Edited by Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman
Afterword by Ursula K. Le Guin

About the Book

The Dispossessed has been described by political thinker Andre Gorz as 'The most striking description I know of the seductions--and snares--of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society.' To date, however, the radical social, cultural, and political ramifications of Le Guin's multiple award-winning novel remain woefully under explored. Editors Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman right this state of affairs in the first ever collection of original essays devoted to Le Guin's novel. Among the topics covered in this wide-ranging, international and interdisciplinary collection are the anarchist, ecological, post-consumerist, temporal, revolutionary, and open-ended utopian politics of The Dispossessed. The book concludes with an essay by Le Guin written specially for this volume, in which she reassesses the novel in light of the development of her own thinking over the past 30 years.

"Perhaps I can express my gratitude best by saying that reading [these essays] left me knowing far better than I knew before how I wrote the book and why I wrote it as I did . They have restored the book to me as I conceived it, not as an exposition of ideas but as an embodiment of idea - a revolutionary artifact, a work containing a potential permanent source of renewal of thought and perception, like a William Morris design, or the Bernard Maybeck house I grew up in . This is criticism as I first knew it, serious, responsive, and jargon-free. I honor it as an invaluable aid to reading, my own text as well as others."
-Ursula K. Le Guin, from the Response

Table of Contents

Introduction, Laurence Davis

Part I. Open-Ended Utopian Politics
1 The Dynamic and Revolutionary Utopia of Ursula K. Le Guin, Laurence Davis
2 Worlds Apart: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Possibility of Method, Simon Stow

Part II. Post-Consumerist Politics
3 The Dispossessed as Ecological Political Theory, Peter G. Stillman
4 Ursula K. Le Guin, Herbert Marcuse, and the Fate of Utopia in the Postmodern, Andrew Reynolds
5 The Alien Comes Home: Getting Past the Twin Planets of Possession and Austerity in Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Douglas Spencer

Part III. Anarchist Politics
6 Individual and Community in Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Dan Sabia
7 The Need for Walls: Privacy, Community, and Freedom in The Dispossessed, Mark Tunick
8 Breaching Invisible Walls: Individual Anarchy in The Dispossessed, Winter Elliott

Part IV. Temporal Politics
9 Time and the Measure of the Political Animal, Ellen M. Rigsby
10 Fulfillment as a Function of Time, or the Ambiguous Process of Utopia, Jennifer Rodgers
11 Science and Politics in The Dispossessed: Le Guin and the "Science Wars," Tony Burns

Part V. Revolutionary Politics
12 The Gap in the Wall: Partnership, Physics, and Politics in The Dispossessed, Everett L. Hamner
13 From Ambiguity to Self-Reflexivity: Revolutionizing Fantasy Space, Bulent Somay
14 Future Conditional or Future Perfect? The Dispossessed and Permanent Revolution, Chris Ferns

Part VI. Open-Ended Utopian Politics
15 Ambiguous Choices: Skepticism as a Grounding for Utopia, Claire P. Curtis
16 Empty Hands: Communication, Pluralism, and Community in Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, Avery Plaw

A Response, by Ansible, from Tau Ceti, Ursula K. Le Guin

Further Reading
Index
About the Contributors