Download or read book Feminist Science Fiction Gender Aspects in Ursula K Le Guin s The Dispossessed and Feminist Criticism written by Celine Briot and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2015-08-19 with total page 21 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Bonn (Anglistik), course: Science-Fiction, language: English, abstract: In recent decades the literary genre of Science Fiction has experienced a rising interest which might be attributed to the rapid technological development and the deep integration of it into daily life. Science Fiction offers writers a wide range of potential themes to explore and is thus a very complex genre. While often being considered male oriented, at least during the Feminist Movement in the 1960s, female authors found their way into the genre and raised questions about gender roles, political inequality and sexuality within their works. Among those female writers was Ursula K. Le Guin who gained wide recognition for her writing and is today regarded one of the most influential science-fiction and fantasy author of the twentieth century. Asscociated with feminist tendencies in her works, her most famous novel referred to be feminist science fiction is "The Left Hand of Darkness" in which she imagined an androgynous society in order to investigate what society would be if sex did not matter. But also many other of her works have received attention from critics interested in gender and feminism. In this paper I intend to analyse and discuss the depiction of gender and the realisation of feminist aspects in Le Guin's novel "The Dispossessed: An ambiguous Utopia". The novel won several important literary awards such as the Hugo and the Nebula and gained a lot of respect among critics for its great literary qualities and its extensive exploration of political ideas and social themes, including for example anarchism, capitalism and socialism. It is set on the fictional planets Urras and Anarres which inhabit two contrasting societies, one capitalist and class oriented and the other one following the principles of anarchism, avoiding any form of social hierarchy among its population. Anarres – apparently the utopian planet in Le Guin's work, is often called a feminist utopia for its conception of gender. However, Le Guin has been highly criticised from feminist for several problematic issues in her approach of sexual politics in the novel. The question therefore arises weather "The Dispossessed" really can be labeled feminist science-fiction and if Anarres really can be called a feminist utopia?
Download or read book The Dispossessed written by Ursula K. Le Guin and published by Turtleback Books. This book was released on 2001 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant physicist attempts to salvage his planet of anarchy.
Download or read book In her novel The Left Hand of Darkness does Ursula K LE Guin succeed in depicting a completely non gendered society written by Melanie Walser and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-02-04 with total page 23 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,5, Free University of Berlin (John F. Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien), course: The Literature of the Sixties, language: English, abstract: This paper will go into certain aspects of feminist criticisms of Ursula K. Le Guin’s 1969 science fiction novel “The Left Hand of Darkness“, discuss their justification question, and further examine the consistency of Le Guin’s description of the genderless society of Gethen. The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of Genly Ai, an envoy from Earth (“Terra”), sent by the “Ekumen”, a union of inhabited planets, to planet Gethen in order to convince the planet’s inhabitants to join an interstellar alliance. Throughout the novel Le Guin explores Genly Ai’s difficulties to understand and become part of society on Gethen, which are mainly due to the fact that all the inhabitants are ambisexual; they only take on a biological gender once a month, in a short period of sexual activity. Each individual has the capacity to become either a man or a woman, and their sex can differ from one month to the other. The Left Hand of Darkness has played an essential role in the history of science fiction. Since Science Fiction was a largely male dominated field of literature in the 1960s, both in its authors and its protagonists, Le Guin’s novel was pathbreaking in many ways. It has attracted a lot of attention for its unusual focus on social science and human relationships as opposed to natural science and technology and for its attempt to show a society of complete equals. However, Le Guins thought-experiment about a genderless or gender-ambiguous society has frequently been subject to harsh criticism by feminist critics, who hold that she has not succeeded to create a credible picture of this society. They claim the gender situation throughout the book to be inconsistent. According to these critics, instead of depicting a society without any gender roles, Le Guin describes a purely male world, and fails to make the reader see the Gethenians as women as well as men. This paper discusses the validity of these criticisms.
Download or read book Does Not Fempute written by Catherine Hynes and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Cyberpunk Women Feminism and Science Fiction written by Carlen Lavigne and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2013-01-30 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This analysis of cyberpunk science fiction written between 1981 and 2003 positions women's cyberpunk in the larger cultural discussion of feminist issues. It traces the origins of the genre, reviews the critical reactions and outlines the ways in which women's cyberpunk advances points of view that are specifically feminist. Novels are examined within their cultural contexts; their content is compared to broader controversies within contemporary feminism, and their themes are revealed as reflections of feminist discourse around the turn of the 21st century. Chapters cover topics such as globalization, virtual reality, cyborg culture, environmentalism, religion, motherhood and queer rights. Interviews with feminist cyberpunk authors are provided, revealing both their motivations for writing and their experiences with fans. The study treats feminist cyberpunk as a unique vehicle for examining contemporary women's issues and analyzes feminist science fiction as a complex source of political ideas.
Download or read book The Politics of Gender written by Adrienne M. Trier-Bieniek and published by Brill. This book was released on 2018 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Politics of Gender presents an international and intersectional approach to the multiple ways gender is intertwined with political institutions and addresses topics that range from the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election to same-sex laws in Nigeria.
Download or read book Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women written by Cheris Kramarae and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-04-16 with total page 2050 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For a full list of entries and contributors, sample entries, and more, visit the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women website. Featuring comprehensive global coverage of women's issues and concerns, from violence and sexuality to feminist theory, the Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women brings the field into the new millennium. In over 900 signed A-Z entries from US and Europe, Asia, the Americas, Oceania, and the Middle East, the women who pioneered the field from its inception collaborate with the new scholars who are shaping the future of women's studies to create the new standard work for anyone who needs information on women-related subjects.
Download or read book Always Coming Home written by Ursula K. Le Guin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2001-02-27 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An "ethnographic" novel that portrays life in California's Napa Valley as it might be a very long time from now, imagined not as a high tech future but as a time of people once again living close to the land.
Download or read book The New Utopian Politics of Ursula K Le Guin s The Dispossessed written by Laurence Davis and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2005 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Description of the seductions - and snares - of self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society. This title, an edited collection of original essays on "Le Guin's The Dispossessed", represents an exploration of the political ramifications of this work by a wide interdisciplinary swath of scholars from around the world.
Download or read book Alternative Masculinities in Feminist Speculative Fiction written by Michael Pitts and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2021-06-01 with total page 169 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alternative Masculinities in Feminist Speculative Fiction: A New Man traces efforts within American feminist utopias to imagine healthier conceptions of manhood. As this analysis illuminates, feminist works envisioning the improved society and its attending masculinities constitute an overlooked site for mining new masculinities. During the years in which such utopias gained popularity —the early 1970s to the mid-2010s—these novels grew more complex, challenging essentialist conceptions of masculinity and female experience. These texts vary in their focus but share an interest in replacing patriarchal masculinities with an alternative informed by second wave and intersectional feminism. This book analyzes the centrality of alternative masculinities to these ideal societies and the ways feminist writers present new conceptions of manhood pivotal to discussions surrounding the ongoing crisis of American masculinity.
Download or read book River of Thieves written by Clayton Snyder and published by Independently Published. This book was released on 2019-04-16 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cursed thief Cord relies on his partner, Nenn, to recover his body, stash the money, and convince the authorities that there are no leads left to follow. They spend their days hitting low-tier lenders and banks, but after a botched robbery, Cord begins to think they need something bigger, something that will set them up for life.When that thing happens to be a heist no one else in the kingdom has the stones to pull off, he gathers a group of rogues with a particular set of talents--Nenn, handy with a knife and a cool head; Rek, cat-fancier and strongman; and Lux, undead wizard. Together, they converge on the city of Midian to steal the heart of a saint and punish a tyrant.What comes out of the carnage is so much more--a conflict between gods that could decide the fate of every thief in the worlds.
Download or read book Wild Girls written by Ursula K. Le Guin and published by PM Press. This book was released on 2011-05-01 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ursula K. Le Guin is the one modern science fiction author who truly needs no introduction. In the half century since The Left Hand of Darkness, her works have changed not only the face but the tone and the agenda of SF, introducing themes of gender, race, socialism, and anarchism, all the while thrilling readers with trips to strange (and strangely familiar) new worlds. She is our exemplar of what fantastic literature can and should be about. Her Nebula winner The Wild Girls, newly revised and presented here in book form for the first time, tells of two captive “dirt children” in a society of sword and silk, whose determination to enter “that possible even when unattainable space in which there is room for justice” leads to a violent and loving end. Plus: Le Guin’s scandalous and scorching Harper’s essay, “Staying Awake While We Read,” (also collected here for the first time) which demolishes the pretensions of corporate publishing and the basic assumptions of capitalism as well. And of course our Outspoken Interview, which promises to reveal the hidden dimensions of America’s best-known SF author. And delivers.
Download or read book Anarcho feminism and Permanent Revolution in Ursula K Le Guin s the Dispossessed written by Mary Irene Morrison and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 70 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ursula K. Le Guin's science fiction novel, The Dispossessed (1974), is a narrative political manifesto in which Le Guin imagines an anarcho-feminist utopia, and articulates the possibilities of an anarchist revolution in our world as it is on the bring of ecological disaster. The narrative follows Shevek, an Anarresti physicist who comes to the realization that his society has lost sight of its anarchist ideals. He challenges his society's retrenchment in various ways, highlighting the need for permanent revolution in order to maintain a just society. While problematic at times, I show that Le Guin's anarcho-feminism is a significant contribution to both anarchist and radical feminist theory. I also discuss the society of Urras, the planet which shares an orbit with Anarres, as an allegory to Earth, and its contemporary political significance.
Download or read book Radical Imagination written by Margarete Keulen and published by Peter Lang Gmbh, Internationaler Verlag Der Wissenschaften. This book was released on 1991 with total page 128 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the New Feminism of the 1970s provided an ideological frame, women writers of utopian fiction had not proposed radical alternative models of society. On the basis of three contemporary American feminist novels, "The left Hand of Darkness" by Ursula K. LeGuin, "Woman on The Edge of Time" by Marge Piercy, and "The Wanderground" by Sally Miller Gearhart, this study investigates the relations between different feminist theories and the creation of alternative fictional societies, the influence of ideology on content and its impact on narrative technique.
Download or read book Speculating Gender written by Kathryn M. Skjoldager and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This thesis will explore science fiction narratives by Ursula K. Le Guin and Octavia Butler's novel Fledgling. It will show how these narratives act as societal mirrors, reflecting society back upon the reader. In this reflection theorists and activists are given space to discuss how to uphold or upend the binary gender systems that govern their lives, and how to investigate both the pitfalls and benefits of the theories that interact with these systems."--Page 3.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Feminist Literary Theory written by Ellen Rooney and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-07-06 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feminism has dramatically influenced the way literary texts are read, taught and evaluated. Feminist literary theory has deliberately transgressed traditional boundaries between literature, philosophy and the social sciences in order to understand how gender has been constructed and represented through language. This lively and thought-provoking Companion presents a range of approaches to the field. Some of the essays demonstrate feminist critical principles at work in analysing texts, while others take a step back to trace the development of a particular feminist literary method. The essays draw on a range of primary material from the medieval period to postmodernism and from several countries, disciplines and genres. Each essay suggests further reading to explore this field further. This is the most accessible guide available both for students of literature new to this developing field, and for students of gender studies and readers interested in the interactions of feminism, literary criticism and literature.
Download or read book In Her Novel the Left Hand of Darkness Does Ursula K Le Guin Succeed in Depicting a Completely Non Gendered Society written by Melanie Walser and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2009-02 with total page 30 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2007 in the subject American Studies - Literature, grade: 1,5, Free University of Berlin (John F. Kennedy-Institut für Nordamerikastudien), course: The Literature of the Sixties, 11 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper will go into certain aspects of feminist criticisms of Ursula K. Le Guin's 1969 science fiction novel "The Left Hand of Darkness", discuss their justification question, and further examine the consistency of Le Guin's description of the genderless society of Gethen. The Left Hand of Darkness tells the story of Genly Ai, an envoy from Earth ("Terra"), sent by the "Ekumen", a union of inhabited planets, to planet Gethen in order to convince the planet's inhabitants to join an interstellar alliance. Throughout the novel Le Guin explores Genly Ai's difficulties to understand and become part of society on Gethen, which are mainly due to the fact that all the inhabitants are ambisexual; they only take on a biological gender once a month, in a short period of sexual activity. Each individual has the capacity to become either a man or a woman, and their sex can differ from one month to the other. The Left Hand of Darkness has played an essential role in the history of science fiction. Since Science Fiction was a largely male dominated field of literature in the 1960s, both in its authors and its protagonists, Le Guin's novel was pathbreaking in many ways. It has attracted a lot of attention for its unusual focus on social science and human relationships as opposed to natural science and technology and for its attempt to show a society of complete equals. However, Le Guins thought-experiment about a genderless or gender-ambiguous society has frequently been subject to harsh criticism by feminist critics, who hold that she has not succeeded to create a credible picture of this society. They claim the gender situation throughout the book to be inconsistent. According to these critics, instead of de
