Abstract
This chapter examines Le Guin’s construction of utopian spaces in her novella “A Man of the People” and her Churten short stories. It argues that her depiction of the interplanetary Ekumen fuses Western utopian optimism with indigenous practices to explore the possibility of a post-imperial West and decolonized indigenous nations harmoniously sharing knowledge. Le Guin’s knowledge of indigenous cultures, however, must be distinguished from indigenous knowledge. Unlike much indigenous science fiction, Le Guin depicts a culturally non-traumatized center. She draws on indigenous knowledge as a source of cultural health but approaches it from a Western perspective. Reading Le Guin’s utopian work as an important voice within a larger, multicultural corpus can begin to presence the sort of non-coercive intercultural exchange Le Guin imagines in the Ekumen.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Editors’ note: For a discussion of the ethics of goodwill and power in The Lathe of Heaven, see Stephanie Burt (2021).
- 2.
I am capitalizing “Tribes” to indicate respect to the collective group of tribes within the borders of the United States. In the same spirit, I will use First Nations to indicate tribes within Canada.
- 3.
While white writers, and arguably especially settler colonial writers, carry the bulk of the responsibility for cultural appropriation and distortion, these concerns are not limited to appropriation by white people. Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo writer Rebecca Roanhorse, for example, has received criticism from Diné commentators for distortion and appropriation of their culture in her futuristic fantasy novel Trail of Lightning (ICT Opinion 2018).
- 4.
To be sure, Western science fiction also has a strong tradition of stories about the human race being colonized, from H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds (1898) to the popular Hollywood film Independence Day (1996). These works, however, typically center Westerners and Western society as victims (and often ultimate victors) of a war against a monstrous Other. Non-Western cultures generally do not appear as secondary players. Indigenous cultures rarely figure at all. Often serving to validate a Western claim to righteousness, these stories have more in common with narratives of heroic homesteaders attacked by Indians than they do with indigenous stories of survivance in the face of colonization.
- 5.
“Folx” is an increasingly common alternative to “folks,” considered more inclusive of marginalized groups, particularly the queer community but also people of color and other marginalized groups.
- 6.
“Refugees” shares significant ideological terrain with Le Guin’s “Dancing to Ganam.” But while “Dancing to Ganam” focuses on deconstructing the white savior archetype, “Refugees” largely ignores him. It is looking somewhere else.
- 7.
“Material profit” here should not be confused with the growth of capital. “Material profit” in the Ekumen’s sense might be better understood as benefits to humanity that have a physical manifestation. One example might be the development of the ansible, a device which allows instantaneous communication regardless of distance. This device would not have been developed—at least not in the same timespan—if the Ekumen had not exchanged knowledge with the Cetians, who developed the theoretical physics behind it, as recounted in The Dispossessed.
References
Amberstone, Celu. 2004. Refugees. In So Long Been Dreaming: Post-Colonial Science Fiction and Fantasy, ed. Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan, 161–182. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press.
Baker-Cristales, Beth. 2012. Poiesis of Possibility: The Ethnographic Sensibilities of Ursula K. Le Guin. Anthropology and Humanism 37 (1): 15–26.
Buchanan, Ian. 1998. Metacommentary on Utopia, or Jameson’s Dialectic of Hope. Utopian Studies 9 (Spring): 18–25.
Burt, Stephanie. 2021. The Uses of Power, the Power of Dreams: Ursula K. Le Guin and the X-Men. In Legacies of Ursula K. Le Guin, ed. Christopher L. Robinson, Sarah Bouttier, and Pierre-Louis Patoine. London: Palgrave Pivot.
Clark, P. Djèli. 2018. The Black God’s Drums. New York: Tom Doherty Associates.
Crawley, Ashon. 2016. Otherwise, Ferguson. Interfictions Online: A Journal of Interstitial Arts, October 7. Accessed May 11, 2021. interfictions.com/otherwise-fergusonashon-crawley/.
Dillon, Grace L. 2012. Imagining Indigenous Futurisms. Introduction. In Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, ed. Grace L. Dillon, 1–12. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
———. 2018. Re: Question: Intersection of Indigeneity and Utopia. Received by Arwen Spicer, September 17.
ICT Opinion. 2018. Trail of Lightning Is an Appropriation of Diné Cultural Beliefs. Indian Country Today, November 5. Accessed May 11, 2021. newsmaven.io/indiancountrytoday/opinion/trail-of-lightning-is-an-appropriation-of-din%C3%A9-cultural-beliefs-4tvSMvEfNE-i7AE10W7nQg/.
Jameson, Fredric. 1982. Progress vs. Utopia: Or, Can We Imagine the Future. Science Fiction Studies 9 (2): 147–158.
———. 1982. 1994. The Seeds of Time. New York: Columbia University Press.
Le Guin, Ursula K. 1985. Always Coming Home. Illustrated by Margaret Chodos. Music composed by Todd Barton. New York: Harper and Row.
———. 1995. A Man of the People. In Four Ways to Forgiveness, 125–194. New York: HarperPrism.
———. 2000. The Lathe of Heaven. New York: EOS/HarperCollins.
———. 2005. Dancing to Ganam. In A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, 115–157. New York: Harper Perennial.
———. 2010a. Introduction. In The Left Hand of Darkness, xiii–xix. New York: Ace.
———. 2010b. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace.
———. 2015. Listening to the Unheard Voices. Interview by Zoë Carpenter. In The Nation, YouTube. Accessed January 26, 2018. youtu.be/3_vzSgkjBEI.
Madsen, Deborah L. 2008. On Subjectivity and Survivance. In Narratives of Native Presence, ed. Gerald Vizenor, 61–87. Lincoln, NB: University of Nebraska Press.
Nogha, Misha. 2010. Chippoke Na Gomi. In The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction, ed. Arthur B. Evans, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Joan Gordon, Veronica Hollinger, Rob Latham, and Carol McGuirk, 631–636. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Recollet, Karyn. 2018. Steel Trees, Fish Skins, and Futurity Cyphers. Canadian Theatre Review 176 (Fall): 26–30. Accessed May 11, 2021. https://doi.org/10.3138/ctr.176.004.
Roanhorse, Rebecca. 2017. Welcome to Your Authentic Indian Experience. Apex Magazine, August 8. Accessed May 11, 2021. www.apex-magazine.com/welcome-to-your-authentic-indian-experience/.
Robertson, Michael. 2018. The Last Utopians: Four Late-Nineteenth Century Visionaries and Their Legacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Sanders, William. 2012. When This World Is All on Fire. In Walking the Clouds: An Anthology of Indigenous Science Fiction, ed. Grace L. Dillion, 151–170. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.
Simon, Zoltán Boldizár. 2018. The Limits of Anthropocene Narratives. European Journal of Social Theory, September: 1–17. Accessed May 11, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368431018799256
Smith, Linda Tuhiwai. 2012. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. 2nd ed. London: Zed.
Suskol House. 2011. Suskol House. Suscol Intertribal Council. Accessed May 11, 2021. www.suscolcouncil.org.
Taylor, Drew Hayden. 2016. Lost in Space. In Take Us to Your Chief and Other Stories, 46–55. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre.
Vizenor, Gerald. 1999. Manifest Manners: Narratives on Postindian Survivance. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Worster, Donald. 1994. Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Spicer, A. (2021). Many Voices in the Household: Indigeneity and Utopia in Le Guin’s Ekumen. In: Robinson, C.L., Bouttier, S., Patoine, PL. (eds) The Legacies of Ursula K. Le Guin. Palgrave Studies in Science and Popular Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82827-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82827-1_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-82826-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-82827-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)