Representations of Political Resistance and Emancipation in Science Fiction

Analyzing speculative fiction and science fiction, this book explores a range of political and social theoretical concerns for the twenty-first century, including post-humanism, resistance, agency, political community making, and ethics and politics during the Anthropocene.

In a world in which political opportunity and liberation seem far away, the genre of science fiction grows in cultural importance and popularity. The contributors to this collection are political and social theorists from a range of disciplines who use science fiction as inspiration for new theories and examples of speculative politics. In dystopian governments, they find locations and forms of resistance. Representations of Political Resistance and Emancipation in Science Fiction explores a range of political and social theoretical concerns for the twenty-first century. Contributors analyze themes of post-humanism, resistance, agency, political community making, and ethics and politics during the Anthropocene.

Introduction: The Future is Unwritten: Political Agency and Radical Change in a Science Fiction”

Judith Grant and Sean Parson

Part I: Collapse and Rebuilding

Chapter One: Dystopia, Apocalypse, and Other Things to Look Forward to: Reading for Radical Hope in the Fiction of Fear

Matthew Cole

Chapter Two: Mirror, Mirror: The Tragic Vision of Star TrekDiscovery

Libby Barringer

Chapter Three: Beginning Again: Jericho, Revolution, and Catastrophic Originalism

Ira Allen

Part II: Resistance and Survival

Chapter Four: “We Survived You”: Resisting Eugenic Imaginaries through Feminist Speculative Fiction

Jess Whatcott

Chapter Five: Wakanda Forever: Black Panther in Black Political Thought

Deborah Thompson

Chapter Six: A Politics of Drowning: Theorizing Action in the Anthropocene through JG Ballard’s The Drowned World

Chase Hobbs-Morgan

Part III: Reconstructing Our World: Space and Place

Chapter Seven: The Ambiguities of Critical Desire: Utopia and Heterotopia in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Samuel R. Delany’s Trouble on Triton

Michael Lipscomb

Chapter Eight: Politicizing Cities in China Miéville’s Speculative Fiction

Andrew Uzendoski and Caleb Gallemore

Chapter Nine: Stranger than Fiction: Silicon Valley and the Politics of Space Colonization

Emily Ray

Part IV: Reconstructing Ourselves: Identity and Agency

Chapter Ten: A Future is Female: Loving Animals and Scientific Romance

Claire E. Rasmussen

Chapter Eleven: Finding Liberation and Futurity in the Sentient Spaceships of Leckie, Chambers, and Okorafor

Laurie Ringer

Chapter Twelve: What Do We Lose When We Become Posthuman?: Paolo Bacigalupi’s “The People of Sand and Slag” and the Politics of Recognition

Michael Uhall