprised to see some Buddha-flavored (for lack of a better description) ideas emerging as the overarching themes or conflicts of the novel. Though little actually happens plot-wise, Le Guin has a very distinctive, almost sarcastic "writer's voice" that gets the reader caught up in this meandering philosophical journey.

Certainly "Left Hand of Darkness" is a classic example of how third-wave feminism looked at (and continues to look at) the cultural problems of themodern world. The way that Genly Ai, a Terran, approaches human and societal differences is indicative of the struggles that people here on Earth have with the ideas of race, gender, class and so on. On one side of the conflict we have Terran duality; on the other, Gethenian oneness and fluidity. We, too, have this driving need to classify people and phenomena into categories, defining them by a single label; day and night, male and female, black and white, rich and poor. Though we acknowledge that there are gray areas to a certain extent, we are never completely comfortable with allowing someone or something to be neither, or to be both.

Gethenians, on the other hand, have a difficult time separating things into dualities; everything exists in a singular, cohesive state. The planet, true to its name of "Winter" experiences nothing but unchanging snowy weather. Gender is completely fluid, and Genly struggles to properly express someone's gender due to the constraint of his (and by extension, our) language. For example, Genly describes one Gethenian he encounters as "{his} landlady, a voluble man" (pg.47), which is seemingly a paradox and an expression of total androgyny. Perhaps it is safer to say that Gethenians are touched by duality to a lesser extent; they are closer to being an enlightened society, if you will. Maybe Le Guin is trying to present them as an example of what we could attain.
The only instances in which duality appears within Gethenian society are: 1) when male and female become distinct during the period of "kemmer". Genly Ai sticks to a singular pronoun here: "I saw a girl, a filthy, pretty, stupid, weary girl looking up into my face as she talked, smiling timidly, looking for solace. The young Orgota was in kemmer" (pg. 171). The other is 2) within the governmental structure. Gethenians do understand the idea of separate "Domains" and nations, as a sort of replacement for the duality of different races.

What frustrates me the most about Left Hand of Darkness is that it does a wonderful job of presenting and describing the problems created by our dualistic worldview, but it fails to suggest a method for solving these problems. When read in the most simplistic way, perhaps the solution is "move towards androgyny! forcibly train yourselves to forget gender!" in which case, I simply disagree. It can be impossible to make people forget ideas that were imposed on them from birth. I wanted to know what the answer was to the duality question.
The book does offer readers a passage that resonates somewhat with the Buddhist idea of the "middle path" as the most direct route to enlightenment. Genly Ai's task as an Envoy is to move towards "increase of knowledge. The augmentation of the complexity and intensity of the field of intelligent life. The enrichment of harmony and the greater glory of God" (pg. 34). In a similarly Buddhist way, perhaps Le Guin is purposefully leaving the question open encourage us to observe how we divide things into dualities, and take the first step on the path: self-inquiry.

pass

dreamfall17 — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:02:37 +0000

I'm punking out on this response, along with everyone else, apparently. Though (as I have said repeatedly) I was really into the movie for this week, Le Guin didn't really do anything for me.

Handdara Philosophy and Atheism

LeoniaTavira — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 08:20:03 +0000

To examine a part of the book I feel was ignored in discussion on Monday, I wanted to explore my interest in the Handdara and their philosophy. The whole concept of Foretelling is fascinating, especially as it is practiced in a religious society that considers it to be a completely fruitless exercise. There is a point early on in the book when Genly is talking with Faxe about the process of Foretelling and how useful it is, but Faxe is trying to get Genly to understand him. Faxe says "â€¦we in the Handdara don't want answers. It's hard to avoid them, but we try to." (70) When I first considered this statement I thought that the goal of many religions is to find answers, and in this the Handdara are set apart. However, upon closer examination of prominent organized religions, definite answers are never the goal. If it could be answered whether or not Jesus Christ actually lived and the stories of the New Testament were true, would any Christian honestly want to know? The point is faith, the belief that something is so, even if proof is out of the question. Faxe expresses some degree of exasperation with Genly's questions about Foretelling and finally asks Genly "you don't see yetâ€¦why we perfected and practice Foretelling?" and Faxe goes on to answer his own question, "to exhibit the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question." (70) Taking the earlier example of the existence or non-existence in actual history of Jesus, one sees that the answer to that question is immaterial, as there are so many other questions which would be more useful if answered. For example, would Christ's alleged teachings, if truly followed by all mankind, be the answer to world peace and global unconditional human love and kindness?

The Handdara respect ignorance because it is the only thing that we can count on as constant, apart from death, which few people hurry towards. At the end of the chapter, Faxe lays the philosophy of the Handdara out in plain language for Genly.

"The unknownâ€¦the unforetold, the unproven, that is what life is based on. Ignorance is the ground of thought. Unproof is the ground of action. If it were proven that there is no God there would be no religionâ€¦but also if it were proven that there is a God, there would be no religion." (71)

Much later in the book, during one of Estraven's journal entries, he suggests "to be an atheist is to maintain God. His existence or his nonexistence, it amounts to much the same, on the plane of proof" (153). Here, Le Guin inserts her own beliefs, as she stated in the foreword that she is herself an atheist. It seems unusual for an author to openly question, or rather examine in a virtually unbiased fashion, her own beliefs through the characters she has created. She brings up such unusual and controversial issues, and manages to look at this society, without stable gender, through its own eyes. Questioning the human desire to know, especially creating a religious group that gives importance and prominence to ignorance, is an incredible exercise in stepping outside one's own beliefs and taking a very critical look at society.

Left Hand of Darkness Response

Riceguy20 — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 05:31:15 +0000

One of the things that was touched on in class recently was the way in which Genly Ai often characterized the ways the Gethenieas acted around him. Particularly interesting to me were the ways that appeared derogatory towards woman, and what this conveys about him and the 'Ekumenical' society he comes from.
The first that caught my attention appeared on page 48-9, when Genly is describing the Karhiders' absence of war. He says that, "They lackedâ€¦the capacity to mobilize. They behaved like animals in that respect; or like woman. They do not behave like men, or ants." In this comparison, he act in a similar manner to Starship Trooper's Johnny, placing woman on a level seemingly below men when it comes to being able to fight wars. This is on an even larger scale though; whereas Johnny discredits them as not being infantry or front-line fighters, Genly appears to not seem a woman capable of mobilizing towards war at all. Similarly, near the end of the novel (pg 299), he describes the first person he meets in the Estre Hearth as so silent that, "no girl could keep so grim a silence as he did." This is an oddly conspicuous comment, especially with so little basis in why he would think this way. This little off-hand remark helps lets us infer much about Genlys background. Later in the novel, Genly confesses to Estreven that he understands very little about woman at all, inferring some trouble he may have had in the past in relationships or meetings with woman in general. He has his own perception of woman from is own experience, not some grandiose utopian notion of equality or acceptance. Does this reflect then more on his personal experience, or on the nature of the Ekumen he comes from?
In my opinion, the fact that he makes these observations makes the society from which he comes from much more believable as a human future. At first, at least to me, the Ekumenical system he is from seems overly optimistic. A large, constantly expanding society with sizeable gaps in technology among several different races, even those with a common genetic background, seems unlikely to be so peaceful, and this makes it unbelievable to me. Were it not for Genlys infrequent, not-so-PC references, I would have a lot of trouble connecting to the society as a whole. The references themselves are what make him a human, imperfect and opinionated.

Interstellar Buddhism

Captain.ver.Kerk — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 03:56:11 +0000

The clash of duality and singularity is the overarching theme and conflict in Ursula LeGuin's "The Left Hand of Darkness." Many things on Gethen seem to exist in a state of oneness rather than parity, and while the contrasting of Genly Ai's dualistic worldview against this new "norm" is how this idea is predominantly played out, many fail to notice that there do exist examples of pairing within the Gethenian society and planet, and I feel there to be yet another overarching theme that can be derived out of this clash.

Genly comes from Terra, if I'm not mistaken also known as our own planet Earth, and brings with him a mind preconditioned to seeing things in opposition. For example, he tells his companion Therem Harth rem ir Estraven, a native Gethenian of the Yin and Yang symbol, telling Estraven that "Light is the left hand of darknessâ€¦ how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male," (267). This very clearly demonstrates how Genly tries to view things, in pairs. Similarly, Genly often tries to classify the Gethenians into the paired sexual confines he is used to, male and female, when describing them in his self-proclaimed story-report, telling of "[His] landlady, a voluble man," and of another, "wiping the sweat from his dark forehead the man â€“ man I must say, having said he and his," (47, 5). To us the first description seems a strange contradiction, and the second an unnecessary attempt at explaining pronoun selection, yet his struggle is not without merit. He finds it very difficult on Gethen to split people, places, and other thing into their Terran dualalities, and finds that the Gethenians themselves see things in quite a contrasting manner due to the strangeness of their planet.

Of course the greatest reason that Gethen and its inhabitants defy division into pairs stems from the physiological design of the Gethenian people. They are for the greater part of their lives, androgynous beings incapable of separation into male or female, and often exhibiting characteristics typical of both, evidenced by the voluble male landlady. Also, the planet is in an almost perpetual state of winter without really any other strong seasons, meaning the weather almost everyday is "snowy", and the inhabitants are comprised of the same race rather than the many different peoples of Earth and other planets within LeGuin's universe. Notice, though, that all examples but my final are conditional, revealing that pairings do in fact exist on this world of singularity.

Gethenians do split into male and female beings during their period of kemmer, much like a menstrual cycle. Genly describes how "I saw a girl, a filthy, pretty, stupid, weary girl looking up into my face as she talked, smiling timidly, looking for solace. The young Orgota was in kemmer, and had been drawn to me," (171). During this stage, they react to their kemmer partner and their anatomy transforms to fill the roles of male and female, giving us the customary parity. Even in the absence of racial divisions one can find a substitute in governmental designations between the two Gethenian nations of Karhide and Orgoreyn. Karhide on the one hand is a monarchy, ruled by King Argaven in form very similar to a European monarchy, while Orgoreyn is almost blatantly structured as a socialist state where everyone is given a job by the government, things are shared, and dissidents and criminals are sent to "farms" as punishment, a contrast much like that between the governments of Western Europe and the Soviet Union. So, as one may note, dualism is not absent on Gethen.

All this talk of pairing and oneness I feel to be aside from the true message of the novel. If one examines a bit further, "The Left Hand of Darkness" can be seen rather as a religious or spiritual text. Both the Gethenians and the Ekumen of Known Worlds, the interplanetary league Genly works for as an Envoy, are in the end on a quest towards the same goal: Enlightenment. Now, they aren't working towards strictly the same type of enlightenment, but ideas and principles are much the same. The Ekumen searches for Enlightenment by means of connecting all mankind to create greater and more knowledgeable beings. As Genly explains it, the Ekumen searches for "material profit. Increase of knowledge. The augmentation of the complexity and intensity of the field of intelligent life. The enrichment of harmony and the greater glory of God," (34). This sounds very much like a spiritual journey, except instead of it being an individual's quest, it is undertaken by all of humanity.

The Gethenians also have their goal of Enlightenment, set before them by a very Buddha-esque figure, Meshe. Followers of the Yomesh cult are "obedient to their rule of inactivity or non-interference. That rule (expressed in the word nusuth, which I have to translate as 'no matter') is the heart of the cult," (60). Additionally, according to legend, "Meshe is the Center of Timeâ€¦ The life of every man is in the Center of Time, for all were seen in the Seeing of Meshe, and are in his Eye. We are the pupils of his Eye. Our doing is his Seeing: our being his Knowing," (162-3). Meshe is the quintessential "enlightened being," knowing and seeing all at once, and a similar state is sought by many of the Gethenians. So in fact, this is a book about the Duality of Gethen and the Ekumen both seeking out the goal of Oneness within the universe.

Pass

Scott_of_the_Sahara — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 02:07:33 +0000

I'm going to pass on this one.

I drop this response

greenhedge — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 23:08:15 +0000

I'm using my pass on this response

duality and war

dragongrrl — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 06:15:29 +0000

Though we discussed all the issues involved in the duality inherent in our culture and language, I don't think we really discussed the issue of duality itself as Ursula Le Guin portrays it in The Left Hand of Darkness. It is true that our fixation with the opposites of male and female make interpreting the world of Gethen difficult; we can't quite comprehend the idea of androgynous humans. But this doesn't mean our refusal to let go of this way of thinking is necessarily bad. We think of many important ideas in this way, not just gender--light/dark, good/evil, black/white, right/wrong, nature/civilization. The point is, however, that in any duality, neither half is better or more important than the other. As Estraven says, " 'It's queer that daylight's not enough. We need the shadows, in order to walk.' " (267) Genly Ai of course points out the yin yang symbol to Estraven, something we as a society often reference.

If we consider this further, however, there is another reason thinking in dualities is not inherently a bad thing. Though we specifically name the two ends of the spectrum, we also recognize the area between as having possibility--the "gray" area, both a combination of black and white and between them. Obviously, we have the middle word for the black/white duality, but what's the middle word for the right/wrong or good/evil duality? We don't have one (that I know of--feel free to correct me). We do understand the concept this middle word would describe, however, because there are so many instances in life that cannot be placed at either end of the spectrum. I think Le Guin is in part identifying one middle concept that we haven't really considered, which is why it is so difficult for us to comprehend. Maybe over time there will be a need for a pronoun to describe an "it" in a non-degrading way, but in the novel androgyny is used at least partially to show how our idealistic dual way of thinking applies to the real world. As she says in the introduction, Le Guin is "merely observing" and "describing" (5th pg of intro) the world as it currently exists.

On a different train of thought, Le Guin also interestingly critiques nationalism, patriotism, and war. The Gethenians have no word for war, probably a result from rather than a cause behind the fact they have never had a war--just small competitions, though sometimes equally fatal. On the subject of patriotism, Estraven asks, "[W]hat is the sense of giving a boundary to all that, of giving it a name and ceasing to love where the name ceases to apply? What is love of one's country; is it hate of one's uncountry?" (211) Of course, it is in order to change this view, in order to bring the nation of Karhide together that Tibe wants to create war with Orgoreyn, though this is difficult without an actual word to describe his intent. "He was after something surer, the sure, quick, and lasting way to make people into a nation: war. . . . The only other means of mobilizing people rapidly and entirely is with a new religion; none was handy; he would make do with war." (103) (Is this also a critique of religion--or at least new religion, which is simply a cult? Must ponder later.) War obviously does create nationalism--Americans never feel more American than when they are banded together against some foreign enemy. I'm not sure, however, why war and religion are the only two options for Tibe. Why he wants war is only more unclear with the interesting observation, "If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both." (102) It would follow, then, that if the country waged war, it would be nationalistic but no longer actually a country, just a fighting body. Perhaps it is through the idea that in war we regress to more animalistic, aggressive ways of viewing our enemy. Even more interesting is that Le Guin has provided us with another duality to consider: war and civilization. In this case, is there still a middle ground, as in the other dualities? Once again, interestingly, it seems the Gethenians have the answer: they have both civilization and conflict, but their conflicts are limited to small numbers of people, and most often people within a country, not between countries.