Sarah Coronado

A1: Utopia as Literature Through Bakhtin’s Theories of the Novel

          In the initial response to her novel, The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin recalls the instant assumption that the text was intended merely to propagate an idea: “I wasn’t surprised that it was treated as a treatise, but I wondered if the people who read it as a treatise ever wondered why I had written it as a novel” (Le Guin 306). Listening to the majority of our course discussions this semester we might have been well advised to ask ourselves this same question. Kathryn Vitek states a similar argument in her 2009 Final: “If a writer were interested strictly in explaining a social theory, he could publish in an academic journal or contribute to any number of textbooks covering the multitude of topics touched on in utopian novels.” They write novels, though. Upon this perspective, I think we could almost redefine course objective 2c that currently asks, “What tensions between the author’s description of a social theory and the reader’s demand for a story” to, “What tensions between the text’s description of a social theory and the reader’s and author’s demand for a story.” In utopian literature it just seems to be an inevitable slide down a slippery slope once we start pinpointing and exploiting the social theories present in the texts. An argument for or against this particular claim is not the purpose here, however. Instead, I will attempt to reestablish the literary value of utopian literature without disregarding the social content by framing the analysis within Bakhtin’s Theories of the Novel from The Dialogic Imagination.

          In our course, we touched on Bakhtin’s idea of the chronotope of meeting through Dr. White’s online notes, but did not dive much into his other essays dealing with the genre of the novel and dialogue. Some of the points most pertinent to this essay will herein be briefly explained with all possible care to carve delicately and not butcher. Bakhtin begins by explaining, “the novel is the sole genre that continues to develop, that is as yet uncompleted” (3). This claim is based on the fact that reality—the here and now—is “unfinished, still-evolving,” and because novels attempt to reconstruct reality as accurately as possible, the novel then, must share this indeterminacy.  This creates “a zone of contact with the present in all its [semantic] openendedness” (7). Semantic openendedness allows for a “new cultural and creative consciousness” to arise that “lives in an actively polyglot world … the period of national languages, coexisting but closed and deaf to each other, comes to an end” (12). In a simplistic sense, we can understand “national languages” to be a kind of dialect. In this new zone of openendedness, characters, narrators, authors speak in dialects such as the scholar, professional, artist, factory worker, etc. Within the novel they will meet, acknowledge, engage, and possibly conflict with each other. In short, and in Bakhtin’s words, they will “interilluminate” and “interanimate” each other. What we must observe in these numerous dialects is that each of them (as a reflection of what is real) is “ideologically saturated” with their society’s worldviews. When the dialects interanimate they “objectify precisely that side of one’s own (and of the other’s) language that pertains to its world view, its inner form, the axiologically accentuated system inherent in it” (62). Something incredibly realistic happens in even the simplest of dialogues: different languages and ideologies meet.

          When Bakhtin developed his theory of the novel, he did not do so attempting to justify utopian literature, but oh! how effortless and satisfying it is to apply it to our studies! Utopian literature offers miles of concrete slab over which we may test-drive a training-wheeled version of Bakhtin’s theory.  In class we were encouraged to “get over routine dismissals of utopias” and to rather “regard utopias as literary and historical experiments essential to Western Civilization and education” (Objective 3). What a literary experiment utopias appear now in light of Bakhtin’s theory! Not only does it embody his theory, it magnifies, dramatizes it in both form (abundant dialogue) and content (the outsider embracing a new society). Here we will observe this experimentation within Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward 2000-1887, Ernest Callenbach’s Ecotopia, and Dr. King’s Dream Speech in order to uncover how the inter-animation of literary dialogue mirrors the social collisions found in the subject matter of the texts.

          The bulk of the text in Looking Backward consists of dialogue between Julian West and Dr. Leete. Being a stowaway of sorts, Julian finds himself in a new society and much of his interaction with it is only through conversations with Dr. Leete who speaks the dialect of a future Bostonian. Through this dialogue numerous discrepancies are brought forth between the two languages and worlds, one of them being the semantic difference in the word “army.” To Julian “army” signifies a military force whose job is “to practice the manual of arms, to march and stand guard” (Bellamy 7.1). Dr. Leete, on the other hand, refers to an industrial “army” of workers organized so that “a man's natural endowments, mental and physical, determine what he can work at most profitably to the nation and most satisfactorily to himself” (7.4). The semantic difference found in this word is a reflection of the societies of each man. In Julian’s world, there was a necessity for a militant force, in Dr. Leete’s, an industrial one. Therefore, engaging in dialogue leads them to expose their ideological differences. Additionally, many of the words from 1887 have been “forgotten” in 2000, “charity,” “menial,” “rich,” “poor.” In another instance the word “dollars” remains but is essentially meaningless, while the concept behind the word “crime” has been replaced with “atavism.” This modification in language (and worldview) is uncovered only through this dialogue within the novel and enables the inter-animation of the characters and the subject matter.

           However, there need not be many inter-animated characters to utilize Bakhtin’s theories of the novel and dialogue. It does not exempt single speakers or narrators. His term “hybrid construction” describes a single narrator or character speaking a mixture of “two utterances, two speech manners, two styles, two ‘languages,’ two semantic and axiological belief systems” (Bakhtin 304). In many instances one language will be used to usurp or mock the other (used often to create instances of parody) or in some cases to illuminate a conflict between the two. An instance of hybrid construction and dialect mockery is evident in Ecotopia in the narrator’s professional and personal languages. The professional dialect was one saturated with a national pride (in this case, American) that exhibits skepticism for anything foreign. While on his journey to Ecotopia, Weston writes his first column for his newspaper and his cultural biases shine ever so subtly through his language. In explaining his editorial assignment in the column it is made very clear that he is an American journalist writing to an American audience,

If its [Ecotopia’s] social experimentation turns out to be absurd and irresponsible, it will then no longer tempt impressionable young Americans. If its strange customs indeed prove as barbaric as rumors suggest, Ecotopia will have to pay the cost in outraged world opinion. If Ecotopian claims are false, American policy-makers can profit from knowledge of that fact (Callenbach 4).

Within this narration, we can identify two nationalistic undertones. First, nothing positive is expected of the new country. Rather, the narrator uses the words “absurd,” “irresponsible,” “barbaric,” and “false” in approaching the investigation. Secondly, in Ecotopia’s expected failures we see the vindication of his nation’s youth, opinion, and policy.  Weston’s professional dialect is entering into the narration clearly saddled with a powerful cultural bias.

The text also supplies an alternative personal dialect for Weston; visually distinguished by italics throughout the text. Though clearly, the professional dialect was not adequately “objective,” the personal dialect is much more emotional, honest, raw, and intensely subjected to the speaker’s personal motivations (sex, sex, sex!) rather than that of a nation’s. As the story progresses and Weston’s attitudes change (remember that as a novel, it is connected to development and evolution; nothing is fixed) the personal dialect begins to mock the professional (nationalistic) dialect, “Blah, blah, blah. Can hardly bear to reread that last column. They’ll probably love it in New York. Real ‘objective’ pseudo-think, trying to come to conclusions at any cost” (Callenbach 165). The personal language identifies and mocks the assumed objectivity of the professional language as well as demonstrating the narrator’s corresponding movement towards the Ecotopian language and culture, which is much more similar to Weston’s personal language; emotional, honest, raw. In this case the interaction of the professional and personal dialects of the narration resulted in conflict that precipitated a new development in the narrator and the languages he spoke.

Dr. King’s Dream Speech is another instance of conflict arising by the hybrid construction within one speaker. Dr. King embodies many different languages and in utilizing all of them betrays some very clear boundaries that touch on one of our course objectives, defining the relations between the “self and other” (Objective 3b). The most powerful of Dr. King’s dialects is that of a Negro man. The ideology inherent in this dialect is one fighting for justice and true freedom. He speaks to this point as he promises, “Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual” (King). The force of this dialect will not back down; will not stop fighting. Dr. King also navigates between this and an American dialect as he quotes the Declaration of Independence and the patriotic song “America” (My Country, ‘Tis of Thee). At this point in his speech this is a very different dialect with a very different history. When Dr. King speaks of his dream in the Negro dialect and says, “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream” the dialect implies two separate dreams, that of the Negro and that of the American and though they are rooted together, they are separate. Juxtaposing these two languages together allows Dr. King to dialogically create conflict and illuminate an injustice that is all too real for the Negro of his day.

A final dialect found in Dr. King’s Dream Speech is that of the Baptist pastor. His reference to Amos 5:24, “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream” and Isaiah 40:4-5, “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together” brings this dialect forward. One interpretation (remember we are in the realm of “openendedness,” this is one of many possibilities) could view religion is a unifying interest of both the Negro and the American or at least one that softens the conflict that has been engaged so far between the dialects (and ideologies). This unifier posits the possibility of progress, of further development, of an answer to a question of the present: “what now?” Dr. King gives us the answer, “all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual” (italics mine). Through its inter-illumination, the Negro dialect distinguishes that the chains of bondage are not on the Negro, but on American ideology. When justice and equality are granted, those chains will be broken and the American language will incorporate into its ever-evolving language a new meaningful phrase, “Free at last, free at last. Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”

In its effort to project reality, Bakhtin’s theory of the novel must adopt dialogue and with dialogue it adopts multiple languages/dialects and attached to each of these are forceful societal ideologies. In utopian literature dialogue and its societal baggage is such an integral part of the content that intense literary experimentation can take place, as we have seen in the conflicts and movements inherent in the inter-animation of the languages. The relations between the “self and other,” the possibilities of progressive or conservative character movement or change, and adaptations of languages are open and remain unfixed. Utopian literature has defined its past and, through its experimentation with the forms of Bakhtin’s novel, seizes for itself an unstipulated present and future. This is the appeal of utopian literature. This is why we are not reading treatises.

Works Cited

Le Guin, Ursula K. Afterword. The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed. Ed. Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2005. Print.