Frank Herbert’s epic
science-fantasy series, Dune, was my first exploration of the
science fiction genre and my first experience with Orientalist literature;
albeit, I was unaware of the latter at the time of my reading. Being only an
adolescent I was not yet aware of the work of Edward Said and would not come to
read his works until late into my undergraduate education at university.
Orientalist interpretations of Eastern culture and religion presuppose a binary
between West and East that estranges the latter from the former. The values of
the East are considered oppositional to those of the West and are conceived as
a static totality. Such simplification enables Eastern culture to be more
easily appropriated, commodified and exploited by Western influences. Whether the
culture of East is considered superior or inferior to the West, it must
inevitably be mastered by the West; either explicitly through the imposition of
Western political power or implicitly through the rationalization of Eastern
culture according to the dominant ideologies of Orientalist interpreters.
The speculative future
imagined in Dune contains several standard orientalist
caricatures but none more so than in the white savior, Paul Mau’dib, the young
noble who integrates himself with the primitive natives in order to liberate
them against the threat of empire in Laurence-of-Arabia-fashion. But if Dune can
then be said to be Orientalist, it is, like much of speculative fiction,
obscurely so. While it is an apparent work of science fiction, Dune posits
an alien desert world, Arrakis, so estranged from the experience of the
contemporary reader that it is difficult to conceive of it as a future reality
as opposed to an alternative reality altogether. This estrangement is only
intensified as the years since the novel’s original publication grow, and the
pseudo-science of the world becomes less and less credible and coherent in
comparison to contemporary scientific knowledge. Contrary to the expectations
of science fiction literature however, it is not primarily the
pseudo-scientific speculations that connect the fictional world of the Dune series
to our own, but rather it is the language of the series that unites the two.
The language of the series, or more precisely one of the languages within the
series, is also the most apparent site of the series’ obscure Orientalism.
Specifically it is
Arabic-derived language of the Fremen desert nomads of Arrakis which provides
the connection, albeit in clandestine fashion. At the time of my initial
reading of Dune I did not recognize the Fremen language as
based in Arabic, having no familiarity with the language or the concepts it
expresses, and considered it another exercise in speculative neologisms.
Speculative fiction, fantasy or science fiction, utilizes neologisms to
construct an imagined alternative world or project ourselves into the language
of an imagined future. As most writers of the genre write for English
audiences, this linguistic contrast between the familiar and the alien is often
done by contrasting English with an exotic-sounding language, whether
historical or fantastical. After returning to the text with some familiarity of
Arabic, minor as mine is, it was apparent to me that the words spoken by the
Fremen (Muad’Dib, Usul, Shari-a, Lian al-Haib, ayat, Kitab al-Ibar, Shaitan,
taqwa, dijihad, Sayaddin, jinn, etc ) are derivative of a familiar terrestrial
origin in Arabic. What once appeared to be an alien language is now apparent as
linguistic appropriation. The exoticism of fictional Fremen culture is a
function of the reader’s own unfamiliarity with the Arabic language and Islamic
culture and cosmology. Dune does not merely parallel the
Orientalist binary between the familiarity of empire and the exoticism of
primitive natives but projects it into the future.
However there is not
enough explicit context to determine whether the apparent Orientalism of the
text is best interpreted as a representation of contemporary Islamic culture, a
speculative projection of Islamic history, or the mere appropriation of a
historical culture to provide the element of alien exoticism common to the
speculative fiction genre. Speculative fiction requires both a familiar and an
exotic language; the former to ground the reader to a relatable reality and the
latter to push them beyond its horizon into unfamiliar and fascinating
territory. When the pseudo-Arabic of Dune functions as a
covert pedagogy in Arab and Islamic culture or whether it is the exploitation
and manipulation of that very heritage in the service of speculative of
entertainment remains a debatable question. The obscurity of Dune’s
Orientalism, the indeterminacy of its intentionality, makes it a problematic
work of speculative fiction. But to conclude that this uncertainty is nothing
more than a deficiency of the series is to misunderstand the intellectual
appeal and potential of speculative fiction.
Such indeterminacy of
intention complicates our world by either imagining alternative histories of
this world as in science fiction or an alternative world altogether as is the
case of fantasy fiction. Such exercises of the imagination speculate beyond the
horizon of our immediate experience and expose us to that which is other. This
is often criticized as escapist and in at least one sense I consider this a
legitimate critique; by constructing an artificial world rationalized in
pseudo-scientific or magical logic, such writing often rationalizes prejudicial
stereotypes while simultaneously excusing them as mere speculative play. This
writing provides the comforting possibility of escaping into a world where
one’s thinking is not challenged by any external referent and casual prejudices
and bigotry can be ignored if not celebrated as avatars of artistic freedom.
The Fremen are not an Orientalist caricature of a “space Bedouin” because they
are not real Bedouin but are Fremen, a futuristic and fictional culture.
Speculative fiction abounds with the abominations of racist and Orientalist
imaginings but to write explicitly against such naked prejudice misses the
potential of speculative writing.
Our world is not
transparent and insofar as speculative fiction aspires towards the construction
of realistic artificial worlds it ought to emulate an aura of uncertainty
surrounding its world-building. Since such worlds are written and read into
being through words, and the more ambiguous the language, the more open to
interpretation the world they describe is. The use of neologisms in speculative
fiction both liberates the world from prejudicial narratives while exposing our
inevitably prejudicial interpretations we project upon the world to understand
it. By using unfamiliar words to describe the world, the reader is forced to
understand the meaning it communicates independent of automatic and unconscious
associations more familiar words would have inherited. But at the same time,
this unhistorical use of language opens the words up to wider, and therefore
more personally prejudicial, interpretations analogous to a Rorschact ink-blot
test.
The significance of and
relationship between the Fremen Arabic of the future and Arab-Islamic culture
in the present is not obvious and is relative to one’s own prejudices and
ignorance. A reader unfamiliar with such a cultural heritage will approach Dune as
a mere space opera, but a reader aware of or identifying with such a culture
will have a more consequential reading of the text. Dune is
very much written within the gaze of Oriental imperialism and the colonial
white savior, but whether it is read that way depends very much upon one’s own
cultural education and sensitivity. The series is certainly not an ideal way to
educate one’s self on such a cultural history; for it isn’t concerned with
familiarizing the reader with Arabic or Islam as historically understood but in
utilizing them as pseudo-neologisms to construct an alien world.
The extent of this
estrangement depends upon one’s own limited exposure to and appreciation of
other cultures and cosmologies. To the Arabic speaker or Muslim reader, this
world will appear far more familiar, though not necessarily more welcome, given
its Orientalist tropes. Dune is an imperfect exercise in speculative
neologism and a perfect example of how speculative fiction appropriates the
language and concepts of “exotic” cultures and translates them into “alien”
ones. Exotic words may liberate our imaginations but only if those words are
not appropriated from the heritage of people suffering under the prejudices of
Orientalism and projects of colonialism. I look forward to a future where
speculative fiction not only writes against the prejudices of empire, but is
written by those outside its gaze. Thankfully that future appears both
inevitable and immanent.
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