The Mephi - Theoreticians of Rebellion

Thomas Horan wrote:In her excellent study, Dystopian Fiction East and West, Erika Gottlieb suggests that twentieth-century dystopian fiction is partially defined by a terrible and irrevocable finality: "It is one of the most conspicuous features of ... dystopian fiction that once we allow the totalitarian state to come to power, there will be no way back" (4). I take issue with this conclusion, arguing instead that the major authors of dystopian fiction present sexual desire as an aspect of the self that can never be fully appropriated, and therefore as a potential force for political and spiritual regeneration from within the totalitarian state. This point is commonly made by a sexual relationship situated at the beginning of the story, which eventually develops into a subversive political conspiracy for revolution. Though these sexual liaisons are usually ill-fated, they suggest that sexual desire has a propulsive ability to promote change even when the sexual relationship itself is curtailed. Sex works as a portal through which the dystopian everyman at the center of the story glimpses the idea of both political liberation and a universal human dignity based on a newfound understanding of the sublime.

To better denote how sexuality works in the particular type of dystopian fiction with which I am concerned, I have coined the term "projected political fiction" which refers to dystopian stories that are both speculative and political. Authors of projected political fiction project a political system or philosophy with which they disagree into a futuristic story. Setting their stories in the future allows writers of projected political fiction to explore their immediate political concerns on a grander scale without appearing to exaggerate. Thus, like a conical beam of light emanating from a movie projector, these stories not only reach forward through the uncertain darkness to cast an image of what may lie ahead, they also widen the scope of that image to encompass all aspects of social, political, and economic life, including the way in which the members of these projected societies perceive and understand the past and their own future.

Projected political fiction is written for one of two not always mutually exclusive purposes: either it serves as a warning to the author's contemporaries to help them avert an impending governmental disaster, or it predicts what the seemingly unavoidable future will look like. George Orwell's 1984 is an obvious example of the cautionary form of projected political fiction, while Aldous Huxley's Brave New World is a more predictive dystopia. Since the 1890s, dozens of novels and stories fitting this paradigm have been written, but this paper will concentrate on three of the most prominent works of this genre: 1984, Brave New World, and Yevgeny Zamyatin's We. These particular books are seminal because their influence guided and shaped the development of this genre and changed forever the climate of Western political thought. Through these writings, words and phrases like "Big Brother," "two plus two equals five," "alpha-plus," and "Orwellian," along with the concepts that underlie them, have become a part of common vocabulary. Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell have been linked frequently in the past, but mainly through the question of influence. Orwell suspected that Brave New World was inspired by We, while others have pointed out intriguing similarities between We and 1984. Here, I want to make a different kind of comparison by exploring how sexual desire provides an opening out of the rigid structure of totalitarianism in the work of all three authors.

What clearly defines projected political fiction as its own genre is the way that illicit sexual arousal always precedes political awareness within the story. Each projected political fiction is plotted around an unlawful erotic relationship, which may or may not develop into love, between two characters: an orthodox character who either believes in the existing political system or has submitted to it without hope of deliverance, and a subversive, lascivious radical. As the story progresses, the docile character is first overwhelmed with lust for the rebellious character and then, once consummation has occurred, he or she is won over to the hope provided by the renegade's heretical political philosophy. Even when, as in Brave New World, no radical seductive figure exists, forbidden sexual desire foments in the protagonist a political awareness of its own. Since the legally and socially permissible method of sexual contact is different in each projected political fiction, the nature of these salacious relationships varies to the point where in some of these stories the eroticism depicted would seem tame or even asexual by our own cultural standards.

Picking up on a related idea, Gottlieb sees the solicitous bond of romantic love as the determining factor in these novels: "Falling in love with a woman who offers affection, passion, or simply an intimate bond is essential to the protagonist's awakening to his private universe, an essential step in building resistance against the regime" (Gottlieb 21). It is true that in some cases, 1984 for instance, a genuine and reciprocal love does eventually develop between the recalcitrant pair. But love always follows, rather than precedes, the sexual arousal and political awakening of the lovers. In some projected political fictions, love plays a minimal or even antagonistic role. For example, John the Savage in Brave New World is much more troubled by the thought, or, to his mind, the sin of wantonly bedding Lenina than by the idea of loving her. Likewise, in Zamyatin's We, D-503 loves the Benefactor and hates all that I-330 represents. When he first discovers her seditious intentions, he intends to hand her over to the police. But his lust for her makes him a coconspirator virtually against his will:

Her tone was so impudent, so full of mockery.... I always hated her.... Suddenly her arm crept round my neck, lips touched lips, went deeper, things got even scarier. I swear, this was a total surprise for me, and maybe that's the only reason why. Because I could not have. I now understand this with absolute clarity. I could not possibly have desired what happened next.... I became glass. I saw myself, inside.... I remember I was on the floor hugging her legs, kissing her knees. And I was begging, "Now, right now, this minute...." (Zamyatin 55-57)

D-503's abject, primal hunger for I-330 is based on animal attraction rather than anything as deep and sophisticated as romantic love. But though he loves his Benefactor and is cognizant of his own guilt throughout the story, years of control and conditioning have left him unprepared to cope with this overpowering lust. The story of D-503, like that of Winston Smith and John the Savage, indicates that the breaking of sexual taboos leads to political upheaval because whatever else they can control, governments--no matter how absolutely pervasive--can never fully regulate the sexual instincts and indiscretions of their citizens. As Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari insist in Anti-Oedipus, even a single instance of sensual passion is inherently and pervasively volatile:

If desire is repressed, it is because every position of desire, no matter how small, is capable of calling into question the established order of a society.... It is explosive.... Desire is revolutionary in its essence.... No society can tolerate a position of real desire without its structures of exploitation, servitude, and hierarchy being compromised.... Sexuality and love ... cause strange flows to circulate that do not let themselves be stocked within an established order. Desire does not want revolution, it is revolutionary in its own right. (Deleuze and Guattari 116)

Deleuze and Guattari argue that totalitarian institutions are perennially haunted by the incendiary specter of sexual desire because desire injects a volatile wildness into social and political entrenchment. Their conception of desire closely parallels what occurs in projected political fiction. The authors of this kind of dystopian literature root political insurrections in the potentially liberating instability induced by sexual passion.

Deleuze and Guattari make a good prima facie case, yet other theorists, like Michel Foucault, see desire as something that is systematically tamable. Moreover, since projected political fiction is more commonly produced by male authors, this idea of liberation through sex also lends itself to a number of disturbing tendencies, including a juvenile attitude toward the female body, a reliance on sexist stereotypes, and, occasionally, a troubling link between desire for and violence toward women.

But even when the revolution promised by illicit desire fails to be completely unprejudiced, authors of projected political fiction, like Zamyatin, Huxley, and Orwell, transcend the physical to present sexual desire as a catalyst for a spirituality beyond political change. Admittedly, as a socialist, Orwell in particular clearly believed that human development needed to move beyond organized religion, but he, like Huxley and Zamyatin, mourned the loss of the sense of universal human dignity that accompanied religious faith. As Winston says to O'Brien in 1984: "'There is something in the universe--I don't know, some spirit, some principle--that you will never overcome.' 'Do you believe in God, Winston?' 'No.' 'Then what is it, this principle that will defeat us?' 'I don't know. The spirit of man.' 'And do you consider yourself a man?' 'Yes'" (Orwell 273). Under torture, Winston has clearly abandoned the hope of overthrowing the Party by force, violence, or any political act. But even though he realizes that the humanity will eventually be expunged from his heart, mind, and body, he knows that some spiritual common worth may still remain among the living. In attempting to recreate the idea of this shared dignity, writers of projected political fiction typically rely on Judeo-Christian religious symbols and pastoral settings. It is this egalitarian, quasi-mystical, universal human nature that sexuality awakens in projected political fictions. Because every person has this spiritual space somewhere deep inside him or herself waiting to be unlocked by desire, these dystopic governments must be committed to the colonization of the sexual instinct right down to the last individual.

In defining the scope of projected political fiction and in delineating its main characteristics, I first discuss We, followed by 1984, and finally Brave New World. My decision not to examine Zamyatin and Huxley's work in tandem may strike the reader as odd, not only because these novels were both published and widely read years before 1984 was even written, but also because there are enough shared similarities to invite a close comparison. Both We and Brave New World foresee a pain-free future in which the government controls humans by satiating rather than repressing their desires. As Herbert Marcuse explains in One-Dimensional Man, this sort of economic and social totalitarianism is just as insidiously effective as the overtly repressive variety:

For "totalitarianism" is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests.