Richard Powers conveys one of his essential ideas through the memories of Dr. Patricia Westerford:
She squints and sees her father. The voice is wrong but there are the rimless glasses, the high, surprised eyebrows, the constant curiosity. All those first lessons from half a century ago cloud around her, days in the beaten-up Packard, her mobile classroom, tooling around the back roads of southwest Ohio. It stuns her to recognize all her own adult convictions, there in embryo, formed by a casual few words with the window rolled down on a Friday afternoon and the soy fields of Highland County unspooling into the rearview mirror. Remember? People aren’t the apex species they think they are. Other creatures—bigger, smaller, slower, faster, older, younger, more powerful — call the shots, make the air, and eat sunlight. Without them, nothing. (Powers 277).
Powers’ idea of humans being merely a species on Earth rather than the masters of the planet can be analyzed through two literary forms. Firstly, Patricia’s memories and her father’s words that determined her life can be perceived as a bounded whole. Levine argues that while the totality associated with the bounded wholes might be used for expelling, it might create conditions for positive affordances (53). In addition, valuable acts of political action would be impossible without the bounded wholes. For instance, social activists overcame racial segregation in the Methodist church in the 1950s by rejecting plurality in favor of a single, overarching union (Levine 67). Likewise, her father’s influence made Patricia perceive the world as a unified system where humanity is only a single element. Moreover, this element often does more harm than good to itself and the system that provides it with conditions for existence. Such wholeness of beliefs may be confining; however, it affords the realization that the position of humanity on Earth is significantly more fragile than humans tend to believe.
Secondly, Powers’ message can be considered deeply hierarchic in its essence. Levine described hierarchy as the most troubling type of form since it ranks experiences, bodies, and things according to their subjective importance (123). Consequently, hierarchy can be outright discriminatory, thus affording systemic inequality. However, contrary to Levine’s concerns, hierarchy is used to convey a socially valuable message in the selected passage from The Overstory. Powers creates a hierarchy that dethrones humanity from the apex species’ position and even puts it below other creatures. This approach affords the author to amplify the idea of human vulnerability. By putting humanity in lower places in the hierarchy, Powers asks the reader whether Earth can live without humans. The answer is obvious — humans cannot survive on the devastated planet, whereas the planet and many of its inhabitants will endure and outlast humanity. As such, humanity’s belief in its supremacy should be considered nothing but a dangerous delusion.
Therefore, the form of hierarchy affords to send an important warning signal to humanity. Our conflicts, strive for supremacy, greed, and fleeting glory will mean nothing if the global ecosystem is irreversibly damaged. Through a combination of bounded whole and hierarchy in the selected passage, Powers shows the reader how disregarding the environment leads humanity to catastrophe. The forms afford to claim: humans misjudge their place in the global hierarchy, and this arrogance will lead to our downfall if humanity does not recognize the wholeness of the world and change its ways.
Powers’ stance against human supremacy on Earth finds indirect support in a philosophical understanding of power and discipline. Foucault described the concept of docile bodies — human beings subjected, transformed, or improved through disciplinary means (136). Docility came into a fashion in the 18th century, when Prussian king Frederick II achieved military success by turning his soldiers into small living machines, tiny projections of the state power. Meticulous, coercive, and uninterrupted control instilled the necessary docility into humans. According to Foucault, discipline played a vital role in this process since it increased bodies’ utility by reversing the course of their energy (138). Discipline dissociated power from the bodies, making recruits unable to escape the relationships of a strict subjection. As a result, human beings were successfully turned into docile, dehumanized, and obedient instruments.
One can argue that the modern era is different from the 18th century in regard to respect for human rights and personality. Such a claim would be mostly valid, especially in the case of economically-developed democratic countries. However, docility, the willing acceptance of superiors’ dominance, remains a reality in the modern era, even though the disciplinary methods have become more refined. Foucault listed three techniques employed by discipline in order to distribute individuals in space (141). Most importantly, discipline encloses people in confined settings with obligatory restrictions. Furthermore, dividing groups into separate individuals creates controlled spaces in which organized resistance is impossible. Lastly, discipline transforms the space around the individuals into functional sites (Foucault 143). These techniques are applicable to modern reality — schools, universities, and workplaces often turn people into the glorified cogs in the system. In this regard, one can conclude that most humans on Earth are not truly free: billions are subjected to someone else’s will as the modern-day docile bodies.
This conclusion is directly related to the author’s perception of the human species in the global hierarchy. Through the memories of Dr. Patricia Westerford, Richard Powers explicitly states: humanity is not supreme. In relation to Foucault’s theory, claims of human supremacy over other creatures on Earth would be empty since most humans are trapped in the role of subjected, docile bodies. In a bitter irony of fate, a significant part of the “apex species” exists in a perpetual condition of subjugation, whereas “lesser” animals and trees enjoy more freedom.
The persistence of questionable beliefs about human supremacy on Earth can be explained through the concepts of habitualization and institutionalization. Berger and Luckmann define habitualization as frequently repeated actions that turn into a steady pattern and can be reproduced with an economy of effort (71). Habitualization frees the individual from “the burden of all those decisions” (Berger and Luckmann 71). An institution emerges whenever a reciprocal typification of habitualized actions occurs (Berger and Luckmann 72). In this regard, one can argue that the idea of human supremacy on Earth has become a habitualized an institutionalized pattern of thinking. Humanity takes its self-perceived supremacy for granted due to the dominance of the anthropocentric paradigm in culture and philosophy. In the selected passage, Powers attempts to challenge the pattern of human supremacy on Earth since he is firmly convinced of its catastrophic consequences in the long-term perspective.
In this regard, one can argue that the selected passage belongs to the domain of political reading rather than fiction. According to Levine, acts of political reading rely on implicit models of the plausible unfolding of forms (159). Therefore, the gradual unfolding of Powers’ idea can be traced via the SOLO taxonomy. Moreover, SOLO taxonomy allows the reader to project the development of Powers’ idea to the extended abstract level even in scenarios when the reader is unfamiliar with the subject.
For instance, at the pre-structural level, a reader might be a firm believer in human supremacy or be completely unconcerned with the place of humanity on Earth. As such, the reader would lack awareness of the alternatives to anthropocentrism. After reading the passage for the first time, the reader would move to the unistructural level of the taxonomy. They will become acknowledged with an alternative perspective on humanity’s place in the world. As a result, the readers would develop an idea of humanity being merely a single species in the system.
From this starting point, the reader might ascend to the multistructural level. The fundamental fallacy of the human supremacy concept might become accompanied by various ideas. For instance, the reader might describe the consequences of deforestation or list the reasons why humans depend on animals and plants for comfortable living. In this stage, the reader would develop a selection of plausible factors that dethrone humanity from the apex species position, thus reinforcing Powers’ argument.
Once the reader lists the reasons for human dependency on the environment and other species on Earth, they would become able to make a transition to the relational level. At this stage, multiple ideas drawn on the multistructural level would become related via various explanations. For example, the reader could link deforestation or the extinction of valuable species to human activities. Additionally, the reader might compare and contrast the influence of human supremacist stance on the environment with the outcomes of an eco-friendly attitude to Earth and its inhabitants. Overall, the relational level of taxonomy would provide the reader with the necessary background knowledge for making the last step in understanding the socio-political message of the passage.
Finally, the reader would unfold the forms utilized by Richard Powers at the extended abstract level. In particular, the reader would become capable of reflecting on how the world benefits from being a bounded whole, a united system, in which human supremacy is abandoned in favor of smart stewardship. In addition, the reader would understand why anthropocentric beliefs are persistent and why humans cannot be considered an apex species of the global hierarchy despite their prevalence. Consequently, the reader would manage to explain how human behavior must change in order to secure the future of Earth and ensure the survival of humanity. In accordance with Levine’s definition of political reading, literary forms would unfold as the reader reaches the highest point of SOLO taxonomy.
In conclusion, in this example, one can see how SOLO taxonomy facilitates political reading. The message conveyed by Richard Powers is strong yet relatively simple — humans are not the apex species of Earth. However, the application of the SOLO taxonomy gradually unfolds literary forms of the whole and hierarchy used by the author. In the end, the reader obtains a significantly deeper understanding of the problem, developing a socio-political standpoint on humanity’s place on Earth. Therefore, SOLO taxonomy should be considered a valuable analytical instrument in terms of application to the complex challenges of the modern era.
Works Cited
Berger, Peter. L., and Luckmann, Thomas. The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. Penguin Adult, 1991.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books, 1995.
Levine, Caroline. Forms: Whole, Rhythm, Hierarchy, Network. Princeton University Press, 2015.
Powers, Richard. The Overstory. W. W. Norton & Company, 2018.