Nuking narrative: quantum physics as utopian allegory in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed

This article examines the contentious depiction of an ambiguous utopia in Ursula K. Le Guin’s science fiction novel, The Dispossessed (1974), arguing that it develops a new poetics for the nuclear age by experimenting with quantum theory’s growing image-repertoire. Drawing on Karen Barad’s interpretation of quantum entanglement as a political phenomenon, alongside Fredric Jameson’s assertion that utopian allegories are always structurally and politically ambiguous, I analyse the centrality of physics to the novel’s political thought experiment. By exploring Le Guin’s political utopia as an allegory for quantum entanglement, I consider the impact of two twentieth-century inventions – the nuclear weapon and nuclear family – on Utopia as a literary form. By analysing the novel’s representation of the Einstein-Bohr debate on classical versus quantum mechanics, I explore how protagonist Shevek’s scientific breakthrough embodies spooky action at a distance. My analysis examines how the ansible, a device for instant communication enabled by his work, embodies the material ambiguity of quantum entanglement by erasing boundaries of scale between political and personal, macro and micro. I consider how Le Guin uses a nuclear family to complicate the novel’s anarchist utopia, countering conventional interpretations that find Shevek’s heteropatriarchal relationships altogether undermine its utopian narrative.