Читать книгу Absent Rebels: Criticism and Network Power in 21st Century Dystopian Fiction - Annika Gonnermann - Страница 7

If you are not already a little interested and open-minded with regard to social and political questions, and a little exercised in self-examination, you will find neither interest nor pleasure here. (H.G. Wells, A Modern Utopia, A Note to the Reader 8)

In January 2017, George Orwell’s nearly 70-year-old classic Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) rose once again to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list (cf. Alter; also Kakutani). While this fact in itself is not surprising, since Orwell’s master piece “must be among the most widely read books in the history of the world“ (Gleason and Nussbaum 1) and has always had a stable readership, the timing is startling. Prompted by statements about ‘alternative facts’ uttered by Kellyanne Conway, spokeswoman to the 45^th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump, dystopia rose back into the spotlight, having been rediscovered by authors, filmmakers, and the general public apparently as a reading aid to decipher and make sense of our current socio-cultural reality.1 Other dystopias were also ‘rediscovered’ as analytical tool for a social diagnosis of our time. The 2017 series adaption of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), for instance, immediately received positive critical attention (including an Emmy win) for its blunt and terrifying description of religious devotion gone astray, with its visuals (red gown and supersize white bonnet) immediately adopted by the #Metoo movement and the defenders of abortion rights for women in both the United States and abroad. Fittingly, in the very same year, novels by Orwell, Atwood, and Erik Larson were distributed free of charge by an anonymous philanthropist as a means of education and “fight[ing] back” (Kean). While dystopia has always enjoyed a canonical place among Western literature and a loyal reader base, it is now firmly back on the agenda for literature, the media, and the public.

According to Darko Suvin’s ‘radically less perfect principle,’ dystopia is defined as

the construction of a particular community where sociopolitical institutions, norms, and individual relationships between people are organized according to a radically less perfect principle than in the author’s community; this construction is based on estrangement arising out of an alternative historical hypothesis. (reformulated based on “Theses” 188f., emphasis in the original)

These literary and radically less perfect communities always appear at the “great whirlpool periods of history“ (Suvin, Metamorphoses 7)2 and react to “explicit or immanent socio-political defects” of the present (cf. Zeißler 9). Keith M. Booker agrees, stating that “the modern turn to dystopian fiction is largely attributable to perceived inadequacies in existing social and political systems” (Impulse 20). Dystopia’s function, then, can be adequately described as formulating a warning “that if certain social trends go unchecked, the future will exhibit certain specific undesirable qualities” (Zaki 244; cf. also Tuzinski 88). It offers a “diagnosis, a warning, a call to understanding and action, and – most importantly – a mapping of possible alternatives” (Suvin, Metamorphoses 12).

As has been argued, classical dystopian fiction has recently attracted more interest from readers and scholars alike, as “[i]n this fake news, post-truth era, books like #TheHandmaidsTale, 1984 [sic!]3 and Brave New World have been our guiding lights” as @PenguinUKBooks tweeted (my emphasis). Yet although Orwell’s, Huxley’s, and Zamyatin’s satires on the current political tendencies of their times offer timeless lessons about totalitarianism, human rights, and the vindication thereof, it seems startling that an 21^st century audience should try to make sense of their 21^st century reality with the help of novels written over half a century ago, i.e. which are the “product[s] of the terrors of the twentieth century” (Moylan, Scraps xi). Since dystopias are always children of their time, their historical socio-political background must be considered. The dystopian novels written in the 1940s and 50s deal with fears and anxieties characteristic of post-war societies, influenced by the experience of state totalitarianism: Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, for example, “provid[es] some of the best known images and ideas of post-World War II Western culture” (Booker and Thomas 193; cf. also Atchison and Shames 36). Likewise, We by Yevgeny Zamyatin (1920) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) can be read as historic documents produced by a specific zeitgeist: while the former is “very much about certain ominous trends that Zamyatin sensed in the postrevolutionary society of Soviet Russia” (Booker, Impulse 19), the latter is “directed at excesses that were already brewing in Huxley’s contemporary world” (ibid.). They warn and educate their contemporaries about what they have identified as problematic. Classical dystopian fiction is defined by its focus on state totalitarianism and the dangers associated with that: surveillance, oppression, torture, and human rights violations.

Therefore, the celebration of classical dystopian fiction as a subversive and revolutionary genre is startling, since these classical texts have long lost the ability to really shock anyone in the 21^st century (despite the renewed interest in Big Brother et al.). As Guardian journalist Damien Walter observes

Dystopian visions used to present dire warnings of futures to come, now they seem more like pale reflections of reality. Today dystopia is just another category of light entertainment, a marketing niche for ebooks which even has its own channel on Netflix. Is this because we no longer have anything to fear? Or have our dystopian nightmares simply become reality? (“Reality TV”)

Concluding with the horrifying observation that “there are thousands of content consumers quite happy with Big Brother,” Walter’s article hits a nerve. People apparently love Big Brother. Moreover, they have turned Orwell’s sinister symbol of constant surveillance and oppression into a source of entertainment. Named after Orwell’s omnipresent dictator, the TV series Big Brother caused serious international outrage upon its first broadcast in the late 1990s (cf. Meier; cf. also Kammerer 104). Today, the series has a stable place in the repertoire of light TV entertainment and airs worldwide. Usually featuring a group of (celebrity) participants locked into a house for a certain amount of time, the series and the eponymous Big Brother narrator-figure invite audiences to 24/7 access into the life of the candidates (cf. R.J. Thompson and S. Allen), thus perverting the original intention of Nineteen Eighty-Four. This paradoxical interpretation of Orwell’s classic (celebrated base for resistance and, simultaneously, inspiration for the commercial exploitation of the audience’s voyeuristic potential) destabilizes the entire genre’s claim to represent an innovative source of critique about contemporary society.

Our familiarity with Big Brother, and the resulting weakening of the warning effect arise from the wearing out of genre materials due to the many uniform dystopias written and read ever since the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, We, and Brave New World, which have served as templates and models other writers structured their radically less perfect societies on. Concomitantly, Christopher Ferns criticises the dystopian genre for its repetitiveness (cf. 130), while Ursula Heise laments the loss of topicality since these “visions of the future serve mostly to reconfirm well-established views of the present” (“Matter”). The result is that the genre has become standardised and that current bestsellers are “far from unsettling their readers” (ibid.). As Joanna Russ explains,

when writers work in the same genre, i.e. use the same big scenes or ‘gimmicks’ or ‘elements’ or ‘ideas’ or ‘worlds’ (similar locales and kinds of plots lead to similar high points), they are using the same fantasy. Once used in art, once brought to light as it were, the effect of the fantasy begins to wane, and the scene embodying it begins to wear out. (“Wearing” 47)

One could therefore get the impression that dystopian fiction has neglected one of the “commonplaces of the history of art” (ibid.), namely “that art changes when society changes” (ibid.). Readers, especially those interested in the dialogue between literature and culture expect the former to tackle and illuminate pressing social and political issues. Not only since the so-called ethical turn in the 1990s, literature should again “engage[…] earnestly with real-world problems” (cf. Gibbons). Yet, the literary production of dystopias seems to have declined that wish: the great majority of works – besides Cyberpunk4 and the Critical Eutopia/Dystopia as a progressive version of classical dystopian fiction – has missed the opportunity to adapt to the reality of the 21^st century. As a consequence of our familiarity with popular tropes of science fiction, “these visions of the ‘new world’ no longer shock us, they do not strike our sensibilities” (Galtseva and Rodnyanskaya 294).5 By now, we have grown accustomed to Big Brother’s observing gaze – or as Jessica Winter pointedly maintains, “we are become Big Brother” (“Happens”).

Yet it is not only illogical to celebrate classical dystopian fiction as a “fruitful, constructive form of resistance” as it is currently done by booksellers, readers, and critics alike (cf. Kean) despite the apparent uniformity of the genre, but also dangerous. Literary scholars like Tom Moylan criticise, for instance, classical dystopian writing for its oversimplification of the current socio-economic and political reality:

The critical logic of the classical dystopia is […] a simplifying one. It doesn’t matter that an economic regime drives the society; it doesn’t matter that a cultural regime of interpellation shapes and directs the people; for social evil to be named, and resisted, is nothing but the modern state in and of itself. Even as late as Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, the state-run fire company that burns books and executes readers is foregrounded, not the processes of the reification and commodification that characterize the controlled society of Bradbury’s America. (“Moment” 136)

Moylan thus accuses dystopian fiction of having long ignored relevant processes of social, economic, and political dimensions, while having barked up the wrong ‘state’ tree. For him, criticism of state has been misguided for it ignores the basic living conditions in the West and around the globe. Similarly, Christine Lehnen comments on the changed reality in her survey Defining Dystopia (2015) and claims that at least in the West, “[t]otalitarian regimes have become so rare that it is surprising to find them so often in the new ‘young adult dystopian literature,’ particularly because it is read […] by young people who were born after 1990 and have never had any experience let alone contact […] with totalitarian governments” (131). Lehnen is right to identify the obvious paradox here: although totalitarian governments have largely disappeared from the socio-cultural reality of Western readers, they are still to be found at the centre of Western dystopian writing.6 In this respect, Zygmunt Bauman diagnoses the shortcomings of this type of dystopian fiction as follows:

We are naturally inclined to spy out in the contemporary arrangements of power a new and improved rendition of old and basically unchanged panoptical techniques. We tend to overlook the fact that the majority of the population has no longer either the need or the chance to be dragged through the drilling fields of yore. (Globalization 49)

Having identified the wrong point of attack, i.e. dystopia’s continued focus on state structures and totalitarianism, Bauman continues to accuse dystopia of complicity.7 He insists that not posing the right questions, i.e. not addressing the most urgent issues, results in an escapist attitude legitimising the status quo: “not asking certain questions is pregnant with more dangers than failing to answer the questions already on the official agenda, [since] asking the wrong kind of questions all too often helps to avert eyes from the truly important issues” (ibid. 5; cf. also Schmeink, Biopunk 67). In this respect, the classical dystopian genre is doing its audience a great disservice, since a great deal of dystopian fiction can be accused of “not asking certain questions.” Young adult dystopias like Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games (2008) are enormously successful yet ignore the fact that the basis for dystopian fiction has changed. Big Brother and his alternative facts are no longer a source of fear or warning.8 On the contrary: “[w]e have met Big Brother, and he is us” (Grossman). This leads Ulf Abraham to conclude that “these works of fiction seem rather old-fashioned and out-of-date. One could get the impression that dystopia – in itself the predecessor of historical [e]utopia – is already outdated” (125, own translation; cf. also Haufschild and Hanenberger 51).

The prevailing mood in both Western academic and public discourse seems to suggest that the continued interest of classical dystopian fiction – with its focus on political entities – is anachronistic for totalitarianism has disappeared from the socio-cultural reality of most Western readers. In fact, neoliberalism and globalisation have been gnawing away at the power and influence of Western nation states for decades.9 Many sociologists, political scientists, and journalists have analysed the descent of the nation-state, tracing its loss of influence and attributing the decline of nation states to an ever more powerful economic system fashioned according to the imperatives originated within neoliberal capitalism.10 For David Held (“Regulating Globalization,” 2000), the reconfiguration of national and international politics has started with the emergence of supranational structures and globalisation (cf. 396). He diagnoses that the “fate of peoples are determined increasingly by complex processes that stretch across […] borders” (ibid. 395). Reluctant to speak of the decline of nation states, Held asserts that while globalisation transforms the nature of national power, states remain powerful players of international standing.

King and Kendall offer a moderate opinion on this topic, stating that although the modern Western state has lost its power monopoly, it will also maintain its relevance:

Globalization, for example, with the growth of worldwide financial integration in finance, currency, capital and other markets, and the virtually instantaneous movement of huge private funds between territories, threatens domestic and popular democratic power. Multilateral and international governance regimes, and the rise of social, cultural and legal issues around human rights and ecology especially, also raise questions about, if not actually the demise of the nation state, then certainly the severe attenuation of its authority. (239)

Yet, others disagree: Ulrich Seeber argues that “economic globalization makes national structures increasingly superfluous” (“Nation” 56), while Anderson and Cavanagh embellish their opinion on the perceived decline of the nation state with impressive examples: “General Motors is now bigger than Denmark; DaimlerChrysler is bigger than Poland; Royal Dutch/Shell is bigger than Venezuela; IBM is bigger than Singapore; and Sony is bigger than Pakistan” (3), concluding that “[t]he 1999 sales of each of the top five corporations (General Motors, Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, Ford Motor, and DaimlerChrysler) are bigger than the GDP’s of 182 countries” (ibid.). The picture Anderson and Cavanagh paint is likely to be even more drastic today. After all, the world of 1999 had not yet seen the rise of global giants like Facebook, Google, and Co., today’s most prominent global and financial players, continuing to replace the power of states (cf. Grosser).11 To summarise, independent of political opinion or perspective, scholars agree that nation states “weakened by networks of money, power and information” (Ben-Refa’el and Sternberg 13) inevitably give way to global movements beyond their influence – the results being that “the life conditions of most citizens are deteriorating” (ibid.).12 As Darko Suvin diagnoses, “[w]e have gone through – the globe is still going through – a change of Leviathans that rule and subsume us” (“Reflections” 52). These new Leviathans (a term Suvin borrows from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan from 1651) are a “corporate capital substitute” (ibid. 58), global actors in a network of financial and economic ties, which have challenged the state’s monopoly of power – in real life and in dystopian literature.

This analysis aims to identify precisely this shift, from state totalitarianism to free market capitalism, in the focus and the agenda of the dystopian genre. It concentrates on five dystopian texts in particular which have reacted to Suvin’s new Leviathans, put them at the hearts of their dystopian realities, and thus have attempted to update the dystopian genre accordingly. These contemporary texts (all published after the year 2000) are especially progressive and subversive and push the boundaries established by classical dystopian fiction: Dave Eggers’ The Circle (2013), Margaret Atwood’s The Heart Goes Last (2015), M.T. Anderson’s Feed (2002), David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas (2004), and Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005).13 Next to the fact that all of these novels do no longer feature a traditional state and its representatives as antagonist but concentrate on free market capitalism as the source and origin of the dystopian world, they also surprise readers with the violation of further genre hallmarks. Noteworthy is the absence of rebels in all these novels, meaning that these texts omit the traditional subplot of resistance: rebellion against a dystopian system is either non-existent or side-lined to the margins of the narrative and thus into ineffectiveness. Furthermore, despite their differences in terms of genre, target audience, style and length, these five novels can be placed on a continuum which nicely shows the progress which has been made within the genre and how far dystopian fiction has deviated from the traditional core as exemplified by Nineteen Eighty-Four et al. To do so, the analysis will start with the novel closest to the typical dystopian schema (Eggers’ The Circle) and conclude with the novel which has trodden almost entirely new paths (Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go).

The initial impetus that has prompted this project was to offer an analysis of the effects the absence of rebels has on these narratives; to investigate the text-internal and cultural potential the changes listed above have on dystopian fiction; and to explore the complex relationship between the genre of dystopia and the formulation of criticism and alternatives. I will argue that by delving into the absence of rebels and dissidents, and thus by shrinking away from applying a simplistic black and white pattern of good and bad, these texts force readers to leave the well-trodden (analytical) paths of classical dystopian fiction and thereby try to rejuvenate the genre. Furthermore, written in the context of the latent Fukuyamaist notion of the ‘End of History’ and Mark Fisher’s ‘capitalist realism,’ they do not offer ready-made intradiegetic alternative worlds and solutions (as classical dystopian fiction does), but urge readers to explore the possible alternatives to the dystopian world presented to them on their own. Moreover, they map out the contradictions of contemporary neoliberal capitalism and thereby voice a critique based on ecological and ethical implications, highlighting the system’s destructive consequences for the planet and its human population. Ultimately, they modify and change the paradigms of the genre on a content level to be a more accurate reflection of the 21^st century than the reflections of Orwell or Huxley – despite their timeless character – could ever be.

Very few researchers have yet paid attention to this new kind of dystopian fiction. The focus of critical research still lies on the reproduction of knowledge about classical dystopian fiction rather than examining the radical modifications of the genre. In general, most researchers limit their corpora of research to works of fiction produced before the year 2000. In his comprehensive work Die anti-utopische Tradition (2001). Stephan Meyer recapitulates the motif of the rebel and its defining quality for dystopian fiction by looking at novels published before the 1950s, thereby ignoring a vast proportion of the canon. Equally extensive but equally limited (in this case, to fiction written before 1980) is M. Keith Booker’s survey Dystopian Literature (1994). Moreover, Booker states that “[v]irtually any literary work that contains an element of social or political criticism” (3) can be classified as dystopian, including works like James Joyce’s Dubliners (1914). His anthology thus deteriorates into a rather oversimplified account of the genre, lacking a clearly defined scholarly access to dystopian fiction. Also restricted to the classics and descriptive rather than analytical is Julia Hachtel’s Die Entwicklung des Genres Antiutopie (2007), which pays attention to Huxley’s Brave New World and Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, among others. While David Stock (Modern Dystopian Fiction and Political Thought, 2019) focuses on the intriguing history of dystopia and critique, he reduces his approach to books written half a century ago, with Katharine Burdekin’s (alias Murray Burdekin’s) Swastika Night (1940) as his most recent object of study. David Lorenzo uses dystopian classics to reflect critically on political beliefs and ways of life in his Cities at the End of the World (2014), yet equally limits his area of research to classical dystopian fiction. While the encyclopaedic surveys by Mark Bould (The Routledge Companion to Science Fiction, 2010), Gregory Claeys (The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, 2010), M. Keith Booker and Anne-Marie Thomas (The Science Fiction Handbook, 2009) or Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn (The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction, 2003) offer a thorough introduction to the classics of the genre, they focus on the canon, providing an introductory basis for those starting out in the field of research on utopian fiction.

Eckart Voigts-Virchow and Alessandra Boller are one step ahead. They include contemporary dystopian fiction in their study Dystopia, Science Fiction, Post-Apocalypse – Classics – New Tendencies – Model Interpretations (2015) such as Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go or Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games. However, they blur the generic definitions of post-apocalyptic fiction and dystopia too much when they refer to Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic nightmare The Road (2006) as ‘post-apocalyptic dystopia.’ The same is true for Worlds Gone Awry. Essays on Dystopian Fiction (2018) edited by Han, Triplett, and Anthony. While both Alessandra Boller in Rethinking ‘the Human’ in Dystopian Times (2018) and Elena Zeißler in Dunkle Welten (2008) have correctly identified the need for a new classification of dystopian fiction by advocating a focus on newer works of dystopian fiction such as Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam trilogy (2003–2013) or even post-colonial dystopias such as Albert Wendt’s Black Rainbow (1992), the latter’s structuralist approach remains unconvincing. Zeißler’s classification system differentiates, for instance, between feminist and postmodern dystopias, thereby ignoring the fact that these two categories might be applied at the same time. Christine Lehnen (Defining Dystopia, 2015) also attempts to redefine the genre. Having identified the generic boundaries as being too narrow and arguing for a re-negotiation of the genre characteristics, she opts to build her reader-oriented classification on the premise whether the didactic appeal is fully recognized by the audience – a rather broad and uncritical classification since almost any literature can be described as ‘offering a warning’ ever since Horaz defined its general function as ‘prodesse et delectare.’

Enlightening, however, is the collection of essays published by Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan in Dark Horizons (2003). They critically engage with new developments of the genre outside the paradigm of state criticism. Tom Moylan is one of the first scholars to describe a paradigmatic change in dystopian fiction. His essay “State, Agency, and Dystopia in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Antarctica and Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Telling” (2003) should serve as a rudimentary basis for the current project; it describes the transition from a state-focused critique to criticism focused on neoliberal capitalism, globalisation, and network-thinking, which shape the society at the beginning of the 21^st century – tendencies progressive dystopian fiction undoubtedly reacts to. Also, Moyan’s work on the ‘critical utopia’ has undoubtedly influenced the ideas presented in this book.

While research usually focuses purely on the content of dystopian writing, the meta-analysis of forms of critique has thus far largely escaped scholarly attention. This is the reason why the following thesis has a second aim (besides offering an explanation for the absent rebels and tracing the change from state totalitarianism to free market capitalism dystopia): it will analyse the prevailing modes of formulating critique within dystopian fiction in general. The basis for this differentiation is to be found in Rahel Jaeggi’s Kritik von Lebensformen (2014; Critique of Forms of Life, trans. 2018), a philosophical enquiry into what constitutes ‘the good life.’ Her terminology offers the subtle nuances necessary for categorising the process of voicing critique and is thus perfectly suited for a detailed look at how dystopian fiction approaches the socio-cultural reality of the 21^st century. Moreover, tracing the use of Jaeggi’s ‘external criticism’ and ‘immanent criticism’ in classical dystopian fiction and contemporary dystopian fiction respectively, this analysis will draw attention to a genealogical change in the formulation of critique within the dystopian canon. Connecting Jaeggi’s ‘immanent criticism’ and David Grewal’s ‘network power’ (Network Power, 2008), this analysis will examine the nature of power – a hallmark of dystopian writing – within free market capitalism. I will treat the dialectics between perceived freedom and actual freedom (‘voluntariness’) as a yardstick for deciphering oppression within seemingly free neoliberal societies, and offer an explanation for how and where coercion originates in systems that lack a Machiavellian centre of power.

After the introduction of both the etymology and history of dystopian fiction in “The Dystopian Genre,” the chapter “Context, Criticism, and Rahel Jaeggi’s Critique of Forms of Life (2014)” will link classical dystopian fiction with ‘external criticism’ and demonstrate how this model is well suited to criticise structures like totalitarianism. In a second step, the analysis will juxtapose the tradition of classical dystopian writing to the texts produced at the beginning of the 21^st century, ending with the observation that ‘external criticism’ is replaced by ‘immanent criticism’ within certain novels. By elaborating on the observation that the socio-cultural reality of the 21^st century has changed dramatically (key developments include globalisation, neoliberal capitalism, and the resulting decline of the nation state), this analysis shall demonstrate how the construction and literary focus of selected contemporary dystopias published since the year 2000 has changed accordingly. Having set the necessary analytical parameters, the project will continue with the theoretical section which begins with the analysis of the five dystopian novels in question. By analysing the dystopian novels by Dave Eggers, Margaret Atwood, M.T. Anderson, David Mitchell, and Kazuo Ishiguro, this book aims to provide a critical approach to recent dystopian fiction that transcends its traditional genre boundaries. Afterwards, this study will conclude with a re-contextualisation of contemporary dystopian fiction within the wider framework of the utopian genre, introducing the terminology of ‘blueprint dystopias’ versus ‘iconoclastic dystopias,’ before discussing the eutopian potential within the dystopias defined by their absent rebels.