In his Tales of Neveryon, Samuel Delany offers a heterotopian account, interrogating identities at the center of master/slave, masculine/feminine, black/white binaries. Indeed, Delany inverts traditional notions of racialism in his narrative in which whites are barbarians and black and brown-skinned individuals are the rulers. Further, Gorgik, the heroic emancipator of his people, reveals the ways in which the racial oppression creates legacies that perpetuate psychic trauma long after slavery has been abolished. Thus, Gorgik, who is the object of sexual coercion while he is enslaved, becomes incapable of sexual satisfaction in the absence of the outward symbols of slavery, i.e., the collar that signifies his bondage. The obsidian mines in which he works signify how blackness reflects both the ways in which racial desire of black bodies functions in society and the ways in which black bodies are commodified. Beyond this, Delany highlights the extent to which each of our contingent identities are used to enslave us.

I found one of the most compelling scenes in the book to be at the end of The Tale of Old Venn when the story of Norema is told. The first of her children, a son, has died at four from the plague, and she refrains from taking her own life only so that she can serve others, including her husband and two young daughters. It is at this moment in time that her husband, who has lost seven of the twelve workers in his fishing fleet, announces that he is taking another wife. Delany writes, “Somewhere in the midst of her arguing it suddenly struck her what she must do./ So, she agreed” (137)

Instead of welcoming her resignation to his choice, he beats Norema and accuses her of bringing a plague on him that is far worse than the one that has decimated the population of the island, with only 50 out of 800 still alive. When those fifty are transported to safety, of the dozen turned away due to signs of the disease, her husband and his new seventeen year-old wife are among them. Norema feels neither anger nor hurt, though, with the death of each of her children, she is now alone in her grief.

Much has been written about Delany’s use of the plague as a reference to the AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Norema is convinced that “it is this experience that would be responsible for anything bad or good that ever befell her again” (138). There are a variety of interesting issues in this section related to the politics of disease, yet I was most interested in the way in which Norema is set up as a Griselda-like character. The Tale of Patient Griselda, which has taken different forms in the works of Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Petrarch. Griselda is held up as the paradigm of virtue, the perfect woman, for tolerating all of her cruel husband’s whims, including the fake murder of her children as a means of testing her loyalty. Norema seems to be portrayed as equally virtuous in the face of abuse at the hands of her husband. While this depiction could be viewed as subversive in a world in which women are often portrayed as lesser, I wonder about the underlying misogynistic elements in this portrait of her.

Delany`s Tales of Neveryon evokes complex questions about the relationships between language, knowledge, power, and desire.  Three moments and one thread stand out to me –although there are certainly many others that are equally significant in different ways–for their significance in thinking about utopia/utopianism:  the first is Gorgik`s double memory of vanishing slaves and clanking coins that occurs near the beginning of his tale but is inserted and then abandoned with a seamlessness that renders it uncanny; the second moment involves the mirror game Old Venn demonstrates to/with the children and its lessons about truth and perception; and the third is the fireside chance encounter and conversation between Raven and Norema and Gorgik and Small Sarg that occurs in the final tale.  The thread of story-telling is implicated in some capacity in each of these moments, and is also present in many other places throughout the text.  I`m not going to try here (though perhaps I will elsewhere) for an in-depth analysis of what is going on in each of these moments, but will just attempt to articulate some of the questions that they raise for me in terms of thinking about utopia and the utopian impulse, and the relationship of utopia to history and memory and to desire.

The narrative`s articulation of Gorgik`s double memory (involving the sight of dejected slaves and the nearby sound of coins clinking) seems to function to create a connection between money/wealth and subjection at the outset of the text, but this relationship is complicated by the mysterious disappearance of these shackled slaves on the child Gorgik`s re-entrance to the same room hours later.  The narrative`s staging of this almost dream-like memory, especially followed by Gorgik`s strange encounter with the (perhaps)- slave boy in the square, brings up questions for me about the representation of time and memory.  Where is this double memory situated in relation to Gorgik`s imagination, and how does it situate him?  How does it condition his ideals of freedom and desire?  Is the slave boy a double for Gorgik, or a symbol of his fate/future?  What is the significance of his ability to break his collar in terms of thinking about the psychic shackles that bind and what it means to imagine other ways of either escaping or negotiating these binds?  And then, how does this scene figure the relationship between the money system and desire?  I can say with near certainty that Samuel Delany`s vision of utopia would not be absent of desire—but do the operations of desire in some way necessitate/engender/rely upon(?) asymmetrical relations of power?

The scene by the fire in which Gorgik tells Raven and Norema about his and Small Sarg`s relationship also brings up similar questions.  Gorgik tells the women, “We are both free men.  For the boy the collar is symbolic—of our mutual affection and our mutual protection.  For myself, it is sexual—a necessary part in the pattern that allows both action and orgasm to manifest themselves within the single circle of desire” (238).  He denies that it carries any social meaning for them—except that is “shocks, offends, or deceives”—despite the fact that in many ways it functions in the world in which they live as the paradigmatic sign of power (in a different way than the rult does, I suppose).

So, this collar serves (also) as a sign of submission and subordination, but the dynamics of Gorgik and Small Sarg`s relationship subverts this sign, and reveals its ultimate meaninglessness.  Further, this subversion is enacted through Gorgik`s relaying of its intentionality to Raven and Norema, which may speak to the power of story-telling to create new forms of relationships (more on this in a moment).

But going back, I am also thinking about the operations of desire that Gorgik`s relationship to Young Sarg reveals.  Are these two men more “free” because of their open subversion of the sign of power (the collar), or does Gorgik`s need to wear it in order to initiate desire bespeak his continued subjection to this symbol?  His wearing of the collar during sex (sex that is on some level taboo) serves as a kind of abjection of self, which he needs in order to be stimulated; but at the same time as it offers him a certain freedom through sex and the body, it problematizes the notion of an inherently liberating desire.  Desire is intimately connected with utopia; both are engendered and sustained through the conditions of their impossibility.  One might even say that utopia/utopian thinking always emerges from desire (an insatiable/impossible longing for wholeness), though I`m not yet prepared to claim that this is true.  But then I come back to the question voiced above:  does desire always involve asymmetrical power relations, if not between subjects than between the subject and his/her means of expression?  And what is the relationship (represented here; or otherwise) between desire and love?

Skipping around, back to storytelling:  We might think of story-telling as itself embodying a utopic impulse, which seems to be an especially salient theme in the first few tales.  The act of telling a story is an inherently transformative—and on some levels, one might argue, subversive—act.  To tell a story is to create a bridge between realms of experience, and a gap where new meanings can arise; and it is also to alter the course of history, and in so doing, the present and future as well.  To tell a story is to (re)claim a kind of agency, which may also represent transformative possibilities for the subject.  I wonder, however, what the limits of storytelling are in terms of reimagining/rearticulating the world?  Story-telling in most any form involves a harnessing of creativity combined with a willingness to imagine things not as they are but as they could be—but how far can this take us?  What, indeed, is language`s potential to actualize a utopian space?  And how can we conceptualize this space?  Is this a different kind/mode of utopia entirely than more concrete visions of utopia?  Because utopia by definition cannot exist, must it always involve a linguistic dimension?  I had to return my library copy of Trouble on Triton, so I don`t have access to the Foucault quote Britt read at the end of last week`s class, but I found it very provocative in thinking about the relationship between language, form, and utopia; and it brought up questions that I would like to continue to think about.

I won`t talk about the mirror scene here because I`m afraid I may be rambling.  I apologize for any incoherence, which can be blamed on too much time spent writing at my computer today!  But I`d certainly be interested to hear others` thoughts on any of these questions/threads…

I’m afraid I missed our class discussion of Trouble on Triton last week, so please forgive me for what might come across as a simplistic or redundant response.

I was particularly interested in the second section in this collection, “The Tale of Old Venn,” both in terms of the Utopian enclave (More/Jameson) and the idea that Utopia is a (pre)historic status to which we can return (Mackey, as one example). Venn reminded me of the narrator in More’s Utopia, and her primary narrative about the Rulvyn–“simple, proud, insular–like an island within our island”–is framed within many utopian terms (Delany 92). Venn disparages the spread of modern systems that developed from more “civilized” Nevérÿon. She feels that money has devalued labor by forcing all goods and services to be equated in the same currency (102). She is concerned about the development of writing as a way to better keep track of and more easily enslave people, and therefore advises that “Since we, here, do not aspire to civilization, it is perhaps best we halt the entire process” of developing a written language (85).

Rather than a positive and progressive force, Venn sees civilization as corrupting. She frames her past life with the Rulvyn as a simpler time free of many of the complications like written communication and money (More’s own symbol of human corruption). Because Rulvyn was “isolated,” it retained a prolonged immunity against the influences of Nevérÿon. Yet, as we discover, the utopian enclave is impermanent as long as the Rulvyn participate in trade. By the time Venn is telling her story, it is clear that the Rulvyn have also been corrupted by money (93). What is established, then, is a utopia that is unreachable not because of its geography, but its temporality. Venn advocates (or longs for) a society free of civilization that can only be set in history now that society has experienced that civilization. And what are we, as readers supposedly thousands of years in the future of Venn, supposed to make of the fact that we are much further removed from Venn’s utopia?

– Heather Nielsen

“’It is as though—‘ Gorgik held up the verdisgrised disk with its barbarous chasings—‘all these things would come together in a logical patter, immensely complex and greatly beautiful, tying together slave and empress, commoner and lord—even gods and demons—to show how all are related in a negotiable pattern, like some sailor’s knot, not yet pulled taut, but laid out on the dock in loose loops, so that simply to see it in such form were to comprehend it even when yanked tight.  And yet…’  He turn the astrolabe over;…there will not clear in my mind to any such pattern!’” (242).

This passage from the end of Tales of Neveryon encapsulates, for me, the intersecting stories that both single out and complicate Delaney’s interest with capital and money, gender and sexuality, race, and systems of domination.  Like any intersectional project, Tales of Neveryon presents a number of characters and storylines that work through complex social systems, illuminating the ‘knot’ that does not always clearly represent a ‘pattern’.

Though there is much to be said about the themes Delaney’s text tackles, and there are so many interesting passages and frameworks Delaney plays with, I was really fascinated by the way children and childhood are represented and used to construct Delaney’s plot. We meet both Gorgik and Norema as children and watch them grow up and travel throughout the land.  We leave them and return to them, and watch as they learn lessons from those they meet.  I was also fascinated with the focus on educating youth in “The Tale of Old Venn” as well as the young child that joins Norema and Raven in “The Tales of Potters and Dragons,” and of course, the child empress.

Is childhood a utopian space of potential alterity and futurity?  One also linked to parents sometimes present, sometimes absent?  How does focusing on children illuminate the generational changes Delaney stresses?  Are Delaney’s temporal comparisons materialized through the child who needs to learn or comes to learn about the differences of his or her world?  How does focusing on children iterate the socially constructed nature of gender and sex, race, and even money?  Or am I reading too far into these inquiries—is this ‘childhood’ plotline merely another Bildungsroman?