Striking similarities can be seen between the two works. But the source of the latter term, Thomas More’s Utopia of 1516, 2 was also framed in an ambiguous manner, and the society it describes also appears flawed to the modern reader. 1 The term “ambiguous” makes an important qualification today, when “utopia” implies “perfection”. This is the novel The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, by Ursula K. Nevertheless, a powerful and persuasive vision of a utopia has appeared as recently as 1974, one which has the potential to become as well-known as those famous dystopias, and one of particular interest to political and social theorists.

The tastes of the twentieth century, affected by world wars, revolutions, and environmental disaster, run more to dystopias such as Huxley’s Brave New World or Orwell’s 1984-warnings rather than rallying cries. Utopias are not popular with today’s fiction writers, perhaps because they sense that the modern reader would give little credence to tales of “perfect” societies. It deals with a novel well-known within its genre then and now, but from a genre that was less accepted in literary circles at the time than today. This one is from my masters year, 1991–92, and is presented here almost unchanged. This is the fifth in a series of essays I wrote as an undergraduate, honours, and then masters student in political theory. Ambiguous Utopias: A Comparison of Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and More’s Utopia Rory Ewins

The dispossessed an ambiguous utopia