scholarly journals Marginalization of “the Other”: Gender Discrimination in Dystopian Visions by Feminist Science Fiction Authors

Text Matters ◽  
2012 ◽  
pp. 221-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Gilarek
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
The Other ◽  
Marge Piercy ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Feminist Science Fiction ◽  
Gender Based

In patriarchy women are frequently perceived as “the other” and as such they are subject to discrimination and marginalization. The androcentric character of patriarchy inherently confines women to the fringes of society. Undeniably, this was the case in Western culture throughout most of the twentieth century, before the social transformation triggered by the feminist movement enabled women to access spheres previously unavailable to them. Feminist science fiction of the 1970s, like feminism, attempted to challenge the patriarchal status quo in which gender-based discrimination against women was the norm. Thus, authors expressed, in a fictionalized form, the same issues that constituted the primary concerns of feminism in its second wave. As feminist science fiction is an imaginative genre, the critique of the abuses of the twentieth-century patriarchy is usually developed in defamiliarized, unreal settings. Consequently, current problems are recontextualized, a technique which is meant to give the reader a new perspective on certain aspects of life they might otherwise take for granted, such as the inadequacies of patriarchy and women’s marginality in society. Yet there are authors who consider the real world dystopian enough to be used as a setting for their novels. This is the case with Woman on the Edge of Time by Marge Piercy and The Female Man by Joanna Russ. Both texts split the narrative into a science fictional and a realistic strand so as to contrast the contemporary world with utopian and dystopian alternatives. Both texts are largely politicized as they expose and challenge the marginalized status of women in the American society of the 1970s. They explore the process of constructing marginalized identities, as well as the forms that marginalization takes in the society. Most importantly, they indicate the necessity of decisive steps being taken to improve the situation.

Rewilding Technology

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (12) ◽  
Author(s):  
Felicitas Macgilchrist
Keyword(s):  
Educational Technology ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
Ecological Crisis ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Feminist Science Fiction ◽  
Conservation Projects ◽  
Current Practices

This paper is rooted in the ecological crisis of our contemporary world. Rather than rejecting educational technology (edtech) as too environmentally damaging to use, it draws on critical utopian approaches, feminist science fiction and conservation projects to suggest ‘rewilding’ as a frame for designing and using edtech with a view to ameliorating technology’s long-term inequitable planetary impact. After briefly describing projects for rewilding nature, the paper turns to the specifics of rewilding edtech. It first highlights pragmatic suggestions for more sustainable edtech practices. It then suggests that the concept of ‘sustainability’ limits current practices, and proposes that a more radical and utopian rewilding can herald an education beyond sustainability. Rewilding edtech prioritises decelerating and degrowth, regenerating and relating, hospicing dying worlds and birthing new possibilities.

Feminist Bunker Fantasies

2021 ◽  
pp. 219-262
Author(s):  
David L. Pike
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Spatial Association ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Core Element ◽  
Cultural Perception ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Feminist Science Fiction ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Physical Spaces ◽  
Nuclear Condition

Feminist science fiction emerged during the late 1970s as a creative and political force, with the nuclear condition as a core element of this new form and its new approach to science fiction. Despite the full awareness and acknowledgment of the horrors underpinning the postapocalyptic world, this body of work as a whole is hopeful and open to the future in ways that most other 1980s bunker fantasies were not. These are not only survivors’ songs, in other words; they are critical engagements with the complexity of historical change that refunctioned the spaces of the Cold War into new configurations. One of the primary, and often the only, positively bunkered spaces in the texts themselves during this period were the analogous forms of language, storytelling, words, and writing. While the positive, enabling bunker potentials of language—and the stultifying effects of its loss—remain a constant theme through this period, the changing representations of physical spaces in relation to language fall into roughly three periods, analogous to political changes in the cultural perception of nuclear threat. The sheltering power of language remains a constant throughout, as do the spatial association of the fallout shelter with masculine social structures and the nuclear condition, along with the central problematic of reproduction and reproductive futurism in relation to survival in a post-holocaust world; however, writers’ treatment of these themes changes.

Globalization

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan Aart Scholte
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Other ◽  
Public Discussion ◽  
The Third ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
Global Status ◽  
Technological Developments

Globalization is one of the most hotly contested issues in contemporary social inquiry and public discussion. The debates mainly revolve around six points: definition, measurement, chronology, causes, consequences, and policy responses. In regard to definition, five broad usages of ’ globalization’ can be distinguished: internationalization, liberalization, universalization, Westernization, and deterritorialization. Although these conceptions overlap to some extent, their emphases are substantially different. With respect to magnitude, ’ globalists’ suggest that today’ s world is thoroughly globalized, whereas sceptics dismiss every claim of globalization as myth. Most observers agree that the incidence of globalization has been uneven, and that some countries and social circles have experienced globality more than others. The chronology of globalization depends in good part on the definition adopted. Internationalization, liberalization, universalization and Westernization can all be traced back at least several centuries, if not millennia. On the other hand, deterritorialization has transpired on a large scale only since the third quarter of the twentieth century. Accounts of the causal dynamics of globalization depend upon one’ s theoretical persuasion. However, most researchers explain globalization in some way as a product of modernity and/or capitalism. Many studies also highlight the enabling effects of certain technological developments and certain regulatory arrangements. In terms of its consequences for social structure, some analysts treat globalization as radically transformative. Such accounts link globalization to the end of the state, the end of nationality, the end of modernity, and more. In contrast, other assessments downplay any suggestion of social change in connection with globalization. Still others conclude that globalization generates an interplay of changes and continuities in social structure. Finally, in regard to policy, neoliberal approaches argue that globalization should be guided by market forces. In contrast, reformist strategies maintain that globalization should be deliberately steered with public policies, including in particular through suprastate laws and institutions. From a more radical position, traditionalists seek to ’ de-globalize’ and return to a pre-global status quo ante. Other radicals advocate a continuation of globalization, but in tandem with a revolutionary social transformation, for example, to a post-capitalist society.

Home and Away

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-177
Author(s):  
Micha Rahder
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
Outer Space ◽  
Global Environmental Change ◽  
Evolutionary Time ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Feminist Science Fiction ◽  
Global Environmental ◽  
New Development ◽  
Gaia Theory

This article examines the reinvigoration of outer space imaginaries in the era of global environmental change, and the impacts of these imaginaries on Earth. Privatized space research mobilizes fears of ecological, political, or economic catastrophe to garner support for new utopian futures, or the search for Earth 2.0. These imaginaries reflect dominant global discourses about environmental and social issues, and enable the flow of earthly resources toward an extraterrestrial frontier. In contrast, eco-centric visions emerging from Gaia theory or feminist science fiction project post-earthly life in terms that are ecological, engaged in multispecies relations and ethics, and anticapitalist. In these imaginaries, rather than centering humans as would-be destroyers or saviors of Earth, our species becomes merely instrumental in launching life—a multispecies process—off the planet, a new development in deep evolutionary time. This article traces these two imaginaries and how they are reshaping material and political earthly life.

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