Recommendation | Beyond Hope and Despair: Thoughts on Imagination

My discussion about imagination as a generator of despair and/or hope will be held with the guidance of two recommended literary works.

First, science fiction and fantasy literature is, by its very nature, based on speculation; construction of possible worlds in space-time, asking “what if” questions about communities, cultures, and mental frameworks that are created under these speculative conditions. By turning the present into one of many possible worlds, it challenges deterministic perceptions that see it as a necessary, static, self-evident state of affairs based on religion, ideology, historical laws, or pseudoscience. Therefore, even when it describes seemingly hopeless post-apocalyptic dystopias, it also points, together with despair, to the hope inherent in the very ability of reality to change.

Secondly, there is something liberating and hopeful about the artistic representation of fears and paranoia; and to be a little Freudian, it also exists in the literary realization of hidden desires (which fantasy literature certainly fulfills for children, for example: the common desire for orphanhood, but not only that and not only for them).

The first reading is of that kind, an imaginary world, the associations of which with our own world are quite obvious. In addition, imagination is used there to generate empathy for others and foreigners, to break down prejudices and stereotypes.

The second reading transfers the act of imagination from the creator to us, the readers. As such, it is an exemplary model of comfort and hope.

The Word for World is Forest

Once upon a time, I was asked about a good book on “settler colonialism.” My answer, which surprised—and probably disappointed—the inquirers, who were probably expecting a thick, heavy volume of cutting-edge academic theory, was and remains a recommendation for a fantasy/science fiction novel by my favorite author, Ursula K. Le Guin. The book is called The Word for World is Forest (first published in English, 1972).

The book describes an encounter in a distant world between its settlers-inhabitants and its indigenous-inhabitants. Le Guin’s genius literary move, which prevents it from being a clichéd allegory and a manifesto masquerading as literature, is based on the use of imagination, not only to create a world and society within the framework of speculative anthropology that characterizes it, but also to move between consciousnesses and experiences, challenge what we take for granted, and generate empathy towards the foreign and the other.

The opening is described through the eyes (and consciousness, and feelings) of a “white” (i.e., foreign) settler, in a way that automatically arouses our sympathy for him and his role, together with contempt, disgust, and anger at the disobedience of the natives, who are perceived by him (and us) as subhuman work animals. It is the same automatism with which we “knew” (that is, were led to ‘know’) who were the “good guys” and who were the “bad guys” in the adventure books and movies of our childhood — the good guys were white gentlemen from Europe, the bad guys were the notorious, savage natives, who gathered on the wild beach waiting for their ship to serve them submissively or to be slaughtered or, God forbid, be cooked by them in a large pot… The good guys were the white cowboys, the bad guys were the rebellious, cruel, bloodthirsty “Indians” or the lazy, filthy, greedy “Mexicans.”

Then, gently and gradually, a reversal is constructed in the book, and in the reader’s mind. With it, comes identification, familiarity, and empathy with the indigenous people, their culture, and their worldview. The reversal brings with it a series of insights, one of which, a particularly political one, is noteworthy because it is often forgotten: The occupier, the invader, the settler, the colonizer, the foreigner, does not only bring with it weapons, police, and supervision that ensure its supremacy by force, but it also imports “laws” that it both enacts and enforces. It renders local traditions and ways of life illegitimate, not to say illegal.

Hence, Native Americans lost their lands because they did not register them by a certain “deadline” at some mayor or sheriff’s office. It was announced in notices posted in a language other than their own on bulletin boards in cities where they did not live, and based on laws and regulations that not only they did not participate in their enactment, but were also unaware of their existence (and ignorance of the law is no excuse; this can also be learned from the opening chapter of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams’ science fiction classic, where Earth is destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass, according to plans that were presented more than fifty years ago in the local galactic planning offices in the Alpha Centauri system – UA).

Thus, Lobengula, king of the Ndebele people (as they were called), signed a unilateral agreement granting rights to Cecil Rhodes’ company and the British crown in what would later be called Rhodesia (and today Zimbabwe), in legal language and according to laws provided by the British (and while he was apparently drugged with red wine mixed with opium, and under heavy guard by soldiers armed with machine guns — one of the first uses of this weapon).

In Le Guin’s book, the natives defeat the invaders from the galaxy following a violent uprising, the invaders give up the conflict and choose to respect the autonomy of the locals. But they also pay a heavy price—the loss of the pacifist and peace-loving ethos that characterized their culture. In this sense, everyone comes out as losers in this conflict. Le Guin’s imagination not only poses the somewhat clichéd moral question of “does the end justify the means?” but also Albert Camus’s sharp question/answer: “what justifies the end?” to which he answers, true to his way, “the means.”

Moomintroll’s Wish

The second example (which I particularly like) is the use of the readers’ imagination, an example that describes a moment that does not even take place within the story, rather only after it ends. When I first read the book, it was called The Family of Strange Animals, and no child or adult I knew had heard of it or of its author, Tove Jansson. It was my private secret. Today, in a recent translation, it is called The Wizard’s Hat, and its Moomin characters are familiar to everyone, thanks in no small part to the popular animated series.

At the end of the book, Moomintroill asks the wizard to send the table packed with goodies to his friend Snufkin, who is wandering somewhere at night, all by himself. This is a noble request from a true friend, who uses (and supposedly wastes) his only wish to make his soulmate happy.

This is where the story ends, but the magic moment is in your imagination: the moment when, in the depths of the forest, on a dark and cold night, a festive, heartening table descends from the sky in a complete surprise for Snufkin. I imagine him smiling to himself, the gift not being the table itself, but the intention. Moomintroll gives Snufkin the most beautiful present, a moment of unexpected grace.

(The first book in the Moomin adventure series was published in Finnish in 1945. The book in question, The Wizard’s Hat, the third in the series, was published in 1948).