| As one of the representatives of the American science fiction,Ursula K.Le Guin(1929-)enjoys a unique position for both literariness and philosophical thinking in her soft science fiction.She wins not only the recognition from the mainstream literature but also a number of international awards,such as the Hugo Awards and the Nebula Awards.Taking China as the prototype,The Telling(2000)creates a city where an eco-socialist revolution is conducted.Sutty,an observer of the interstellar Ekumen,has been assigned to Aka,an exoplanet in the grip of a materialistic government.The monolithic Corporation has outlawed old customs and beliefs,abandoned its history and imitated the advanced technology of other members of Ekumen.Unexpectedly,Sutty receives permission to leave the modern city where her movements are closely monitored.She travels up the river into Okzat-Ozkat,the countryside,to seek the remnants of the banned culture of Aka.She begins to learn the unique religion of the people there—the Telling and finally joins the villagers on a trek into Silong Hill to one of the last sacred places,Umayzu.Dovza City refers to a capitalist society while Okzat-Ozkat is a socialist society which tries to transform itself into an eco-socialist one but fails.Such change is similar to the construction of ecological civilization in China.Thus,the thesis attempts to explore this novel’s significance to China by analyzing the problems of the eco-socialist revolution conducted in The Telling.The theoretical framework is based on the theories of Reiner Grundmann and David Pepper,the representatives of the third generation of western eco-socialism.Grundmann re-explains the ecological view of the classical Marxism.His interpretation is relatively comprehensive and coincides with features of the society in Okzat-Ozkat.Considering that Grundmann’s theory mentions the construction method without elaborating its feasibility,the thesis chooses Pepper’s construction theory as a complement.Their theories are generally in unison with each other.The thesis is divided into three parts:introduction,main body and conclusion.The introduction includes a brief introduction of Ursula K.Le Guin and The Telling,the theory of eco-socialism by Reiner Grundmann and David Pepper,literature review and thesis arrangements.The main body consists of three chapters.The first chapter attempts to explain the discrepancy.between the strong and the weak anthropocentrism by interpreting the different living environments in Dovza City,the capital of Aka,and Okzat-Ozkat,a village.And this chapter also explores the components of the eco-socialist revolutionary force in Okzat-Ozkat and the potential problem.Chapter Two discusses the difference between the domination of the first nature in Dovza and the domination of the second nature in Okzat-Ozkat.The opposite attitudes toward nature reveal the ideologies of these two areas.Although the ideology of Okzat-Ozkat is quite similar to the eco-socialist one,there still exists disparity between the theoretical ideology advocated by eco-socialism and the one held by the villagers.And such difference may also result in the failure of the revolution.Chapter Three explores Dovza’s parody of the alien technology and Okzat-Ozkat’s dendritic evolution of technology.Dovza City imitates the advanced technology of other members of Ekumen without adapting the techniques to its own social condition.Meanwhile,Okzat-Ozkat advocates the technology evolution which stresses the sustainable development.But its indirect revolutionary approach is not in accordance with Pepper’s theory and this becomes the third potential cause of the ultimate failure.The conclusion summarizes the significance of The Telling to China.Chinese ecological civilization is constructed on the basis of eco-socialism as well and it is facing similar problems in the same three aspects:force,ideology and approach.By analyzing the potential risks existing in Okzat-Ozkat’s trial of eco-socialist revolution,this thesis attempts to find the possible solutions. |
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