Bachelor's Thesis
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BACHELOR'S THESIS Gender, Class and Transhumanism in Charles Stross' Novel Singularity Sky An Intersectional Analysis of Post-Singularity Societies Markus Öhman Bachelor of Arts in Education Bachelor of Arts in Education, 270/300/330 credits Luleå University of Technology Department of Arts, Communication and Education ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to take this moment to thank those that made this essay possible. To my supervisor Marie Wallin, I express my deepest gratitude for her insistent moderation, questioning and provocation. Without her, this essay would be a monument to convoluted obfuscation, long-winded magniloquence and tedious monotony. To Johanna, my love, I extend my heartfelt appreciation for your tenacity and support. It was you who made me question the roles society has molded for us, and it was you who made me believe I had the competence to put my thoughts into writing. This essay is yours just as much as it is mine. Thank you. Finally, I wish to thank my friends in LoST, who has fuelled my passion for science fiction these past seven years. Together, we have in our minds’ eyes seen what outer space and the far future holds. Markus Öhman 1/26/12 ABSTRACT The aim of this essay was to analyze and discuss how gender and class are portrayed in the societies of Charles Stross’ Singularity Sky through the use of an intersectional perspective focusing heavily on gender and supported by a class perspective. The effects of the Singularity and the use of transhuman augmentations to transgress societal boundaries have been of special interest. Women who use transhuman augmentations to achieve intellectual power is portrayed as unnatural, whilst those enhance their physical prowess, and in essence conform to male role characteristics, do not receive the same treatment. Protagonist Rachel Mansour’s implants enable her to appropriate characteristics normally associated with males without forsaking female such, thereby transgressing gender boundaries. The Festival acts as an imperialist power, exploiting the weak Rochard’s World in order to satiate its hunger for information. On pre-Singularity Rochard’s World and in Critic society both, discrimination on the basis of gender and class are commonplace. The disadvantaged suffer a systematic inequality, as gender partiality results in a lower class status, which itself is seen as inferior. CONTENTS INTRODUCTION AND MATERIAL ................................................................................................. 1 AIM AND SCOPE ................................................................................................................................................ 3 BACKGROUND AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK ................................................................ 4 SCIENCE FICTION AND THE SINGULARITY ...................................................................................................... 4 FEMINIST THEORY AND TECHNOCULTURAL CYBORGS ................................................................................. 6 Intersectionality: The interrelationship of social categories ..................................................... 8 TRANSHUMANISM............................................................................................................................................. 9 ANALYSIS .......................................................................................................................................... 12 ROCHARD’S WORLD AND THE SOCIOECONOMIC SINGULARITY ................................................................ 12 THE FESTIVAL AND THE CRITICS ................................................................................................................. 18 RACHEL MANSOUR, TRANSHUMANIST CYBER-COMMANDO ...................................................................... 23 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS .................................................................................................. 26 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................................... 28 INTRODUCTION AND MATERIAL Western culture is permeated by capitalist patriarchal values in which the white, middle- aged, middle-class man is the standard to adhere to and whose tastes and preferences are the norm. These capitalist and patriarchal values form and are formed by society and its products. With these values come also the notion of power and who should have it. Only by deconstructing and analyzing products of society, such as literature, can the forces that are responsible for the allocation of power and values be exposed. Exposing social hierarchical structures serves to better understand and assail the inequalities and injustices inherent in Western culture. However, analyzing class and gender separately, while productive in its own right, runs the risk of missing key elements only found the dynamic relation between the two factors. Instead, you can look at the relationships between numerous social construct categories, such as gender and class, and how they result in systemic inequality. Patriarchal oppression of women and capitalist oppression and exploitation of the poor should not and can not be perceived as if in a vacuum, but are instead supported and fashioned by each other. The notions of gender constructs and class constructs are so thoroughly ingrained and ubiquitous in Western culture that creating a fiction in which they are different results in speculative fiction. One such speculative fiction novel is Charles Stross’ Singularity Sky. Singularity Sky is a science fiction novel set in the far future, in which the societies are purely fictional and far removed from our contemporary world. The cultural and temporal distance means that they have no reason to identify themselves with the norms or limitations inherent in Western civilization. The science fiction genre has a long history of utilizing constructions of alien cultures, alternative realities and far futures as allegories for contemporaneous social problems. One of the more seminal works of science fiction, Star Trek, is well known for its usage of all three types of allegories to criticize everything from apartheid to genetic engineering. The politics of transhumanism – the utilization of technology to improve upon the bodies of humans – is oft discussed in the halls of sci-fi authors. Countless novels, films and videogames return to transhumanism as either the salvation, most noticeable in American comic book super-heroes, or the damnation, as seen in the Star Trek villain Khan Noonien 1 Singh1, of humanity. Science fiction, and transhumanism through it, is often used to discuss notions of gender and class constructs. Singularity Sky is a science fiction novel set in the far future, where scarcity is predominantly nonexistent and class is viewed as an archaic concept by all save for a few feudal society planets. The story of Singularity Sky takes place in the meeting between a neo-feudal regressive conservative society with a strong patriarchal tradition and a transhumanist, information-driven upload society in which most intelligent minds live in something similar to cyberspace. Written by Charles Stross in 2003, Singularity Sky tells the story of what happens when a vastly technologically superior and socially advanced alien civilization comes into contact with a feudal and despotic backwater planet. When the Festival arrives at the New Republican colony of Rochard’s World, the changes its technological capabilities bring plunges the planet into chaos as a revolutionary cadre seizes the opportunity to import superior weaponry. The New Republic, misinterpreting the chaos as an invasion from the Festival, arranges for its interstellar navy to travel back in time in order to arrive at the colony mere days after the arrival of the Festival. UN diplomat Rachel Mansour is sent as an impartial observer to make sure that the navy does not travel farther back in time than interstellar law allows. During her voyage, Rachel and her love interest engineer Martin Springfield are harassed by the secret police, as they are under suspicion of espionage. Meanwhile on Rochard’s World, several small governments spring up, but the majority of people have found that the technology offered by the Festival enables them to live outside the reach of sovereign rule. However, the Festival’s stay is not to last forever. After only a few months in orbit, they leave the planet, enabling the New Republic to return Rochard’s World to its previous feudal state. 1Introduced in the 1967 Star Trek episode Space Seed and revisited in the 1982 film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. 2 AIM AND SCOPE The aim of this essay is to analyze and discuss how gender and class are portrayed in the societies of Charles Stross’ Singularity Sky. Specifically, the analysis will focus heavily on gender portrayal and issues. Class, while also an important subject of analysis, will not be as vigourously considered. The main focus of the analysis is on three cultures or cultural representatives: the planet of Rochard’s World, and in extension the New Republic; the alien nomadic societies of The Festival and the Critics; as well Earth-born UN diplomat Rachel Mansour. Special consideration has been made in order to maintain a balanced view of the source material; this essay is neither fully supportive nor subversive of Stross, and tries to maintain an unbiased disposition towards that which the analysis begets. This essay will therefor contain