Yesterday's Tomorrows : On Utopia and Dystopia [1 ed.] 9781443858779, 9781443855884

Citation preview

Yesterday’s Tomorrows

Yesterday’s Tomorrows: On Utopia and Dystopia

Edited by

Pere Gallardo and Elizabeth Russell

Yesterday’s Tomorrows: On Utopia and Dystopia, Edited by Pere Gallardo and Elizabeth Russell This book first published 2014 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Copyright © 2014 by Pere Gallardo, Elizabeth Russell and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-5588-X, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5588-4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Yesterday’s Tomorrows: On Utopia and Dystopia PERE GALLARDO AND ELIZABETH RUSSELL Part I: Speculations on Elsewhere and Managing the Crisis Chapter I .................................................................................................... 11 Stanisáaw Lem’s Futures and Futurology KENNETH HANSHEW Chapter II ................................................................................................... 25 Gathering for the Millenium: Sacred Places and Utopian Visions TIMOTHY MILLER Chapter III ................................................................................................. 31 Laughing at the End of the World: Cat’s Cradle and Galapagos BURCU KAYISCI Chapter IV ................................................................................................. 45 Intimations of Hope within Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Context ANNETTE MAGID Chapter V .................................................................................................. 59 The Flat Management of “Crises” on Our Spherical Planet: Anarchist Order for a Sustainable Future DIANE MORGAN Part II: Disturbing Utopias Chapter VI ................................................................................................. 75 Satirical Utopia, Utopia Satirised: Danny Boyle’s The Beach BARBARA KLONOWSKA

vi

Table of Contents

Chapter VII ................................................................................................ 87 Hollywood’s Neo-Marxist Approach: In Time, by Andrew Niccol PERE GALLARDO Chapter VIII .............................................................................................. 99 “There’s some things apocalypse can’t change”: Gender in Jericho ISABEL SANTAULARIA Chapter IX ............................................................................................... 121 Dystopian Masculinities in Science Fiction BILL PHILLIPS Chapter X ................................................................................................ 137 Cracks in the Feminist Nirvana: Reading David Brin’s Anti-Patriarchal SF Novel Glory Season (1993) as a “Feminist” Woman SARA MARTÍN Chapter XI ............................................................................................... 153 Apocalypse Now: Illusion of Inclusion in Janusz A. Zajdel’s Dystopian Novelty KRZYSZTOF M. MAJ Part III: Communication and Community Matters Chapter XII .............................................................................................. 171 The Midas Blessing: Turning Commodities into Gifts BÜLENT SOMAY Chapter XIII ............................................................................................ 185 Occupy and the Utopian Moment: Social Theory and the Challenge of Transformation JAMES E. BLOCK Chapter XIV ............................................................................................ 201 Occupy the World with Utopias MANUELA SALAU BRASIL Chapter XV.............................................................................................. 217 The Rise of Communitarianism and Other Alternative Movements from the Athenian Crises NICHOLAS ANASTASOPOULOS

Yesterday’s Tomorrows: On Utopia and Dystopia

vii

Chapter XVI ............................................................................................ 227 Nothing to Fear but the Algorithm Itself: The Computer as Monster in Robert Harris’ The Fear Index JOHN STYLE Chapter XVII ........................................................................................... 241 Utopia as Hörspiel: Technology and Cultural Form ANDREW MILNER Chapter XVIII .......................................................................................... 253 Rhetorical Beginnings of Dystopian Films LUDMILA GRUSZEWSKA-BLAIM Part IV: Yesterday’s Tomorrows Chapter XIX ............................................................................................ 265 Memory and Wisdom: Approaches to the Elemental Possibility of Utopia JOSÉ EDUARDO REIS Chapter XX.............................................................................................. 277 The Giver: Memory Erased, Death Marginalized, Freedom Forgotten KATARZYNA BARAN Chapter XXI ............................................................................................ 293 Don Quixote contra Faust: Ernst Bloch’s Abstract or Concrete Utopia? DHARMENDER DILLON Chapter XXII ........................................................................................... 307 Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84: A Homage to George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four? ELIZABETH RUSSELL Chapter XXIII .......................................................................................... 323 Transforming the World: Doris Lessing’s Alternative Futures CRISTINA ANDREU Chapter XXIV ......................................................................................... 333 When China Rules the World: Apocalyptic Visions of the Post-American Order in Gary Shteyngart’s Super Sad: A True Love Story STANKOMIR NICIEJA

viii

Table of Contents

Part V: Post Apocalypse Chapter XXV ........................................................................................... 345 “All alone in an empty world”: Post-Apocalyptic Robinsonades SUSANNA LAYH Chapter XXVI ......................................................................................... 357 In Search of Meaning after the End of the World: The Vision of the PostApocalyptic America in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road MICHAà PALMOWSKI Chapter XXVII ........................................................................................ 367 No Post-Apocalyptic Future: The Straw-Man Utopia of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood PETTER SKULT Chapter XXVIII ....................................................................................... 381 Science vs. Ecology: About the End of the World in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake SàAWOMIR KUħNICKI Contributors ............................................................................................. 395 Index ........................................................................................................ 401

INTRODUCTION YESTERDAY’S TOMORROWS: ON UTOPIA AND DYSTOPIA PERE GALLARDO AND ELIZABETH RUSSELL

When we hosted The Utopian Studies Society conference in Tarragona in 2012, the idea for the title “The Shape of Things to Come” was partly influenced by Slavoj Žižek’s book Living in the End Times (2011)1. Žižek leaves out the preposition of in what would be The End of Times. If the book title is read in conjunction with Adam Kirsch’s quote on the book cover, declaring Žižek to be “The most dangerous philosopher in the West”, the reader might then look closely at other details. For example, the cover illustration is an untitled image by the Austrian artist, Gottfried Helnwein. Helnwein, in turn, based his illustration on a romantic painting by Caspar David Friedrich which is known by various names: “The Wreck of Hope”, “The Polar Sea” or “The Sea of Ice” and shows the complete destruction of a wooden ship by massive peaked slabs of ice pointing left. There are no survivors in either Friedrich’s or Helnwein’s paintings. This intertextual game then reveals that Helnwein’s illustration is actually a copy of Friedrich’s with one notable difference: the ice slabs are mirror images of each other. The front cover of Žižek’s book shows the movement of the slabs going left, the back cover shows them moving right. It seems, therefore, that the end times and the end of times are rapidly closing in on each other and that the diminishing space in between is where Žižek and, indeed, Helnwein will speak. This is a space in which the “dangerous” philosopher is at his best, where he brings together philosophy and popular culture and takes up positions that tag him as very controversial, immensely likeable but seriously disconcerting at the same time.

 1

http://wwwa.urv.cat/deaa/utopia/international/home.html

2

Introduction

This looking forwards and backwards from the diminishing space of the present is conveyed in this book, Yesterday’s Tomorrows: On Utopia and Dystopia. It contains thoughts and discussions on utopian spaces and dystopian places from architecture, political theory, intentional communities and from fact and fiction. The articles are grouped together with chapter headings which have been an attempt to divide them into coherent categories. As in all work on utopian and dystopian thought, this has resulted in an overlapping of ideas, which is positive as it creates an interdisciplinary dialectic space between authors and readers. Kenneth Hanshew’s description of the future society in Stanisáaw Lem’s Return from the Stars “Human society has become rational, caring and humane, yet also soft” anticipates the conclusions of his study. By turning his eyes to Return from the Stars and The Futurological Congress, Hanshew delves into Lem’s seemingly schizophrenic attitude as regards the futurological possibilities Science Fiction and Utopia may offer, and concludes that Lem was able to “[engage] in ethical and philosophical questioning, while satirizing the science of futurology”. Timothy Miller analyses several cases of millennialist gatherings both in the past and in recent times (2000, 2012). Such gatherings, which are frequent in Western societies, are inextricably related to the nature of the places where they occur. Thus, whether it is Münster, Chicago, Jerusalem, or Bugarach, to name but a few, Miller contends that “place is central to the millennial expectation” as “[it] provides a groundedness, a concrete reality, to millennial expectations”. Representations of apocalypse, Burcu Kayisci explains, are depictions of the chaos prior to the end of the world and the subsequent time of bliss that will succeed it. However, the apocalyptic discourse does not need to sound as gloomy as its contents. After discussing Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle and Galapagos Kayisci suggests that humour and the apocalypse are not irreconcilable concepts, and examines the comic interpretation of the myth of the apocalypse drawing on the ideas of critics such as Kenneth Burke and Stephen O’Leary. Along similar lines, Annette M. Magid suggests that “since most apocalyptic scenarios are used to project social criticism, the element of hope is intrinsic in human nature”. Thus, her discussion revolves around some landmarks in modern and contemporary fiction and cinema and concludes that the American film industry’s fascination with the genre starts from “the conjecture that something remains”, which obviously contemplates the possibility of a new start. On a more political line, Diane Morgan sets out to discuss Proudhon and Dejours’ ideas on property, anarchism and the hypothetical management of

Yesterday’s Tomorrows: On Utopia and Dystopia

3

crises, and determines that crises are to be seen as part of our social culture. As such, they should be tackled with an all-encompassing approach which includes an analysis of the nature of property, the possibility of developing alternative ways of social organization, and the repudiation of cynicism as a concept with an influence on social relationships. The chapter on disturbing utopias groups together scholars’ readings of films and texts which have in common one thing: that the scholars (ie: the authors of the articles) find their readings troubling. There is a problem with terminology: words which should have a clear meaning but do not. How can a utopia be utopian if it seems to be apolitical? What is the point of defining a film as being “neo-Marxist” if it conveys no political message? What term could be used for a feminist who enjoys maleauthored fiction? Barbara Klonowska’s article defines Danny Boyle’s film The Beach as a satirical utopia where the search for a perfect society has been replaced by the search for a better society. “Better” in this film version comes to mean devoid of ideology and ethics, the desire for improvement or any other consciousness-raising programmes. The objective is to seek pleasure for pleasure’s sake. This involves all the hedonist comforts of a consumer society together with a life in paradise: the Beach. Violence emerges in this pleasure park when the utopians are confronted with civil responsibilities. The title of Pere Gallardo’s article is certainly thought-provoking in that it brings together Hollywood and Neo-Marxism in his discussion of Niccol’s film when Hollywood was one of the most effective instruments of the media in projecting the American dream as a self-made utopia, based on material and social comforts. Any suggestions or suspicions of communist ideology were weeded out by the McCarthy witch-hunters. As Gallardo claims, Niccol’s In Time, has little in the way of offering a strong ideological content but perhaps that is not the main aim of the film. Isabel Santaularia’s article tackles gender politics in her article on CBS’s Jericho but concludes that, although the gender map of societal norms may be more progressive because it foregrounds women’s agency, it still maintains these norms within a patriarchal framework. Masculinities in SF has become an important area of negotiating new spaces, new identities and new labels. Bill Phillips’ analysis of Heinlein’s 1959 Starship Troopers illustrates scenarios where violence is necessary for the survival of humankind and the threat of destruction by alien beings opens up a space where Heinlein can propound his ideas on politics. Nietzsche’s famous quote “'Man is for war, woman for the recreation of the warrior”

4

Introduction

might be understood as a pun on recreation/re-creation and it is in this sense that Bill Phillips points out that humanity has to be “emasculated”: they will not give up their dystopias unless by force. Sara Martin’s article takes up the challenge of posing questions on gender issues which need new labels. Her extensive reading of male-authored SF from a feminist standpoint brings her to negotiate a reading space which she can enjoy but which creates problems. Can a feminist enjoy male-authored, antipatriarchal SF? Her answer is a definite yes and in utopian fashion she proposes a committed struggle which is based on sharing aims. Krzysztof M. Maj’s discussion of the Polish SF writer, Janusz A. Zajdel, introduces new terminologies such as “lunanthropists” who are escaped refugees from Earth to Paradyzja after humanity has been sprayed by a mutagen which causes only baby boys to be born, thereby bringing about an apocalypse. Dystopia here holds many of the features that limit freedom and free will such as Level of Humanity points, spying, enforced labour—all camouflaged under protection and security of the state. The chapter on communication issues begins with the utopianness of the internet. Bülent Somay, who has translated much of Žižek’s work into Turkish, picks up the Slovenian philosopher’s 2008 dilemma regarding the following contradiction: is the internet a free intellectual space which can be shared by all or is the virtual projection of private property, disguised as “intellectual property”, developing towards a totalitarian future? Certainly, SF has long entered this debate, as Somay illustrates, but the internet creates problems that need to be solved now, not sometime in the future. In this era of crisis, James E. Block’s article sees the Occupy movement as offering a political and social alternative. Starting off from Harris’s novel The Fear Index, Block maintains that utopian movements based on social change must have their origin in hope and love. Moreover, this love, “Eros”, is translated into the authentic consent of both adults and adolescents to engage in meaningful engagements with the world. Manuela Salau Brasil’s article deals with the Occupy movement where to “occupy the world with utopias” does not necessarily mean planning and predefining the future but using one’s imagination to open up and explore other alternatives. Ernst Bloch is one of the theorists who have contributed to this idea and who has influenced other theorists, such as David Harvey. The Occupy movement and the Outraged or Indignant Movement have emerged and eventually organised themselves in situations of deep social and political crisis. Nicholas Anastasopoulos analyses the communitarian movement within the context of modern Greece, a country which has become suspicious of so-called “public” reforms and has lost the sense of social cohesion. In spite of this, new forms of grassroots initiative have

Yesterday’s Tomorrows: On Utopia and Dystopia

5

emerged which are struggling to rebuild the country from hope. The Fear Index appears again in the article by John Style, who points out that Harris expressly regards his novel as being influenced by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Investments on the stock market profit from the knowledge of behavioural patterns: the experiences of people exposed to fear and panic can be predicted. Monitor these emotions locally and globally through the internet and the monster becomes uncontrollable. “Hörspiele”, the German term for audioplays or hearing plays without images are the focus of discussion by Andrew Milner’s article. Orson Welles’s now famous broadcast from 1938 on H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds spread panic amongst a number of the listeners who took it to be based on fact, rather than fiction. Milner contrasts Wells’s play with one by Friedrich Dürrenmatt and Paul Cornell’s dramatized version of an Iain M. Banks novel. The characteristics of SF in these Hörspiele are the use of neologisms, the dialogical quality and effects of estrangement. Milner claims that these qualities have been widely ignored by academic scholars because they do not fit easily into present-day genres. Film technology in the production of dystopias is the subject of Ludmiáa Gruszewska-Blaim’s article. Her main objective is to distinguish and analyse the tropes in the imaginary world of films. Thus, she looks at beginnings and endings and the methodological aspects of bringing dystopia to the screen. Methodological analysis is useful, she claims, especially as it guarantees the combination of the estrangement process whilst also promoting the pleasure of viewing. José Eduardo Reis begins from the assumption that “a common form of knowledge is generated by the conscious aspiration to dream of a better world, often geared by nostalgia for a lost paradise or hope for a brighter future”. Then, drawing on the work of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela, experts in cognitive science, reaches the conclusion that memory has a prominent role when it comes to representing that potentially better world. Memory, however, is a tricky element, particularly when it relies on nostalgia. Katarzyna Baran’s contribution to this volume focuses on the novel The Giver, by Lois Lowry, and analyses the relationship between memory, death and freedom. By reading the novel as an anti-critical utopia Baran suggests that, despite Lowry’s superficial questioning of the present socio-cultural context, the novel “can still prove a valuable and stimulating text for young adults, provided it is contextualised and examined thoroughly”. Dharmender Dhillon adopts a more theoretical approach to utopia in his article. He reassesses the work of Ernst Bloch and his distinction

6

Introduction

between abstract and concrete utopia. By comparing Bloch’s work with Theodor Adorno’s, Dhillon demonstrates that Bloch’s expressions in favour of concrete utopia have the opposite effect and actually reinforce the idea that the abstract utopia is the most genuine form of utopia. It is precisely this hesitation about the nature of utopia that leads Elizabeth Russell to discuss Haruki Murakami’s novel 1Q84. Russell’s contribution analyses Murakami’s novel in relation to Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four and speculates about the potential differences between both works. Whereas, on the one hand, Murakami’s novel is political fiction, Orwell’s text is fictional politics; though both novels present worlds where violence, surveillance and the policing of bodies are present. 1Q84, which Russell suggests can be read as a love story, unfolds in a blurred territory between the real and the unreal, until both areas merge and the sense of reality and good and evil lose their contours, thus forming a disturbing landscape with constant references to Orwell’s novel. Cristina Andreu finds in Doris Lessing’s science fiction a vehicle whose destination is “the transformation of reality itself”. For Andreu, Lessing uses the conventions of science fiction and Marxist social criticism to help us transcend the limitations of known reality, and concludes that Lessing urges us to consider utopian thought as a possible bridge to a new way of seeing and thinking. In this sense, this “known reality”, as Andreu calls it, materializes in the article by Stankomir Nicieja, which is an analysis of Gary Shteyngart’s novel Super Sad: A True Love Story. The crisis of the American economic and political model and the rise of China lead Nicieja to see two analytical standpoints. On the one hand, those political thinkers who understand the current crisis as a result of America’s lack of assertiveness. On the other, those who admit “the relative demise of the West as inevitable”. For Nicieja, and despite its limitations, Shteyngart’s novel may offer a thought-provoking perspective. The survival of mankind or rather, the survival of the individual, has a rich tradition within fiction. The Robinsonade is a subgenre which Susanna Layh explores from a different perspective, as she discusses it in relation to apocalyptic fiction. Lay contends that the genre has undergone an evolution to adapt to post-apocalyptic contexts and discusses whether recent robinsonades function according to the traditional principle of dystopian warning and if “the utopian principle of hope has a chance to survive” in those new contexts. Of all these apocalyptic tales, perhaps Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road is a leading example. “What to live for in a world in which everything is dead?”, questions Michaá Palmowski in his article, and he

Yesterday’s Tomorrows: On Utopia and Dystopia

7

goes on to explore the similarities between McCarthy’s novel and the philosophy of Nietzsche and Sartre to conclude that The Road may be read as “an allegorical statement on the human condition” rather than just another post-apocalyptic tale. The book closes with two approaches to Margaret Atwood’s work, in particular her novels Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood. In the first one, Petter Skult contends, much against the general belief, that both texts should be read as “doubly apocalyptic” as their apocalyptic depictions do not add anything new to a potentially utopian brave new world. Instead, Skult suggests, they should be read as pre-apocalyptic warnings. In his turn, Sáawomir KuĨnicki sees Oryx and Crake as an ecological cry to “preserve nature as it should be” and concludes that science itself is not responsible for the fictional apocalypse in the novel and the present plight of the human race. Rather, it is humankind’s incapacity to add an adequate ethics to scientific development. In other words, to look back into the past, into our yesterdays, and to look forward into the future—our tomorrows—with responsibility and courage.  

PART I SPECULATIONS ON ELSEWHERE AND MANAGING THE CRISIS

CHAPTER I STANISàAW LEM’S FUTURES AND FUTUROLOGY KENNETH HANSHEW

Abstract Futures Studies may promise plausible predictions. Yet, in Fantastyka i Futurologia Stanisáaw Lem pointed out the impotency of futurology, describing it as a preemie that not only attempts to speak from its cradle but also to do so intelligently, and branded the popular The Year 2000 (1967) by the leading futurologists H. Kahn and A. Wiener as an instruction book in futurology’s failures and mistakes. Lem’s critical views on others work and futurology did not, however, prevent him from writing his own speculative visions of humankind’s future. This article revisits Lem’s theoretical writing on futurology as background for the examination of Lem’s own utopian futures in Return from the Stars and The Futurological Congress in order to more completely grasp Lem the futurologist and science fiction writer. • Although many Poles would perhaps prefer it otherwise, Stanisáaw Lem is the most well-known Polish author beyond Poland’s borders, overshadowing the canonical works of Adam Mickiewicz, Juliusz Sáowacki or Henryk Sienkiewicz to name but a few. Lem’s fame is not difficult to understand: few writers espouse pansophy or write both literary theory texts as well as acclaimed novels, short stories and essays which defy a limited national context. Lem’s timely anticipation of future developments in robotics and artificial intelligence has also helped him earn a place in the pantheon of world science fiction. Lem’s speculative visions of humankind’s future are, however, somewhat surprising when

12

Chapter I

one considers Lem’s relationship to Futures Studies, which he so carefully explicated in 1969 in his theoretical work, Fantastyka i Futurologia [The Fantastic and Futurology], that has not been translated into English. The following study takes Lem’s theoretical writing on futurology, science fiction and utopia as the point of departure for an excursion into Lem’s own speculative futures in Powrót z gwiazd [Return from the Stars] and Kongres futurologiczny [Futurological Congress] with a twofold goal: to have a better understanding of Lem the futurologist and literary theorist as well as to determine whether Lem adheres to his own theories by practicing what he preaches. Like most double titles, such as “Science Fiction and Utopia” or “Science Fiction and Fantasy,” Lem’s Fantastyka i Futurologia suggests from the outset a complicated relationship between the two terms, more than a simple opposition and yet not quite identical. In the only section dedicated specifically to futurology, Lem is quick to point out in his typical fashion the state of futures studies during their first wave of popularity in the nineteen sixties. Lem condemns the popular The Year 2000 written in 1967 by the leading futurologists H. Kahn and A. Wiener as “a treasure trove of futurology’s failures and mistakes” (2008-2010a: 131) and maintains futurology is impotent, “a premature birth that not only attempts to speak from its cradle but also to do so intelligently and succinctly” (2008-2010a: 124). Is this attack on futurology not at odds with Lem’s own speculative fiction, revealing a schizophrenic attitude toward speaking of the future? Despite first impressions, it does not. Lem criticizes and ultimately rejects futurology not because of its goals, but its method, or rather, its lack of methodology. Lem traces out in essay fashion the traditional path to establishing a new scientific field: a new phenomenon is observed, a hypothesis is created, and additional observations lead to antithesis and then synthesis; i.e. Lem points to the scientific method. He argues that futurology has not followed this path; indeed, it has not even carefully identified its subject, a prerequisite for the scientific method, and thus remains speculation. Lem may greet the idea of speculation in his fictional writing, however he rejects futurology as a science or rather as a field that pretends to be a science. Lem’s second term, fantastyka, is clearly the more important of the two title words and rather than an opposite, it is that which subsumes the extrapolations and possible futures of futurology. The Polish term fantastyka eludes precise definition as it includes various forms of fictional literature, stretching from fantasy to science fiction, horror fiction and it also means fantastic. This causes Lem himself to note that the precise definition of the fantastic is one of the most difficult tasks one can take on

Stanisáaw Lem’s Futures and Futurology

13

(2008-2010a: 19). To avoid entangled theoretical discussions of what Lem’s fantastic may be, it is preferable to examine the texts Lem cites as examples thereof and which qualities he emphasizes in his search for an answer. In this way, one discovers Lem accentuates the particular branch of fantastic literature generally described as science fiction, marked not by rockets and aliens, but rather cognitive estrangement and rationally constructed, possible (even if improbable) fictive universes with their own natural laws. These characteristics are not only descriptive but also prescriptive: Lem is quite ready to dismiss any break from this standard as a betrayal of science fiction as he does in the case of Ray Bradbury (20082010a: 160). Apart from these elements of science fiction, Lem pays particular attention to science fiction’s role in imagining future worlds. Although he suggests that non-future oriented science fiction is no less valuable, “Quite the opposite—it must be the main type, anchored in real social problems as all literary works are [WrĊcz przeciwnie—to ona wáaĞnie musi byü gáównym nurtem science fiction, poniewaĪ taki, tj. uwikáany w realną wspóáczesną problematykĊ—jest charakter wszelkiej literackiej pracy]” (2008-2010b: 445), his own literary works and following notes on speculation suggest otherwise: […Science fiction is able to do everything literature can do (but in its own manner) and according to its own traditions and its purposes. However, the former exceeds the scope of the latter in the realm of the hypothetical because literature has never intended a serious prediction of the future]… zdolna czyniü to wszystko (tyle Īe po swojemu), co czyni literatura zgodnie ze swymi tradycjami, ze swym powoáaniem, potrafi w tym jednym sektorze—hipotezotwórczym—wykraczaü poza brzeg zadaĔ dotychczasowych pisarstwa. Albowiem intencji powaĪnego przepowiadania nigdy literatura nie Īywiáa. (2008-2010b: 445-446).

Lem maintains that science fiction essentially has a futurological function which makes it a unique type of literature. However, it is not identical to futurology since it does not pretend to predict the future. Science fiction’s status as literature affords it greater freedom. Lem argues that the difference may be greater because of due to poetic license. To create a model, the author is entitled to adopt a thesis which is not probable from an empirical point of view, whereas the futurologist may not dare to do so. [Ta róĪnica moĪe byü gáĊbsza, poniewaĪ licentia poetica pozostaje nadal w mocy i przez to pisarz jest w prawie dla celów modelarskich przyjmowaü zaáoĪenia tak ze stanowiska empirii nieprawdopodobne, Īe go w ich ustanawianiu futurolog nie bĊdzie Ğmiaá naĞladowaü]” (2008-2010b: 446). While the science fiction author should

14

Chapter I

not create worlds at random, he is still not confined to probability in the same way as the futurologist. Most importantly, the latter cannot follow impulses which are “simply in the air” “z powietrza”, although these have so often been responsible for great changes in the past. Lem thus stresses the futurological function both as key to science fiction literature as well as suggesting that literature’s futurology surpasses the capability of the “science” of futurology. While one may be inclined to agree with Lem’s assessment of futurology’s science, it is difficult to contend that science fiction offers more accurate visions of the future than those of even a pseudo-science and thus its futurology may seem questionable. However, this is not Lem’s argument. Although he may draw attention to futurology’s many false prognoses, Lem side-steps the issue of accuracy, arguing instead for the meaningfulness of visions of the future: true prognoses may be devoid of any meaning whereas false ones offer valuable information (2008-2010a: 135). The impact literature has on shaping human thought is significant for Lem, not hypotheses which are later proven true. Lem supports his argument with examples from literature. Jules Verne’s submarines, while an accurate prediction, had little influence on changing how his readers’ perceived the world, while Robert Heinlein’s vision of doomsday in Solution Unsatisfactory was inaccurate, yet extremely meaningful (20082010a: 136). Lem’s futurological science fiction empowers its readers to envision possible outcomes and to mentally play out their ramifications without claiming any pretence to the visions’ probability. Free from the confines of the futurologist’s statistical probability, Lem’s ideal science fiction writers still do have several obstacles to overcome, if they are to produce meaningful literature. The first obstacle is the relationship of the future world to that of the reader, a spectrum of simple allegory (uninteresting according to Lem) to such different autonomous worlds that are unintelligible and meaningless (2008-2010a: 320). Lem points to his own Solaris as an example of a work approaching a radical break from the world of the reader that allows multiple interpretations (2008-2010a: 291). The second obstacle is language itself. Language is not the clothing of thoughts but shows how future people think differently. Although it is typical in science fiction time travels to the future to rely on a few exemplary new words or have the narrator indicate a new language, Lem rightfully argues that this is unsatisfactory both from a futurological and aesthetic point of view and offers guidance in solving this problem (2008-2010a: 32-37). One would expect that the theorist would apply these principles to his own writing. As in the pair fantastyka and futurologia, so too one term subsumes the

Stanisáaw Lem’s Futures and Futurology

15

other in Lem’s pairing utopia / science fiction. Lem only briefly addresses early utopian writing as a longing for a better life and a beginning of science fiction, before going on to exclusively refer to eutopian and dystopian science fiction, in essence treating the utopia as a subgenre of science fiction, as social science fiction, before Darko Suvin explicitly proposed this (1973: 144). Yet unlike Suvin and others, Lem does not stress the historical context of a work to label a work dystopian or eutopian but rather envisions ambiguous science fiction that has a prolonged and changing reception, which opens diverse, conflicting readings (20082010a: 291). It may seem that Lem has begun arguing for the ambiguous utopia theoretically, it is still to be seen whether he realizes this in practice. Lem’s Return from the Stars, published in 1961, predates Fantastyka i Futurologia by almost ten years and anticipates the latter. The novel opens in typical dystopian fashion in media res with the protagonist: “I didn’t have anything, not even a coat. They told me I didn’t need it. They allowed me to keep my black sweater, its okay. And I fought them for a shirt. I said I would slowly experience withdrawal”: “[Nie miaáem Īadnych rzeczy, nawet páaszcza. Mówili, Īe to niepotrzebne. Pozwolili mi zatrzymaü mój czarny sweter: ujdzie. A koszulĊ wywalczyáem. Powiedziaáem, Īe bĊdĊ odwykaá powoli]” (1999: 5). The first-person narrator has literally almost lost the shirt off his back, before the former astronaut is transferred from a lunar station to Earth’s surface after ten years ship time and 127 Earth years. This is a result of traveling at near light speeds in an expedition to the star system Fomalhaut. The feeling of loss and estrangement are amplified by the narrator who remains nameless until page thirty and his first experiences on a future Earth. Landing at the port, he is not met as planned by an agent from the agency of assimilation, adapt, and must therefore make his way through the world alone. He relays to the reader in an objective scenic portrayal the foreignness of the future. The city is like a labyrinth, where he is bombarded by advertisements and signs in a changed language, a language he has no full command of, making it difficult to even ask the way or understand the answers. A simple breakfast reveals to the reader how much language has changed: “Ozot, kress or herma?” “Don’t you have coffee?” “Yes. Kress, ozot or herma?” “Coffee and that… well, whatever goes with it best.” “Ozot” he said and left” [Ozot, kress czy herma?” A kawy nie ma?” Jest. Kress, ozot czy herma?” Kawa i, tego… no, to, co najlepiej pasuje do kawy.” “Ozot” powiedziaá i odszedá”] (199: 63). Yet despite the formidable language barriers, a sign of Lem’s linguistic futurology, the narrator realizes in his first exchange with a young girl he met in a bar that the problem is greater than language: “The language hadn’t really even changed that much—I

16

Chapter I

just didn’t understand. Anything. They [the people] had changed [JĊzyk nie zmieniá siĊ nawet tak bardzo—tylko nie rozumiaáem. Niczego. To oni siĊ zmienili]” (1999: 32). At the time, Hal Bregg does not realize how true this is. As in utopian travel literature, the first-person narrator’s wanderings through the city reveal a future Earth that seems to have achieved much that was unattainable in both his and the reader’s past. During Hal’s search for entertainment and accommodation, he discovers to his great surprise that everything from food to hotels is free. Women and men are not encumbered by the social codes he knows; codes allowing women to pick up casual acquaintances just like men. New too are the robotic servants the narrator sees as waiters, clerks and information guides. Despite the obvious advantages for the lost time-traveler, he clings to the worn, silly garments of his past as he futilely looks for now-deceased relatives and grasps for his past life by visiting the bank, which determines his location by caller ID, and by purchasing an automobile in an antique shop which he drives recklessly. Unable to make the transition to this new life and distrusting adapt, Hal makes a voice request by phone to consult a doctor for astronomic health and is directed to Dr. Juffon, who “coincidentally” practices in the same street as his hotel. Dr. Juffon confirms Hal’s impression that Earth now enjoys an era of dobrobyt “being well-off” that not only concerns material possessions but also the human body; thanks to special hormonal treatments and applications no one is old until the age of eighty. The doctor quickly identifies the difficulty Hal will face in establishing a new life: he is from a harder time and the age of space exploration has ended. In order to adapt, he will need to find a place for himself to give his life meaning. Surprisingly from a doctor but not in a utopian narrative, Juffon suggests Hal must find love and a woman to spend his life with. Return from the Stars thus anticipates positive changes: greater equality, longevity and automatization, yet the future is not without its shadows. “Progress never comes without a price [PostĊp nigdy nie przychodzi za darmo]”, the doctor reminds Hal (1999: 81). Though his contact with others hinted at the causes of the change, it is Hal’s study of the history books of modern Earth that reveal the path to this more perfect society: beztryzacja, an acronym for the scientist names Bennet, Trimaldi and Zacharov who discovered a means to almost completely eliminate human aggression. Not through repression and prohibition, but by engineering humans so that they are incapable of thinking of violence and killing. Thus began, in the future history book’s words, “a new era of humanism” (1999: 131). Human society has become rational, caring and humane, yet also soft. The humans of the future are

Stanisáaw Lem’s Futures and Futurology

17

unable and unwilling to kill anyone or anything, even livestock for food, or to risk lives in further space exploration. Not only brutality has been eliminated, but also the positive side of passion: “ZlikwidowaliĞmy piekáo namiĊtnoĞci, a wtedy okazaáo siĊ, Īe za jednym zamachem i niebo przestaáo istnieü [We eliminated the hell of passion and it turned out that heaven had ceased to exist at the same time]” (1999: 79). Romance has been destroyed once and for all. Whether the future Earth is better or worse, i.e. dystopian or eutopian, is the subject of the narrator’s and Olaf’s, his fellow crewman, debates and a question raised in the narrative. Hal and Olaf mourn the loss of risk taking, of putting everything on the line, of which the new humans are incapable. Olaf misinterprets this ability with being human and views beztryzacja as a horrendous crime by which “they killed the man in man [oni zabili w czáowieku—czáowieka]” (1999: 167). At the same time, however, Hal questions the rewards of their valiant space explorations: a collection of data and a few samples hardly seem to amount to great gains in knowledge or justify the loss of life. These debates are complemented by elements questioning the desirability of the better world. The humans of the future seek to control the old humans by “hypnocogs”, dream suggestion devices that they should listen to every night. Even the traditional utopian literary device to become part of the new world, a love story, creates more questions than it answers. Lacking nothing material, yet feeling ill at ease with the new language and conventions, Hal becomes infatuated with Eri, a plain looking anthropologist resembling the women of his own era, who is coincidentally sharing a vacation house with him. It would seem the story will be resolved as Dr. Juffon advised. The plot of this romance is, however, anything but simple: Eri is a happy newly-wed. Hal, truly acting as a savage romantic of the past, abducts Eri, who first accompanies him out of fear for her husband’s safety, knowing that Hal is one of the few men alive capable of murder, and later out of her sense of compassion for the self-destructive primitive man. Hal cannot bear such pity, when he desires romantic love, and his ability to wake Eli’s carnal instincts is too fleeting to be meaningful. He therefore attempts suicide in his antique car but is saved when Eri risks her own life for him. While the remaining members of the crew gather to plan a new mission, Hal has married Eri and seems to choose to live in the future, knowing that beztryzacja was not done at the genetic level, allowing a return to older instincts in future generations if necessary. Yet this happy end is undercut in the knowledge that Eri’s meeting Hal is most likely a planned anthropological field study and that she does not love Hal romantically as he desires but in the only way possible: “‘Ale ja nie chcĊ tak…’—

18

Chapter I

szepnąáem. ‘Inaczej nie moĪe byü’…” (1999: 221). The romance is missing, a foreign passion to the new world. Andrzej Stoff decries Lem’s novel as anti-utopian, as an indictment of totalitarian attempts at a better future, and also rejects it as a utopia, suggesting the future society is not described in enough detail (1990: 40), yet this reading does not do justice to the novel’s ambivalence and presupposes a narrow definition of a literary utopia. While the novel does not offer the insight of More’s Utopia in religious or legal codes, it does survey the automatized production by robots, the state of public welfare and presents an enlightened discussion of children’s education through the depiction of a society “organized according to a more perfect principle” (Suvin 1973: 132). This is more than enough to be considered utopian. The question lingers, however, if the cost of utopia is too high, transforming eutopia into dystopia. Certainly humans have not devolved into the simple Eloi of H.G. Well’s Time Machine and governmental control is only hinted at, indeed, Hal enjoys great freedom, which he often abuses for destructive purposes, calling the absolute value of freedom itself into question. The narrative even relativizes the lack of risk-taking against the meager rewards, avoiding the judgment that Stoff suggests. The shadows in paradise are best revealed by giving some attention to the role of robots, the true producers of the future. While humans live a life of pleasure and even the “barbaric” Hal finds compassion, thinking robots decide on the viability of their own kind, letting those they deem unfit to be dismantled even as these cry out in “human voices” for mercy (Lem 1999: 147). Hal’s unsettling account of this scene reveals a double standard of life in utopia even as it questions what beings are truly alive. Lem’s Return from the Stars thus presents a plausible future vision, extrapolating on genetic engineering and robotics, placed between warning and hope, an ambiguous text filled with new language and a new society that does not end in simple analogy or predictions, thus fulfilling his own criteria for science fiction. Lem’s Futurological Congress offers not only visions of the future, but also reflects Lem’s own theoretical writings on science fiction and futurology. Ijon Tichy, protagonist from Lem’s Diary of a Starman, finds himself in the capital of the fictive Latin American country Costa Ricana at the eighth futurological congress. Tichy does not willingly attend the conference, he is coerced by Professor Tarantoga, who states “astronautics today are a form of escape from the problems of the world. Everyone who has had enough, sets off for the stars [astronautyka jest dziĞ formą ucieczki od spraw ziemskich. KaĪdy, kto ma ich doĞü, wyrusza w GalaktykĊ…]” (Lem 2003: 5). Certainly this is Lem’s jab at the view that the literature about space, science fiction, is above all the literature of escapism, which

Stanisáaw Lem’s Futures and Futurology

19

contradicts his own view of science fiction’s social function. That Lem’s most famous science fiction character, Tichy, must listen to this accusation is particularly humorous. Tichy’s further protest that he doesn’t know anything about futurology “na futurologii siĊ nie znam” (2003: 5) illicits a similarly revealing reaction from the professor: “generally no one knows anything about pumping, and yet we all come running, having heard the cry ‘to the pumps’ [na ogóá nikt nie zna siĊ na pompowaniu, a jednak spieszymy na stanowiska, usáyszawszy okrzyk ‘do pump’]” (2003: 5). One must not read between the lines to infer that no one really knows anything about futurology. The validity of futurology’s science is further called into question by Lem’s satire of scholars, both the stationary and traveling ones, and the outlandish proposals for solving the world’s overpopulation problem with giant mobile skyscrapers or synthesizing food and drink— even champagne—from feces. These first lines of introduction reveal the text’s metatextual dimension, commenting both on the role of science fiction and futurology’s expertise. The Futurological Congress carefully avoids falling into the trap of allegory, of which Lem warns in his theoretical writings. On the one hand, the text’s frame appears to offer a realistic, allegoric anchor to ensuing fantastic visions. Tichy’s stay at the conference is soon overshadowed by political events in Costa Ricana, a clash between a dictatorial regime supported by the United States and the opposition that proposes taking American hostages. The international Hilton, in which the futurological congress on overpopulation is being held, is surrounded during the fighting between government and rebel troops and its delegates evacuated to the sewers as the government resorts to the use of hallucinogenic bombs, bemby, which change the most evil into the most benevolent and thus easily controllable. Tichy has already experienced the hallucinogenic effects by drinking the local water. Apart from the bemby, the events hardly seem fantastic: the population explosion was a fear of the time, political instability characteristic of Latin America and the ill effects of drinking the local water common knowledge even today. Yet on the other hand, the fact that the real Costa Rica was demilitarized and the hallucinogenic effects of the water undermine any allegory. Moreover, Tichy’s encounter with the feathered women and the pink room filled with sexual libertines and their pornographic food, his elaborate plans for the perfect egg delivery system and his drug-induced hallucinations tax the boundaries of the realistic. The story’s frame thus serves neither as allegory nor as a realistic anchor. In the sewer, the story’s frame gives way to several drug-induced visions of the future, each longer than the last and yet sharing elements

20

Chapter I

both with the frame and each other, thus indicating their shared unreliability. Certainly, the first person narrator’s frequent questioning of his reality as real or hallucination, makes all his observations suspect. The suspicion of unreliable narration is strengthened by uncanny wishfulfillment and recurrences of motifs in separate visions. Tichy expresses the desire to see Professor Trottelreiner and in the next sentence unexpectedly finds the professor next to him, similar to how desires work in a dream. Robert Philmus has pointed out that Tichy’s awakening as a small black woman after an unsuccessful escape or his abduction by two women harken back to his strange encounters in the narrative frame, that his dreams are a continuation of his reality (1986: 319). Further support of this may be found in recurrences of details. The sewer rats appear in both visions and frame, connecting them, and the theme of garbage recurs in all visions. A knife appears at a key moment in both the second and third hallucination and military rescue attempts of U.S. troops in these two visions parallel the events in the narrative frame. The danger of overpopulation is also shared by the final vision of the future and the frame. Particularly, the reappearance of the sewer in the last and most detailed world as a place of refuge suggests the frailty of the world’s reality as well as the impossibility of determining what is real and what is not. It is this final vision of the future of the year 2039 that reveals both Lem’s speculations on the attainment of eutopia or dystopia while reflecting his conception of valuable science fiction, as well as the future of futurology. Tichy awakes from cryogenic sleep after his last failed operation to a world in which “universal affluence reigns [Panuje powszechny dobrobyt]” (1999: 84) and a seemingly better future New York, an unbelievable idyllic scene “Idylla. Nie do wiary!” (1999: 88). Attempting to make the transition to modern life, Tichy is assisted by a nurse and keeps a diary, in which he describes how New York is a multilevel garden, pumped with light via soloducts, a factory for pneumatic robots is close to his apartment, everyone is assured life’s basic necessities, the skies are always blue—if the weather is so desired—, the global arms race has come to an end and world peace has been achieved, while anyone may purchase fine art, even an original Rembrandt or receive the Nobel Prize at a corner store. If the narrator’s last innocent observation and the reference to pumping, found also in the narrative frame in connection with futurology, does not raise the reader’s distrust of this better world, then it is certain to be awakened by Tichy’s notes in passing that there are no animals in the future, no books and that daily newspapers decompose after twenty-four hours, recalling modern dystopias.

Stanisáaw Lem’s Futures and Futurology

21

Unlike Hal, Tichy cannot delve into history books to read how the transformation occurred, causing him to repeat his unanswered questions. Even if such books were available, language has changed so much, he might not understand them as Tichy’s newspaper reading and flipping through webster’s dictionary shows: “Profut báedny niedoindeksowany szkodzi konkurencji tak samo jak rekurrencji [Wrong, not completely indexed Profat harms competitiveness the same as recurrence]” (1999: 9798). Tichy seems even at moments of optimism to sense that something is not quite right: “A passing impression, that the people, such beautiful, tall, nice, polite and calm people are in addition sort of, sort of specific, special, there’s something about them that surprises or at least causes me to pause. But I have no idea what that could be [Ulotne wraĪenie, Īe ludzie, tacy áadni, duzi, mili, grzeczni i spokojni, są jeszcze do tego jacyĞ—jacyĞ osobni, specjalni—coĞ w nich jest takiego, co mnie dziwi, a co najmniej zastanawia. Tylko co to byü moĪe—pojĊcia nie mam]” (1999: 88). Time and again he believes to hear these special, healthy people gasping for breath in public (1999: 89, 90), which his nurse denies, and questions the reality of this world. The supposed eutopia is the fruit of farmakokracja “pharmocracy” (1999: 118): all people take a variety of pills to enhance their intelligence, abilities and even appearance. “In this society everything seems possible [W tej cywilizacji wszystko wydaje siĊ moĪliwe]” (1999: 101) notes Tichy, even learning is replaced by the quick swallowing of a pill. Tichy’s resistance to these chemicals is anticipated even as one would anticipate a Neanderthal’s aversion to fire; he cannot be convinced of their complete benevolence. Mr. Symington, however, reveals to Tichy the full spectrum of the new civilization: “[our age] has fulfilled Bentham’s dream of the greatest amount of good for the greatest number of people but that is only one side of the coin… Now everyone can do something unkind to his fellow man without hurting him” [Speániáa marzenia Benthama o najwiĊkszej iloĞci dobra dla najwiĊkszej iloĞci ludzi—ale to tylko jedna strona medalu. ...KaĪdy moĪe teraz robiü bliĨniemu, co mu niemiáe— wcale mu nie szkodząc]” (1999: 119). Unlike the society in Return from the Stars, people have not become good, they have only been given an outlet for their vices that does not harm others—and improves the sales of murderaid, a hallucinogenic pill. The ethical problems of this solution are compounded by hints at government surveillance. When Bill wishes to interview Tichy in his apartment, not per telephone, because it may also function as a transmitter, Tichy recalls a book painting a black picture of the future as a dystopia in which all are under constant observation (Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four) (1999: 98), a notion that is not dispelled

22

Chapter I

by Aileen and Bill’s laughter and protest but rather confirmed when a large strange bird “because it is on wheels” peers into Tichy’s apartment (1999: 127). In addition, Tichy learns in his readings in the new, barely understandable language that not all is perfect in the future: there are problems with corruption and production. The first impressions of eutopia are thus revised. Professor Trottelreiner, whose name inverted means “complete idiot” in German, offers a futurological view of futurology itself, which has changed both its function and name. The former futurologist is now a leading bĊdzieista “willbeier (from the Polish verb to be)” (1999: 130), and futurology has now, finally defined its subject of study, addressing Lem’s critic of the science. Trottelreiner does not deal with prognosis for all branches of science and society, but specifically with the possible development of language in the future. The thesis of the bĊdzieista is that man can only govern what he can understand. Further, what he can understand is that which he can pronounce. Thus, the new futurology explores what concepts are possible and may become meaningful in the future (1999: 131). Lem’s fictional futurology surpasses the real futurology of his theoretical writings by its ability to envision its own future and to explore mere possibilities. Trottelreiner not only confirms Tichy’s suspicions, but reveals a grim, overpopulated future world in which hallucinogens, maskons “maskers”, keep reality hidden, while harming people with their side-effects. Spoken as a true extrapolative futurologist, Trottelreiner shows how the development of the new pharmaceutical society was only a natural development from the hallucinogens of the past; people simply could no longer tell the difference between reality and hallucination. Indeed, the entire process of disarmament was a curious by-product of the chemical revolution: all countries were drugged into believing they had colonies in space, thousands of tanks, etc., yet these were all products of their imagination. This development reflects the surprises of history mentioned in Fantastyka i Futurologia, of which fiction, not science, may avail. Due to the potential for abuse and the need to address the real situation, trueseers, a group to which Trottelreiner belongs, are allowed to use antihallucinogens to remove the effects of the maskons. Tichy also uses them and before his eyes the wondrous city turns into a filth-covered, cold, impoverished place, in which malnourished people climb up elevator shafts, for there are no elevators, and run from place to place, mistakingly believing they are driving cars. In a final scene, Tichy confronts Symington, who futilely attempts to convince him of maskons benevolence as there is no hope for humanity, the population explosion cannot be

Stanisáaw Lem’s Futures and Futurology

23

controlled. Tichy rejects the argument, choosing what he perceives as reality, plunging out of the window of the skyscraper with his adversary, echoing his plunge from the helicopter or rocket pack in earlier visions to awaken once again near the sewer. The cycle from frame to vision is thus complete. Lem’s Futurological Congress combines elements of the detective story and narrative uncertainty to produce an ambiguous tale of the future which oscillates between eutopia and dystopia, while metatextually addressing futurology and the function of science fiction. Lem remains true to the theoretical principles he delineated in Fantastyka i Futurologia, bringing his experiment with a new language in Return to the Stars to new heights by exploring future etymologies. He expands on the meaningful play with possible futures, engaging in ethical and philosophical questioning, while satirizing the science of futurology. Significant change is not to be found in Lem’s fictional praxis, but in his tone. Whereas Hal Bregg may question the cost of creating a positive utopia, Ijon Tichy is faced with a much less enviable situation: not knowing what is real and deciding whether harmful illusion is not better than hopeless reality. Indeed, Lem’s increasingly dark vision of the future may be related to one of Trottelreiner’s future etymologies: “When you consider that to drown (utopiü siĊ) may come from the word utopia, you can better understand the many grim visions of the future [Utopiü siĊ—gdy pan pojmie, Īe to moĪe iĞü od ‘utopia’, zrozumie pan lepiej czarnowidztwo wielu futurologów]” (2003: 135).

Works cited Lem, Stanisáaw 1999: Powrót z gwiazd. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie. —. 2003: Kongres futurologiczny. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie. —. 2008-2010a: Fantastyka i Futurologia, Tom 1. Vol. 23 of Stanisáaw Lem, Dzieáa. 33 vols. Warszawa: Agora. —. 2008-2010b: Fantastyka i Futurologia, Tom 2. Vol. 24 of Stanisáaw Lem, Dzieáa. 33 vols. Warszawa: Agora. Philmus, Robert M. 1986: “Futurological Congress as Metageneric Text”. Science Fiction Studies 13.3: 313-328. Stoff, Andrzej 1990: “To, o czym siĊ nie wspomina”. Lem i inni: szkice o polskiej science fiction. Bydgoszcz: Pomorze. 36-47. Suvin, Darko 1973: “Defining the Literary Genre of Utopia: Some Historical Semantics, Some Genology. A Proposal and a Plea”. Studies in the Literary Imagination 6.2 (1973): 121-145.

CHAPTER II GATHERING FOR THE MILLENNIUM: SACRED PLACES AND UTOPIAN VISIONS TIMOTHY MILLER

Abstract Visionaries and prophets have been proclaiming the approach of the millennium for thousands of years, often urging followers to gather in safe places to await the glorious events about to unfold. This paper recounts such gatherings of the past, as in the case of Münster, Germany, in the early days of the Protestant Reformation; the departure of several European groups for millennial enclaves in early America; and several cases of Christians gathering in Jerusalem to await the end of the world. Then it examines several contemporary examples of place-based millennialism, including the recent gathering at Bugarach, France, where UFOs were expected to carry earthly believers away from cataclysm; the Siberian community that has grown up around Vissarion, who claims to be a reincarnation of Jesus; and the Rastafarians, who expect to be repatriated to Ethiopia. • Millennial excitement arises frequently in Western societies, recently with the turn of the millennium in 2000 and even more recently with the apocalypse predicted for December 21, 2012. But these two recent dates are hardly the only ones that have attracted attention as possible times of cataclysmic change or even the end of the world. Visionaries and prophets have been proclaiming the approach of the millennium for thousands of years, often urging followers to gather in safe places to await the glorious events about to unfold. Here I will present overviews of several such

26

Chapter II

gatherings, and then offer a few remarks on the significance of place for utopian visions. One period that saw a surge of millennial enthusiasm was that of the Protestant Reformation. Given the utter domination of Western society by the Catholic Church for a thousand years, many saw portents of the millennium in this revolutionary undertaking. Of the many concrete expressions of millennialism that arose in that time, none was more dramatic than the events at Münster, Germany. In 1534, a group of Anabaptists led by Jan Matthys and Jan Bockelson, usually called John of Leiden, instigated the Münster Rebellion and established a city-wide commune. With the support of some local leaders and prominent citizens they deposed the existing magistrates fairly easily and simply took over the city. Matthys declared the town the New Jerusalem. Soon thereafter he took a small band forth to engage the forces besieging the town, and in short order he was killed, his head placed on a pole, and his genitals nailed to the city gate. John of Leiden thereupon declared himself king. Quickly he imposed his absolute authority over the city and, acting on what he said were his visionary experiences, or instructions from God, imposed new social rules on the city. One of them was the legalization of polygamy, and John soon had sixteen wives. He also instituted a community of goods among all residents. It all came to an end less than a year and a half after it began, with the besiegers finally taking the city. John and other leaders were executed in the city marketplace and their bodies were hung in cages from a church steeple. The cages are still there, albeit now without the bodies. Few more bizarre millennial episodes have graced human history. For a short time one band of true believers was certain that Münster was the site of the creation of the millennial Kingdom of God. As the settlement of North America began to take on serious proportions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries quite a few groups of European millennial believers crossed the ocean to settle in isolated enclaves where they could await the Second Coming. One of the first such groups is most frequently called the Woman in the Wilderness, and its members are often described as Rosicrucians or theosophists. Its forty scholars and millennial believers arrived in Pennsylvania, USA, in 1694. The group had coalesced in Germany under the leadership and teaching of Johann Jakob Zimmerman, who died shortly before they were to leave for the new world. The leadership was then assumed by Johannes Kelpius who arranged for them to settle near Wissahickon Creek in what is now Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. Living a monastic life, the group was devoted to study as well as to astronomy, the latter stemming from a hope of finding the earliest possible heavenly

Gathering for the Millenium: Sacred Places and Utopian Visions

27

portents of the coming end of the world. Gradually the fervor of the members decreased, and the society was effectively dissolved not long after the death of Kelpius in 1708. But soon thereafter came Ephrata, a disciplined religious order founded and led by Conrad Beissel (1691-1768), another German who traveled to Pennsylvania in 1720 to join the community of the Woman in the Wilderness, only to find that it had already dispersed by the time of his arrival. In 1732 Beissel headed west and settled as a hermit in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Followers soon joined him, and by the end of that year the Ephrata Community was taking shape. The monastic life of Ephrata went on through Beissel’s lifetime and beyond; its legal dissolution came in 1814. Many more were to follow—the Harmony Society, the Amana Society, the Zoar Society, and others. Much of European millennial enthusiasm seems to have been diverted to the New World. Although standard Christian millennial theory usually envisions a New Jerusalem, quite a few believers focus on the Old Jerusalem. If Jesus is to return, what more likely place could there be for him to land? Thus over time quite a few have made pilgrimages there to wait for the apocalyptic events believed to be in the near future. One interesting international expedition was undertaken by Americans and Swedes. It started in Chicago, where Horatio Spafford and his wife Anna Spafford became convinced of the imminence of the Second Coming in the 1860s. In 1881, with ten other adults and four children, they went to Jerusalem; they established a colony first in the old city, and later just outside it, in which all things were held in common and they awaited the millennium together. In the meantime, Olof Larson had established a millennial commune of Swedish immigrants in Chicago. In 1896 the Chicago Larsonites moved to Jerusalem, and they were joined at the colony by other followers of Larson from Sweden. The colony ceased to exist in the 1930s, but early in the twentieth century the colonists had built a luxurious hotel as a way to make a living, and the American Colony Hotel continues to be a prime Jerusalem lodging. It is still owned by descendants of the colonists. So are such gatherings only curiosities of the past? Not at all. They go on in many locations today. One that is not too far from here, in southern France, is the Holy City of the Mandarom. It is the work of Gilbert Bourdin, also known as Hamsah Manarah, and his followers, known as Aumistes. Announcing that he had achieved enlightenment, Bourdin began accepting disciples and in 1967 formed the Association of the Knights of the Golden Lotus. In 1969 they purchased land near Castellane where, they

28

Chapter II

believed, all the faiths of the world would unite. On the mountaintop property they built shrines over the next two decades–a Jewish temple, a Hindu temple, a mosque, a statue of the Buddha, a statue of the Cosmic Christ, and a statue of the Cosmoplanetary Messiah, who was Bourdin himself. The Cosmoplanetary Messiah, as Susan Palmer has explained, “has come to Earth at the end of time to unite all the world’s religions, to reveal the Unity of the Face of God, and to usher in the Golden Age.” By the 1990s, however, a formidable group of opponents of the group was taking shape, and began to focus on the great statue of the Cosmoplanetary Messiah that towered over the settlement. Finally they persuaded the authorities to destroy the status with explosives in 2001. Bourdin, in the meantime, had died in 1998, but his followers persist today. They continue to seek permission to build one more structure, a pyramid temple, which they believe will usher in the Golden Age. Although membership has declined since Bourdin’s death, several hundred continue to live out their millennial vision at the Holy City of the Mandarom. Meanwhile, another millennial vision, also in southern France, gathered adherents recently. The tiny village of Bugarach is at the base of an upside-down mountain, the Pic de Bugarach, so called because of the uplift of the Pyrenees and a volcanic explosion long ago that left older rocks at the top and newer ones at the bottom. By 2011 Bugarach was inundated with visitors who believed, as did many others, that the world would see a grand apocalypse in 2012 and that being present on December 21, 2012, would offer salvation from destruction. It was said that aliens were living in the mountain but would flee the planet when the apocalypse came, and would take with them those humans who had joined their ranks. In 2011 the village of 200 persons had over 20,000 visitors, and those numbers increased as the fateful date drew closer. Among other things, the mountain was said to be getting many visits from UFOs. People were booking hotel rooms and apartments for December as much as a year ahead. Meanwhile, the powerful anti-secte, or anti-cult, forces in France took to warning of disaster in this remote village. But now that the predicted date has passed without seeing any landing of UFOs, the village seems to be slipping back into its customary obscurity. Meanwhile, another type of millennial gathering in Russia appears to be one of the largest of its type in the world. Sergey Anatolyevitch Torup is a Russian visionary who claimed to have had a spiritual rebirth in 1990 in which he became the reincarnated Jesus Christ and took the name of Vissarion. The next year he founded the Church of the Last Testament, which has many Russian Orthodox elements but also incorporates some

Gathering for the Millenium: Sacred Places and Utopian Visions

29

ideas and practices from Buddhism and modern environmentalism, as well as an apocalyptic outlook that expects the end of the world in the very near future. His followers are vegans who are to abstain from smoking, drinking, and other destructive practices. Some 5,000 followers live in and around Sun City, the location of Vissarion’s headquarters, and among other things are not to use money. As many, or perhaps even more, followers live elsewhere in Russia and to some extent in other countries. The most devoted core of followers lives at the Abode of Dawn, several miles from the nearest road and near Vissarion’s own house. One might not think of the heavenly city as located in a remote, mosquito-infested area whose winters are brutal, but the thousands of Vissarionites in the area have given up much of modern life to live near Jesus. Such are the gathering places of several contemporary religious groups with utopian millennial expectations. Others have designated gathering places for millennial events that are not yet ready for fulfillment. The Mormons, for example, have an exact place reserved for the Second Coming of Christ but have not yet announced the date at which the event will take place. The location is Independence, Missouri, USA. In 1831 the Mormon founding prophet Joseph Smith, Jr., traveled to Independence, then a town on America’s western frontier, that had been the site of the biblical Garden of Eden, he declared. In other words, the world as we know it will end where it began, in the American Midwest. The Temple Lot is a specific plot of ground of about twenty-five hectares, and Mormons believe that they will receive word from God when it is time to build a temple there, after which Christ will return and the events of the millennium will be fulfilled. So far, however, the word to build the temple has not been received. Similarly the Rastafari of Jamaica envision a millennial gathering in the future at a date that has not yet been determined. It is a fundamental Rasta precept that today the Rastafari are living in Babylon, the oppressive social order that now dominates the world, awaiting the millennial return to Ethiopia. Repatriation will come, and a vast fleet of ships will carry the Rastafari to Ethiopia to live in the presence of the living God, Haile Selassie. Right now we are simply waiting for that to happen. This list could be continued at some length. A great many millennial movements have in them a guiding commitment to a place—not some vague heavenly realm, but a specific place right here on the earth. In some cases, the place is a traditional earthly one. Most obviously, for Christians and Jews, and to some degree even to Muslims, Jerusalem is the place where the millennial events could logically take place. The American Colony settlers that I discussed earlier are by far not the only

30

Chapter II

group to figure that Jerusalem would be the place where Jesus would come again. Some years earlier, in 1851, another similar group of Americans established the Mount Hope Colony in Palestine, and when those settlers left amid local cultural conflict, the site was taken over by a German millennial group. In the 1860s the Adams Colony, also American, settled in Jaffa, not far from Jerusalem. And so forth. But does the sacred place necessarily have to be Jerusalem? No, not at all. The Mormons do not deny that Jesus conducted his ministry in Palestine, but they believe that one of his resurrection appearances was in the New World. Just as he rose from the dead and continued to teach for several weeks, so did he visit and teach the ancient American settlers, who according to Mormon teaching are descended from the ancient Israelites. Therefore it is perfectly logical to situate the place of the millennial events in the Americas. For their part, the Rastafari also see themselves as descended from the ancient Israelites, and over a long history these particular Israelites became a firmly African people. Especially given that God lives in Ethiopia today, we can look forward to an African location for the millennium. Some millennial groups have not focused on specific locations, but have simply gathered in remote locations for mutual support in the expectation of the millennium. The founder of the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness, Johann Jakob Zimmerman, told his followers that they had to seek isolation as they prepared for the millennium, which Zimmerman had calculated would come in 1694, and they moved to America, where isolation was abundantly available. Similarly the Ephrata community was established in the remote American wilderness in the eighteenth century, as was the Harmony Society nearly a century later. Place is not just a particular location, but a physical space in which the faithful can gather and minimize the taint they would be subjected to in the larger society. In all of these cases and many more, however, place is central to the millennial expectation. It provides a groundedness, a concrete reality, to millennial expectations. One can expect that gathering places will exist as long as millennial expectations persist, which stands to be a very long time (unless, of course, the millennium comes tomorrow).

CHAPTER III LAUGHING AT THE END OF THE WORLD: CAT’S CRADLE AND GALAPAGOS BURCU KAYISCI

Abstract As its literal meaning suggests, apocalypse claims to “unveil” or “reveal” the end of the world and the end of history, through representation of a crisis that will culminate in the triumph of good over evil, to be succeeded by the promise of eternal bliss. The claim to represent infinitude in “orderly” fashion and to imagine the end as chaos makes it, is not only one of the most challenging, but also one of the most appealing, kinds of narrative. American author Kurt Vonnegut can be seen to utilise apocalyptic discourse in a number of his novels. This article will focus on two texts, Cat’s Cradle (1963) and Galapagos (1985), in both of which Vonnegut endeavours to imagine the end of the world through the exposure and critique of human destructive potential. The apocalyptic and the comic are generally conceived as irreconcilable. But Vonnegut incorporates an important comic element into his apocalyptic vision, so as to reinsert human agency into history. Drawing on the ideas of critics such as Kenneth Burke and Stephen O’Leary, the comic interpretation of the myth of apocalypse will be examined. • The end is the context. Only at the end do we have a vantage point from which to see and understand better. Apocalyptic narratives that depict the end of the world are mainly concerned with the trajectory and vantage point it provides. As Frank Kermode points out, the end “is a fact of life and a fact of imagination, working out from the middle, the human crisis” (2000: 58).

32

Chapter III

When its literal meaning is considered, apocalypse signifies an attempt to “unveil” or “reveal” the end of the world and of time in the form of a resolution to a crisis. The resolution ensures the triumph of good over evil, which is followed by the promise of a better order on earth. Apocalypse connotes the sense of an opening, or beginning, as well as signifying an eschatological myth. Thus, it entails the challenge, not only of imagining the end and its time frame, but also of representing infinitude by finite means and agents. The challenge brings its own discursive value to the foreground. As Catherine Keller suggests, “apocalypse is both a state of affairs and an interpretation of that state of affairs” (1996: 13). In other words, it is a text, but at the same time a context, a vision that permeates a myriad of other texts. This article aims to discuss the apocalyptic discourse deployed in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle (1963) and Galapagos (1985), with a special focus on the comic element in the novels; and to demonstrate how this specific discourse, which will be described as comic apocalypse, proves a powerful tool with which to confront and criticise practices such as the misuse of science and technology or, the belligerence of governments. The rhetoric of comic apocalypse reinserts the human into context, rather than locating it at the centre, and reasserts responsibility through a prophetic warning about the impending catastrophe likely to be caused by human recklessness. In this respect, it represents a critique of the present as much as a vision of the future. An understanding of comic apocalypse necessitates a clear differentiation between comic and tragic approaches. Drawing on Kenneth Burke’s formulation of frames of acceptance and rejection, 1 Stephen O’Leary explains the difference thus: “Tragedy conceives of evil in terms of guilt; its mechanism of redemption is victimage, its plot moves inexorably toward sacrifice and ‘the cult of the kill’. Comedy conceives of evil not as guilt, but as error; its mechanism of redemption is recognition rather than victimage, and its plot moves not toward sacrifice but to the exposure of fallibility” (1994: 68). The vision of tragic apocalypse bases itself on the word of scripture and is concerned with the kind of closure that renders human choice and agency redundant, whereas comic apocalypse recognises humans as active agents responsible for creating their own evils (i.e. warfare and environmental disasters) and, thus, carries a cautionary potential. In this respect, “one can speak of impending catastrophe and yet remain within the assumptions of the comic frame, so long as the catastrophe is depicted as avoidable through human choice, or simply as an episode that, however unfortunate, represents no

 1

See Kenneth Burke’s Language as Symbolic Action, Berkeley, 1966.

Laughing at the End of the World: Cat’s Cradle and Galapagos

33

rupture in the fabric of history” (O’Leary 1994: 83). Rather than pinpointing a certain time for the end, the comic frame envisions it as imminent and perceptible, and reinterprets the myth of apocalypse in a secular context. Comic apocalypse can be considered a discursive tool which focuses on the potential of myth, and the proliferation of meaning there, rather than the totality, or closure, of a single “story”. As O’Leary points out, “the comic awareness of human fallibility requires the denial of all claims to absolute knowledge” (1994: 218). Thus, in comic apocalyptic discourse, apocalypse as “revelation/unveiling” carries more significance than the representation of the end per se. In Cat’s Cradle and Galapagos, Vonnegut problematises claims to absolute knowledge by highlighting the tension between science and religion without declaring the superiority of either over the other. Both novels are interwoven with Biblical imagery and scientific reference, and depict catastrophes. Vonnegut is mainly concerned with human fallibility and destructive potential, but he does not adopt the bitter tone of a jeremiad to explore this dark theme. Rather, he turns to humour, satire and the consolation of “harmless untruths”, if there be any. He “circumvents” the end through comedy, but his comic circumvention is all the more serious because it represents history itself as apocalypse and thereby leads us to think about the wrongdoings of the past, which reverberate in the present, so as to prevent future catastrophes. He is engaged with the “political work of dis/closure” Catherine Keller explains: “at the latest ‘end’ of a history that crowds, consumes, and closes the present, the opening of the present as the only site of memory and hope grounds— without founding—the political work of dis/closure” (1996: 30). Cat’s Cradle is presented by Vonnegut as a novel written by the narrator John in lieu of an initial book project entitled The Day the World Ended. The latter was to have been a factual account of what important Americans had done on the day the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. John explains that it was to have been a Christian book, whereas he is now a Bokononist. The novel itself opens with a disclaimer that “Nothing in this book is true”, followed by a quotation from the Books of Bokonon: “Live by the foma that makes you brave and kind and healthy and happy.” Foma, one of many original coinages in the novel, means “harmless untruths.” Through this epigraph, the novel is presented as a self-conscious work of fiction with no claims to truth. Vonnegut playfully carries this to an extreme when, a couple of pages later, John introduces us to the paradoxical philosophy of Bokononism. Like Cat’s Cradle itself, the Books of Bokonon opens with the words: “All of the true things I am about to tell you are shameless lies” (1963: 5). This can be interpreted both as

34

Chapter III

the denunciation of religious fundamentalism and as the disclosure of “shameless lies”, which, directly or indirectly, bring about the end of the world in the novel. Within this framework, unquestioned and unbridled faith in science-bound progress is condemned through Vonnegut’s depiction of Dr. Felix Hoenikker and his children. Failing to establish a loving and caring relationship with his two sons and daughter, and fully immersed in his research, Hoenikker proves a better father to the atom bomb than to his family. He later invents ice-nine, which will cause worldwide catastrophe by making water freeze at a much higher temperature. After his death, his children, Frank, Angela and Newton, share it among themselves. Vonnegut depicts Hoenikker as a controversial figure, embodying both ultimate good and ultimate evil. Known for his gentle character and indifference towards money and power, he is regarded as so innocent that some think he is “practically a Jesus—except for the Son of God part.” (1963: 67) In a letter about the narrator’s other book project, Newton refers to an incident when, after the explosion of the atom bomb, a scientist tells his father: “Science has now known sin.” Hoenikker’s response is: “What is sin?” (1963: 17). His passion for pure research causes him to disregard the ethical aspects of his work, so that he is completely unaware of whether it operates to the detriment or betterment of humanity. To put it crudely, he does not care. At this point, Vonnegut raises the issue of responsibility, posing the question through one of the characters: “but how the hell innocent is a man who helps to make a thing like an atomic bomb?” (1963: 68). It should be noted that the notions of “sin” and “innocence” here serve, not for the indictment of science in a religious context, but for the exposure of human fallibility in line with comic-apocalyptic rhetoric. Vonnegut seems to imply that it is necessary to recognise limits, which is why, he advocates, via Bokonon, “harmless” untruths that set the limit on harming humans and the environment. As Todd F. Davis observes, following Lyotard, “grand narratives, the fictions we construct, even if their constructedness is exposed, still do as much harm as those that are hidden, and for that reason Vonnegut urges us to choose those narratives that are ‘harmless’” (2006: 60). Vonnegut’s comic treatment of religion as “grand narrative” is manifest in Bokononism, which is itself inspired by Charles Atlas’s “Dynamic Tension Theory”: “It was the belief of Charles Atlas [the mailorder muscle-builder] that muscles could be built without bar bells or spring exercisers, could be built by simply pitting one set of muscles against another. It was the belief of Bokonon that good societies could be built only by pitting good against evil, and by keeping the tension between

Laughing at the End of the World: Cat’s Cradle and Galapagos

35

the two high at all times” (1963: 102). When Lionel Boyd Johnson (that is, Bokonon) and the idealistic Earl McCabe (that is, Papa Monzano) survive shipwreck to swim to the shore of San Lorenzo, they dream of making the island a utopia. As Philip Castle, the son of the island’s famous doctor, Julian Castle, explains in his San Lorenzo: The Land, the History, the People, McCabe overhauls the economy and laws whilst Johnson invents a new religion. However, when conditions only deteriorate for the island’s inhabitants, religion becomes their only instrument of hope. Interestingly, Bokonon demands that he be made an outlaw in order to preserve the tension between state and religion. The situation is thus transformed into a drama in which McCabe and Bokonon play the antagonistic parts of “the cruel tyrant” in the city and “the gentle holy man in the jungle” (1963: 174). But, the drama is eventually, in turn, transformed into reality, when the consolation of harmless truths is forbidden by Papa Monzano. What changes his mind is Frank Hoenikker’s arrival on the island, becoming Minister of Science and Progress of San Lorenzo in exchange for a piece of ice-nine, in yet another instance of the abuse of science. In Cat’s Cradle, the world comes to an end when ice-nine accidentally reaches the sea and freezes it: “There was a sound like that of the gentle closing of a portal as big as the sky, the great door of heaven being closed softly. It was a grand AH-WHOOM” (1963: 261). The subsequent tornadoes swiftly disseminate ice-nine frost everywhere and cause the seasons to change forever: “Anything that still lived would die soon enough of thirst–or hunger–or rage–or apathy” (1963: 264). When eternal winter begins on earth, there are only a few survivors, including Hoenikker’s two sons and the narrator, who manage to remain safe in their sheltered spots. The part in which John gives an account of the catastrophe’s aftermath is a remarkable second Genesis that follows the apocalypse. John and Mona leave the sanctuary where they have been hiding for seven days after the “end of the world”, making sure that the tornadoes are now reticent. This can be interpreted as another gesture by Vonnegut toward circumventing the end. John joins with the other survivors and they start a new life, in which the end turns out to be not the end. He describes this new phase in ironically simplistic terms: “we had survived a storm, were isolated, and then the living became very easy indeed. It was not without a certain Walt Disney charm” (1963: 276). It can even be inferred from this description of the post-catastrophe that they live in some kind of “utopia”: “Food was no problem, and neither were clothing or shelter, for the weather was uniformly dry and dead and hot. Our health was monotonously good. Apparently all the germs were dead, too–or napping” (1963: 277). All these environmental factors obviously

36

Chapter III

facilitate survival and render a new beginning possible. However, Vonnegut brings a different issue to the fore a couple of paragraphs later. When John goes to the cave to see how Frank Hoenikker spends his time, he finds him watching the ant farm he constructed in an experiment about how ants survive in a waterless world. “You know why ants are so successful?” he asks Jones, and replies to his own question: “They co-oper-ate” (1963: 280). This is the real message Vonnegut wishes to convey to his readers. Although “man got to sit and wonder, ‘Why, why, why?’ as one of Bokonon’s poems states, for God left it to humanity to think of [a purpose] for all this” (1963: 265), there might not always be an easy answer. Perhaps, there is no purpose, nor reason. What is to be done, then, in the face of such meaninglessness? This is the central problem in Cat’s Cradle. However, by balancing the apocalyptic tone with the comic which “does not contain the seeds of apocalyptic despair” (O’Leary 1994: 216), Vonnegut underlines the significance of responsibility and the will to coexist, lack of which actually brings about the end of the world in the novel. Humans can avert “apocalypses” only when they acknowledge that they are ethically responsible for each other as well as for other living beings. Only then will the mistakes of the past not be repeated and future disasters be prevented. In this respect, John’s completion of the eponymous novel he is working on is symbolic of Vonnegut’s own endeavour. John finishes what later becomes Cat’s Cradle in the six months that follow the catastrophe, writing from the end of the world as an apocalyptic writer while also simultaneously living in it. The penultimate chapter hinges on utopias, “of what might have been, of what should have been, of what might yet be, if the world would thaw” (1963: 284). At this point, he refers to a whole book about utopias, written by Bokonon and called The Seventh Book, or “Bokonon’s Republic”. Vonnegut’s subversively comic tone is evident in the description of Bokonon’s utopia: “Let us start our Republic with a chain of drug stores, a chain of gas chambers, and a national game. After that, we can write our Constitution” (1963: 285). As with Vonnegut’s stance on science and religion, this should be construed not as the critique of utopian imagination per se but of misconceptions of it. Like Bokonon who says “If I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity” (1963: 287), Vonnegut writes various “revelations”, through which he exposes human short-sightedness, and takes refuge in the cautionary potential of storytelling. History needs to be remembered and examined: “Without accurate records of the past, how can men and women be expected to avoid making serious mistakes in the future?” This question, which represents the main thematic concern of

Laughing at the End of the World: Cat’s Cradle and Galapagos

37

comic-apocalyptic discourse, is posed ironically by Bokonon according to John. He believes that what Bokonon really tells us is “how futile it is to write or read histories” (1963: 237). Yet, we should also keep in mind that “nothing in this book is true.” “The ironic layer of self-invalidating Bokononist contradictions” (Abadi- Nagy 1996: 86) enhances the effect of Vonnegut’s narrative by creating a tension that leads us to think, and thus increases our awareness. As Robert Scholes explains, Vonnegut’s intellectual (and, in this case, apocalyptic) comedy “offers us moral stimulation—not fixed ethical positions which we can complacently assume, but such thoughts as exercise our consciences and help us keep our humanity in shape, ready to respond to the humanity of others” (1990: 82). Cat’s Cradle aims to reinsert the human into context, rather than locating it at the centre, and emphasises cooperation, in line with the rhetoric of comic apocalypse. Representing a very different catastrophe but similar endeavour, Galapagos scrutinises the myth of human rationality from an evolutionary perspective. Here, Vonnegut’s project is an ambitious representation of history itself: he aims to trace a time span of more than a million years, with a plotline covering an apocalypse and a post-apocalypse that “unveils” what becomes of humanity after the catastrophe. What is unveiled at the end of the world and the novel, by the ghost-narrator Leon Trout, are human beings living happily ever after, as they evolve into creatures with smaller brains, beaks and flippers. The fulcrum of Vonnegut’s narrative is Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution and law of natural selection. Vonnegut’s depiction of the future can be considered evolutionary theory stretched to its limits, to the extent that it almost runs in reverse. Galapagos plays with the myth of the rational man who turns his face to unlimited progress. Leon’s attribution to “big brains”, and thus to nature itself, of human insanities such as dropping the atomic bomb on Japan and the Vietnam War is an ironic twist on the myth of reason. The story’s central action revolves around the “Nature Cruise of the Century”, planned to run from Guayaquil in Ecuador to the Galapagos Islands. Yet, the voyage is officially cancelled when global financial crisis develops and Peru declares war on Ecuador. The passengers who, in one way or another, manage to arrive in Guayaquil and set sail on the Bahia de Darwin are also the story’s main characters. They ensure the future of humanity by circumventing the war and, more significantly, the outbreak of a deadly virus which damages female fertility all around the world. Through Leon Trout’s omniscient viewpoint, we learn how one of the passengers, Mary Hepburn, the biology teacher (or Mother Nature

38

Chapter III

Personified as her students call her), impregnates one of the fertile Kankabono girls by artificial insemination and how the Captain, who is going to be the father of all children born on the island, becomes “a latter day Adam” (1985: 49). Once again, Biblical references permeate Vonnegut’s narrative: the Bahia de Darwin is referred to as Noah’s Ark; and the myths of Genesis and the Fall are reinterpreted in very different contexts. While it is clear in Genesis that God had sent the flood to eradicate “all flesh”, it remains unclear in Galapagos whence the virus might have come and how it is disseminated. Yet, we can still speculate that the catastrophe is most probably brought about by the “big brains” themselves. The brilliance of Galapagos, Leonard Mustazza points out, “lies precisely in Vonnegut’s deft fusion of future orientation-science fiction and backward-looking narrative form myth” (1990: 167). This fusion, along with the problematisation of the relationship between the ethical dimension of human existence, and the purely animalistic/biological aspect, operates to produce a clear vision of the present, and contributes to the formation of a very distinctive approach to humanism. Whilst preserving his critical distance from humanity’s twisted ways, Vonnegut also attempts to supply a sense of direction and self-understanding in the present by ironically eradicating all traces of the human form in his future-oriented narrative. The novel’s misanthropic tone is most apparent in Leon’s father, Kilgore Trout, who appears towards the end to take his son through the blue tunnel to the Afterlife. The final confrontation between father and son is one of the most remarkable scenes, insofar as it provides Vonnegut with the opportunity to represent opposing voices, and elucidate how his own understanding is formed out of this amalgam. Kilgore wants to know if his son has exhausted his curiosity as to what life is all about and “had enough of the ship of fools” (1985: 252). Yet, Leon is reluctant to go with his father because he thinks he has not yet completed his researches: “I had chosen to be a ghost because the job carried with it, as a fringe benefit, licence to read minds, to learn the truth of people’s pasts,... to be many places all at once, to learn in depth how this or that situation had come to be structured as it was, and to have access to all human knowledge” (1985: 253). When he asks for five more years, his father answers that this will be insufficient time to learn what he hopes for: The more you learn about people, the more disgusted you’ll become. I would have thought that your being sent by the wisest men in your country, supposedly to fight a nearly endless, thankless, horrifying, and, finally pointless war, would have given you sufficient insight into the nature of humanity to last you throughout all eternity! (1985: 254)

Laughing at the End of the World: Cat’s Cradle and Galapagos

39

Vonnegut enumerates the vices of humans and reveals their meaninglessly destructive potential through Kilgore. People have the propensity to kill, destroy, consume and pollute irresponsibly. But what, then, is to be done? Why is Leon reluctant to leave behind these wonderful, yet pathetic, animals? For Kilgore, the answer lies in Leon’s naive belief that human beings “will eventually solve all their problems and make earth into a Garden of Eden again” (1985: 257). He thinks the son resembles his mother because both share the same naivety. At this point, we learn that her favourite quotation had been the one that opens the novel: “In spite of everything, I still believe people are really good at heart.” Vonnegut’s choice of epigraph is telling. Taken from Anne Frank’s diary, these words not only have their own socio-political significance, but also provide the reader with a hint of his own dual position of despair and hope, which leads him to adopt a comic apocalyptic voice capable of acknowledging both tragic and comic aspects of human existence. In a brief moment of hesitancy and distraction combined with reluctance, Leon misses the opportunity to go through the blue tunnel, which means he will wait another million years before his father reappears. What actually distracts him is Mary Hepburn’s exclamation of delight when she sees Santa Rosalia from the ship. Thus, he gets the opportunity to observe humanity’s second beginning and how life will continue, albeit in an entirely different form for humans. As the novel comes to a close, his time with people also nears completion. He expects to see the blue tunnel soon and, this time, is happy to pass through: “Nothing ever happens here anymore that [he hasn’t] seen or heard so many times before. Nobody, surely, is going to write Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony—or tell a lie, or start a Third World War. Mother was right: Even in the darkest times, there really was still hope for humankind” (1985: 259). So, hope for humanity resides in getting rid of what it is to be human. The juxtaposition of the fact that nobody will be able to write the Ninth Symphony with the existence of hope for humankind displays the novel’s “tragic hopefulness”, to borrow Charles Berryman’s phrase (1990: 198), and Vonnegut’s “misanthropic humanism”, as defined by Robert Tally (2011: 113). Vonnegut, like Leon himself, cannot abandon humanity, even though he “sees most people as fundamentally flawed, petty, avaricious, and prone to acts of almost incredible cruelty” (Tally 2011: 113). The repeated statement about big brains is an indication of Vonnegut’s ambivalence. On the one hand, it externalises the source of evil rather than ascribing it to human beings; on the other, Vonnegut is well aware that humans are not blue-footed boobies whose actions have not changed “one iota in a million years” (1985: 110). If they have the

40

Chapter III

ability to think, then they are also responsible for their own actions. Boobies have no choice but always to conduct their courtship dance in the same way, but people have choices and are responsible for the consequences of those choices. In this respect, Vonnegut is misanthropic yet humanist, or philanthropic yet apocalyptic, seemingly haunted by the cruel paradox of Bokononist thought: “the heartbreaking necessity of lying about reality, and the heartbreaking impossibility of lying about it” (1963: 284). The “misanthropic humanism” and “tragic hopefulness” that dominate both Galapagos and Cat’s Cradle can be regarded as key instances of Vonnegut’s comic-apocalyptic discourse. They are also reminiscent of the Burkean notions of the “comic corrective” and “perspective by incongruity”. Burke argues that these notions operate to interpret the world from various, sometimes incongruous, perspectives, in order to avoid monolithic models, and that any related didactic strategy must be employed “as an essentially comic notion,” “neither wholly euphemistic, nor wholly debunking” (1961: 166). Vonnegut’s tone and style seem to fit this model very precisely. The comic frame mainly aims at the “exposure of fallibility” (O’Leary 1994: 68), carrying a cautionary potential which stresses the imminence of apocalypse rather than pinpointing a certain time for the end. In both novels, the narrator insinuates that apocalypse is “here and now”, that it is already happening. In a 1989 interview, Vonnegut was asked the question: “Apropos of science fiction the worlds presented in your novels are often apocalyptic. Is this your way of pricking bubbles?” His answer was: “Yes, it’s a way of saying God doesn’t care what becomes of us, and neither does Nature, so we’d better care. We’re all there’s to care” (Abadi- Nagy 1996: 25). But, he is also careful not to plant “the seeds of apocalyptic despair” (O’Leary 1994: 216) by depicting humanity as deserted and desperate. Nor is he trying to argue that humans are the only beings worth caring for. He is simply aware that we must be there to care, since we are all there is to care. At this point, it is necessary to present a more detailed discussion of the relationship between the writer/storyteller and the reader in the novels. Both are preoccupied with writing as a profession and with the redemptive power of storytelling. In Cat’s Cradle, Philip Castle and the narrator talk about their conceptions of the writer. When Philip says he is thinking of calling a general strike of all writers until mankind comes to its senses, John asks: “Do writers have a right to strike? That would be like the police or the firemen walking out” (1963: 231). Writers are so vital for society that when a person is deprived of the consolations of literature, they might die from “putrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system”,

Laughing at the End of the World: Cat’s Cradle and Galapagos

41

Doctor Julian Castle half-seriously explains. He continues: “For the love of God, both of you, please keep writing!”(1963: 232). That Dr. Hoenikker ignores the manuscript of a novel sent him by a prisoner, which tells how mad scientists made a bomb that wiped out the world in the year 2000, is Vonnegut’s way of emphasising the cautionary potential and critical value of writing and, hence, of John’s completed novel, Cat’s Cradle itself. Similarly, Galapagos examines the role of writer through the figure of the unsuccessful science fiction author, Kilgore Trout, and his son Leon’s own narrative, which is itself the novel we read. Having a ghost narrator serves Vonnegut’s purposes since it enables him to cover more than a million years in the novel. Moreover, there is a clear parallel between Leon’s decision to linger on earth as a ghost and Vonnegut’s own to become a writer: “because the job carried with it, as a fringe benefit, licence to read minds, to learn the truth of people’s pasts, to see through walls” (1985: 253). Leon functions as an agent by means of which Vonnegut can express his thoughts on authorship and science fiction writing. He despises his father’s efforts as an author: “if I haven’t now become a writer, too, scribbling away like Father, without the slightest hint that there might actually be a reader somewhere. There isn’t one. There can’t be one” (1985: 257). We can interpret the idea that there is no recipient of science fiction writing in two ways: first, that human beings have become physically devoid of faculties which would enable them to comprehend writing; second, that Leon as the ghost-narrator, lacks substantiality. At the end, he says “I have written these words in air—with the tip of the index finger of my left hand, which is also air” (1985: 290). Galapagos, then, is the sum of words on air, with neither materiality nor visibility. Leon poses a question: “Does it trouble me to write so insubstantially, with air on air? Well—my words will be as enduring as anything my father wrote, or Shakespeare wrote, or Beethoven wrote, or Darwin wrote. It turns out that they all wrote with air on air” (1985: 290). Yet, what Shakespeare, Beethoven and Darwin wrote has been enduring. Even what Kilgore wrote is enduring, for Vonnegut’s science fiction is itself an endeavour to vindicate Kilgore Trout’s status as author. In this respect, both Vonnegut and his readers know that there is going to be a reader somewhere. This is why he invalidates his own character at the end of the novel, by making Leon burst into tears when he learns that Kilgore is actually his doctor’s favourite author. Although Vonnegut depicts the humans of the future as seal-like creatures who lack the distinctive faculties to comprehend writing, he addresses his novel to humans of the present capable of receiving his message and learning from his future vision. Just as the prisoner in Cat’s

42

Chapter III

Cradle has written a cautionary manuscript, so too Kilgore Trout once wrote a novel, The Era of Hopeful Monsters. Leon summarises the novel as being about a planet where the humanoids ignore their most serious survival problems until the last moment. After all the forests are destroyed, all the lakes poisoned and all the groundwater rendered undrinkable, the humanoids start having children with wings or fins, with a hundred eyes or no eyes, with huge brains or no brains, and so on. These children are in fact nature’s experiments to create better planetary citizens. Leon calls his own lifetime “the Era of Hopeful Monsters” (1985: 83). His father’s novel embodies a prescient warning, not only for the fictional world of Galapagos, but also for the environmental crisis that threatens the real world. Vonnegut criticises humanity’s reluctance to take action through both Kilgore and Leon. The words of Leon’s Galapagos do reach us and so we are reluctant to obey Bokonon’s command, on the title page of the First Book of Bokonon, which reads: “Don’t be a fool! Close this book at once! It is nothing but foma!” (1963: 265). Vonnegut’s foma lead us to think about our responsibilities to each other and to the planet we live in. The ends he envisions (or circumvents) present us with the context we need to position ourselves ethically. At this point, Bokonon’s definition of maturity can be borrowed for a better description of Vonnegut’s comic-apocalyptic voice: “maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything” (1963: 198). For Vonnegut, humanity might be a bitter disappointment at times, but comic correctives are always available to provide some relief and raise our awareness. His resentment towards the absurdity of the world is disciplined into humour and laughter, and the cautionary potential of his stories demonstrates that his comedy is no less serious.

Works cited Abadi-Nagy, Zoltan 1996: “Serenity, Courage, Wisdom: A Talk with Kurt Vonnegut, 1989”. Reed and Leeds, eds. The Vonnegut Chronicles. Westport: Greenwood. 15-34. —. 1996: “Bokononism as a Structure of Ironies”. Reed and Leeds, eds. The Vonnegut Chronicles. Westport: Greenwood. 85-90. Berryman, Charles 1990: “Vonnegut and Evolution”. Robert Merrill, ed. Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut. Boston, G.K. 188-200. Burke, Kenneth 1961: Attitudes towards History. Boston: Beacon. Davis, Todd 2006: Kurt Vonnegut’s Crusade, or, How a Postmodern Harlequin Preached a New Kind of Humanism. New York: SUNY.

Laughing at the End of the World: Cat’s Cradle and Galapagos

43

Keller, Catherine 1996: Apocalypse Now and Then. Boston: Augsburg Fortress. Kermode, Frank 2000: The Sense of an Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction. New York: Oxford UP. Mustazza, Leonard 1990: Forever Pursuing Genesis: the Myth of Eden in the Novels of Kurt Vonnegut. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP. O’Leary, Stephen 1994: Arguing the Apocalypse. New York: Oxford UP. Scholes, Robert 1990: “Kurt Vonnegut and Black Humor”. Robert Merrill, ed. Critical Essays on Kurt Vonnegut. Boston: G.K. Hall. 74-82. Tally Jr, Robert 2011: Kurt Vonnegut and the American Novel: Postmodern Iconography. London: Continuum. Vonnegut, Kurt 2000 (1963): Cat’s Cradle. New York: Random House. —. 1985: Galapagos. New York: Delacorte Press.

CHAPTER IV INTIMATIONS OF HOPE WITHIN APOCALYPTIC AND POST-APOCALYPTIC CONTEXT ANNETTE M. MAGID

Abstract Apocalyptic representations in film and literature seem to impose a threat of obliteration on the future of humanity as we know it; one of the common themes of post-apocalyptic fiction frequently suggests that human genius will enable Man to start anew following what seems to be a devastation of total destruction. The purpose of my paper is to examine the overt and, at times, hidden messages of impending hope in apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic film and literature. The American film industry’s fascination with images of cataclysmic endings intensified in the late 1970s through the 1980s and post-apocalyptic novels often focus on the possibilities of starting over replete with the potential of hope and utopian theories. • Even though apocalyptic representations in film and literature seem to impose a threat of obliteration on the future of humanity as we know it, one of the common themes of post-apocalyptic fiction “often reflects hopeful celebrations of human ingenuity in their detailing how people start over again” (Curtis 2010: 37). While threats of nuclear annihilation, global pandemics and destruction of the ecosystem threaten human existence on a global level, there is a “psychological need for... [a] sense-making narrative” (Rosen 2008: xix). It is my conjecture that since most apocalyptic scenarios are used to project social criticism, the element of hope is intrinsic in human nature. It may seem paradoxical that stories projecting the end of the world incorporate an element of hope, yet as

46

Chapter IV

Zamora asserts, apocalyptic stories “[mock] the notion of conclusive ends and endings even as [they] propose just that—the conclusive narration of history’s end” (1982: 17). In addition, apocalyptic narratives are often used as “an instrument of criticism” (Rosen 2008: xxi). James Berger notes: The end is never the end. The apocalyptic text announces and describes the end of the world, but then the text does not end, nor does the world represented in the text, and neither does the world itself... [S]omething remains after the end.1 (1999: 5-6)

Because the conjecture is that something remains, I view this as a means of imparting hope where there seems to be oblivion. The purpose of my paper is to examine the overt and, at times, hidden messages of impending hope in selected apocalyptic, dystopic and post-apocalyptic film and literature. The American film industry’s fascination with images of cataclysmic endings intensified in the late 1970s through the 1980s. One 1981 film example, Escape from New York, turns the entire island of Manhattan into an ultimate maximum-security prison. The film ends with the seemingly untimely revelation of the president’s top-secret pre-taped plan to preserve world peace, reflecting the initial desire for hope in a hostile environment. Hope is suggested even in Alan Moore’s graphic novel Swamp Thing: A Murder of Crows, his postmodern Armageddon,2 which examines the nature of evil and spins it into an “ongoing circle of existence” (Rosen 2008: 17). Swamp Thing states: “Perhaps evil... is the humus... formed by virtue’s decay... and perhaps it is from... that dark, sinister loam... that virtue grows strongest” (Moore 2001: 195). By idealizing ongoing existence, the concept of hope for the future perpetuates and grows strongest within the darkest medium. As Elizabeth Rosen states in Apocalyptic Transformation, “Endings are part of beginnings” (2008: 18). There are two perceptions of apocalypse. One is shown as cataclysm and the other as revelation: The combination of violent hatred for the world as it is and violent desire for the world as it should be has characterized apocalyptic representations

 1

Berger’s emphasis. Where Swamp Thing focuses on Moore’s environmental concerns and the issue of New Jerusalem, Watchmen, illustrated by Dave Gibbons, focuses largely on reworking the superhero genre and the idea of an apocalyptic deity (Rosen 2008: 18). 2

Intimations of Hope within Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Context

47

and apocalyptic social movements since their first recorded instances, the Biblical and apocryphal apocalypses. (Berger 1999: 34)

Both share a common path toward the primality and immediacy related to the unitary unmodified event and the absolute resolution. The focus for most apocalyptic writers and film makers seems to be an urge to reveal the ultimate apocalyptic event that will inspire the ultimate ethical and moral change needed for Mankind to move in a direction away from the abyss of total annihilation. It is interesting to note that even though the apocalypse is, resembles, or explains The End, 3 nearly every apocalyptic text presents the same paradox which reveals that the end is never the end. The text predicts and describes the end of the world, but the text does not end, nor does the world within the text end. In nearly every apocalyptic presentation, something remains beyond the proscribed end. I suggest two exceptions to this observation: Mary Shelley’s The Last Man and Byron’s poem “Darkness”, where the end of the narrative reflects the end of the world without hope of any future; however, more than likely, the end of most other apocalyptic narratives suggests that something is left from the previous world to ignite a spark of hope. For example, in a real-life scenario during the Cold War,4 a future for the world is alluded to even if there is total nuclear destruction of the two major powers, Russia and the United States. Under the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, if Russia sent nuclear missiles in the westerly direction of the United States, then there would have been an immediate retaliation from the United States who would send nuclear missiles in the easterly direction of Russia, thus ostensibly obliterating both major powers. Even if those two countries were totally obliterated, other smaller, less powerful nations associated with the Non-Aligned Movement founded by Egypt, India and Yugoslavia would have been put in the position to take over once the major powers were gone, thus seemingly fulfilling Nostradamus’ prediction in Century IX Quatrain 66: There will be peace, union and change Estates, offices, low high and high very low: To prepare a trip, the first offspring torment, War to cease, civil process, debates (Hare 2010: n. p.)

 3

My emphasis. Often dated from 1945-1991 with the powers aligning with United States, NATO and other allies in the Western World and the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and other allies in the Eastern World. 4

48

Chapter IV

According to Edgar Leoni, the classic interpretation of this quatrain is that a “Utopian age” shall come to be; but not without much pain (1892: 140). Doug Yurchey in “Nostrodamus 2000” questions: “Is this when the meek inherits [sic] the Earth?” (2000: 5). The “low” becoming “high’ seems to be an allusion to an inkling of hope often reflected in most dystopian and apocalyptic literature and film. A clear example of this spark of hope is reflected in a most recent trilogy, The Hunger Games from which book one has been made into a movie. Like the book, the premise for the movie features children, ages twelve through seventeen, who are selected in a lottery-type system from the post-apocalyptic twelve districts in a Panem (North America after nuclear destruction). Each district has a reaping every year where one boy and one girl are selected to serve as “tributes” to fight in violent “games” designed by Gamemakers to entertain the wealthy living in the Capital. The children from the selected districts battle each other to the death with only one winner remaining. Besides entertainment, the games serve as a means to control the poor masses living in the various districts outside of the Capital. In the movie, once the tributes are selected, none of the people in District 12 cheer, instead they raise their right hand in solidarity, a gesture that looks similar to the raised hands of the Serbian dissidents5 (MacKinnon 1997: n.p.). The Hunger Games identified District 13 as a post-apocalyptic location, kept secret from the other districts by the villainous President Snow. District 13 is said to have been “obliterated” (Collins 2008: 18), yet its existence is known to a few individuals within the Capital District. In District 13 people can live as relatively free individuals, unbound by the Capital’s reaping of their children, yet to keep order, a militaristic atmosphere is strictly enforced and inhabitants are made to adhere to a rigid behavioral schedule which is tattooed daily into the forearm of each person and removed each evening. It is ironic that District 13’s real motive to help those who are being tortured in the Hunger Games and offer a means of escape into District 13 is for their own self-preservation. Many of the inhabitants of District 13 have been rendered infertile by “some sort of pox epidemic” (Collins 2010: 8) and those who escaped from the tyranny of the Capital are viewed

 5

According to Edward T. Hall, “Sixty percent of our daily communication is nonverbal” (Axtell 2007: 7). The raised hand and the three finger salute seen in The Hunger Games seems to echo the gesture that is commonly recognized as a sign of Serbian supremacy in rallies by supporters of Radovan Karadzic and Ratlo Mladic, the Bosnian Serb leaders who later were indicted for genocide (MacKinnon 1997: n. p.).

Intimations of Hope within Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Context

49

by District 13 as “new breeding stock” (Collins 2010: 8). While the authorities from District 13 grant every single refugee with “automatic citizenship”, additional efforts are implemented to train newcomers for work. In addition, children are being educated so that they will be more suitable for propagating the next generation. Within District 13, even the concept of the military is viewed as a positive opportunity since those over fourteen are given entry-level rank of “soldier” and most importantly, respect as individuals (Collins 2010: 8). Even though District 13 leadership is presented as corrupt in Mockingjay, the final volume of The Hunger Games trilogy, Collins seems to be insinuating that hope for future generations will be achieved only by initiating a clean slate, destroying all maniacal leadership and allowing the people to form a democratic self-government. Once the people return to their districts after the corrupt government tries to destroy them, they will be able to re-start their own communities. In this way, the apocalyptic event that destroyed a majority of North America will be put behind the inhabitants so they can build on hope for a better future. The end of book two, Catching Fire, reveals the total devastation of District 12, the area in which the protagonist, Katniss Everdeen, grew up. Threaded within the rhetoric of the first few pages of book three, the concept of hope compels Katniss to return to her bombed-out home district where she locates items in her former Victory Circle home (the only area in District 12 that was not bombed by the Capital). Not specifically looking for each item, but recognizing their emotional value, she locates memorabilia that suggest snippets of her family history such as her mother’s wedding photo, her father’s hunting jacket, Buttercup, her sister’s cat, and a book of medicinal plants drawn with precision by her Hunger Game partner, Peeta. Each item that brings a semblance of normalcy to her mother, sister Prim, and to herself at the beginning of Mockingjay, brings the solace of memory to Katniss at the end of the book. These items focus on a glimmer of hope which helps to dissipate the sense of despair represented by their total loss of District 12. The items help deflect the chaos in which they find themselves and illuminate some hope that one day at least they may return to the calm Katniss and her family experienced in past times before her participation as a “tribute” for the Games. She takes the items found in the Victory Circle home with her to her new, but temporary, home in District 13. When District 13 is threatened with bombing from the Capital, it is these items that her friend Gale gathers from her assigned room in District 13 and brings them to Katniss in the bomb shelter. Each of the items symbolizes that which has passed and that which brings hope for normalcy

50

Chapter IV

in the future. It should be noted that Katniss’ battle cry against the Capital is, “If we burn, you will burn with us” (Collins 2010: 186). This chant suggests the belligerence embraced by the districts’ inhabitants who have a chance and possible hope of defeating the oppression of the Capital if they fight back against them. The Capital is depicted as being very hedonistic as well as highly materialistic; therefore, they would find the message of their own possible destruction to be highly disconcerting. Katniss, becomes the personification of the Mockingjay, symbolized in a pin given to her by her wealthy friend Marge, the mayor’s daughter, in Book One, The Hunger Games.6 Once Katniss becomes the Mockingjay, she is sent to various districts as a mascot to help provide hope for other militants’ efforts to over-throw the ironically named Peacekeepers of the Capital. The last district that is not totally bombed out is District 2 where the Capital trains Peacekeepers [equivalent to storm troopers] inside a granite-filled mountain called “The Nut’, a virtually impenetrable natural fortress. When Katniss” friend Gale who is helping the anti-government Special Defense Forces from District 13 suggests that an avalanche might be the best way to overpower the enemy stronghold, Katniss remembers many victims, including their fathers, who died in a similar mountain disaster when it blew up while they were mining coal. She views Gale’s plan similar to that which President Snow might implement: show no mercy, allow no hope. Even though they did bomb the unstable areas above “The Nut” to create an avalanche, one concession Gale made to Katniss was to keep an exit accessible to those trapped in the mountain. Gale and his Special Defense Forces could have bombed a tunnel through which trains reached the interior of the mine; however, by allowing the tunnel to remain open, there was an element of hope, a possible escape route, allowed to the survivors of the crushed mountain (Collins 2010: 211). While Collins is presenting a fictional set of details with sociological implications, it is interesting to note that in Anthony Burgess’ 1962 novel, The Wanting Seed, focuses on a similar sociological problem of population control. Rather than using an artificial device of deadly games to control population over-growth, Burgess’ employs more realistically harsh government measures—similar to those utilized in China—to limit additional population growth by creating “Population Police” to enforce arrest or imprisonment of English couples who have or attempt to have more than one child. Through his history teacher protagonist Tristram

 6

In the movie, this is changed and the Mockingjay pin is given to her by her District 12 boyfriend, Gale, immediately before the Games begin.

Intimations of Hope within Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Context

51

Foxe, Burgess presents the conundrum of history in which there are three phases representing the cyclical nature of history. The first phase is based on tolerance and liberalism in which government serves as a guide rather than an oppressive force for the citizenry. The second phase is an intermediate zone which realizes the lack of government control and the inevitable abuse which follows no matter how well-intentioned the first phase seems to be. The third phase focuses on the sinfulness of humankind; therefore, strict government control is considered necessary and is imposed on the citizens to maintain obedience. Ironically, this last, most stringent phase in human history lends itself to hope for human perfectibility. The logic proceeds with the thought that if mankind is capable of obedience, then there is “a perception that people are perfectible” (Dorenkamp 1981: 108) which leads back the first phase of tolerance and hope. Of course, Burgess does not regard this as a simplistic formula for categorizing individuals since he asserts that all individuals embody a combination of the behaviors “either in cyclical phases, or, through a kind of doublethink, at one and the same time” (1978: 53). The duality of human nature is also suggested several decades earlier in dystopian novels that present the “doublethink” alluded to by Burgess. It should be noted that neither Huxley’s Brave New World nor Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four suggest an “either/or” conclusion concerning the most acceptable form of society. Both would reject an ideal society that embraces rightness, justness and truthfulness as the exclusive doctrine of the entire population. In Huxley’s Brave New World, all aspects of life are designed to increase consumption and enhance pleasure within a society which lacks individual liberty. Huxley’s dystopia is more subtle than the overbearing government in Collins’ Hunger Games. Rather than the overt exercise of power that Collins depicts, Huxley “imposes more subtle manipulations [of] modern bourgeois society in the West” (Booker 1994: 171). Huxley also presciently anticipated the “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” counterculture of the 1960s and Huxley’s 1962 more positive novel Island depicts drugs that lead to a mystical enlightenment and spiritual growth (Clark 1975: 112). While Huxley uses artificial means such as drugs to control the population and as in the story line of Brave New World and Island, a method to embrace positiveness toward consumerism, an exaggerated version of capitalism in which new production and consumption are essential to keep the economy functioning, Orwell, in his fictional city of Oceania, uses almost every motif associated with dystopian fiction to depict a negative aspect of traditionally held beliefs. For example, he depicts the mechanical application of technology as a means for spying on

52

Chapter IV

the population. In addition, religion has been conscripted by the state. Sexuality is strictly controlled to prevent strong emotional attachments. Also, art and culture are used as tools for direct propagation of Oceania’s official ideology. Orwell introduces the notion that if science and technology are politicized, it will have a suffocating effect on science. Orwell’s official government propagandist Winston Smith invents “Comrade Ogilvy”, an idealized party leader who, like the fictitious Soldier, Lieutenant Andrew Summer Rowan in A Message to Garcia7— created by Elbert Hubbard— is intended to serve as model of an exemplary person who is obedient, following orders as presented by authority figures.8 In Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the character Smith describes Ogilvy in terms with “clear religious undertones, making him a sort of Communist saint” (Booker 1994: 209-10). Ogilvy was portrayed as an individual who practiced all the behavior that was considered exemplary in Oceana: “He was a total abstainer and nonsmoker, had no recreations except a daily hour in the gymnasium, and had taken a vow of celibacy, believing marriage and the care of a family to be incompatible with a twenty-four-hour-a-day devotion to duty” (Orwell 1949: 42). As in The Hunger Games, the population in Oceania is totally under control of the oppressive government. Language and mind control used to manipulate the population in the dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four are the most powerful forces for the government of Oceana as well as the Districts in The Hunger Games. In spite of the oppressive societies Huxley and Orwell created, like Collins and others, each writer alludes to a kind of justice and the right to free, truthful expression of thought in a functional, vital society. This pursuit of justice offers an element of hope to those who are seeking to emerge from an oppressive society. The last stanza of the song at the end of Mockingjay depicts the hope that emerges from the screaming nightmares Katniss will never fully erase from her sub-consciousness: Here it’s safe, here it’s warm Here the daises guard you from every harm Here your dreams are sweet and tomorrow bring them true. Here is the place where I love you. (Collins 2010: 389-90)

 7

Elbert Hubbard’s story was originally included as “filler” in his magazine The Philistine; “A Message to Garcia” was reprinted as a small chapbook which sold over one million copies and was translated into multiple languages and used as an inspirational story to encourage loyalty and obedience in soldiers and workers. 8 In Hubbard’s story, the authority figure was United States President William McKinley.

Intimations of Hope within Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Context

53

In the 1974 pre-apocalyptic novel, Walk to the End of the World, threats of misogyny and sterility put women, rather than children on a path to annihilation by the male population. Women are treated not only “as inferiors and slaves, but as enemies opposition to whom provides a central unifying force for the men who have already eliminated other natural ‘enemies’ like animals and nonwhites” (Booker 1994: 112). Unlike Collins’ trilogy which exposes complex levels of amoral political behavior, Charnas’ Walk to the End of the World satirizes a number of social evils including “slavery, exploitation, burning of women, rape, drug dependence, institutional stifling of creatively, sexual perversion, pogroms, Nazi-like research on human subjects and nuclear devastation” (Barr 1983: 49). Within the apocalyptic framework of this novel, the rebel hero of the book is a homosexual man, Eykar Bek whose quest is Oedipal since he must murder his father, leader of Troi, to implement change toward women, especially Alidera, a female leader. The hope that emanates from Bek’s realization regarding the futility of total male dominance at the expense of total female subservience is projected near the end when Alidera escapes into the wilds, where she will “encounter tribes of ‘Riding Women’... and experience various additional adventures” (Booker 1994: 113). In the apocalyptic genre, the warning of destruction, usually from an uncontrollable outside source or a higher authority is so complete that total devastation seems to be the only prognosis; however, following the traumatic event or events, the focus is on new possibilities which might thwart the finality of life and the threatened, nearly annihilated humanity. The implication that humanity may have some hope of revitalization if it is dissuaded from continuing down the same foreboding path, suggests to me that fear is used as a means to implement a more positive behavioral change. At times when the element of fear is generated by a particular catastrophe or cataclysmic choice, one or two characters such as Katniss in The Hunger Games or Winston Smith in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, to name two protagonists in a genre filled with parallel scenarios, come forward to attempt to resolve the vexing dilemma of total annihilation. An example which offers implications of employing fear through apocalyptic endings is seen in Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winner, The Road. The didactic message presented in the novel seems to be intended as an object lesson to those experiencing the impact of the story as well as to those who are apathetic to the issues in the novel. Since the outcome of the book, as well as the movie, is shown as being a hopeless cause for the human race, I see this as a means to inspire readers to seek and implement change. The novel, as well as the movie, serves as a warning so that the reader/viewer and generations to come will not end up

54

Chapter IV

in the same hopeless position as the protagonist father and his son (Curtis 39-40). The Road offers a view of the future that does not bode well for the human race; however, it does offer a somewhat positive view into human nature embodied in the father and his son when they are faced with the direst set of circumstances. The barbaric, cannibalistic behavior that occurs following the cataclysmic destruction of the United States suggests that the absence of human needs has a tendency to yield despicable behavior; however, it should not be interpreted as the result of the apocalyptic cataclysm. The choices that can be made by individuals following any set of stimuli do not necessarily have to be those horrific choices indicated in movies and literature such as McCarthy’s The Road.9 Even though survival is paramount, the father and his son demonstrate more positive, compassionate behavior lending credibility to the notion of hope for the future. James Berger’s study of representations of post-apocalypse, After the End, studied the parallelism between theories of post-apocalypse and the Holocaust. Even though he clearly details the psychoanalytic term for apocalypse as “trauma”, the post-apocalypse yields evidence of healing and hope. For example, in a real-life scenario, the town of Freiburg which was nearly totally bombed during World War I, was rebuilt to its medieval appearance based on photos before the war, pre-apocalypse. In fact Berger asserts that “No historical plaques mention the reconstruction [of Freiburg]; guidebooks overlook it” (1999: 20). Berger suggests that Freiburg and other German cities such as Munich are “post-apocalyptic simulacra, products of a purposeful historical amnesia, rebuilt so as to deny that the years from 1933 to 1945 ever really took place” (1999: 20). Like the attempt in The Hunger Games to erase District 13 from the consciousness of the Panem inhabitants, Berger suggests that even though the events occur and seemingly leave no trace, the “trauma” did take place: The apocalyptic sign is the mirror image of the traumatic symptom... Both apocalypse and trauma present the most difficult questions of what happened “before”, and what is the situation “after”. (Berger 1999:26)

When analyzing apocalyptic trauma, Slavoj Žižek’s theories suggest that there will always be some kind of disruptive force, of different types and magnitudes, which will push a symbolic order into some ideological adjustment (1989: 202). Post-apocalyptic theory of trauma is evident in a multiplicity of media. For example, the regard for catastrophe is universal

 9

The screenplay based on The Road was written by Joe Penhall and produced by Dimension Films in 2009.

Intimations of Hope within Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Context

55

as is suggested in the theme of the nineteenth century poet Walt Whitman’s “This Compost” when he expresses his fears, “Something startles me where I thought I was safest,” ending with his revelation the what he viewed as a catastrophe has some value, “Now I am terrified at the Earth, it is that calm and patient... [I]t grows such sweet things out of such corruptions” and “distills exquisite winds out of such infused fetor” (1996: 390). Twentieth century writer Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart 10 presents another example of catastrophe ending somewhat positively. It should be noted as with several apocalyptic films and books, the catastrophe is not relegated to one disastrous episode which may seem to have sparked the cataclysmic results, but “it provides a method of interpretation and posits that the effects of an event may be dispersed and manifested in many forms not obviously associated with the event” (Berger 1999: 26). In fact, Berger suggests that “the idea of trauma allows for an interpretation of cultural symptoms—of growths, wounds, scars on a social body, and its compulsive, repeated actions” (1999: 26). It is interesting to note that Freud recognized that it was possible for someone to “remember but not remember, to tell the story of a traumatic event and yet fail to acknowledge its effects” (1955: 236). A person ostensibly suffering from a traumatic experience may acknowledge that something happened, yes, but the person would be relieved to agree that since the trauma has passed, the problem is over now and “I am all better” (Freud 1955: 236). This line of thinking would help to eradicate the negative thinking that might undermine hope. Once the negativity of trauma is eliminated, whether from omission, delusions or free will, the process of healing renews hope. It is the hope for secure lives after the chaos of the apocalyptic event and its aftermath that inspires Lazarus in Marge Piercy’s He, She and It to actively work to unify the Glop11 workforce. Even though the anarchy of the Glop leads to a great deal of crime and violence, the relative independence of direct domination by the Glop makes it a potential source of social and cultural revival. Lazarus, leader of the Coyote Gang, a locus

 10

Yeats’ apocalyptic rhetoric suggests, “things fall apart” and “change utterly,” but that “remainders and reminders, signs and symptoms survive” (Berger 1999: 26). 11 In Piercy’s novel, the majority of North America is covered by either barren wasteland or the “Glop” which is a violent, dirty, crime-ridden, gang-ruled Megalopolis that stretches from what had been Boston to what had been Atlanta. Glop is a dystopian projection of contemporary urban problems (Haraway 1985: 68).

56

Chapter IV

of utopian energy in the Glop, organizes the inhabitants, incorporating historical change with their ethnic and racial diversity. The Glop’s opposition is the multis, employers of sterile technical / business language that leaves little room for the expression of ideas contrary to official corporate policy. By presenting utopian alternative to complement her dystopian vision, Piercy offers an element of hope in a mixture of utopian and dystopian energies characterizing some “feminist imaginative writing [that shows] dystopian warnings in no way require the complete surrender of any hope of a better future” (Penley and Ross 1992: 16). Often radical hope seems to have vanished, even in the present-day real world, or at the very least hope is viewed as “barely shimmering at a far horizon” (“Michael D. Higgins” 2011: n. p.). However, some issues once considered disastrous—such as the bleak economic situation of Ireland— may be overcome after an announcement regarding the recently published positive outlook of Ireland’s newly elected President Michael D. Higgins. Higgins succinctly stated, “Hope, and the work of making hope take palpable shape in the transformation of society, is alive and well” (“Michael D. Higgins” 2011: n. p.). On the other hand, in the fictional world of The Hunger Games, for example, hope, as expressed by President Snow, is “necessary to keep people moving forward”; yet he warns that “too much hope can create rebellion” (Collins, 2012: movie). To quote Elizabeth Rosen from her Apocalyptic Transformation, “Apocalypse is a metaphor and a story, just as it is simultaneously a sense-making structure and a promise of hope held out to a troubled people” (2008: 174). Often used as a means to gain understanding of oppression, governmental or otherwise, apocalyptic treatises are at once warnings and pathways to enable humanity to move forward. Even when total destruction seems inevitable, rather than succumbing to despair, an element of hope is presented in various scenarios which will perhaps guide the reader and in turn mankind on a path away from oblivion and toward survival.

Works cited Achebe, Chinua 1994: Things Fall Apart. New York: Anchor. Axtell, Roger E. 2007: Essential Do’s and Taboos: The Complete Guide to International Business and Leisure Travel. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley. Barr, Marleen 1983: “Utopia at the End of a Male Chauvinist Dystopian World: Suzy McKee Charnas’s Feminist Science Fiction”. Marleen Barr and Nicholas D. Smith, eds. Women and Utopian: Critical Interpretations. New York: UP of America. 43-66. Berger, James 1999: After the End: Representations of Post-Apocalypse.

Intimations of Hope within Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Context

57

Minneapolis and London: U of Minnesota. Booker, M. Keith 1994: Dystopian Literature: A Theory and Research Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Burgess, Anthony 1978: 1985. Boston: Little, Brown. —. 1976: The Wanting Seed. New York: Norton. Byron, George Gordon, Baron 1927: The Complete Poetical Works of Lord Byron. New York: Macmillan. Charnas, Suzy McKee 1974: Walk to the End of the World. New York: Ballantine. Clark, Walter H. 1975: “Drugs and Utopia”. Peyton Richter, ed. Utopia/Dystopia? Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. 109-23. Collins, Suzanne 2008: The Hunger Games. New York: Scholastic. —. 2009: Catching Fire. New York: Scholastic. —. 2010: Mockingjay. New York: Scholastic. Collins, Suzanne, Gary Ross and Billy Ray 2012: The Hunger Games, movie. Lionsgate. 23 March. Curtis, Claire P. 2010: Postapocalyptic Fiction and the Social Contract: “We’ll Not Go Home Again”. New York: Lexington. Dorenkamp, John H. 1981: “Anthony Burgess and the Future Man: The Wanting Seed”. U of Dayton Review 15.1 (Spring): 107-111. Freud, Sigmund 1955: “Negation”. Trans. James Strachey. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. London: Hogarth. 23: 209-53. Haraway, Donna 1985: “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s”. Socialist Review 15.2: 65-107. Hare, John Bruno, ed. 2010: “The Prophecies of Nostradamus”. Internet Sacred Text Archive Santa Cruz, CA: Evinity (Accessed 14 December 2012). Hubbard, Elbert 1899: A Message to Garcia. East Aurora, New York: Roycroft. Huxley, Aldous 1965: Brave New World. In “Brave New World” and “Brave New World Revisited”. New York: Harper. —. 1962: Island. New York: Harper. Leoni, Edgar 1892: Nostradomus and His Prophecies. New York: Bell. MacKinnon, Catharine A. 1997: “Serbian Salute”

(Accessed 16 December 2012). McCarthy, Cormac 2006: The Road. New York and Toronto: Vintage. “Michael D Higgins inaugurated as President” (Accessed 28

58

Chapter IV

February 2012). Moore, Alan 2001: Swamp Thing: A Murder of Crows. Book 4. Illustrated by Stan Woch, Ron Randall et al. New York: Vertigo, DC Comics. Orwell, George 1961: Nineteen Eighty-Four. New York: New American Library. Penhall, Joe 2009: The Road, movie. Dimension Films. 25 November. Penley, Constance and Andrew Ross 1992: “Cyborgs at large: Interview with Donna Haraway”. Constance Penley and Andrew Ross, eds. Technoculture. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P. 1-20. Rosen, Elizabeth K. 2008: Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination. Lanham, MD, New York, and Plymouth, UK: Lexington. Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft 1826: The Last Man. London: Henry Colburn. Whitman, Walt 1996: “This Compost” The Complete Poems. London, New York, and Australia: Penguin. Yeats. William Butler 1956: The Collected Poems of W. B. Yeats. New York: Macmillan. Yurchey, Doug. “Nostrodamus 2000” (Accessed 14 December 2012). Zamora, Lois Parkinson, ed. 1982: The Aocalyptic Vision in America: Interdisciplinary Essays on Myth and Culture. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green U. Žižek, Slavoj 1989: The Sublime Object of Ideology. London: Verso.

CHAPTER V THE FLAT MANAGEMENT OF “CRISES” ON OUR SPHERICAL PLANET: ANARCHIST ORDER FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE DIANE MORGAN

Abstract The O.E.D. entry for “crisis” reads as follows: “1606 Sir Goosecappe, “The Creses here are excellent good; The proportion of the chin good … the wart aboue it most exceeding good”. Despite this refreshingly positive definite of “crisis”, we mostly react to them negatively. They are often experienced as disasters which befall us. They can also serve a system which profits from the feelings of insecurity that are produced. However, “crises” can also be decisive moments, turning points. They can lead to change; for the worse, but also for the better. Instead of constantly being faced with imminent “catastrophes”, a reevaluated sense of “crisis” might permit us to approach the world more as a dynamic series of intense and invigorating exchanges. My article explores these ideas in relation to the work of Immanuel Kant, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon and Christophe Dejours. The argument will be that, when the working situation is organized in nonhierarchical fashion, “crises” can produce creative effects, such as enthusiasm for the task in hand and solidarity between colleagues. The radically reconfigured working relations that would ensue from this working with “instability” are of long-term benefit. They would be an instance of sustainable development and of anarchist order. •

60

Chapter V As man seeks justice in equality, so society seeks order in anarchy. Anarchy, the absence of a master, of a sovereign, such is the form of government to which we are approaching every day and which our inveterate habit of taking man for our rule and his will for law leads us to regard as the height of disorder and the expression of chaos. Politics is the science of liberty. The government of man by man, under whatever name is disguised, is oppression. The highest perfection of society is found in the union of order and anarchy. The end of the old civilisation has come; the face of the earth will be renewed under a new sun. —Pierre-Joseph Proudhon What is Property? (2007: 209, 216)

Brushing conventional opinions against the grain, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon claims that anarchy is a form of social order that differs radically from hierarchically organised management structures1. The latter leads a precarious existence whereas “anarchy” nurtures life. As we will see, this proposal emerges out of his analysis of property as theft. This argument is in turn grounded in an analysis of land as a natural resource and the need for its continued availability for all. The limited nature of land on this spherical planet is of primordial importance for Proudhon’s analysis of property2. Proudhon is in effect proposing that only “flat management” has a future, i.e.: only self-organising, non-hierarchical work practices can produce the key values identified as being those of “sustainable development” such as respect, care, commitment, responsibility and tolerance3. Only this sort of organization can cultivate what he identifies as the “needs-rights-duties” series (to be explained later) which would provide a basis for the affirmation of social values, whilst necessitating a radical transformation of society as we have come to know it. Similarly, the contemporary psychiatrist/psychoanalyst Christian Dejours

 1

Hierarchical structures claim to produce “unity”. As we will see, Proudhon advocates instead the “repetition, diverse positions and combinations” that the “series” has to offer as a way of producing a different, more creative and therefore positive form of “order”. See Proudhon 2000a: 175. 2 Proudhon shares with Kant the conviction that recognition of the incontrovertible physico-geographical fact of the earth’s sphericity should necessarily generate farreaching political effects. Kant’s hopes for a more enlightened, just and peaceful age sometime in the future are likewise predicated on not only a keen sense of our responsibilities towards, but also, paradoxically, an acknowledgement of our ultimate insignificance to, this finite planet with its limited resources. 3 In the 1987 Brundtland Report (“Our Common Future”), “sustainable development” is defined as: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

The Flat Management of “Crises” on Our Spherical Planet

61

argues that the way the workplace is currently organised increasingly produces “social disaggregation” and a “precarisation of existence”, both of which are regarded as being incompatible with individual well-being and positive social relations. In his influential Travail Vivant, Dejours explains how, instead of fatalistically accepting “crises” as catastrophic incidents which justify a stressful state of emergency and breed a “blame culture”, we should instead view them as part and parcel of our being and doing in this world: The gap between what is prescribed and what is effective is never definitively overcome. Incidents and unexpected difficulties are always occurring in work situations (Dejours 2009a: 26).

The inevitability of “crises” is no fatality; for Dejours “difficulties” are integral attributes of our industrious interaction with the world which provide us with positive opportunities for exploring the various ways that can exist to get things done. Dejours goes so far as to suggest that if “orders” were to be scrupulously carried out accordingly to the letter of the laws, it would be a recipe for disaster. “Crises” are an inevitable part of the work experience and meeting their challenge requires a degree of (“anarchical”) disobedience on the part of workers so that the working process can be productive: For the clinician, work is not above all the wage relation or employment but “working” which is to say, the way the personality is involved in confronting a task that is subject to constraints (material and social). What emerges as the main feature of “working” is that, even when the work is well conceived, even when the organisation of work is rigorous, even when the instructions and procedures are clear, it is impossible to achieve quality if the orders are scrupulously respected. Indeed ordinary work situations are rife with unexpected events, breakdowns, incidents, operational anomalies, organisational inconsistency and things that are simply impossible to predict, arising from the materials, tools and machines as well as from other workers, colleagues, bosses, subordinates, the team, the chain of authority, the clients and so on. In short there is no such thing as purely mechanical work. (Dejours in Deranty 2008: 451).

As is the case with the notion of “crisis”, Dejours further positivises what is usually experienced as something negative when he analyses a situation of “failure”: The real of work lets itself be known as an affective experience, that of failure. But for the worker involved with his tasks this failure transforms

62

Chapter V itself straightaway into enigma and is source of excitation which demands a translation (Dejours 2009a: 61).

“Failure” is a vital part of our interaction with the real world; we rebound from the worldly resistance to our wills and are thereby obliged to invent different approaches, to adopt various ruses, to bring our desired projects into fruition4. Dejours valorises human intelligence and initiative, as well as teamwork, as resources for finding solutions to the problems which inevitably, and even thankfully, crop up over and over again5. The working situation is an ongoing negotiation with the world at hand. Positive “outcomes” are predicated on a flexible code of practice, one which is continually being reassessed, not one which tries to predetermine means and standardize ends. For Dejours, a successful (i.e. “living”) working culture requires the nurturing of “deontic activity” which he defines as: The activity of making rules for work, in order to make work work… If workers did nothing other than obey, it would create a “slowdown” of production and the system would break down. Cooperation designates precisely the redevelopment of coordination through deontic activity, that is, through the collaborative elaboration of concrete rules by and between the workers … (Dejours & Deranty 2010: 175).6

 4

For the importance of a ruseful “bending or infringing” of rules otherwise known as the “tricks of the trade” (“les ficelles de métier”) for the successful completion of a task see Dejours (2009a: 28-31). See also Dejours & Deranty (2010: 171): “Intelligence in the workplace requires cheating, wheeling and dealing, tricks. All that trickery (the “métis” of the Greeks) is part and parcel of any live work and no work organization could live without it. If the rules and procedures were followed to the letter, production would grind to a halt”. 5 By so doing Dejours criticises those dominant working practices which stifle individual and group creativity. In the name of “Quality Assurance”, the ‘human factor’ is all too often considered to be something problematic, even chaotic, a contingency to be contained, reduced and/or disciplined. By contrast, Dejours suggests that it should instead be valorized as a source of deviousness which is essential for problem-solving and innovation (see Dejours 1995). 6 “Deontic activity” can have important effects in society as a whole: for instance, Crispin Hemson suggests that the defense and implementation of professional ethics should be understood as contributions to “nonviolent action”. He emphasises that responsibility is not just an issue about how we behave as individuals towards others, but that it is also a professional issue; it concerns how our professions as a body behave; for these too we should feel accountable. Hence “ethically-minded professionalism” can be conceived as helping promote peace (Hemson in Morgan

The Flat Management of “Crises” on Our Spherical Planet

63

The concept of “deontic activity” implies a form of principled cooperation which is necessary for producing work of quality. Dejours points out that cooperation depends on “a minimum of consideration of others and of conviviality”7; it is based on “a minimal form of communal life” (Dejours & Deranty 2010: 175). It is in effect a recognition of our social interdependence. Work itself should not just be an ordeal that we have to deal with in order to make ends meet; it should instead be valued as an essential aspect of our “learning to live together” (ibid)8.

The Fact of the Earth’s Sphericity and its Impact on Social Organisation …Thus, the principle of occupation is abandoned; no longer is it said: “The land belongs to the one who first seizes it”… But henceforth thanks to the times and to the advent of reason, it will be admitted that the earth is not a prize to be won in a race; in the absence of any other obstacle, there is a place for everyone under the sun. Each one may tie his goat to the hedge, lead his cow to pasture, sow a corner of a field, and bake his bread by his own fireside. —Pierre-Joseph Proudhon What is Property? (2007, 69). ...a right of resort, for all men are entitled to present themselves in the society of others by virtue of their right to communal possession of the earth’s surface. Since the earth is a globe, they cannot disperse over an infinite area, but must necessarily tolerate one another company. And noone originally has any greater right than anyone else to occupy any particular portion of the earth”. —Immanuel Kant “Towards Perpetual Peace” (1994; 106).

As we are maybe increasingly realizing, how to “live together” in a sustainable way requires a taking into account of the limited quantity of natural resources on this planet. Kant and Proudhon are two thinkers for whom the spatial and temporal finitude of this planet plays a crucial role. We need to recognise the fact that the earth’s spherical surface is

 & Webb 2013 forthcoming). 7 Dejours’ passing reference to “consideration” here will gain weight later on in this article when it encounters the theories of Proudhon (and Saint-Simon). 8 Dejours’s valorisation of work as a central feature of our identities is interestingly “unfashionable”: many other contemporary theorists of work advocate a scaling down of its importance, a disinvestment in waged labour as a form of social protest and resistance to dominant economic forces, see for example, Slater 2011, Weeks 2011.

64

Chapter V

characterised by a preponderance of water and limited land mass 9 . For Kant and for Proudhon, these physiogeographical factors necessitate a cosmopolitics, i.e. a political thinking which is given form by, and mediated through, a consideration of the planet as a living and dying whole10. This underlying and contributing condition is seen to necessitate a reconsideration of property rights in the light of a primordially common claim to precious natural resources, including land11. In What is Property? Proudhon introduces the distinction between possession and property, which for him engenders needs, duties but also, as will see, rights: To sustain life man thus needs continually to appropriate all kinds of things. But these things do not exist in the same proportions. Some, such as the light of the stars, the atmosphere of the earth, and the water contained in the seas and oceans exist I such great quantities that men cannot create any perceptible increase or decrease; and each one can appropriate as much as he needs without detracting from the enjoyment of others or causing them in the least harm. Things of this sort are in some way the common property of the human race; the only duty imposed upon each individual in this regard is in no way to interfere with the enjoyment of others…. The land is limited… it should not be appropriated. For no matter how large the quantities of air or light appropriated, no one is damaged thereby because there is always enough. With the soil it is altogether different. Let him who will or can seize the sun’s rays, the passing breeze, or the waves of the sea; I permit it and pardon his bad will; but should any living man dare to transform his right of territorial possession into a right of property, I will declare war upon him and fight him to the death” (Proudhon 2007a: 73 my italics)12.

 9

The Brundtland Report, “Our Common Future”, identifies the two key concepts of sustainable development as being: “needs, in particular the essential needs of the world’s poor, to which overriding priority should be given” and “the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment’s ability to meet present and future needs”. 10 The heliocentricity of our universe is another (astro)physico-geographical fact which has far-reaching constitutive effects on Kant’s philosophical system, greatly influencing his cosmopolitical writings. 11 Proudhon, who identified Kant as “that philosopher who has never been equalled by any other”, writes: “Thus according to Kant, the right to property, that is the legitimacy of occupation, proceeds from the consent of the State, which originally implies common possession” (Proudhon 2011: 648, 235). 12 There is much to be said about Proudhon’s differentiation between the earth’s resources: he assumes that “quantities of air or light” (the “sun’s rays, the passing breeze”) and indeed the waves of the sea” are elements so abundantly and freely available that anyone can be permitted to appropriate them as they wish as no-one

The Flat Management of “Crises” on Our Spherical Planet

65

Proudhon notoriously claimed that “property is theft!” as it takes common land out of circulation probably forever (Proudhon 2007: 13). In place of property, he reinstates the primordial right of possession. This right recognizes from a moral perspective the physico-geographical facts that science demonstrates. One such fact is the spherical shape of the planet, which means that land is limited and must therefore be shared (ibid 18–19). “Possession” also recognizes how indispensable and therefore precious natural resources are and how, in times of increased population levels, redistribution must occur. Possession is a right that is temporary, not fixed (ibid 66). It readjusts its claim to the things on this planet, not according to the claims of distributive justice whose dictum runs “to each according to his capacity; to each capacity according to its results,” but according to the contractual obligations of commutative justice that recognizes that “there is a place for everyone under the sun” (ibid 69)13. Recognising the needs, duties and rights attached to possession necessitates ongoing negotiation across and through time; it implicates one not only in a synchronic coordination with others (including other life forms), but also in a responsible taking into account of diachronicity, of the heritage of the past and the potential demands of the future. For Proudhon, needs, duties and rights form a “series”14. Seriality is what makes the world go round. By way of a definition of a “series”, Proudhon affirms that: [everything] in nature produces itself and develops itself by series. The series is the supreme condition of life, duration, beauty, as well as of science and reason. Every manifestation of substance and force which does not contain within itself its own law, i.e. the mode of seriation which makes it what it is, is anormal, subversive and transitory (Proudhon 2000b:17).

 misses out on their benefits. Proudhon suggests that such an irreducible omnipresence does not apply to land which, once appropriated, is taken out of circulation and is thereby no longer available to all. Given contemporary inequalities relating to the quality of air, light and water, we might now wish to refine Proudhon’s argument: even the smallest appropriation of one of these elements can gravely affect the well-being of others; the way air, light and water is used needs to be controlled as pollution has an effect on the quantity of the resource available for healthy consumption by others. 13 For the difference between “distributive” and “commutative” justice, see Morgan (2010: 294-5). 14 For the importance of “seriality” for Proudhon, which he derives from Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, see Morgan 2010: 293-4, 298; Morgan 2011; Morgan 2013 (forthcoming).

66

Chapter V

A series is both the way things grow and a principle for growth. It is a process; it is “the antithesis of unity; it forms itself through repetition, from positions and diverse combinations of unity” (Proudhon 2000a: 175). The serial dialectic is an “unfolding” (déroulement), “a transformation of terms”, a “perpetual equation”. It is the “art of composing and decomposing our ideas” in a manner which engages with the world reflectively, dialogically and creatively (ibid 189). The need-right-duty” series forcefully emerges in the following passage from What is property?: Duty and right are born of need, which when considered in connection with others is a right, and in connection with ourselves, a duty. We have a need to eat and sleep; we have a right to procure those things which are necessary for rest and nourishment; we have a duty to use them when nature requires it. We have a need to labour in order to live; it is also our right and duty… We have a need to exchange our products for other products; we have a right for this exchange to be one of equivalents, and since we consume before we produce, it would be our duty, if it depended on us, to see to it that our last product should follow our last consumption. (Proudhon 2007a, 213 my italics)

Proudhon considers that the series provides vital support for our needs and rights. It also entails us in duties towards others, those both here and now and in the future. Kant, identified by Proudhon as the central figure for thinking the series, reinforces this notion of serial commitment in his cosmopolitical writings: I am a member of a series of human generations ([ein] Glied der Reihe der Zeugungen), and as such, I am not as good as I ought to be or could be according to the moral requirements of my nature. I base my argument upon my inborn duty of influencing posterity in such a way that it will make constant progress (and I must thus assume that progress is possible – it can be interrupted (unterbrochen) not broken off (abgebrochen) and that this duty must be rightfully handed down from one member of the series to the next [von einem Gliede der Zeugungen zum andern] (Kant 1994: 88)

The series is an ongoing process entailing us in responsibilities towards past, present and future others. It can therefore be temporarily “interrupted” but never “broken off”. The evolutive series poses challenges to dominant regimes which seek to manage body politics with fixed notions of “order”. In an attempt to be equal to the series by respecting and enhancing its fine elaboration, we should ask ourselves far-reaching questions about what alternative ways of

The Flat Management of “Crises” on Our Spherical Planet

67

organizing our societal exchanges are possible. For Proudhon it is mutualism which rises to the occasion of the series. The mutualist contract is defined as: “an act by which two or more individuals agree to organize among themselves, within certain limits and for a given time [dans une mesure et pour un temps déterminé], the industrial force we call exchange” (Proudhon 2007b: 133). This form of order requires a degree of nonhierarchical self-government so as best to foster negotiation (notably of limits of jurisdiction and of duration) and to facilitate cooperation. Proudhon considers that with mutuality as an organising principle the individual will is not “held to ransom” by external sources of sovereign authority as it is in a power-centred, governmental system (ibid 152). Nevertheless we are not free to do what we like as the resonating series reminds us that everything produces is “already struck [frappé] by a mortgage to society” (Proudhon 2007a: 115 translated modified). This primordial indebtedness occurs because we consume well before we begin to produce. When we finally begin producing we are therefore already in debt to the work produced by the collective force that has preceded us, and that continues laterally to support our industrious endeavors. Proudhon succinctly states that “in relation to society the laborer is a debtor who of necessity dies insolvent” (ibid 116). Even the actualization of an individual’s potential derives the nourishment it requires to flourish from the “universal intelligence and general knowledge slowly accumulated” through time: “Whatever may be then the capacity of a man, once this capacity is created it does not belong to him. Like the material fashioned by an industrious hand, it had the power of becoming and society has given it being”. The conclusion to be drawn is therefore that the facts underpinning labor as a social activity fundamentally destroy the right to property (whether material or intellectual) as something we integrally own. Serial organization is naturally self-generated and self-managed. It cannot be solicited by heavy-handedly imposing a governing principle, but instead requires the respectful recognition of its continual incipience. For Proudhon, “creation” is the “putting-into-action of a series” which involves an observation of the processes of nature. Natural differences, oppositions, incompatibilities and conflicts become productive, even beautiful, when a series emerges from them15. The natural order of society does not manifest itself as a hierarchised—i.e. perhaps steady but almost static—unit but as “a succession of contradictions organized in a series”.

 15 Indeed for Proudhon the series not only gives a sustaining force to needs, rights and duties but it is also a source of beauty, happiness and pleasure to the “awakened intelligence” (Proudhon 2000a: 197).

68

Chapter V

Order does not result from a “hierarchy of functions and faculties”, but instead it is constantly recreated out of the reiterated balancing and complex organization of “free forces” (Proudhon 1977: 86). Order requires the respectful employment of “free forces”, not their attempted subjugation by power (pouvoir). Power (pouvoir) is an instrumentalisation of societal forces along formal and institutionalised lines. It functions largely through control. By contrast, the power in “puissance(s)” is able to work with the energetic and creative forces which are both inherent in, and which pass through, individual and group capacities. For Proudhon—and, as we will see, for Dejours—dominant regimes of work produce a bullying “culture” which breeds unhappiness, as well as potentially explosive resentment: To be governed is to be watched over, inspected, spied on, directed, legislated for, regimented, penned in, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, assessed, evaluated, censored, commanded by those who have neither the title, science, nor virtue. … To be governed, is to be, at each step, by every transaction, with every movement, noted, registered, recorded, priced, stamped, eyed up and down, classified, patented, licensed, authorized, annotated, reprimanded, hindered, reformed, put straight, corrected (Proudhon 2007b: 309).

For Proudhon top-down hierarchical governance is ultimately dysfunctional as it leads to disorder. It is therefore inappropriate as an organising principle for society. However, his alternative model of mutualism, which necessitates a demanding amount of collective engagement, needs to be able to guarantee that collective decisions will indeed emerge out of what risks becoming endless debate. Hence mutualism sustains a radically refashioned form of “authority”, one underpinned by a theory and practice of associative “consideration”.

Considering the “arrangement of capacities” If [one] obeys no longer because the king commands but because the king proves [his right to command], it may be said that henceforth [one] will recognize no authority and that [one] has become [one’s] own king. (Proudhon 2007a: 207)

Society depends on the “arrangement of [different] capacities” (Proudhon 2007a: 212). This “arrangement” can produce (em)powering points of specialisation, enlivening networks between different domains, interconnecting nodes of creative functionality. It might depend on

The Flat Management of “Crises” on Our Spherical Planet

69

someone or some people taking more initiative than others, even having more power than others. We might decide that, if this is indeed the case, that they deserve our “consideration”. The term “consideration” was originally Saint-Simon’s which he defines as “the voluntary permission given to those who do some things that you judge to be useful to partially dominate you” (with regard to that particular issue) (Saint-Simon 1966: 42). By granting “consideration” one is not accepting the governance of one’s will by some external sovereign authority. Instead, one is recognizing the immanent legitimacy of power in that particular instance and according to the consideration needed, if it indeed is, to those who administer that particular affair so that they can carry it out for the sustainable good of the collective force. Of course we might equally decide that those in power are not worthy of our “consideration” as they use their own, and indeed our, capacities in ways which have counterproductive, uncreative, exploitative or even lethal effects16. “Living work” would be an “arrangement of capacities” which aims, maybe idealistically, to nurture the seriality of life in its various guises. Christophe Dejours’ work on this subject has received much attention, notable in the light of the wave of suicides at France Telecom17. Dejours identifies cynicism as the dominant social malaise plaguing our relations with others and our sense of self (Dejours 2009a: 10). For Dejours, cynicism is not only a form of atrophying disinvestment leading to moral misery and political despair but it can also propagate real violence. Dejours convincingly writes about the corrosive effect on social bonds cynicism can have and the devastating consequences thereof: The increase in cases of bullying is not due to the intensification of bullying which has always been the praxis of little bosses. They are more the results of the solitude of the person affected. This isolation is brought about the absence of reactions of solidarity when confronted with suffering and injustice. Suicide at the workplace and pathologies of bullying are the most eloquent clinical forms of the disaggregation of conviviality in everyday life. (ibid: 16)

 16

See Proudhon (2007a: 208) for how worthiness should be demonstrated in both public and private life for consideration to take place. 17 Between 2006-8 the managers of France Telecom implemented their “Plan NEXT” which aimed at “restructuring” the organisation so as to secure the departures of 22,000 employees before 2008. The methods used have been severely criticised and for many commentators were the cause of the 48 suicides which occurred over four years as from 2006. In this context see especially Dejours 2009c, 2012.

70

Chapter V

For Dejours it is critically necessary to revalorize “living work” (travail vivant) so that the passionate “suffering” that it brings, the challenging experience of “failure” and the intense encounter with neverending “crises”, which all are part of being human, are not co-opted by regimes which can kill. Dejours’ conclusion is that we can, if we decide to, activate the “deposit” (gisement) contained within “living work” so as to “extract inestimable resources for honoring life” (Dejours 2009b: 217). It is this extension of Dejours’ analysis beyond, what is often too restrictively defined as, “the workplace” into “our common future” which Kant and Proudhon can help us to prefigure18. This “common future” is one which could be, and many say has to be, so different from the present. It encompasses the needs-rights-duties series already at work on this spherical planet.

Works cited Dejours, Christophe 1995: Le facteur humain. Paris : P.U.F. —. 2009a: Travail Vivant. Vol I. « Sexualité et travail ». Paris : Payot. —. 2009b : Travail Vivant. Vol. II « Travail et émancipation ». Paris : Payot. —. 2009c (1998): Souffrances en France : La banalisation de l’injustice sociale. Paris: Editions du Seuil. —. 2012 : La panne : Repenser le travail et changer la vie Paris : Bayard. Dejours, Christophe & Deranty, Jean-Philippe 2010: “The Centrality of Work”. Critical Horizons. Equinox Publishing 167-180. Deranty, Jean-Philippe 2008: “Work and the Precarisation of Existence”. European Journal of Social Theory 11: 443-463. Hemson, Crispin 2013 forthcoming: “Violence at the end of the rainbow”. Peace Review: A Journal of Social Justice. Issue on “Projecting Peace”. Morgan, Diane & Webb, David eds. Taylor & Francis. Kant, Immanuel 1994: Political Writings. Hans Reiss, ed. H.S. Nisbet, trans. Cambridge: C.U.P.

 18

The definition that should be given to work and the place accorded to it, is of course of central interest for utopian studies. Kathi Weeks (2011) has recently advocated a reduction of the importance we give to wage labour in our lives. She also argues powerfully for the “utopian demand” for a basic income, regardless of whether industrious or socially useful activity is being carried or not. She awakens our “utopian imagination” in the name of us “getting a life”, one maybe radically different from that available in society as it is currently organised. Dejours offers a different understanding of work but is not thereby any less critical of the regimes which govern the workplace today.

The Flat Management of “Crises” on Our Spherical Planet

71

Morgan, Diane 2010: “Saint-Simon, Fourier and Proudhon”. Tom Nenon, ed. The History of Continental Philosophy Vol. 1, Durham U.K. Acumen Press: 265-304. —. 2011: “Are you working enthusiastically? Fourier, Proudhon and the Serial Organisation of the Workplace”. Parallax, Issue 59 on “Enthusiasm” ed. F. Ventrella, 36-48. —. 2013 forthcoming: “Globus terraqueus : Cosmopolitan Law and ‘Fluid Geography’ in the Utopian Thinking of Immanuel Kant and JosephPierre Proudhon” for the Amherst Series in Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought ed. A Sarat et al (Stanford: Stanford U.P). Proudhon, Pierre-Joseph 1997: De la capacité politique de classes ouvrières vol I & II. Besançon : Editions du monde libertaire. —. 2000a De la création de l’ordre dans l’humanité Vol 1 Antony: Editions Tops. —. 2000b De la création de l’ordre dans l’humanité Vol II Antony : Editions Tops. —. 2007a: What is Property? Cambridge: C.U.P. —. 2007b: Idée générale de la révolution Anthony : Edition Tops. —. 2011: Property is Theft!: A Pierre-Joseph Proudhon Anthology. Iain McKay ed. Edinburgh/ Oakland Baltimore: AK Press. Saint-Simon, Claude-Henri de: 1966 «Lettre d’un habitant de Genève à ses contemporains». Œuvres Vol I. Paris : Editions Anthropos. Slater, Howard 2011: Anomie/ Bonhomie and other Writings London: Mute Publishing. Weeks, Kathi 2011: The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics and Postwork Imaginaries. Durham & London : Duke University Press.

Web Resources Our_Common_Future-Brundtland_Report_1987.pdf United Nations Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development, accessed 31st December 2012.

PART II DISTURBING UTOPIAS

CHAPTER VI SATIRICAL UTOPIA, UTOPIA SATIRISED: DANNY BOYLE’S THE BEACH BARBARA KLONOWSKA

Abstract This article analyses Danny Boyle’s film The Beach as an instance of a satire on contemporary consumerist utopianism and as a critique of illfounded utopian projects. Systematically installing and then satirically subverting most of the features of the utopian romance, i.e. the spatiotemporal setting, characterisation, plot construction and the presentation of a utopian community, the film exposes the weaknesses and fragility of naive utopianism based on the ideals of hedonism and uninterrupted pleasure. More interestingly still, it also engages in a polemic with the very concept of utopia and its possibility in the contemporary world. The satire employed in the film operates, among others, via the ironic diminishing of the scale of the protagonist and the systematic displacement of most features of the utopian convention which lead to the inevitable criticism of the presented “utopia”. The paper argues that in contrast to the venerable tradition of utopian satire, which criticised the world, this film may be read instead as an instance of a satire whose target is a particular utopia itself, and thus as a criticism of some naive contemporary utopian thinking. • Danny Boyle’s film The Beach, the 2000 adaptation of the novel by Alex Garland, tells the story of the decline and fall of a utopian hippie community set on a tropical Thai island of breathtaking beauty. In keeping with the utopian literary tradition, the film presents an ideal place and an— almost—ideal utopian community which, however, falls apart under the pressure of the external world and the internal dynamics which explode its

76

Chapter VI

seemingly utopian foundations. Showcasing the weaknesses of utopians and their utopian ideals, the film makes bitter comments about Western dreams of South Asian utopias. Drawing on Northrop Frye’s concepts of satire, this paper will analyse Danny Boyle’s film as an example of a satirical reading of certain utopian projects. Systematically installing and then undermining most of the rules of utopian romances, starting with the construction of protagonists, through the representation of utopia, and ending with its collapse, the film criticises Western pop-cultural ideals and exposes their superficial and arrogant foundations. Satire is systematically employed to criticise both a particular utopia, and a kind of utopianism which degenerates into exploitative adventure. And while satirical utopias are a well-recognised sub-genre of this type of literature, utopia satirised is a relatively less frequent, yet no less interesting possibility. Danny Boyle’s film is an adaptation of the novel which won the status of “the cult novel about Gen X disillusionment” (Travers 2000), yet the paper will focus on the film itself treating it as an autonomous narrative rather than a derivative product. While the discussion of a film adaptation in the context of its literary source is a perfectly legitimate and, indeed, the most widespread procedure, I believe that any film works primarily precisely as a film rather than just an adaptation, and thus merits an analysis of its own. As Brian McFarlane observes, there is a varying, but large, segment of the audience to whom an adaptation is of no more consequence or interest as such as any other film. The stress on fidelity to the original undervalues other aspects of the film. ...To say that a film is based on a novel is to draw attention to one—and, for many people, a crucial—element of its intertextuality, but it can never be the only one. (McFarlane 1996: 21)

Thus, following McFarlane’s clue, it seems perfectly possible to discuss The Beach in other contexts than just its being an adaptation, or to focus on comparisons between the novel and the film only. While undoubtedly interesting, such an approach is simultaneously probably the most obvious one, overshadowing other possible interests. This paper suggests looking at Danny Boyle’s film as an example of an autonomous movie which in a subversive way revisits the concept of utopia and its particular fictional realisation, first installing its most representative features to subsequently expose them, with the help of satire, as either impossible or perverted. In so doing, the film narrative on the one hand inscribes itself into the tradition of satirical utopias, on the other, however, it offers a new turn on this venerable trend.

Satirical Utopia, Utopia Satirised: Danny Boyle’s The Beach

77

Utopia on the beach Danny Boyle’s film consistently evokes all the major features of classical literary utopias: the story starts with a young American traveller, a backpacker Richard who arrives in exotic Bangkok looking for something radically different from his life, for new sensations and new horizons. Like a prototypical utopian protagonist, he is primarily a traveller and an adventure-seeker, open-minded and curious. Little is shown about his life before Bangkok: the protagonist is characterised primarily in the context of his utopian adventure and his actions and reactions to it constitute his profile. The only introductory line he offers is “My name is Richard. So what else do you need to know?” (The Beach), thus clearly suggesting that his identity is the one defined by his adventure. By pure coincidence and sheer good luck Richard is given a map to paradise on earth and, accompanied by a French couple, undertakes a complicated journey to the legendary island and the beach. Getting there involves not merely using all the possible means of transport but also swimming across a gulf, crossing a highly guarded dope field and jumping down a waterfall—all modern—day equivalents of the hardships of past travellers and a sort of obstacles and tests that have to be overcome on one’s way to utopia. The journey ends with the arrival at the beach and the ritual initiation to the beach utopian community. Both the characterisation and plot construction, then, show clear affinities to the pattern of utopian narratives; they may be interpreted as modernised or updated versions of previous instances of the genre. As Peter Bradshaw observes in his review of The Beach, the plot of the film is hardly new: “It is an irresistible story, drawing on the perennial fascination with the mythic “island” and the possibility of reinventing society and the individual, a tale whose pedigree runs in various forms from Shakespeare to Defoe, from RM Ballantyne to JG Ballard” (Bradshaw 2000). The film consistently utilises the matrix of the utopian romance on various levels of its fictional narrative. The representation of space in the film abides by the well-established pattern of fictional utopias, too: remote, secluded and forbidden to the outsiders, the beach is a breathtakingly beautiful tropical haven full of food, flowers and perfect climate. Its seclusion simultaneously marks the exclusion: the beach life is a privilege of the chosen few, of special individuals who rejected the confines and pitfalls of standard civilisation. The utopian community is another utopian feature strongly present in the narrative: the film presents it as a basic social unit, an extended family living together and joined by the same values, maintained by communal work, self-sufficient and quite advanced even architecturally: it is shown

78

Chapter VI

as a small village with paved paths, showers, kitchen and all kinds of bamboo-made facilities. The characters who live there are all post-hippie outsiders, people from all parts of the world united by their rejection of civilisation and the desire to live close to nature. The newcomers are introduced and their acceptance by the community is emphasised by the symbolic scene of releasing paper lampions with their names on them: flying away to the sky, the white paper rectangles symbolically mark the end of their past lives, past identities and past values that vanish into thin air and mark their new life in utopia. This is the symbolic turning point of the narrative: up to this point the code of utopian romance was very systematically employed, starting with the construction of the setting, through the protagonists and secondary characters, to the presentation of the utopian community. Focusing on the latter, the second part of the film equally systematically undermines and discredits this previously installed pattern, turning utopia into its own parody.

A consumerist utopia A focus on the life of the beach community, which occupies the middle part of the film, reveals its less utopian and more mundane characteristics. The movie is narrated by the voice-over of Richard himself who, from the perspective of time, comments on his adventure and who quite openly declares his own lack of any deeper or more subtle ideals. Describing the community he became a part of he admits approvingly that the beach was quite simply a “beach resort for those who hate beach resorts” and that fortunately “they cut out all ideology, all the bullshit” (The Beach) making the pursuit of pleasure their main objective. Thus, one of the striking features of the utopian paradise portrayed in the film is its lack of any deeper values or aims, and its purely hedonistic character. Unlike in other utopias, no one seems to think of any perfectability here; the improvement, betterment, social dreaming and the wish to at least come close to the desired model society being, according to Sargent, defining features of utopias (Sargent 1994: 9). The beach utopians spend time mainly on sports, games, smoking dope and playing music; as Peter Travers somewhat ironically observes, their beach is “a stoner’s paradise” (Travers 2000). They do not seem to be either creative or inquisitive: there is only one scene, in which Richard holds a book, yet he does that merely to observe a girl, himself remaining unobserved; otherwise he just plays Game Boy. About the only intellectual activity the utopians engage in is learning new languages (e.g. Serbo-Croatian) to seize the opportunity of their internationalism; yet what they learn is merely a couple of

Satirical Utopia, Utopia Satirised: Danny Boyle’s The Beach

79

nonsensical phrases. They are not particularly religious, either: the only funeral they organise is a mixture of remnants of Christian rituals combined with Bob Marley’s songs. Thus, their spiritual, intellectual or cultural life is reduced to the shadows of their former education, little needed and hardly used in changed circumstances, which promote rather different values. In a striking contrast to classical utopias, this one is devoid of ideals and ideas, pleasant life being the only aim of its existence. The utopians themselves are another element of the narrative which subverts the previously activated utopian convention. In a humorous scene when Richard is going to the mainland on a mission to buy rice, they present him with their shopping lists of items they want him to bring. None of them wants to leave the beach and return to the world, yet their rejection of this world turns out quite selective: significantly, what they want is cosmetics, favourite food, sweets, newspapers, batteries, appliances and condoms, all the little pleasures and comforts of civilisation they seemed to have left behind. Thus, their rejection of the “civilised” world is shown as a mere pose: they cling to its comfortable parts, rejecting the more annoying aspects and replacing them with pleasant ones. The utopian community they belong to is not organised by any conscious counter-ideal offered as a competitive model to the society left behind: rather, it is a combination of the most pleasant aspects of both worlds, the intensification of the pleasures of the old one and the elimination of its problems and nuisance. Even more disturbing is the moral life of the beach utopians or, more precisely, its lack. Leaving behind the world they also leave its values, and “morality” no longer seems to be a recognizable concept. Swapping partners and regular infidelity, lying, boasting and competition seem to be an accepted norm here. Acceptable, too, is cruelty, prophetically signalled in the scene of tooth-ripping. Gregorio, a community member with an aching tooth, is not allowed to go to the mainland to visit the dentist, as this could risk the revealing of the secret community, and for the same reason no doctor can ever visit the island. Thus, the only remedy the character is offered is that the utopians themselves rip his tooth in a violent scene only partially softened by the pain-killing effects of alcohol. The scene, despite its not dangerous character and the happy ending, is surprisingly graphic and drastic, and constitutes a significant prefiguration of the further brutality of the utopians. In the unfolding action this is but the first of sacrifices they are ready to make for the sake of their exclusive pleasure: a more dramatic one comes after the shark attack when one of the members is severely wounded and needs medical treatment. The doctor is not called for; the character of Christo is left to develop gangrene, and is

80

Chapter VI

finally removed from the communal house as his moans disturb the good mood of the remaining healthy utopians. The only character who preserves former moral values and basic human compassion is the Frenchman Étienne who bitterly opposes the group’s cruelty, stays with Christo and takes care of him. Particularly ironic in this context is the suffering character’s name: Christo’s pain and death may be interpreted as a sacrifice for the sake of the community’s supreme value, which is the undisturbed pleasure. The allusion to the passion of Christ and the redemption ironically shows how dwarfed and perverted this particular utopia has become. Simultaneously, the violent turn the beach utopia takes and the group’s torture inflicted on some of its members provide the story with a distinctive dystopian dimension, echoing such literary classics as Lord of the Flies, which similarly presents a group of immature protagonists and the violence unleashed by the group dynamics for the sake of preserving the utopia. Finally, the collapse of the beach utopia is one more element which gives an ironic twist to the otherwise quite clear utopian skeleton of the film. The arrival of new tourists that breaches the agreement with the local dope mafia, their massacre and the ensuing quarrel with the mob all lead to the dissolution of the community. Yet, except for the leader Sal, no one is ready to fight for the community or even try to preserve it; the moment the pleasure turns into risk marks the ending of the utopian project. One of the last scenes of the film shows the beach utopians frantically fleeing from the island on a makeshift raft, although after a dramatic scene they are allowed to stay. None of them, however, wants it any more and they decide to leave. Thus, the willing and instantaneous abandoning of the utopia, the dispersal of the community and their relatively easy readaptation to previous lives all reveal how superficial and unimportant this utopia in fact was. Apparently, for the community members it mattered only as long as it provided pleasure; when it required active defence, it was immediately abandoned and exchanged for other pleasures. Thus, the representation of the beach utopia in the film turns into its own parody: about the only utopian feature preserved there is perhaps the setting. Otherwise, neither the characters, nor their values and desires, nor even the community they create might on closer inspection be treated as utopian. The model of the society presented in the film, despite its seemingly revolutionary rejection of the capitalist world and its seclusion in nature, reflects in fact equally clear consumerist ideals. This is the community whose ultimate ideal is the uninterrupted consumption of pleasure, and they do not refrain from deeds conventionally deemed immoral to preserve it. What they actually leave behind, then, is not the

Satirical Utopia, Utopia Satirised: Danny Boyle’s The Beach

81

technologised, consumerist and shallow Western society abandoned in the pursuit of a new better world. Rather, what is rejected is the inhibition, social norms and obligations that prevent them from gratifying their desires.

Tropical “heart of darkness”? Thus analysed, the story might bring out some similarities between The Beach and the classic English narrative of self-discovery in the jungle, i.e. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Indeed, in its outline, the film does resemble the Conradian tale of the darkness of human nature revealed once the confines of civilisation and its norms are cast off. Similar to Heart of Darkness, Danny Boyle’s film shows how the protagonist gradually crosses numerous seemingly un-crossable barriers and performs increasingly less noble deeds driven by the wish to satisfy his own desires. A nice, intelligent, good-looking, seemingly innocent American young man at the beginning of the film, the protagonist discovers his darker potential: he learns how to lie, betray, cheat, abuse loyalty, plan the killing and finally even single-handedly murder a man. A modern-day variation of Kurtz, he does not refrain from committing any crime to achieve his goal and to get what he wants, be it a girl, fame or safety. What differentiates him from the Conradian hero, however, is his scale: while Kurtz discovers god-like power and obsession, Richard’s dark desires are again quite consumerist: he simply wants things that provide leisure, comfort and popularity. Yet again, then, the allusion made by the film seems to have a parodic and diminishing function; compared to the monstrous figure of Kurtz, Richard’s monstrosity resembles that of a dwarf: ugly, yet hardly demonic. Similarly, the conclusions he draws from his adventure come nowhere near Kurtz’s famous “The horror! The horror!” (Conrad 1994: 100). In the novel, the protagonist has a vision in which the monstrous character of Duffy Duck ominously whispers “The horror”, to which Richard replies innocently and incomprehensively, “What horror?” (Garland 1997: 419). This ironic exchange marks not just the protagonist’s lack of literary erudition; more importantly, it reveals the lack of any more profound moral values, of introspection and the recognition of one’s guilt. In the film, this episode is shown differently: after the massacre in which he was instrumental, Richard quite simply moves on saying that “You learn to adapt” (The Beach), and in the last scene of the film he is shown in an internet cafe reading an e-mail from Françoise with an attached photo taken at the beach in its golden days, smiling at it nostalgically and with no visible remorse. He does not seem to feel guilty or to have revised his life

82

Chapter VI

priorities: the beach seems to be merely a vacation-like episode in his life, finished yet not traumatic. The dream of a beach utopia might have ended in disillusionment and might have demonstrated the impossibility of utopias in contemporary world, yet Richard seems little changed and blissfully unaware of more profound moral implications of his own actions and attitude, of his own “darkness” revealed in Thailand. The comparison of the protagonist to Kurtz, then, and his experience to that of Heart of Darkness, once again ironically reduce the character and reveal his limitations. Heart of Darkness, however, remains an important intertext for The Beach for yet another reason, and not accidentally several scenes refer to it quite straightforwardly. When Richard arrives at the hotel in Bangkok, the guests are watching on TV Coppola’s Apocalypse Now; when the protagonist is reminiscing about Duffy’s death, the film shows a hotel room and the soundtrack imitates the helicopter’s sound, resembling the famous opening scene of the same film. Images of the American invasion on Vietnam appear on TV and are evoked in the scenes on the hill and on the dope field. Visually, then, the clear connection with Apocalypse Now may be treated as a filmic equivalent of the ideological connection with Conrad’s story and interpreted as an ironic counterpoint to the selfimportant and yet pitifully limited story of the protagonist. The director Danny Boyle’s intention, however, seems to be political rather than merely parodic, as he seems to draw an analogy between the American military invasion in the 1960s and the contemporary invasion of the American way of life, its flooding of East Asia in a perhaps less militant yet equally arrogant way, imposing Western values in a seemingly innocent pursuit of exoticism and enlightenment. In the commentary to the film Boyle emphasises the theme of invasion (“Director’s Commentary”), shown in the shots of Bangkok’s noisy and dirty streets, all kinds of utilities aimed to attract shallow tourists, and the demolition of the ancient culture. Visual allusions to Apocalypse Now, and through it to Heart of Darkness, work to emphasise the similar theme of Western imperialism and of the repeated both military and tourist colonisation, in the late 20th century incarnated in backpackers, pleasure-seekers and late “hippies”. The key character in the movie, Duffy Duck who escapes from the beach paradise, calls all the tourists, including the beach utopians and himself, “parasites, viruses, cancers, chunky Charlie” (The Beach)—in other words, invaders who destroy perfection. Shots of Coppola’s film emphasise the process of the on-going colonisation; simultaneously, however, they allude to the story of human darkness and weakness. The allusions to Conrad’s novel, then, though indirect and reinforced

Satirical Utopia, Utopia Satirised: Danny Boyle’s The Beach

83

by the means of its film adaptation, i.e. Apocalypse Now, may perform several functions in The Beach: ideologically, they show the continuity of the Western colonising drive; they also imply self-discovery as one of the movie’s themes, and finally, they simultaneously parody indirectly whatever grand or noble interpretations the latter might inspire.

Utopia satirised Parody and satire, then, seem to be the guiding principles of The Beach: the film systematically installs and then subverts several features of the utopian convention, and shows them in a satirical light. Satire, as Northrop Frye defines it, is “a parody of romance: the application of romantic mythical forms to a more realistic content that fits them in unexpected ways” (Frye 2000: 223). The romantic adventures of the hero, his quest and finding of utopia, are satirised in Boyle’s film by applying them to much less elevated and noble characters, circumstances and ideals. Satire is a displaced romance, and the principle of the displacement is the change of scale: idealised elements become mundane, grand or noble causes—down to earth, great ambitions and deeds—low and egoistic, seriousness is replaced with ridicule. Satire diminishes the romance, exposing its inflated and hence absurd ambitions. The Beach employs similar devices with respect to the convention of the utopian romance it has activated and installed in its first part. It consistently displaces the protagonists showing them, instead of heroes, as egoists with only basic instincts; it displaces ideals, substituting consumerism, immaturity and lack of responsibility for courage and perseverance; it displaces the model community showing ruthless hedonists rather than idealists. The systematic diminishing of the scale of all these elements and the consistent displacement of grand romantic models leads to the satirical effect of the film: the utopia presented in it becomes a parody of utopian projects, and the film narrative—a satire on utopian narratives. Lyman Tower Sargent enumerates utopian satire as one of the possible terms used in connection with utopia. He defines it as “a non-existent society... located in time and space that the author intended a contemporaneous reader to view as a criticism of that contemporary society” (Sargent 1994: 9), adding that it “describes those works where satire overwhelms the other elements and in which there is no simple good/bad distinction” (Sargent 1994: 8). Danny Boyle’s The Beach comes close to these definitions, yet not quite. One breach of the convention is that the criticism of the film is directed both at the contemporary society and the utopian community alike, and that precisely the latter is exposed as

84

Chapter VI

a sham. Therefore, it is not a utopia which acts as a mirror for the contemporary world that might critically compare itself with it and draw unfavourable conclusions; rather, the “utopia” is a reflection of this world, and thus equally imperfect. As a result, the film does not juxtapose utopias and the world: it shows its utopia as a part of the world and criticises both of them, pointing perhaps to the general impossibility of utopias in a highly consumerist contemporary world. Another difference would be the good/bad distinction which in this film does seem to be relatively clearly suggested. Northrop Frye draws attention to the fact that as an attitude, satire strongly emphasises morality (Frye 2000: 310). And it seems that the film indeed reveals quite openly its ethical sympathies, especially in the voice-over parts and in the contrast between the characters of Richard and Étienne, clearly favouring the latter and showing him as the only remnant of such values as decency, compassion and humanity. Contrasted with hedonistic Richard, the character of Étienne becomes the locus of the old-world morality, and his critical attitude to the a-morality of utopians seems to be a port-parole of the film as such and a vehicle of its criticism. Likewise, the frantic collapse of the community shows not only its weakness but criticises its very foundations as shallow and amoral in the first place. The Beach seems to be critical of the particular hedonistic utopia it presents, showing it as morally doubtful and thus hardly utopian. Presenting it as a product of the contemporary world, only superficially differing from it, it indirectly draws attention to the consumerist drive of the Western world which produces consumerist “utopias”. Satire, then, serves as the vehicle to point out weaknesses of both the world and the utopia. Boyle’s use of satire in The Beach is interesting as it still refers to some clearly defined ethos, a set of values broadly identical with humanism. In this gesture it comes back to the venerable tradition within satire, in contrast to its modern-day incarnations. In his article on contemporary satirical writing Juan Francisco Elices Agudo observes that what “characterise[s] twentieth-century satire [is] specifically its lack of moralising objectives, which is basically what differentiates current satire from that of the seventeenth of eighteenth centuries” (Elices Agudo 2002: 85). While perhaps not exactly moralising, The Beach is definitely a film with a clear moral underpinning and it uses satire as an instrument to draw attention to the issues which it finds disturbing. Thus, the ill-founded utopian projects produced by the contemporary consumerist society become one of the targets of its satirical edge. Interpreted in the light of utopian theory and practice, it might be therefore read as an interesting

Satirical Utopia, Utopia Satirised: Danny Boyle’s The Beach

85

case of a satire on utopia and contemporary utopianism, rather than as an instance of a utopia which is a satire on the world.

Works cited Boyle, Danny 2000: The Beach. Los Angeles: Twentieth Century Fox. Bradshaw, Peter 2000: “The Beach.” Rev. of The Beach, by Danny Boyle. Guardian 11 Feb