Delany's Triton: Desire and Play in Heterotopia

The concept of centered structure -- although it represents coherence itself, the condition of the episteme as philosophy or science -- is contradictorily coherent. And, as always, coherence in contradiction expresses the force of a desire.
-- Jacques Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences"

Jacques Derrida is one of the new thinkers to make it disturbingly clear that the most fixed and irrefutable-seeming meaning is finally a more or less under-determined play of undecidables.
-- Samuel R. Delany, "The Semiotics of Silence"

I would like to focus on his large contribution to the post-structural debate. More specifically, I would like to examine how Derrida's ideas of structure, desire, and play operate within the limits of Triton's pages, and how Delany has revised the generic models to open the possibilities of his writing. To begin to understand how Delany has pushed his generic models and boundaries, a look at the book's first subtitle, "An Ambiguous Heterotopia," is in order. Delany placed this subtitle on his novel shortly before completing his second draft of Triton. It was intended to exaggerate a textual dialogue with Ursula K. Le Guin's novel The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia, which he read shortly before finishing Triton. In a Science Fiction Studies interview (1990) Delany explains:

When I first looked through The Dispossessed, it occurred to me that the two books generated an interesting dialogue with each other. My added subtitle was an attempt to put the two novels clearly into a dialogue I already felt was implied. [Philmus 301]

Apparently, this dialogue was largely accidental; he did not write Triton as a response to The Dispossessed. Instead, he intends for the single mark of a subtitle to spark a conversation between these texts. Indeed, many science fiction writers at the time were delving into the possibilities of utopian/dystopian literature. With Triton, Delany consciously enters the history of discourse surrounding the utopian/dystopian polemic. What does it mean to have an ideal society? Does that imply ideal citizens? What assumptions and limitations does an author deal with in modeling an ideal? And the reader?

By altering Le Guin's subtitle with the term "heterotopia," Delany implies an open manipulation of classical definitions of utopian literature, and it is an open-ended textuality that Triton offers. Delany proves himself to be firmly in the post-structuralist debate as he questions simultaneously the limits and margins of a social system and the ideas of a centered structure around which the social system operates. The tension between a centered structure and the limits inherent to that structure are hardly new ones. They are reflected upon in Jacques Derrida's essay, "Structure, Sign, and Play." Here, Derrida states the necessity of examining the freeplay of elements within a centered structure in order to determine how the structure is constructed:

No doubt that by orienting and organizing the coherence of the system, the center of a structure permits the freeplay of its elements inside the total form. And even today the notion of a structure lacking any center represents the unthinkable itself. Nevertheless, the center also closes off the freeplay it opens up and makes possible.[248]

This creates a seemingly contradictory, definitely paradoxical, relationship between a center and the freeplay of the elements within the larger structure. However, Delany seems to want to think the unthinkable and stretch the limits of possibility. This requires a textual guise that can deal simultaneously with the range of possibility and "the unthinkable." So, in the guise of the utopian, on Uranus' moon Triton, Delany builds a society of Possibility.

To help explain his choice of the term "heterotopia," Delany prefaces the second appendix with a section from Michel Foucault's The Order of Things,

Utopias afford consolation: although they have no real locality there is nevertheless a fantastic, untroubled region in which they are able to unfold...Heterotopias are disturbing, probably because they make it impossible to name this and that... [ctd in Triton 345]. In many ways, this system operates upon the characters of the novel, as we will see. But Delany works on this heterotopic level both from within and without of the textual boundaries. Indeed, Triton is a hard novel to name. It sits firmly within science fiction boundaries; yet, at times it integrates such disparate genres as the romance novel and logical exposition. Problems not only arise as we try to place this text in a genre; even within the span of the book, the problem of naming, and thereby centering, is questioned repeatedly. By "naming" this world a heterotopia, Delany has created a text of disturbing possibilities. These possibilities are contextualized in the work of Derrida.

In my epigraph, Derrida refers to a centralized, stable meaning that the reader tries to draw out of a text. This idea of a centered structure is paradoxical. It seems to come from the text, yet is always finally denied as the reader attempts to pursue it. However, as Derrida states next, the quest after the illusory signified (in the text, as well as in "philosophy" or "science") expresses the force of a desire, and, according to many post-structural theorists, desire fulfillment is the crucial motivational force. This quest after meaning, and its connections to desire, are predominant in Triton.

Derrida puns on the words "play" and "game"3 as a way to explain the movement surrounding the establishment of a center and the relation of elements around this center. These terms are very useful in reading Delany's novel. Delany contextualizes these ideas on many levels in Triton; he evens subtly puns with the term "heterotopia," a word with many definitions. In an interview with Robert Philmus, Delany discusses the many levels of "heterotopia":

Well, a major definition of "heterotopia" is its medical meaning. It's the removal of one part or organ from the body and affixing it at another place in or on the body. That's called a heterotopia. A skin graft is a heterotopia. But so is a sex-change -- one of the meanings of the word. So there.

And, true to form, it is a sex change operation that causes a major turning point in the book. Bron, our protagonist, has a sex-change operation in order to suppress the pain of losing the Spike. However, Bron seems to have had the switch in another attempt to complete himself, to make himself whole. It, of course, is a disastrous situation. But, before we examine Bron's position within the world of Triton, we must discuss the structure within which Bron is placed.

Perhaps it is best to begin with the background setting of the novel, Triton itself. We have our Foucauldian fantastic place -- a moon of Uranus -- and the year is 2112. The satellites (some nine inhabited moons scattered around our solar system) are engaged in a war with the only two inhabited planets, Earth and Mars. But, this is a war fought without soldiers; it is a political battle fought in negotiation rooms by diplomats, or so the politicians say repeatedly. This war remains in the backdrop for most of the citizens of Triton and appears to the reader as a political game to be played by people in political jobs. It doesn't involve others, just diplomats, elected officials, and anti-war political demonstrators. However, as the story begins to unfold, this game becomes too real.

On Triton, and presumably the nine other satellites, are constructed cities within the boundaries of an atmospheric and gravity processor. Inside these boundaries, Delany constructs a society with remarkable utopian possibility. Within the larger political context of the war, Delany places many subtle descriptions of the political system of the moons which add to the utopian setting. The citizens are not bound to one political ruler; they each vote for whichever candidate they wish to represent them and then live according to the policies and restrictions of that political representative. There seems to be a more equal distribution of basic services than we currently enjoy; there are still high-wage earners and a welfare system, but as Sam, one of Bron's government "friends" points out,

[W]e have a far higher rotation of people on welfare than Luna has, or either of the sovereign worlds. Our welfare isn't a social class who are born in it, and die on it, reproducing half the next welfare generation along the way. Practically everyone spends some time on it. [Triton 179]

This redistribution of wealth has even lowered the work-week to six hours per day, four days per week. Indeed, this seems to be an ideal society -- economically and politically. There is more.

Delany has reorganized the family structure. Sixty percent of the population is bisexual, twenty percent homosexual, and twenty percent heterosexual. People live in co-ops of varying sexual and stylistic preferences. In fact, there are "forty or fifty basic sexes, falling loosely into nine categories, four homophilic" [117] and (presumably) five heterophilic, referring to which gender with whom you prefer to live, regardless of sexual preference. Or, if you prefer family life, there are family-communes in the outer rings of the city. The possible combinations for relationships, both sexual and platonic, are exploded in a textual move of almost infinite freeplay.

The utopian possibilities develop farther as Delany mentions fantastic scientific advances: males can have children and even suckle infants (in fact, women bear only 70% of the children). Any individual can go for a re-alignment, which can range from a sort of "plastic surgery" make-over to a complete psychological reprogramming designed specifically to suit the desire (or obsessions) of the individual. You can dress in a huge number of styles; or, if you prefer, you can go naked. Triton makes twentieth century notions of sexuality look like Victorian prudishness.

The backdrop for Delany's novel is a paradise of almost unthinkable proportions, which is the problem I think Delany wants the reader to think through. In Derridean terms, the possibilities of total desire fulfillment, and thereby (re)claiming whichever signifier is desired, are near one-hundred percent. Many of the characters have played the game well and seem to be happy. For example, the Mummers who wander the street sounding out strings of nonsense syllables, or the Rampant Order of Dumb Beasts who scar themselves endlessly, never bathe, and are dedicated to the ending of meaningless communication (or is it meaningful? -- it remains unspecified and illusory in the text). We meet Bron's only steady friend in the novel, a septuagenarian homosexual with an aversion to clothing; or, the confident Sam, a black politician whom Bron claims to hate with a passion. All of these characters and character-types seem to have found a place in this fragmented, shattered society. They find, somehow, a Grand Purpose to their existence, whether it takes the form of meaningless muttering or a game of vlet.4 These Grand Purposes remain successfully and largely individual. No one political system retains overwhelming power over the people of Triton; no one personal system gains dominance over another.

While the possibility of desire fulfillment is one hundred percent, the probability does not match. Delany also leaves traces of dystopia in his text. The first encounter is an Ego Booster Booth. These are booths in which a citizen (for a credit transfer) can view a few random minutes of tape that the Government keeps. This strikes a chord of possible repressiveness -- the Government has unseen eyes and possibly the power of Big Brother. Later in the novel, we see the "peaceful" war with no soldiers come to a halt, and the damages are heavy. Two million people die on Mars, ninety percent of Earth's population is wiped away and countless others are killed throughout the solar system due to political sabotage. There are no soldiers, but that does not imply no death. This "game" had no winners.

It is within this complicated backdrop that Delany places the main character of the novel, Bron Helstrom. By following this character through the streets of Triton, and even to Earth, Delany textualizes Derridean notions of desire and "playing the game." From the beginning of the novel, the reader hears Bron's dilemma. As he walks home from work, examining the people on the street he decides, "I am a reasonably happy man." However, he cannot leave it at that as he questions, "Is it just that I am, happily, reasonable?" [Triton 1] Bron is caught in a trap, and he cannot work his way out. The trap is the Derridean quest for "centered structure," taking the form of Bron's self-identity. Bron desires a whole, stable, and unique personality and constantly pushes people away in search of his missing parts.

Throughout the novel, the reader becomes increasingly aware of Bron's alienation, both from himself and others. He pushes away the only woman he claims to love and hurts several people (least of all himself) in the process. He constantly invents details and reverses events to cover up his damaged ego, all the while insisting that he doesn't lie. It seems that all Bron wants is to find what will make him happy, but he doesn't know (and refuses to decide) what that is.

This seems to possibly be a standard psychological-romance scenario from twentieth century popular literature, perhaps because Delany consciously leaves traces of this genre in his text. However, Bron is in quite a different situation. On Triton, you can be whatever you want to be. Bron's lack of self-determination is out of place, a seeming rarity in this society. By this, his situation within this heterotopic social context begins to take on a very different edge than other psychological-romances.

Bron makes several attempts at happiness throughout the course of the novel, all of which are defeated before they begin. He claims to love the Spike, a roving micro-theater artist. He incessantly hounds her to "[t]hrow up the theater. Join your life to mine. Become one with me. Be mine. Let me possess you wholly" [Triton 209]. She turns him down realizing that he doesn't love her. Instead, Bron has forced her into a position of completion. He created this role for her out of blind desire; she was to make him complete, but he doesn't even know what he lacks. The Spike knows that she is not his lack -- she's not even his "type."

The Spike is one of Bron's quests after the elusive signified that Derrida speaks of in "Structure, Sign, and Play." Only, with Delany the signified is not only in a textual guise; it is also embroidered deep within the social structure of Triton. Bron lusts after the Spike, desiring her to be his constant stability. However, he is blind to the reality that she can never be his. He is caught in the double-bind created from the quest for center. He places his internal desire for fulfillment on things outside of himself. Even Bron realizes later that the quest failed the moment it began because what he desires is himself. At that moment, he mistakenly thinks that switching to what he sees as his opposite (which turns out to be just a female version of a similar person, betraying his reliance on a binary way of thinking) will solve the problem. He desires the idea of a self -- of a completed, totalized, finalized structure that limits the amount of freeplay and possibility.

There is a constant tension between becoming a totalized individual, by the fulfillment of internal desires, and the need to place those desires outside of the self, causing a need for a lack of internal completion. Bron is still left searching for that piece of himself that will stabilize his existence and give him meaning. However, Derrida seems to say that this inherent contradictory placement/displacement holds the structure together by allowing a paradoxical, constructed existence of freeplay and center.

This idea is addressed as Bron recurrently names himself as an individual and denies any attempt to put himself in a set "type." I have already noted the ego-centric world-view Bron holds. A majority of his behavior is determined (and over-determined) by his attempts to avoid classification, even despite persistent warnings by other characters of the impossibility of this task. In "Structure, Sign, and Play," Derrida says,

With this certainty [of a contradictorily coherent, centered structure] anxiety can be mastered, for anxiety is invariably the result of a certain mode of being implicated in the game, of being caught by the game, of being as it were from the very beginning at stake in the game.[248]

Bron, with all his anxiety, is in search of certainty. His quest throughout the novel is to solidify his understanding of his own purpose, and to master his anxiety. The "game" to which Derrida refers is widened beyond a textual arena to a larger, social context as Bron weaves and "plays" his way through various social situations, only to be again and again caught "caught by the game."

Perhaps the best example of Bron involved with "the game" does not occur on Triton, but on Earth where Bron takes a trip with Sam to get away from his first failure with the Spike. In a twist of synchronicity, he bumps into her at an archaeological dig in Inner Mongolia and later invites her to a posh restaurant hoping to patch things up. The whole visit reminds him of his early days on Mars. As a male prostitute, he was often escorted to these kinds of restaurants by his customers. All through the evening, Bron constantly reminds himself of the codes of behavior and the roles each participant should play that he was bound to as a prostitute. Regardless of his previous assertions that he defies any set type, he guides and judges all of his and her actions according to the type of prostitute and customer, down to the expectation of sex after the meal. He is confused when the Spike breaks out of the "type" guidelines and finally becomes enraged when she refuses his sexual advances. Despite his previous assertions that he defies any type, he certainly allows his own ideas of types to guide his behavior. This, curiously and ironically, slips his attention.

Bron is hopelessly caught up in a chase after something he will never find, and he is the one who keeps himself from fulfilling his quest. He is searching for stability, and yet he repels anyone who offers it to him. The moment he thinks he has found what he wants, he pushes it away. By situating Bron in a position of "playing the game" and failing, Delany makes a crucial move to extend utopian literature. His model begins with a point of argument that has been tossed back and forth through literature from Thomas More to Ursula Le Guin. There is a fine line between utopia and dystopia; which you are writing depends upon the perspective from which the characters in the novel present their world, and Delany has created a text in which each character chooses the mode to operate in, and several of these modes are expressed in Triton. Standing unique among books in the utopian/dystopian tradition, the heterotopia of Triton allows the possibility for each mode to be in "play" at every moment. Through his new textual model, Delany refuses to let this concept be reduced to a binary opposition of utopia/dystopia.

In another interview about Triton, Delany discusses W.H. Auden's concept of modernist world views. These were six classifications of trends that Auden noticed in the early twentieth century, but it is evident that they are still present today. First is the idea of New Jerusalem, the technological Utopia "where everything is bright and shiny and clean, and all the problems have been solved by the beneficent application of science." Its underside is the Brave New World, where "everything is regimented and standardized and we all wear the same uniform." The rural counterpart to this setting is Arcadia, where "everyone eats natural foods and no machine larger than one person can fix in an hour is allowed in." Its flip side is the Land of the Flies where "fire, flood, and earthquake -- not to mention famine and disease -- are always shattering the quality of life." On top of these four descriptions of W.H. Auden's, Delany adds two more of his own that the post-modernists have added to this mythical milieu. The first is Junk City, a run-down techno-dump. The second is more positive, a place where even the techno-junk has its own inner beauty. He also adds that Triton "has all...of those images" [Gregory 304]. Undoubtedly, even more could be created from its pages.

It is the compilation of these paradoxically different societies being blended into one model that makes Triton such an intricate work of science-fiction in particular, and of fiction in general. He refuses to let the reader, or even his main character, settle on any sort of fixed meaning. Perspective is always in "play." As Derrida puts it,

In the absence of a center or origin...everything became a system where the central signified is never absolutely present outside a system of difference. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the interplay of signification ad infinitum. [emphasis his 249]

By placing the main action of the novel on a satellite, Delany shows his intent to de-center the universe. Quite possibly, the war that ends in Earth's almost complete destruction symbolizes the loss of humanity's center. Many characters deal with the absence of a central stability in the society by drawing their own meaning out of the society, by deciding what they want to do and doing it. There is a limitless amount of freeplay of possibility on Triton and the other satellites. However, the possibility will always remain for types like Bron, those who refuse to accept "the system of difference" that reigns on Triton. In order to keep this system going, it requires a fundamental acceptance of an internal contradiction. There is no center, except those that are created momentarily by the freeplay of the elements of the system. Most accept this and create momentary centers, as they should do. Bron, however, wants to escape the system and become an "individual." He cannot accept his position of being implicated in the game of difference. This is the source of his anxiety. He wants his meaning to be the transcendental meaning -- the timeless, true meaning -- and the quest for it drives him to madness.

Yet something more is happening here on a textual level. As Delany begins his "Modular Calculus" series with Triton, he designates this "heterotopic" piece of fiction as the prologue. By calling on the reader's preconceived notions of the utopian/dystopian genre, Delany complicates the issue beyond almost any attempts at meaningful signification. He forces the reader to examine his or her own assumptions about the text. He questions the ability of a literary text to model5 society, and of a utopian text to create an "Ideal" society. Bron, for all his similarity to the generic psychological-romance protagonists around today, is driven mad placed in a similar scenario. He cannot determine who he is by finding his "true self," nor can he embrace the rich universe of possibility that Triton offers.

By placing Bron in the foreground and Triton in the background, Delany takes his readership on the problematic quest to grab hold of an "Ideal." Triton can only be what you make of it, and Bron shows us how easily the utopic possibilities that Triton represents drift into dystopia. This is a problem for the reader as she or he tries to draw some sort of unified meaning out of Triton's pages. For this is a text that is over-determined in its meaning. The possible meanings to be drawn from its pages are as endless as the possibilities within its world. It is a heterotopic text, to be constructed by the reader while reading as much as by Delany himself. The reader can build a finalized, central meaning from the text, only to have this meaning dashed on a second look. The possibilities are not only limitless but slippery as well.

Delany, by embroidering his text with Derridean concepts of "play" and "game," has created a text which alters very drastically conceptions of the Ideal, textuality, meaning, and society. He does this by allowing the reader to delve into its pages, its discourse, and "play" with the suggestions and ideas that seem to deny explanation. He mixes impossible notions of a futuristic techno-society with possible solutions to problems that have been plaguing philosophers and literary critics for centuries. Any attempt at an "answer" to this text only leads to more questions. This is what Foucault described as the "disturbing" aspect of heterotopia. It is impossible for the reader to "name" a meaning for this text; it denies these names the moment they are in place. This is not to say that this text is by any means indecipherable. It is rich with possible meanings. However, any attempt to finalize, to stabilize, these meanings into a centered structure can leave the reader as Bron is left on the last page of the novel, waiting for the dawn that he is "sure would never come" [Triton 330].

Delany, Samuel R. Triton. New York: Bantam Books, 1976.

Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." The Structuralist Controversy. Eds. R. Macksey and E. Donato. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1970. 247-264.

Gregory, Sinda and Larry McCaffery. "Samuel R. Delany: The Semiotics of Silence." Science Fiction Studies. 14:2 (1987). 134-164.

Philmus, Robert M. "On Triton and Other Matters: An Interview with Samuel R. Delany." Science Fiction Studies. 17:3 (1990). 295-324.

1 The "Modular Calculus" series begins with the s-f "novel" Triton (1976), which contains both Part I (the novel itself) and Part II (the second appendix). After that begins a sword-and-sorcery series based in the land of Neveryon: Tales of Neveryon (a collection of short "tales", 1979), Neveryona (a novel, 1983), and "The Tales of Plagues and Carnivals" from Flight from Neveryon (another "tale", 1985). Although not designated as part of the Modular Calculus, The Bridge of Lost Desire (1987) continues and extends much of the discussion begun within the Neveryon series.
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2 Since Delany has incorporated this discussion on many levels in his "Modular Calculus" series, it is necessary to study this process in its varied forms and specific applications throughout the texts. Kathryn Spencer's "Deconstructing Tales of Neveryon: Delany, Derrida, and the 'Modular Calculus, Parts I-IV'" (Essays in Arts and Sciences. 14:2 (May 1985). 59-89), and William Schuyler's "Sexes, Genders, and Discrimination" (see Works Cited) both do an excellent job at beginning to crack open Delany's work.
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3 "Play" both in the sense of an open, shifting mobility (especially in a text's meaning), and in the pleasurable, desirable sense (ranging from the sexual to the dramatic). "Game" in the sense of the object of searching, the fulfillment of desire, and also as the locale for "playing."
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4 Indeed, the game of Vlet is another curious level that Delany has added to the play of the game in Triton. It is a fantasy type board game with almost indecipherable rules of play (and when they are deciphered they turn out to be gibberish). Curiously, the best players seem to be those most comfortable with their existence on the "free" satellites: Sam, Lawrence, and the Spike.
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5 The problematic situation of a model and that which it models is the situation from whence the phrase "Modular Calculus" emanated. It is, roughly, a series of texts that question the relationship of a model and its "real" counterpart.
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