Discovery’s “Point of Light,” Klingon culture and “Ideal Theory,” New Visions for “Reproduction,” and “Commoning” as Future Utopia (Science Fiction and Charles W. Mills’s Critique of “Ideal Theory” Part III)
In Star Trek: Discovery’s “Point of Light” (2019), L’Rell is confronted with a Klingon house that wishes to return to the old ways of Klingons warring with Klingons, or, to Kol-Sha direct plan, to take over the empire and lead himself; displacing the female warrior who rules over Qo’noS. There is currently peace between the Klingon houses, but some would prefer to continue to seek war and domination over each other, and, to continue the war with the Federation. L’Rell offers stability for Qo’noS and a tentative peace with the Federation. The tradition of warring houses is perceived as the Ideal, which L’Rell offers a different hope for growth within united Klingon empire.
The threat is so great that Philippa Georgiou, working for Section 31, must interfere and disrupt a takeover of the empire. After defeating Kol-Sha, Georgiou entreats L’Rell to rid herself of her child and Ash Tyler who is the Torchbearer anointed by Voq. They stage a plan to proclaim that Kol-Sha died defending L’Rell and that Ash Tyler was killed after betraying her. L’Rell makes an announcement that with her child having been killed, she will no longer have children, but will be Mother to all Klingons, “a fiercer title,” to paraphrase. Ash and their child escape with Section 31 where Ash is recruited, and the child is sent to be raised on Boreth with Klingon monks.
The fact that “Mother” is now proclaimed as the title for the leader of the Klingon empire would certainly come with a challenge. The Ideal society for many Klingons is bloodshed and battle. We could argue that L’Rell’s rule is rather to the far left of established Klingon mores. Klingon’s savor autonomy. Their strive for personal independence. Not co-dependence. They idealize what values they conceive of as passionately strong. Consider this an obstacle of peaceful existence. We can navigate this discussion back to “‘Ideal Theory’ as Ideology”.
Or consider a (today) far more respectable ideal, that of autonomy. This notion has been central to ethical theory for hundreds of years, and is, of course, famously most developed in Kant’s writings. But recent work in feminist theory has raised questions as to whether it is an attractive ideal at all, or just a reflection of male privilege. Human beings are dependent upon others for a long time before they can become adult, and if they live to old age, are likely to be dependent upon others for many of their latter years. But traditionally, this work has been done by women, and so it has been invisible or taken for granted, not theorized. Some feminist ethicists have argued for the simple abandonment of autonomy as an attractive value, but others have suggested that it can be redeemed once it is reconceptualized to take account of this necessarily inter-relational aspect (MacKenzie and Stoljar,2000). So the point is that idealization here obfuscates the reality of caregiving that makes any achievement of autonomy possible in the first place, and only through nonideal theory are we sensitized to the need to balance this value against other values, and rethink it. Somewhat similarly, think of the traditional left critique of a liberal concept of freedom that focuses simply on the absence of juridical barriers, and ignores the many ways in which economic constraints can make working-class liberties largely nominal rather than substantive. (Mills 2005, 177)
The feminine leading over the masculine. The feminine as strength. Yes, Klingon women fight alongside the men for the honor and glory of battle, but there is no denying that to be ruled as a matriarchy would be difficult to accept for many traditionalist Klingons. Much in the same way, even today, this masculinarity condemns modern human societies with an anthropologicalesque condemnation of our mutual best interests. As Charles W. Mills wrote, “In its ignoring of oppression, ideal theory also ignores the consequences of oppression” (175). There is no seizing of the galley of predisposed wisdom from which we retreat. No, we simply tire ourselves out with the fetishism of commercialization and the fabrication of the Ideal of a global local-bound stellar conquest. What we think will make life better always leads to a greater insult on the integrity of being human.
Male-dominated accumulation of growth is perceived as the Ideal. Production equals success. Conquest and autonomy equal progress. That is what the world is taught to believe. However, degrowth scholars and feminist scholars offer a different hope, which has been previous mentioned in this three-part series.
They make it possible in the first place to posit these basic (re)productivities as unquestioned ‘givens’ requiring no further consideration by those pursuing the ever further expansion of so-called ‘productive’ economic activity. It is precisely the separations between ‘production’ and ‘reproduction’, ‘public’ and ‘private’ and ‘male’ ‘gainful’ work and ‘female’ care work, which a feminist degrowth critique exposes as basic preconditions for the implementation of an abstract logic of increase. This implies that it is not simply the basic calculative logic of the capitalist economy, but also a specific, historically bourgeois conception of (male) subjectivity and gender relations as well as relationships with nature that needs to be fundamentally changed (Barca, 2020; Kothari et al., 2019; Schmelzer et al., 2022) (Eversberg and Schmelzer, Degrowth Journal, 2022, 5).
A change in worldview that mutual dependency is a reality and not a weakness needs to be sought and preached from the top down, but the reality is that it can only and will only be achieve from the bottom up. Only communities drive deliverance. One at a time. This can be seen in a great number of social initiates. Ideal Theory stipulates that all and everyone is starting with the same grab-bag of privilege and emotional conceit.
By contrast, nonideal theory recognizes that people will typically be cognitively affected by their social location, so that on both the macro and the more local level, the descriptive concepts arrived at maybe misleading (Mills 2004, 175).
Universal understanding of economic equality is mired in historically masculine terms that degrowth and feminist scholars have argued leaves an opportunity for a smarter division of beneficial means and results.
In The case for degrowth (2020), degrowth scholars Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa, and Federico Demaria propose to combine the “universal” aspect of UBI with the “care” of a care income by promoting a universal care income. This conceptualization builds “on other expressions of UBI but differs by foregrounding the social recognition of unpaid and highly gendered care work that we all perform to sustain the life and wellbeing of households and communities” (Kallis et al. 2020, 71). Whether this “foregrounding” refers primarily to a change in name (from UBI to universal care income) that translates to a discursive visibilization/politicization of social reproduction, or whether a differentiated universal care income refers to a UBI for everybody that increases for people who perform care work, is contested. (Dengler 2023, 8)
However, the Ideal is strongly rooted. We can return to Klingon social mores as an example. Between the years 2257 and 2372 the masculine concept of honor had not retreated from their culture. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode, “Sons of Mogh” (1996), Kurn ask his brother Worf to kill him through a ritual referred to as Mauk-to’Vor to restore his honor. Having lost prestige and material possessions, Kurn believed there was no path to living that resembled an honorable life. Over a century had passed since the rule of L’Rell and Kurn still insists on putting honor before his own life. Interestingly, it is Jadzia Dax, a Trill, who stops the ritual, having recognized what was going on due to her familiarity with Klingon culture. Even she does not escape the lure of the Klingon way of life and in the episode, “Blood Oath” (1994), she leaves her post to join three Klingons from the life of her symbiont’s previous host to fulfill a promise she is not technically bound to and kill a man who had murdered the three Klingon’s first sons. If even the intellectually strident Jadzia Dax could not refuse an honorable battle, joined with Klingons, what hope is there for a new perspective that brings parity and peace.
What humans create they are. What writers write reflects not only their surrounding environment, but also their hopes, wishes, and desires. One can be a critique of a way of life, while still working oneself into the benefits of that lifestyle. Both can be true at the same time. What we would stand the reap the greatest benefits from is “commoning”:
Commons, such as collective food provisioning in popular kitchens or open-source software, are created by commoners, who collectively produce, govern, provision, and use commons in accordance with the needs of the group (i.e., commoners collectively create the commons in the process of commoning) (Euler 2018). The inherently relational process of communing strengthens the social fabric and puts human needs, as well as the “sustainability of life” (Pérez Orozco 2014), at its center. (Dengler 2023, 9).
In Corinna Dengler’s Hypatia article, “Rereading the Wages for Housework Campaign: Feminist Degrowth Reflections on Social Reproduction, Commons, and a Care Income,” Dengler magnifies the concept of commoning as a social repair tool in which we could locate an inter-dependence better suited to the reality of living. L’Rell and Ash found that commoning ground in their relationship as they saw over the functions of a new Klingon rule. It also shows in their dependence on each other. What we do not see within the Klingon empire is a code for reciprocity. Social, emotional, intellectual, cognitive, material, caregiving, each hold a rule for harmonizing reciprocity that can lead to a better way of life. One that avoid the pitfalls of the ideology of the Ideal and ushers in a communicable weaving and growing of communal life without endless growth or profits over people.