Abstract

In The Dispossessed, Ursula K. Le Guin embodies a complementary form of anarchism on the planet Anarres. Just as in the scientific theory of the protagonist, Shevek, time is both sequential and simultaneous, so too the individual freedom and social responsibility needed for anarchism to succeed are unified by promising, which itself presupposes sequence and simultaneity. Le Guin examines several challenges to this theory of anarchy : crises that disrupt the complementarity of freedom and responsibility; fear; the desire for power; incompatible ideologies; and hopelessness. Despite the exposure of its limits, however, anarchy survives as the best political option in the novel.