ORP: LeGuin: The Dispossessed, part n

I finally got back to rereading Ursula K. LeGuin’s novel, The Dispossessed, and I thought I would share a few more passages. I have to say that I really admire how good a writer Ms. LeGuin is, and if the few quotes I leave in this blog don’t seem to impress you, then I say: read this novel.

In discussion with his host from the Ieu Eun University of the nation A-Io of the planet Urras, Shevek (remember from the habitable planet Anarres which is a satellite or moon of the main world Urras) explains his motivation in coming to the homeworld:

“You see, I know very little. We learn about Urras, but mostly about *Odo’s times. Before that was eight and one half thousand years! And then since the Settlement of Anarres is a century and a half; since the last ship brought the last Settlers—ignorance. We ignore you; you ignore us. You are our history. We are perhaps your future. I want to learn, not to ignore. It is the reason I came. We must know each other. We are not primitive men. Our morality is no longer tribal, it cannot be. Such ignorance is a wrong, from which wrong will arise. So I come to learn.”

After saying this, Shevek’s hosts claim the same motivation, but then they stumble over how Shevek can represent his government when he comes from a society that has no formal government:

“I come,” he said carefully, “as a syndic of the Syndicate of Initiative, the group that talks with Urras on the radio these last two years. But I am not, you know, an ambassador from any authority, any institution. I hope you did not ask me as that.”
“No,” Oiie said. “We asked you—Shevek the physicist. With the approval of our government and the Council of World Goverrnments, of course. But you are here as the private guest of Ieu Eun University.”
“Good.”
“But we haven’t been sure whether or not you came with the approval of—“ He hesitated.
Shevek grinned. “Of my government?”
“We know that nominally there’s no government on Anarres. However, obviously there’s administration. And we gather that the group that sent you, your Syndicate, is a kind of faction; perhaps a revolutionary faction.”
“Everybody on Anarres is a revolutionary, Oiie… The network of administration and management is called PDC, Production and Distribution Coordination. They are a coordinating system for all syndicates, federatives, and individuals who do productive work. They do not govern persons; they administer production. They have no authority either to support me or to prevent me. They can only tell us the public opinion of us—where we stand in the social conscience. That’s what you want to know? Well, my friends and I are mostly disapproved of. Most people on Anarres don’t want to learn about Urras. They fear it and want nothing to do with the propertarians. I am sorry if I am rude! It is the same here, with some people, is it not? The contempt, the fear, the tribalism. Well, so I came to begin to change that.”
“Entirely on your own initiative,” said Oiie.
“It is the only initiative I acknowledge,” Shevek said, smiling, in dead earnest.

*Odo is the political philosopher who founded the movement that lead to settlement of Anarres.