Schemata of estrangement in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed

Abstract

Ursula Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed (1974) is the first literary treatment of anarchic utopianism, presenting the society on the moon Anarres as operating on social principles lacking any sort of State or governmental oversight (known in the novel as Odonianism). Scholarship on Le Guin’s novel has focused primarily on the overt political and philosophical aspects of the text, while the scant linguistic scholarship goes no further than uncovering fairly superficial aspects of Le Guin’s invented language of Anarres, Pravic. This article investigates exactly how Le Guin presents a richly detailed conceptualisation of an anarchic society to readers on a planet full of states. This is generally achieved through the technique of estrangement (defamiliarisation), and more precisely, by various means of schema disruption.