The Dispossessed has been described by political thinker Andre Gorz as 'The most striking description I know of the seductionsand snaresof self-managed communist or, in other words, anarchist society.' To date, however, the radical social, cultural, and political ramifications of Le Guin's multiple award-winning novel remain woefully under explored. Editors Laurence Davis and Peter Stillman right this state of affairs in the first ever collection of original essays devoted to Le Guin's novel. Among the topics covered in this wide-ranging, international and interdisciplinary collection are the anarchist, ecological, post-consumerist, temporal, revolutionary, and open-ended utopian politics of The Dispossessed. The book concludes with an essay by Le Guin written specially for this volume, in which she reassesses the novel in light of the development of her own thinking over the past 30 years.

Laurence Davis holds a doctoral degree in politics from Oxford University, and has taught political theory at Oxford University and University College Dublin. Peter Stillman is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Environmental Studies Program at Vassar College.

Chapter 1 IntroductionChapter 2 Open-ended Utopian PoliticsChapter 3 The Dynamic and Revolutionary Utopia of Ursula K. Le GuinChapter 4 Worlds Apart: Ursula K. Le Guin and the Possibility of MethodChapter 5 Post-Consumerist PoliticsChapter 6 The Dispossessed as Ecological Political TheoryChapter 7 Ursula K. Le Guin, Herbert Marcuse, and the Fate of Utopia in the PostmodernChapter 8 The Alien Comes Home: Getting Past the Twin Planets of Possession and Austerity in Le Guin's The DispossessedChapter 9 Anarchist PoliticsChapter 10 Individual and Community in Le Guin's The DispossessedChapter 11 The Need for Walls: Privacy, Community, and Freedom in The DispossessedChapter 12 Breaching Invisible Walls: Individual Anarchy in The DispossessedChapter 13 Temporal PoliticsChapter 14 Time and the Measure of the Political AnimalChapter 15 Fulfillment as a Function of Time, or the Ambiguous Process of UtopiaChapter 16 Science and Politics in The Dispossessed: Le Guin and the Science WarsChapter 17 Revolutionary PoliticsChapter 18 The Gap in the Wall: Partnership, Physics, and Politics in The DispossessedChapter 19 From Ambiguity to Self-Reflexivity: Revolutionizing Fantasy SpaceChapter 20 Future Conditional or Future Perfect? The Dispossessed and Permanent RevolutionChapter 21 Open-ended Utopian PoliticsChapter 22 Ambiguous Choices: Skepticism as a Grounding for UtopiaChapter 23 Empty Hands: Communication, Pluralism and Community in Ursula K. Le Guin's The DispossessedChapter 24 A Response, by Ansible, from Tau CetiChapter 25 Further Reading