Feminist Science Fiction Research Articles

The Hard Question of Squishy Machines

The Hard Question of Squishy Machines

Frankenstein's daughters: women writing science fiction

Beginning with the birth of science fiction in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Jane Donawerth takes a broad look at science fiction and utopian literature written by women. In a creative close reading of Frankenstein, Donawerth pinpoints the gender problems that reside in the male-oriented science fiction genre and shows how Shelley and other women science fiction authors have typically responded to such problems. Employing feminist, social and cultural theory, Donawerth identifies new forms of science fiction that emerge from women writers as they address the problems of the genre. She includes a number of close readings from original texts to flesh out these new paradigms for the genre. The range of works by women makes this volume an invaluable scholarly review of the entire field of feminist science fiction and criticism. Without falling prey to an elitist academic discourse or establishing an exclusive science fiction canon, she generates a rigorous and extensive intellectual approach, method and sensibility that reinvents the science fiction intertext itself. The book should be of interest to scholars in a number of fields, especially women's studies and literature.

The Bodypolitics of Feminist Science Fiction: Elisabeth Vonarburg’s Le Silence de la cité

The Bodypolitics of Feminist Science Fiction: Elisabeth Vonarburg's Le Silence de la cite Lorie Sauble-Otto Whether Utopian or dystopian, feminist science fiction is an emerging field of interest in Cultural and Literary Studies, as well as Women's Studies, and to use Jenny Wolmark's phrase, is at the cutting edge of culture (113).^ From freedom of sexuality to pregnancy and childbirth, feminist science fiction writers are exploring the female body in space and imagining its liberty, and sometimes in Dystopia, its bondage. This essay centers around the emergence of feminist science fiction as the realm wherein women writers reinvent themselves and their bodies, thus the process of reproduction. This theme of reproduction as oppression is what Sara Lefanu calls the hallmark of the feminist incursion into science fiction (57). Also, I would like to promote, as does Marleen Barr in Feminist Fabulation: Space/Postmodern Fiction, the canoniza- tion of what she calls feminist fabulation, and correspondingly, the instructional validity of the genre.^ chy... continues to define feminists As Barr states: patriar- and threatening texts (espe- cially science fiction written by women and men) as second-class (15). If, as Barr elaborates, feminist fabulation is a springboard for subversive thought, a literary space of personal transformation which can inspire social and cultural transformation, then it could serve as an empowering experience in the classroom (227). The theme of appropriation of women's bodies, procreative and their offspring is central to Elisabeth Vonarburg's fiction. In Le Silence de la cite, Vonarburg ventures into a realm where total metamorphosis is a reality and parthenogenetic con- ception of children becomes the key to survival in a post-apocalyp- tic world. This essay will pinpoint a few of the specific ways in which the author's writing calls into question or problematizes the discourse of male-dominated reproductive technology. As Emily capacity Martin has suggested in The Woman in the Body: A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction, feminist reconstructions of the discourse of repro- ductive technology can be empowering: Imagining technology being used to control those who ordinarily use it to control others throws the power relationships into focus (58).

Dressing in Imaginary Communities: Clothing, Gender and the Body in Utopian Texts from Thomas More to Feminist Science Fiction

Dressing in Imaginary Communities: Clothing, Gender and the Body in Utopian Texts from Thomas More to Feminist Science Fiction

Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism.

This study explores the radical potential of feminist science fiction to question dominant cultural definitions of difference and identity, self and other. It examines the way in which the generic conventions of science fiction are subverted so that notions of both genre and gender identity are redefined. The book also considers the ways in which both feminism and postmodernism have enabled women science fiction writers to challenge the common sense nature of social and cultural practices and institutions. postmodernism's sustained critique of the grand narratives of western culture is paralleled by feminist analysis of the patriarchal nature of the dominant discourses of that culture. While these are not the same projects, they are nevertheless connected, both by their mutual recognition of the partiality of dominant cultural practices and by their potential to develop an interventionist cultural politics.

Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, and: Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism (review)

Reviewed by: Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond, and: Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism Mária Minich Brewer Marleen S. Barr. Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond. Foreword by Marge Piercy. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1993. xi + 231 pp. Jenny Wolmark. Aliens and Others: Science Fiction, Feminism and Postmodernism. Iowa City: U of Iowa P, 1994. xii + 167 pp. In her foreword to Lost in Space, Marge Piercy makes a pertinent distinction between cultural critics as “exilers” or “shepherds,” suggesting that Marleen Barr’s “heterogeneous yokings of disparate writers” under feminist fabulation makes her a shepherd on a mission of rescue. A sense of urgency pervades Barr’s call for feminist science fiction to resist becoming “lost in space”—marginalized as an alien, noncanonical branch of conventional science fiction—as well as her argument for its classification within a redefinition of postmodern fiction. “I view feminist fabulation,” Barr states, “as an umbrella term that includes science fiction, fantasy, utopian literature, and mainstream literature (written by women and men) that critiques patriarchal fictions.” Barr’s own readings practice exactly such a style of critical feminist fabulation. By turns academic, autobiographical, humorous, and critical, she brings together a variety of popular and literary texts, criticism, film, and visual art. The pleasure of reading Barr may be attributed to the insights gained from such energetic and “heterogeneous yokings.” At times, she seems carried away by the dynamic of these linkages, but she redirects readers to her central concern, the ways in which affinities between diverse cultural practices contribute to social change. The essays in the first section begin by treating feminist science fiction independently of Barr’s more inclusive term—feminist fabulation—but they progressively strain against the limitations of the science [End Page 214] fiction genre. For instance, she reads the film Thelma and Louise and its notion of “taking off” from patriarchy with reference to feminist science fiction and Jean Baudrillard’s ecstatic notion of the desert. Anne McCaffrey’s popular novel Dragonsong is brought together with Tillie Olsen as well as Hélène Cixous in terms of writing and difference. Barr proposes perceptive readings of utopian works by Suzy McKee Charnas, Zoë Fairbairns, James Tiptree, Jr. (Alice Sheldon), Sally Gearhart, Kate Wilhelm, and Joanna Russ, as well as women warrior novels by Elizabeth A. Lynn and Jessica Amanda Salmonson. In one essay, she challenges Joanna Russ’s opposition to men’s sex-role-reversal fictions, which the latter calls “flasher novels.” Instead of being taken as a “declaration of postmodern generic gender war” (Russ), these novels ought to be welcomed by feminist readers as a means to explore real-world gender problems. Piercy is thus read alongside Thomas Berger, Alice Jardine, and Paul Smith. One of the most resonant chapters is devoted to dystopian novels by Charnas, Fairbanks, Wilhelm, and Margaret Atwood, whom Barr reads in tandem with nonfiction critics of new reproductive technologies. She argues persuasively that feminist science fiction becomes blurred as a fictional genre when its representations of reproductive technology come so uncannily close to reality. Its warnings, as she stresses, need to be heeded. The second section, on feminist fabulation and feminist postmodernism, continues the trajectory beyond feminist science fiction initiated in the previous essays. Referring to Barbara Christian, Barr proposes that when Octavia Butler and Tiptree are no longer treated as literary aliens and “categorized with writers who focus on zap guns,” their focus on race, class, and gender can be seen as effective for social change. Their inclusion as postmodern feminist fabulators would prevent their texts and their critique of patriarchy and racism from being marginalized. Another major chapter in Barr’s book questions definitions of manhood in Herman Melville, Fritz Lang’s 1929 film Women in the Moon, Spielberg’s Hook, the TV show “Lost in Space,” Sheri Tepper, and Isaac Asimov. Salman Rushdie is read as a male postmodernist who writes about the visibility of women’s stories, as does novelist Marianne Wiggins. They both decree that the gender war is over and done with—a sentiment echoed by Barr for whom new alliances between postmodern writers can work...

Lost in Space: Probing Feminist Science Fiction and Beyond.

Archaeologists and anthropologists discover other civilizations; science fiction writers invent them. In this collection of her major essays, Marleen Barr argues that feminist science fiction writers contribute to postmodern literary canons with radical alternatives to mainstream patriarchal society. Because feminist science fiction challenges male-centered social imperatives, it has been marginalized and dismissed from the canon--thus, lost in space. Moving beyond feminist science fiction itself, Barr goes on to examine other literary genres from the perspective of 'feminist fabulation'--a term she has coined to encompass science fiction, fantasy, utopian literature, and mainstream literature that critiques patriarchal fictions. Discussing the works of such writers as Margaret Atwood, Joanna Russ, Salman Rushdie, Paul Theroux, Ursula Le Guin, Herman Melville, Saul Bellow, Edgar Allan Poe, and Marge Piercy, Barr illuminates feminist science fiction's connections to other literary traditions and contemporary canons. Her critical analysis yields a new and expanded understanding of feminist creativity.

Love, power and knowledge: towards a feminist transformation of the sciences

... absolutely splendid... the style is elegant, eloquent, and witty. Rose has a unique voice in the increasingly important feminist science and epistemology discussions. A superb accomplishment. Sandra HardingThis is a lively, contentious, important feminist book. Rose's wit and sharp eye and her commitment to thorough comparative historical analysis make for many pages of wonderful reading. Donna HarawayHilary Rose locates feminist criticism of science at the heart of both the women's movement and the radical science movement. Attending to the political economy of the production of knowledge and to what does and does not count as knowledge, she explores how women and minorities are affected by these processes. She examines at length the latest, massively resourced claimant to the old and oppressive biology is destiny dictum the Human Genome program.Rose's commitment to feminist resistance against the science and technology of oppression leads her to claim feminist science fiction with its imaginative capacity to envision different futures with different sciences and technologies as an ally of feminist science critics.

Lost in space: probing feminist science fiction and beyond

Lost in space: probing feminist science fiction and beyond

Fighting Misogynist SF in Another Dimension

here No Man Has Gone Before: Women and Science Fiction, edited by Lucie Armitt, arrives from an alternate world, distant from that of American feminist SF scholarship, a place where the fight for recognition has not advanced so far as it has here, where there are fewer warriors and fewer weapons for the side of feminism. That place is Margaret Thatcher's Britain, and the warriors stand outside the bastions of Oxbridge, blocked not only by their gender but by their interest in a still marginalized subject. This rather dramatic portrayal of Armitt's collection of essays conveys its perspective, the apology of a beleaguered British feminist SF community. That perspective is a valuable one, reminding American readers that we can ill afford the luxury of postfeminist smugness. Where No Man Has Gone Before contains an introduction by the editor; thirteen essays, ten from the scholarly world and three by science fiction writers, on a variety of feminist issues; and a brief bibliography of works cited. None of the writers speaks from the citadels of Oxford and Cambridge. Instead, the notes on contributors, all women, show a network of feminist SF academics linked together by the universities of Warwick and Sheffield, the Liverpool and Sheffield city polytechnics, and The Women's Press. The connection with The Women's Press is key, for these writers continue the discussion Sarah Lefanu began with her superb In the

From Pious Legend to Feminist Fantasy: Distinguishing Hagiographical License from Apostolic Practice in the "Acts of Paul/Acts of Thecla"

Previous articleNext article No AccessFrom Pious Legend to Feminist Fantasy: Distinguishing Hagiographical License from Apostolic Practice in the "Acts of Paul/Acts of Thecla"Lynne C. BoughtonLynne C. Boughton Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Religion Volume 71, Number 3Jul., 1991 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/488660 Views: 17Total views on this site Citations: 5Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1991 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article: An Act to Follow, (May 2022): 33–194.https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009008631.002Valentina Calzolari The Reception of the Acts of Thecla in Armenia, (May 2022): 110–141.https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009008631.006Elif Hilal KARAMAN ABANDONED BY THE APOSTLE: THECLA’S UNIQUENESS AMONG THE APOCRYPHAL ACTS OF THE APOSTLES, Dinbilimleri Akademik Araştırma Dergisi (Sep 2021).https://doi.org/10.33415/daad.960012Sarah Parkhouse The Fetishization of Female Exempla : Mary, Thecla, Perpetua and Felicitas, New Testament Studies 63, no.44 (Sep 2017): 567–587.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0028688517000157Deborah Niederer Saxon Complementary Representations of the Care of the Self in the Gospel of Mary and the Martyrdom of Perpetua and Felicity, (Oct 2017): 133–185.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64750-0_5

Another tale to tell: politics and narrative in postmodern culture

Through his work as a fiction writer, critic and activist, Fred Pfeil has sought to extend the progressive possibilities within contemporary American culture. Idiosyncratic and provocative, Another Tale to Tell moves from evaluations of politically engaged texts and practices - such as Hans Haacke's deconstructive artwork, Chester Himes' Harlem police thrillers, 'cyberpunk' and the feminist science fiction of Octavia Butler - to considerations of the history, dynamics and potential of postmodern culture. Pfeil's work on postmodernity is distinct from the spate of their works on the subject in its insistence on the social base of postmodern practices within today's professional managerial class, and in his endeavour both to use and to criticize Marxist, feminist, psychoanalytic and poststructuralist thought in order to illuminate our present political impasses and openings. From his audacious reading of the film River's Edge as the terminus of the vexed history of bourgeois narrative, and his analysis of Reaganite oedipality in Back to the Future, to his unsettling meditation on the 'poststructuralist paradise' embodied in contemporary SF, Pfeil sorts through a welter of contemporary cultural texts and practices for the glimmerings of a postmodern narrative and politics that may truly be 'another tale to tell'.

Reader's guide to twentieth-century science fiction

The guide offers biographical sketches and critical analyses of more than 150 authors, including well-known US writers, authors from the New Wave, Cyberpunk, and feminist science fiction subgenres, and authors from countries such as Great Britain, Poland, Australia and the Soviet Union. Also included are analyses of each author's style and themes, plot summaries of authors' award winning and major works, a list of selected biographic and bibliographic readings, and appendixes listing titles, Hugo and Nebula award winners, and science fiction journals and magazines.

Songs of Our Future: Feminist Representation of Technology in Science Fiction

Three works of feminist science fiction are examined. The writers see technology as a crucial issue in the development of a new society. They view the current technological society as characterised by a strong male/female dichtomy and as violent, unsustainable as to resources, environmentally harsh and oppressive of humans, especially women and children. They differ as to the relations between hardware technology and masculinity but see a technology/power/gender imbalance that is both a cause and an effect of alienation from the natural environment.

White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory

orn in Flames, a feminist science fiction film set ten years after a Social-Democratic revolution in the U.S., provides an abrupt reminder of the place of theory in the context of social change. Toward the end of the film, with the women's takeover of New York communications channels in progress, the voice of theory is heard over the image, insisting that women also need to take over the production of language. Although the film gives credence to the voice of theory (a white female British-accented voice), it is clear that the militant Women's Emergency Brigade and the martyred Black lesbian leader are carrying the revolutionary moment. What strikes me about the juxtaposition images of women hot-wiring U-Haul trucks and the voice of theory urging women to take control of their own images is that the voice sounds so crisply detached and arid.' What I want to discuss is not so much the scene as the tenor of the

Dreaming the Future

This paper describes my changing relationship to science fiction, surveying the mainstream tradition of utopian SF from a feminist perspective. Bogdanov's novels are seen as a bridge linking a pioneering analysis of science as both progress and problem to our current concerns. Lastly I discuss a number of our most loved feminist SF writers, suggesting that they have created a safe and playful space where the cultural politics of science can be both explored and shared with great numbers of women.

Foreign l(anguish), mother tongue: Concepts of language in contemporary feminist science fiction

FOR FEMINIST writers and critics alike, the ongoing effort to come to grips with the relationship between woman and discourse is of vital concern. Indeed, we cannot avoid posing the question formulated by Luce Irigaray: How can women analyze their exploitation, inscribe their claims, within an order prescribed by the masculine? (78; Mary Jacobus's translation). Is the language we speak made up of words that are killing us (114), as Monique Wittig suggests in Les Guerilleres? Are we exiled from discourse itself? Or, do we possess a hidden linguistic reservoir in common language, a life-sustaining thesaurus? With the introduction of French feminist thought into the North American discussion, attempts to answer the questions raised above have become considerably more difficult. Most of the French feminists whose writings are (directly or indirectly) informed by the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure, the post-Freudian psychoanalysis of Jacques Lacan, and the philosophy of Jacques Derrida share basic assumptions. Generally, they postulate that sexual difference which is at once biological, physiological, and relative to produc-

Feminist science fiction

Feminist science fiction Get access Despatches from the Frontiers of the Human Mind edited by Green Jen Lefanu Sarah The Women's Press, 1986,248 pp, £2.50 George Hay George Hay futures consultant of 5 St Andrew's Mansions, St Andrew's Road, West Kensington, London W14 9SU, UK Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Science and Public Policy, Volume 13, Issue 4, August 1986, Pages 246–247, https://doi.org/10.1093/spp/13.4.246 Published: 01 August 1986

White Privilege and Looking Relations: Race and Gender in Feminist Film Theory

orn in Flames, a feminist science fiction film set ten years after a Social-Democratic revolution in the U.S., provides an abrupt reminder of the place of theory in the context of social change. Toward the end of the film, with the women's takeover of New York communications channels in progress, the voice of theory is heard over the image, insisting that women also need to take over the production of language. Although the film gives credence to the voice of theory (a white female British-accented voice), it is clear that the militant Women's Emergency Brigade and the martyred Black lesbian leader are carrying the revolutionary moment. What strikes me about the juxtaposition images of women hot-wiring U-Haul trucks and the voice of theory urging women to take control of their own images is that the voice sounds so crisply detached and arid.' What I want to discuss is not so much the scene as the tenor of the

Redressing an Internal Imbalance: Women and Science Fiction, 1965–1980

For many years, science fiction has been perceived as “rayguns and rocket ships” boys' literature. Any number of impressionistic and statistical studies have identified the typical SF reader as male, between the ages of twelve and twenty and, in the case of adults, employed in some technical field. Yet I continually find myself having conversations with women, only to find that they, like myself, began reading science fiction between the ages of six and ten, have been reading it voraciously ever since, and were often frustrated at the absence of satisfying female characters and the presence of misogynistic elements in what they read. The stereotype of the male reader and the generally male SF environment mask both the increasing presence of women writers in the field of science fiction and the existence of a feminist dialog within some SF novels. This dialog had its beginnings in the mid‐sixties and is still going strong. It is the hope of the feminist SF community that this effacement can be counteracted.