By:
Amanda Rudd
Abstract:
In his article, “History and the
Historical Effect in Frank Herbert’s Dune,” Lorenzo DiTommaso argues that
history within Dune is a purely
linear and progressive process. DiTommaso claims that Paul’s actions are
pre-determined by the logical progression of history. Paul constructs his
empire from the Galactic Imperium left by Shaddam, making it merely the next
step in the causal and evolutionary chain as already determined by the
Butlerian Jihad. However, DiTommaso’s construction of history is
overly-deterministic, and does not attend to the complexity involved in
building any empire, particularly Paul’s. Instead, reading Dune through the lens of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire and Manuel DeLanda’s assemblage
theory allows for a more complete understanding of the empire Paul assembles
from the pieces of Shaddam’s. It is possible to pay proper attention to
the historical dimensions of Paul’s power while still acknowledging and
examining the paradigmatic breaks that occur in his construction of empire.
Furthermore, by approaching the Galactic Imperium as an assemblage per DeLanda,
in which components may be re-ordered, removed, and plugged into different
assemblages, we may understand Shaddam’s empire as one assemblage, which is
disassembled by Paul and his Fremen forces. Therefore, Paul’s empire, composed
of the elements of Shaddam’s (re-arranged and placed in new relations to each
other), along with elements from Fremen culture and militia power, is in fact
an entirely new assemblage, which is both properly oriented to its linear
historical processes and a total paradigmatic shift from the previous empire.
Keywords: imperialism, assemblage, history, paradigmatic
shift, empire, science fiction
Author
Notes
My thanks to Dr. Jennifer Wingard at the
University of Houston for introducing me to assemblage theory and for her
guidance through early drafts of this paper, and also to Joanna Spaulding for
her assistance in the editing process. Sections of an early draft of this paper
were presented at the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts 35
in March 2014.
“There
is no escape—we pay for the violence of our ancestors” (Herbert, 1965, p. 146);
so spoke the prophet Paul Muad’Dib in “The Collected Sayings of Muad’Dib,”
signifying an inescapable connection to the past. This quote, if read in
isolation, would lend support to Lorenzo DiTommaso’s (1992) argument in
“History and Historical Effect in Frank Herbert’s ‘Dune’” that Dune demonstrates a clear linear
relationship between past and present, and that these historical structures of
linearity underpin many of the themes and institutions of the novel, including,
but not limited to, the Padishah Emperor’s Galactic Imperium and Paul’s role as
a catalyst for change. According to DiTommaso (1992), the structures of Dune show that Herbert himself believed
that “history is a linear and progressive process, whose effects, while not
always predictable, are nonetheless logical and understandable” (p. 311). As
prime evidence, DiTommaso (1992) cites references to the Butlerian Jihad, which
in being called “the last jihad” implies a series of previous jihads. “This
apparent incidence of multiple jihads,” DiTommaso (1992) posits,
should not be taken as being representative of a
theory of cyclical history. Indeed, Herbert’s treatments of the diverse
religious traditions and the politico-social history of all aspects of the
Imperium clearly reveal the evolutionary nature of his vision of history. (p.
311)
While DiTommaso’s (1992) analysis of
history within the context of the Dune
series is thought-provoking, it is flawed in several places and leads to an
overly-simplistic determinism that negates the agency of the characters and
does not account for the complexity inherent in empire-building. DiTommaso’s
(1992) explication of what he terms the “Vitality struggle”—a binary opposition
between vitality (life) and stagnation as represented by the conflict between
the Imperium and Paul Muad’Dib—is particularly astute, and offers a unique
angle on the main thematic and philosophical conflicts within the first novel
of the series. However, this reading neither requires nor advances his
interpretation of time and history as linear and progressive.
For instance, neither
textual evidence from the novel nor theory provides a reason to believe
DiTommaso’s (1992) claim that the series of jihads cannot be read as cyclical.
From what little evidence Herbert provides in the Appendices of Dune, it is just as plausible to read
the jihads as cyclical. Furthermore, DiTommaso’s (1992) argument falls apart
when he applies his reading of linear history to Paul’s empire-building
project, claiming that Paul’s actions are pre-determined by the logical
progression of history, and that the empire Paul inherits is “derived from the
same homogeneous effects of the history” (p. 322) that created Shaddam’s
empire; it is thus merely the next step in the causal and evolutionary chain as
already determined by the Butlerian Jihad. While some attention to historical
processes is admittedly important to an understanding of the imperialism
portrayed in Dune, DiTommaso’s (1992)
construction of history and empire is ultimately deterministic and does not
account for the special conditions of Paul’s empire-building.
There
are several signs that history within the context of Dune is not the simplistic linear progression that DiTommaso (1992)
makes it out to be. While Herbert (1965) acknowledges a connection to the past
in such passages as the quote from Muad’Dib mentioned above, there is nothing
simple about his representation of history and time. He may state in one place
that “there is in all things a pattern that is part of our universe” (Herbert,
1965, p. 380), which implies the kind of logical processes that DiTommaso
speaks of. Yet, in another passage, Herbert claims, “The concept of progress
acts as a protective mechanism to shield us from the terrors of the future” (1965,
p. 371). Defining progress as a shield that protects us from the changes that
come with the passage of time defies the very idea of progress, separating
history from “the old concepts of continuity, causality, and temporal
progression” as the “dream of progress” is buried “beneath the rubble of World
War II, the Holocaust…” (Gomel, 2010, p. 2). Despite the fact that the Bene
Gesserit and the Houses of the Landsraad pay attention to linearity and
genealogy, the novel itself seems in several ways to negate DiTommaso’s
argument for a history that is linear, progressive, and evolutionary in nature.
By negating this concept of temporal history, the novel also demonstrates that
we cannot simplify empire to a deterministic evolutionary progression as
characterized by DiTommaso, particularly when we approach empire in a more critical manner.
I
would argue that by reading Dune
through the lens of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s (2000) Empire, and Manuel DeLanda’s (2006)
assemblage theory, we come to a more complete understanding of Paul and the
empire he assembles from the shattered pieces of the previous Imperium. As
Hardt and Negri (2000) explain in their discussion of capitalism and
imperialism, most current frameworks of empire do not stand up to the current
moment. It is still possible to pay proper attention to the historical and ab origine dimensions of Paul’s power
while acknowledging the real paradigmatic breaks that occur as he constructs
his empire. Moreover, by approaching the Galactic Imperium as an assemblage per
DeLanda (2006), we may understand the Imperium of Padishah Emperor Shaddam IV
as just one possible assemblage, which is disassembled by Paul and his Fremen
forces. Therefore, Paul’s empire, composed of the elements of Shaddam’s
(re-arranged and placed in new relations to each other), along with elements
from Fremen culture and militia power, is in fact an entirely new assemblage,
both properly oriented to its linear historical processes and also a total paradigmatic
shift from the previous empire.
In
constructing his argument about the Vitality struggle, DiTommaso (1992) makes
several claims about the operations of history in empire building, and how Paul
is oriented to history, but his interpretation of history within these contexts
is faulty. For instance, he states that the Vitality struggle is a conflict
between the Imperium and Arrakis as entities that are different in degree, not
in kind (DiTommaso, 1992, p. 313). Paul comes to power by operating within the
system of the already established empire, the control of which, DiTommaso
claims, “naturally encourages a lowering of race consciousness and a slowing of
history” (1992, p. 313).[1]
This is neither an accurate reading of Paul specifically, nor of empire in
general. DiTommaso (1992) seems to be using a mainly Hobbesian theory of
empire—focusing on the transference of sovereignty (i.e., from Shaddam to
Paul), and attributing the legitimacy of that sovereignty primarily with a
“contractual agreement grounded on the convergence of preexisting state
subjects” (Hardt and Negri, 2000, p. 7). Yet Hardt and Negri (2000) point out
that this theory of empire “cannot account for the real novelty of the
historical processes we are witnessing,” nor does it “recognize the accelerated
rhythm, the violence, and the necessity with which the new imperial paradigm
operates” (p. 8).
Though Hardt and Negri
(2000) discuss empire within the context of contemporary globalization and
neoliberalism, I believe their notions can be applied in this case because they
offer a framework by which we can examine the exceptional quality of Paul’s empire-building,
including the accelerated rhythm and violence he employs through Dune. As Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.
(2003) states, whether Hardt and Negri’s (2000) theory is accurate as a
critique of global capitalism or not, it is
immensely useful as a tool for understanding
contemporary geopolitical mythology […] As a world-model, it is simultaneously
an ideological fiction and a way of experiencing the world. It is also what
Peter Stockwell calls an architext: a complex cognitive metaphor onto which can
be mapped readers’ sense of reality and also the many different parts of the
science-fictional megatext. (p. 232)
We can easily apply Hardt and Negri’s
cognitive metaphor of the new imperial paradigm to Paul’s empire—which is built
rapidly, using the force of physical, economic, and ideological violence that
Shaddam neither anticipates nor understands, and with a sense of necessity for
his own and Arrakis’s survival. In Paul Muad’Dib’s use of physical, economic,
and ideological violence, he marks a paradigm shift. In constructing his
empire, Paul does indeed utilize all the pieces of Shaddam’s Imperium, broken,
rearranged, and reconsidered, but he does so in combination with a multitude of
new elements and with new networks and connections. The struggle between
Shaddam’s Imperium and Paul’s is, therefore, a clear break from the old
reality, a conflict arising from a difference of kind as well as degree.
DiTommaso
(1992) further argues, “Paul does not escape from the system when he becomes
the Prophet” (p. 316), but merely adjusts his position or stance within the
system. Paul is therefore a mere catalyst who “sparks the awesome inertial
forces of history into motion” (DiTommaso, 1992, p. 321), triggering a series
of events that were already set to occur by the linear and evolutionary
progression of history. Hardt and Negri (2000) contradict this when they
specifically begin their argument with the proposition that we “rule out from
the outset […] the notion that the present order somehow rises up spontaneously
out of the interactions of radically heterogeneous global forces, as if this
order were a harmonious concert orchestrated by the natural and neutral hand of
the world market” (p. 3). In this case, of course, the concert would be
orchestrated not by the market but by the determinism of the Butlerian Jihad.
If we accept Hardt and Negri’s (2000) stance, then the emergence and/or
creation of imperial structures requires a more complicated process than a
natural combination of preexisting conditions already at play within Shaddam’s
empire. Instead, viewing the imperial forces of Dune through the lens of assemblage theory offers a more complete
picture.
In
his book A New Philosophy of Society,
Manuel DeLanda (2006) extends Deleuze and Guattari’s (1987) theory of
assemblages, first set forth in “1914: One or Several Wolves?” from A Thousand Plateaus, which posits a
theory that can be applied to a “wide variety of wholes constructed from
heterogeneous parts” (p. 3). DeLanda (2006) argues that rather than viewing wholes
(whether those wholes are material, social, etc.) as either single irreducible
entities or only equal to the properties of its separate parts, it is possible
for a whole to be “both analyzable into separate parts and at the same time
have irreducible properties that emerge from the interactions between parts”
(p. 10). These are assemblages: “wholes characterized by relations of
exteriority. These relations imply, first of all, that a component part of an
assemblage may be detached from it and plugged into a different assemblage in
which its interactions are different” (p. 1).
Over
the course of the first chapter of his book, DeLanda (2006) spends considerable
time building upon the theory of assemblages and explicates a series of
elements within his theory. The relations of exteriority that characterize an
assemblage can be “logically necessary relations” between parts, or they can be
only “contingently obligatory” (DeLanda, 2006, p. 11). Furthermore, DeLanda
defines assemblages along two axes or dimensions. The first axis “defines the
variable roles which an assemblage's components may play” (DeLanda, 2006, p.
12), the two sides of which are the material and the expressive. The second
axis “defines variable processes in which these components become involved and
that either stabilize the identity of an assemblage [...] or destabilize it”
(DeLanda, 2006, p. 12). The two sides of this axis are called
territorialization and deterritorialization. It is important to note that these
two axes do not exist in binaries, but are spectrums or continuums. Combining
these two axes results in an array of components that may perform a variety of
functions and could have both territorializing and deterritorializing effects.
Throughout the book, DeLanda (2006) demonstrates how this assemblage theory may
be applied on different scales, beginning with individual interactions between
people or objects, up through the scale of cities and organizations, and ending
with nation-states. Adding or removing components will not always alter an
assemblage, but because the functions and properties of an assemblage are
defined not by the components but the interactions between components, a
significant fracturing, re-ordering, or re-structuring of components can, in
some cases, result in the creation of an entirely new assemblage. This is, in
its essence, what I argue takes place over the course of Dune, as Paul Muad'Dib Atreides attacks and disassembles Shaddam
IV's Imperium, replacing it with an empire of his own making, which reorders all
the components of Shaddam's empire while adding components of Fremen culture
and militia power to the mix.
It
is essential first, though, to note the ways in which Paul himself is also an
assemblage that cannot be predicted or controlled by the old system. DiTommaso
(1992) argues that Paul’s abilities and status as the Kwisatz Haderach separate
him from the Spacing Guild, the Mentats, and the Bene Gesserit by a difference
in degree (p. 316). He views Paul’s abilities as simple extensions of the same “awareness-spectrum”
that the Spacing Guild uses, increased by a combination of the Mentat training
from Thufir Hawat and the Bene Gesserit training from his mother, Jessica.
Furthermore, because Paul resorts to using his position as a Duke within the
Imperium in his dealing with Shaddam IV, DiTommaso (1992) claims that he merely
works within the already-established system and does not in any way constitute
a break. There is no denying the importance of Paul’s background, the training
that is the foundation of his development, or his connections to the
institutions of the Spacing Guild, the Mentats, and the Bene Gesserit.
Nevertheless, if we
view Paul’s abilities as only an intensification of each institution we risk
ignoring the novel ways these elements interact with each other. No human being
before had ever received both Mentat and Bene Gesserit training . These two
elements alone, powerful in their own rights, would interact in unpredictable
ways, feeding off and building from the properties of each element to create
entirely new abilities.[2]
Combining these two already-formidable components with Paul’s initial spice
consumption, the philosophies and religion of the Fremen, his personality as a
Duke’s son, and his final consumption of the Water of Life[3]
could not fail to create an entirely unique entity that could not have been
created or predicted by any of these elements individually. The properties,
abilities, and powers of the Kwisatz Haderach as embodied by Paul are different
from and greater than any of these individual properties, and are dependent
upon the interactions, or relations of exteriority, between these elements.
This is, in effect, the very definition of an assemblage. Though DiTommaso
(1992) argues that Paul’s prescience is only an extension of the Mentat ability
to read paths and probabilities, the scenes when Paul experiences his more
powerful prescient visions demonstrate an experience and knowledge that is not
only different in intensity but vastly different in quality and kind than a Mentat’s
computational predictions.
Paul,
as the Kwisatz Haderach, is not just playing the odds and dealing with
probabilities and statistics. He is stepping outside the stream of time and experiencing events—following the paths
and possibilities past their conclusions, becoming aware of the consequences of
consequences of consequences ad infinitum,
in ways that neither the Mentats nor the Spacing Guild could ever dream of. His
abilities develop slowly, in small flashes such as in the scene just after he
and Jessica escape the Harkonnen attack, and Paul sees
two main branchings along the way ahead—in one he
confronted an evil old Baron and said: ‘Hello, Grandfather.’ The thought of
that path and what lay along it sickened him. The other path held long patches
of grey obscurity except for peaks of violence. He had seen a warrior religion
there, a fire spreading across the universe with the Atreides green and black
banner waving at the head of fanatic legions drunk on spice liquor. (Herbert,
1954, p. 199)
Already here Paul sees farther and in
more visionary ways than the Mentats could, but it is early still, and he does
not see clearly. Paul gains greater understanding of the currents he steps in
as the novel continues:
Awareness flowed into that timeless stratum where he
could view time, […] the one-eyed vision of the past, the one-eyed vision of
the present and the one-eyed vision of the future—all combined in a trinocular
vision that permitted him to see time-become-space” (Herbert, 1965, p. 295).
And once he drinks the Water of Life,
Paul’s sight, his ability to be “many places at once” (Herbert, 1965, p. 444),
becomes complete. His mother Jessica knows in that moment that he is, in fact,
the Kwisatz Haderach. Yet, though the Bene Gesserit have hoped for the Kwisatz
Haderach, have predicted it, and have actively manipulated genetics in order to
bring him about, the reality of Paul’s existence as an assemblage of many
elements leads to a creature that they could not have accurately predicted and
will certainly never be able to understand or control.
This fact is
highlighted in the last chapter. The epigraph to the chapter announces:
There is no measuring Muad’Dib’s motives by ordinary
standards. […] Remember, we speak of the Muad’Dib who ordered battle drums made
from his enemies’ skins, the Muad’Dib who denied the conventions of his ducal
past with a wave of the hand, saying merely: ‘I am the Kwisatz Haderach. That
is reason enough.’ (Herbert, 1965, p. 466)
Paul as Muad’Dib and Kwisatz Haderach
cannot be predicted or measured or held to the same standards as either the
Fremen or the ducal houses of the Landsraad. When the Bene Gesserit Reverend
Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam first realizes that Paul is in fact the Kwisatz
Haderach she feels vindicated, going so far as to say that she can forgive
Jessica for “the abomination of [her] daughter” (Herbert, 1965, p. 477) because
Jessica gave birth to Paul. However, the Reverend Mother quickly realizes that
the Kwisatz Haderach is not what she (or anyone) thought it would be. Paul
disabuses her of her self-congratulatory attitude by stating not only that he
will never do what she wants of him, but also by making her aware of her own
limitations and faulty predictions: “you saw part of what the race needs, but
how poorly you saw it. You think to control human breeding and intermix a
select few according to your master plan! How little you understand…” (Herbert,
1965, p. 478). At this point, the Reverend Mother’s self-satisfaction
transforms to rage and horror as she shouts for Jessica to “Silence him!” (Herbert,
1965, p. 477) and demands: “Jessica, what have you done?” (Herbert, 1965, p.
478). Thus, she disavows the entity she had some part in creating, but which
has so far exceeded and defied her expectations that her success might as well
be considered a failure.
In
many ways, Paul exemplifies the kind of multiplicity described in Deleuze and
Guattari’s (1987) “One or Several Wolves?” which became the foundation for
DeLanda’s (2006) assemblage theory. Their statement that “the unconscious
itself was fundamentally a crowd” (Deleuze and Guttari, 1987, p. 17) fits
neatly with the process of drinking the Water of Life, in which the Bene
Gesserit Reverend Mothers, and eventually Paul as Kwisatz Haderach, become
connected to each other on some meta-cognitive and spiritual level. “It is like
an ultimate simpatico,” Jessica
thinks as she takes the Water of Life, “being two people at once: not
telepathy, but mutual awareness” (Herbert, 1965, p. 355). In that moment,
Jessica connects to the previous Reverend Mother, Ramallo, and is given all her
experiences and memories, including the memories of the Reverend Mother before
Ramallo, and the one before that, as far as back as can be conceived. In this
way, Jessica becomes a crowd, as does Paul when he later drinks the Water of
Life. But unlike Jessica, who merely gains access to previous Reverend Mothers,
Paul gains access to more histories, voices, and visions than even he can
control.
Paul embodies
multiplicity in other ways as well, particularly by virtue of his many names.
According to Deleuze and Guattari (1987),
the proper name (nom proper) does not designate an
individual: it is on the contrary when the individual opens up to the
multiplicities pervading him or her, at the outcome of the most severe
operations of depersonalization, that he or she acquires his or her true proper
name. The proper name is the instantaneous apprehension of a multiplicity. (p.
17)
That name, here, is Muad’Dib, which
encompasses and gestures toward the multiplicity of Paul’s identity: Paul,
Duke, Fremen, Usul, Lisan Al-Gaib, Kwisatz Haderach, and eventually Emperor.
The name Muad’Dib signals the assemblage of Paul, the many elements and
relations of exteriority that make him who and what he is. As Deleuze and Guattari
explain: “Lines of flight or of deterritorialization,[4]
[…] becoming-inhuman, deterritorialized intensities: that is what multiplicity
is” (1987, p. 11). The multiplicity and the assemblage are one and the same,
the assemblage is what makes Paul a multiplicity, and makes him something other
or more than human: the Kwisatz Haderach.
The figure of Paul is
not, however, the only assemblage to be found in the novel, for the entirety of
his empire stands as one as well. In his analysis of organizations and
governments as assemblages, DeLanda (2006) chooses to focus on
what all these organizations share in common: an
authority structure. We can separate those elements that play an expressive
role, that is, those components that express legitimacy of the authority, from
those playing a material role, those involved in the enforcement of obedience…”
(p. 68).
In doing so, he employs Max Weber’s
categories of three types of authority structures: efficient bureaucracy—“in
which a complete separation of position or office from the person occupying it
has been achieved”; religious/monarchical governments—“in which positions of
authority are justified exclusively in terms of traditional rules and
ceremonies inherited from the past and assumed to be sacred”; and charismatic
individuals who repudiate the first two and are “treated by followers as a
leader by virtue of personal charisma” (DeLanda, 2006, p. 69). These three
structures tend to exist in mixtures, making most if not all organizations and
governments assemblages. By discussing Paul’s empire in these terms, I am
greatly simplifying DeLanda’s (2006) analysis, which makes a concerted effort
to distinguish these kinds of hierarchical organizational assemblages “from the
kingdom, empire, or nation-state that [they] control” (p. 87). In reality, on
the level of kingdom, empire, or nation-state, we must also deal with the
“interactions with other organizations, with coalitions of networks, or with
populations of individual persons” (DeLanda, 2006, p. 87), which make that
kingdom, empire, or nation-state an assemblage of many other assemblages
(Deleuzian multiplicity in its largest form). That said, if we accept from the
outset that any empire is an
assemblage of many other assemblages, then it is possible to delineate several
ways in which Paul deconstructs and changes Shaddam’s assemblage empire into a
new one.
The
Galactic Imperium, as ruled by Shaddam IV, is in most respects a mixture of
bureaucratic and monarchical structures, in which Shaddam is a monarch with limited
power, enforced mainly through the deployment of his Sardaukar military forces.
Rather, much of the authority comes from the contractual agreements with the
noble Houses of the Landsraad, and, in the end, largely from the bureaucratic
forces of the Spacing Guild, who have a monopoly on space travel and
essentially have the final word on all matters through their ability to control
mobility, trade, and even where and when Shaddam may deploy his Sardaukar. This
then, though simplified, is the general makeup of Shaddam’s assemblage empire.
On
the simplest level, because Paul is a new and forceful component of the
assemblage, he changes the structure of that assemblage merely by his presence.
As stated previously, adding to, removing, or rearranging the components can
significantly alter an assemblage. This is true in the case of Paul because he
clearly fits the definition of Weber’s charismatic leader, and thus creates a
ripple effect of change in the makeup of Shaddam’s empire. As DeLanda (2006)
notes: “the kinds of individuals that have played this role [of charismatic
leader] have ranged from ‘prophets, to people with a reputation for therapeutic
or legal wisdom, to leaders in the hunt, and heroes of war’” (p. 69).
Importantly, Paul fulfills all of these roles. He is first and foremost, the
Lisan Al-Gaib, the prophet and leader foretold by Fremen myth who can see the
future and will bring about change on Arrakis. Second, due to his training as a
Duke’s son, and his prescient knowledge of Fremen culture, he brings new wisdom
to the Fremen clans, following their customs when it is useful, and also
changing them when he deems it necessary.
This is most apparent
when Paul refuses to follow Fremen culture by challenging Stilgar and killing
him in order to take over leadership of the Fremen forces. Instead, he applies
his special brand of wisdom to the crowds, explaining that he has already been
established as ruler by teaching the Fremen the “weirding way” style of
fighting, and because Stilgar already does his bidding and honors him in the
Fremen council. He does not need to go through with the combat challenge in
order for the Fremen to recognize his leadership. He will not “smash [his]
knife before a battle” or “cut off [his] right arm and leave it bloody on the
floor of this cavern” (Herbert, 1965, p. 427-428). Lastly, he also becomes a
great war-leader for the Fremen, both by teaching them the weirding way, and
also by leading them on highly successful and brutal missions against the
Harkonnen, even before he is recognized as the leader. It is his role as the
charismatic leader that gives him access to the Fremen forces that allow him to
deconstruct Shaddam’s empire, and later gives him the religious mystique that
helps to justify his unquestioned rule in the following novel, Dune Messiah.
Paul
begins to deconstruct Shaddam’s empire when he changes the relations of
exteriority with the Spacing Guild. As Paul and the Fremen continue their
attacks on the Harkonnen, their master plan is to so completely disrupt the
mining and production of the all-important spice mélange that it will capture
the undivided attention of the Spacing Guild and the Emperor. The Spacing Guild
needs the spice because it fuels their ability to fold space and travel between
planets. The Emperor needs the spice because it fuels the entire economy, and
because without it the Spacing Guild will cut off his ability to travel as
well. For decades, the Spacing Guild has been the power behind the throne, and
even the Emperor must often bow to their demands. As Paul states to Shaddam,
the Guild only permitted him to mount the throne on the assurance that the
spice would continue to flow. This balance of power changes in the final
chapter, with Paul. When Shaddam threatens Paul with an armada of ships from
the Great Houses of the Landsraad ready to attack at any moment, Paul does not
respond to the Emperor, but to the two Spacing guildsmen in the room, ordering
them to “Get out there immediately and dispatch messages that will get that
fleet on its way home” (Herbert, 1965, p. 475). The guildsmen respond by
explaining that they do not take orders from him. In order to gain their attention,
Paul threatens to destroy all spice production on Arrakis: “The power to
destroy a thing is the absolute control over it,”[5]
explains Paul (Herbert, 1965, p. 477), and therefore the Spacing Guild is now
also under his control. He describes the guild as a village beside a river:
They need the water, but can only dip out what they
require. […] The spice flow, that’s their river, and I have built a dam. But my
dam is such that you cannot destroy it without destroying the river. (Herbert,
1965, p. 477)
By exerting his power over the Spacing
Guild, Paul dismantles nearly all the bureaucratic power it has over the
empire, vastly restructuring the relations of exteriority between it and the
throne.
Paul
breaks apart and rebuilds Shaddam’s Imperium in other ways as well. When he
removes the Sardaukar from power, and announces that he will turn their
prison/training planet Salusa Secundus into a “garden world, full of gentle
things” (Herbert, 1965, p. 488), he eradicates the Galactic Imperium’s only
other real method of enforcement outside the bureaucratic structures of the
Spacing Guild. Instead, Paul replaces the Sardaukar with his Fremen forces,
leading the Reverend Mother to burst out in fear and horror: “You cannot loose
these people upon the universe!” (Herbert, 1965, p. 488) when she senses the
coming jihad. Paul responds: “You will think back to the gentle ways of the
Sardaukar!” (Herbert, 1965, p. 488). This further highlights the difference
Paul envisions in the way his forces with interact with the empire and the
universe at large. By making the Fremen one of the most significant components
of his empire, Paul also restructures the ceremonial and expressive elements of
the assemblage. The Fremen religion becomes a new method for enforcement and
obedience as their sacred histories and rites influence the expected behavior,
language, and hierarchies of all the people in the empire.
Furthermore, these
ritual aspects are not material components, but are highly important as
expressive elements that sacralize, historicize, and justify both Paul’s power
as emperor and the actions of himself and his followers (this is especially
true in Dune Messiah, in the case of
his sister who is called St. Alia of the Knife[6]).
In addition, in Shaddam’s empire, religion had little influence or importance
(perhaps none). While the Bene Gesserit are in some ways a religious group
similar to an order of nuns, who seed messages of their beliefs within the
myths and religions of all the worlds they contact (through a project called the
Missionaria Protectiva,[7]
which left seeds within the Fremen religion making it possible for Jessica to
claim support and safety), these religious elements have little to no effect on
the governmental organization or bureaucracy of Shaddam’s empire. Paul’s
empire, on the other hand, contains strong threads of the Fremen religion
within its foundations. It is this religion that first posits Paul as a prophet
and grants him the role of charismatic leader, which he uses in combination
with his role as a Duke of the Landsraad to claim Arrakis and eventually the
empire.
Paul
does not, of course, deny his inheritance as Duke Atreides after the death of
his father, Leto. Because he uses his name as an Atreides to his advantage,
DiTommaso argues that Paul merely operates within the already-established
system and does not constitute a paradigm shift. However, this claim ignores
the fact that Paul is an assemblage, a multiplicity of names and roles that
interact and relate to each other in complex ways. Paul knows it would be
foolish and damaging both to his cause and to his own identity if he were to
disavow his name and responsibility as Duke of House Atreides. He therefore
uses every aspect to his advantage as he negotiates with Gurney Halleck, one of
his father’s best commanders, with the Sardaukar, and with Emperor Shaddam IV
himself. In demanding the Emperor’s surrender, Paul sends a message: “I, a Duke
of a Great House, an Imperial Kinsman, give my word of bond under the
Convention. If the Emperor and his people lay down their arms and come to me
here I will guard their lives with my own” (Herbert, 1965, p. 469). When the
Emperor and his entourage come before him, Paul behaves as a Duke of a Great
House should behave. He follows the rules and rituals afforded to him as a
Duke. Paul even accepts a combat challenge from Feyd-Ruatha and fights the
battle within the rules of the Convention that controls the actions of the
Houses of the Landsraad, despite the fact that as a Fremen warrior and leader,
there is no need for him to fight Feyd himself. He could just as easily allow
Gurney or even his lover Chani to kill Feyd for him, but he obeys the dictates
of the system he resides within as a Duke because it is politically effective
for him to do so.
Paul
follows the conventions of the Landsraad only to a point, and only so far as it
suits his needs and whims. Because he is a multiplicity contained within the
name Muad’Dib he feels no compulsion to limit himself to the rules that dictate
the actions of a duke. He thus feels no compunction against threatening the
Emperor with violence and imprisonment. When the Emperor exclaims: “I put down
my arms and came here on your word of bond! […] You dare threaten—” (Herbert,
1965, p. 487), Paul’s response is a clear sign of his ability to fragment his
actions between his multiple roles: “Your person is safe in my presence […] An
Atreides promised it. Muad’Dib, however, sentences you to your prison planet”
(Herbert, 1965, p. 487). It is as if he contains two different people with two
different sets of motives and morals. As Atreides, he demands the hand of the
eldest Princess, Irulan, in marriage, in order to secure the throne and justify
his rule in the eyes of the Landsraad. As Muad’Dib he threatens the Spacing
Guild and sends the Fremen out into the universe with their strength and their
religion to justify his rule in the eyes of everyone else. While Paul Atreides
would worry for his sister, Alia, who is only four or five, Muad’Dib is only
proud of her ability to kill as he tells his mother that Alia is “out doing
what any good Fremen child should be doing in such times […] She’s killing
enemy wounded and marking their bodies for the water-recovery teams” (Herbert,
1965, p. 470). It is Muad’Dib who swears to his lover Chani that she will have
his love and his children and his loyalty, but it is Duke Atreides who bargains
to marry the Princess Irulan anyway. Despite the presence of the Duke within
him, and his ability to work within the old structures as needed, Paul makes it
clear in the conclusion of Dune that
the old law is dead and he is the new law. As he says of Arrakis:
The Fremen have the word of Muad’Dib […] There will be
flowing water here open to the sky and green oases rich with good things. But
we have the spice to think of, too. Thus, there will always be desert on
Arrakis… and fierce winds, and trials to toughen a man. We Fremen have a
saying: ‘God created Arrakis to train the faithful.’ One cannot go against the
word of God. (Herbert, 1965, p. 488)
He adds later that the Fremen are his
and “what they receive shall be dispensed from Muad’Dib” (Herbert, 1965, p.
489). There is no question that he dispenses law, and the empire, not just
Arrakis, will be one of his making.
And yet, because his empire is an assemblage, with a multitude of components
that interact in various and often-unpredictable ways, even Paul fails to
account for and control everything. This becomes abundantly clear in Dune Messiah, as his jihad escapes his
control, and he is eventually betrayed.
Manuel
DeLanda’s (2006) assemblage theory gives us the tools and lens through which
the intricate nature of imperial power is demonstrated in Dune. However, this only begins to scratch the surface of the
possibilities of how both assemblage theory and Hardt and Negri’s (2000) Empire can be applied to the series as a
whole. A more in-depth analysis of the multitude of assemblages that appear in
Herbert’s world-building could offer promising insights into his portrayals of
religion and the politics of the masses. Moreover, the capitalistic nature of
the spice trade and the Spacing Guild are ripe for an analysis based upon the
issues of capitalism and globalization discussed in Empire. It would also be intriguing to see how Paul’s role as a
charismatic leader and Kwisatz Haderach complicates the proposition by Hardt
and Negri (2000) that we should rule out the possibility of “a single power and
a single center of rationality transcendent to global forces, guiding the
various phases of historical development according to its conscious and
all-seeing plan” (p. 3). That is not to say, of course, that Paul is in control
of every single event or sees every single outcome. The events of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune, the third novel of the series which focuses on
Paul’s children, certainly remove that possibility. And yet, as The Tleilaxu
Godbuk states in Dune Messiah:
No matter how exotic human civilization becomes, no
matter the developments of life and society nor the complexity of the
machine/human interface, there always come interludes of lonely power when the
course of humankind, depends upon the relatively simple actions of single
individuals. (Herbert, 1969, p. 209)
No single, all-seeing individual may
orchestrate the concert of imperial forces; but occasionally, a charismatic and
powerful individual such as Paul Muad’Dib Atreides has the ability to break
through systems, shift paradigms, and change the paths of those forces.
References
Csicsery-Ronay I., Jr. (2003). Science Fiction and
Empire. Science Fiction Studies, 30
(2), 231-245. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241171
DeLanda, M. (2006). A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity.
London: Continuum.
Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
DiTommaso, L. (1992). History and Historical Effect in
Frank Herbert’s “Dune.” Science Fiction
Studies, 19 (3), 311-325. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4240179
Gomel, E. (2010). Postmodern
Science Fiction and Temporal Imagination. London: Continuum.
Hardt, M., and Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Herbert, F. (1965). Dune. New York: Ace Books.
Herbert, F. (1969). Dune Messiah. New York: Ace Books.
[1] Ironically, Hardt and Negri (2000)
would posit almost the exact opposite: imperialism creates a perception of
difference (among many lines, including race and ideology) as it develops a
nationalized identity of “the people” (p. 128-129). Thus the Reverend Mother
calls the Fremen “those people” and speaks of them as monstrous.
[2] It may be important to the overall
interaction of the various components that make up Paul as an assemblage to
note that Jessica disobeyed her Bene Gesserit by having a son instead of a
daughter, and that by giving Paul Bene Gesserit training she is the one who makes the first paradigmatic break from the old
system, in which Bene Gesserit training is for women only.
[3] Also a task meant only for women,
specifically for women who are Bene Gesserit trained and intend to become
Reverend Mothers.
[4] Defined by DeLanda (2006) as the
process of destabilizing the internal homogeneity or boundaries of an
assemblage (p. 12).
[5] Or, as the Baron Harkonnen says in the 1984 film
version: “he who controls the spice controls the universe.”
[6] Alia is often seen giving speeches or sermons about
her brother’s philosophies and godhood, and is described as “a Reverend Mother
without motherhood, virgin priestess, object of fearful veneration for the
superstitious masses” (Herbert, 1969, p. 68).
[7] Defined in the Appendices of Dune as “the arm of the Bene Gesserit order charged with sowing
infectious superstitions on primitive worlds, thus opening those regions to
exploitation by the Bene Gesserit” (Herbert, 1965, p. 524).