The Political-ness of the Other

In this week's class (the first in three weeks) we launched into a very ambitious discussion comparing the alien species in Speaker for the Dead and The Martian Chronicles. To make the conversation even more complicated, we attempted to think of the aliens in terms of Schmittian logic. The question we tried to answer at the beginning of class was whether or not the various aliens were political beings or not. Clearly, we felt that each of the species in Speaker, humans, piggies, and buggers, were political in that they made up distinct groups that interact in a political manner with each other. The simple fact of their interactions, with a special emphasis on the creation of the treaty between humans and piggies, shows that they have political interests and are therefore political entities. These political boundaries are so strong that even though Human announces that the humans and piggies and buggers will now be one tribe, this is not really possible because their cultures and beliefs are far too different.

In our discussion we then turned to the Martians in Bradbury's novel. We saw them in a completely different light from Card's aliens. Unlike in Speaker, there are no real political interactions between the humans and the aliens in The Martian Chronicles. The only interactions are between individuals and small groups. Also, in my opinion, Bradbury seems to make the Martians completely non-political on purpose; they appear to be simply a way of seeing human nature. Because of this, I believe that the Martians' lack of political-ness is an important piece of Bradbury's story. It provides something off of which to base the image of the humans, who are the real focus of the story. Because, as Professor Jackson pointed out in class, when humans are confronted with the other, they are actually confronted with themselves and the need to preserve their humanness.

Another interesting question that was raised in class was whether there can ever be true understanding between two different species of intelligent being. We see what seems to be true understanding between Ender and the piggies and buggers, but some in the class question this. They seem to think that his "understanding" is not complete and is based more on self-preservation and species that are so different can never truly comprehend the other's way of life and beliefs. I don't really adhere to the thinking that Ender doesn't really understand the other species in the book; I think the whole story revolves around Ender's ability to understand the "other" in a way that no one else can. His skill in bridging political and cultural gaps between species is vital to Speaker.