A Concept Course: Collectivism and Science Fiction
Jason Kuznicki on May 19th 2008
In my dreams, I am still an academic. Sadly, I probably always will be.
Over at Cliopatria, Rob MacDougall is discussing his favorite “concept courses” — classes he would love to teach, if the world were only a bit more perfect.
I’ve been designing one of my own. It’s called “Collectivism and Science Fiction.” It blends social philosophy and literary criticism, science fiction and history, into a course that could be taught in either a seminar on political thought or one on literature.
Perhaps.
Here’s a first draft of a reading list. I wanted to avoid all the obvious choices (Huxley, Huxley, a bit of Bradbury, more Huxley, creaky old Harrison Bergeron), but I also wanted to hit the key themes of collectivist social thought — and those of its critics. Things like nationalism, collectivized economics, militarism, the thought police… you get the drill. One persistent theme of the class will be that in free societies, individual authors had much greater freedom to explore possible collectivized futures, and that this freedom to imagine may well have saved us from some of the worst features of real-world collectivism. Themes of spontaneous order versus designed order would predominate, and I’d probably lean on Hayek a lot more than I appear to in the following.
First, the theorists:
Charles Fourier, various selections (not necessarily these, though they are a good start)
Claude-Henri Saint-Simon, selections from “Letters from an Inhabitant of Geneva to His Contemporaries”
G. W. F. Hegel - “The State” from Philosophy of Right
Mao Zedong - “On the Proper Method of Handling Contradictions Among the People”
Now, the critics:
F. A. Hayek, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”
Virginia Postrel - The Future and Its Enemies
And the science fiction:
Louis-Sebastien Mercier, “The Year 2440″
Cordwainer Smith - “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard”
Gene Wolfe - sections on the Ascians from The Book of the New Sun; “Loyal to the Group of Seventeen’s Story”
Philip K. Dick - “The Faith of Our Fathers”
Plus one or more of the following novels:
Yevgeny Zamyatin, We
Stanislaw Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
Isaac Asimov, Foundation
Charles Stross, Accelerando
Film night I: Logan’s Run
Film night II: Things to Come.
Thoughts? If there’s interest, I may turn the syllabus into a series of blog posts, one for each of the works, in place of the class that I probably won’t get to teach otherwise…
Filed in The Bookshelf
No Heinlein?
One persistent theme of the class will be that in free societies, individual authors had much greater freedom to explore possible collectivized futures, and that this freedom to imagine may well have saved us from some of the worst features of real-world collectivism.
Astounding, Dr. Kuznicki.
My only objection as a fair-minded person would be that although I completely agree with the thesis, it does indeed have an agenda. I do not know if a class should be a thesis rather than an inquiry.
But with Barack Obama saying today that I may not set my thermostat under 78 degrees or eat whatever I want lest the world complain, cries for a fiction writer to expose his proposed dystopia.
Then again, if I give up beef and cheese and their almost unquantifiable carbon footprint on the face of man’s earth in feed and cow farts, will President Obama let me drive an SUV?
It’s a brave new world. We just gotta figure out the rules.
Have you considered some of the medeival, Renaissance and early Enlightement works of science fiction? Or works outside the Western Canon?
What about Swastika Night by Burdekin? That gets you gender issues, plus it fits perfectly with the theme of exploring the implications of collectivism to avoid them.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a theme in mind — it gives the course more focus, helps with text selection and narrows the questions the students have to wrap their minds around — as long as you’re open to the possibility that the thesis doesn’t pan out in the end.
Wow, lots to reply to!
No Heinlein, because libertarians will have read him already, I think.
A theme, yes, but not the only theme. I could add some pro-collectivism fictional works (Looking Backward for starters) to address the imbalance, although the theorists are skewed in that direction already.
I have one early modern fictional work already, The Year 2440. An English translation may be hard to find, though.
Swastika Night? I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds interesting.
What non-western works would readers recommend? I’m eager for suggestions.
It’s at least possible that the students wouldn’t already be libertarians, so I wouldn’t rule Heinlein out.
Things To Come is such a wonderful piece of propaganda, isn’t it? The rational scientists and engineers swoop down from the skies to the rescue a world destroyed by political thugs and the ignorant masses. Social engineering by real engineers! It’s a progressive’s / socialist’s wet dream and it’s increasingly important to get younger students to realize that, Hayek and a few other early critics aside, socialism, collectivism and social planning and engineering had enormous intuitive appeal among (cough,cough) intellectuals back before there was sufficient empirical evidence to show how disastrously it worked out in actual practice.
You might want to throw a selection from Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies into the critics list, too.
One example which is both medieval and non-western is al-Farabi’s “Opinions of the Residents of a Splendid city.”
There are also some anthologies out there on the subject (quite a number of them dealing with Japanese sci-fi). Indeed, for your film nights you might want to consider some sci-fi themed anime.
D.A. Ridgely,
Consider equally the influence of works like “Lost Horizon” in the 1930s.
How about the 1956 Invasion of the Body Snatchers? A great period piece, and a tight, tense thriller. (Unlike its padded successor, it clocks in at just over 80 minutes.)
Sounds cool. I just got “Red Mars” on the recomendation of an anarchist comrad but my two questions are:
1.)How do you feel about exploring the possibility of voluntary autonomous ‘collectives’ and less strictly ‘individualist’ networks in a free society and in the struggle for one? Probably just one of those fun symantic arguments people seem to love getting stuck in since I may be talking about the kind of community that exists after or in spite of the kind of imposed order that tends to destroy community, nature, philosophy and anything else it can sink its fangs into but I also despise the false duality of individual vs social.
2.)Why don’t you just form a study group to read, watch movies and talk about this? It’s sort of funny that you admit you don’t have enough knowledge to teach a class and you want to focus on freedom but you also assume that you should be in charge. It also sound like something you could do as soon as you found interested parties who live nearby. I awoke this morning to see the pile of books on my kitchen table that was the aftermath of a late night of social drinking among curious people and I can tell you that it is a wonderful experience.
Good luck.
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood is an obvious choice, and I think the only book mentioned so far with a collectivist dystopia that’s religious and reactionary rather than secular and “progressive.”
Also, how about The Left Hand of Darkness? The central political conflict there is between a society that’s feudal and decentralized, and one that the human protagonist initially sees as modern and enlightened, but comes to realize is basically a Stalinist dictatorship. I don’t really think the message of the book can be labeled pro- or anti-collectivist–although it’s definitely anti-nationalistic–but it raises a lot of interesting questions.
Will –
1. I would welcome voluntary autonomous collectives. I think that they would find it hard to prosper without an internal market economy, but some very highly motivated communities (e.g. religious ones) can often make it work. The ideal world for me would be a lot like Robert Nozick’s vision of meta-utopias: We would all be maximally free to create the kind of associations we value the most, including intentional communities.
2. I’m not sure that I anywhere admitted I was unequal to the task of teaching the class. I threw this post together in about fifteen minutes, and I am quite sure that if I gave more time to it, I could do very well at teaching from this reading list, plus at least some of the additions suggested above. Trouble is, I’m employed full-time elsewhere.
Tilts –
Yes, The Handmaid’s Tale is an excellent book, and it would be a great addition to the syllabus.
Calidore –
I don’t know al-Farabi’s “Opinions of the Residents of a Splendid city.” I’ll have to look into it. My training is very western-centric, I admit.
Thanks for the link - and sign me up for this course! You had me at Memoir in a Bathtub and PKDick - it sounds terrific.
I can’t believe I left Serenity off my list. Perfect movie for this topic.
You realize you have to do this blog series now, right?
I realize it. I’m drafting posts on Hegel and Cordwainer Smith as the first two already. I’ll make an opening post next week or so. I’ll also have to finalize the syllabus, and Serenity is so obvious that I can’t believe I didn’t mention it myself.
Sounds like a fascinating course and (since the possibility of me taking it, from you, in the real world is so slim) an even better series of blog posts.
I realize that someone already nominated LeGuin’s “The Left Hand of Darkness” above, but I would love to see her “Dispossesed” on the list.
Swastika Night was a 1930s novel projecting a thousand years into the future of a successful Third Reich. You could accuse it of being over the top, but considering how early in Hitler’s reign it was written and how truly bizarre Naziism would have been in practice over the long term, it’s actually pretty reasonable. I read it when I spotted it in a friend’s book collection and was shocked to see the title in a lesbian quaker feminist’s bookcase.
If you want a weird experience, Starhawk’s Fifth Sacred Thing posits a war (or rather, tense occupation) between a theo-fascist industrial society and an eco-feminist/pagan one. In a post-collapse California (the fascists are from LA; the pagans are, of course, from SF).
I’m definitely adding Swastika Night, and Fifth Sacred Thing sounds interesting too. I’ll add them both. Expect a final syllabus shortly, then I’ll start posting lecture/blog notes.
You may also consider Alexander Chayanov’s Journey of My Brother Alexei to the Land of Peasant Utopia.
I might add Paul Ricoeur’s Lectures on Ideology and Utopia.