Science Fiction, Totality, and Empire in the Twentieth Century
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Theories of Everything: Science Fiction, Totality, and Empire in the Twentieth Century by Gerry Canavan Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Fredric Jameson, Supervisor ___________________________ Priscilla Wald, Supervisor ___________________________ Katherine Hayles ___________________________ Robyn Wiegman ___________________________ Michael Hardt Dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 i v ABSTRACT Theories of Everything: Science Fiction, Totality, and Empire in the Twentieth Century by Gerry Canavan Graduate Program in Literature Duke University Date:_______________________ Approved: ___________________________ Fredric Jameson, Supervisor ___________________________ Priscilla Wald, Supervisor ___________________________ Katherine Hayles ___________________________ Robyn Wiegman ___________________________ Michael Hardt An abstract of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate Program in Literature in the Graduate School of Duke University 2012 i v Copyright by Gerry Canavan 2012 Abstract This dissertation, “Theories of Everything: Science Fiction, Totality, and Empire in the Twentieth Century,” argues that the ideology of empire shares with science fiction an essential cognitive orientation towards totality, an affinity which has made science fiction a privileged site for both the promotion and the critique of imperial ideologies in the United States and Britain in the twentieth century. The cultural anxieties that attend a particular moment of empire are especially manifest in that period’s science fiction, I argue, because of the importance of science and technology: first as a tool of imperial domination and second as a future-oriented knowledge practice that itself has totalizing aspirations, grasping with one hand towards so-called “theories of everything” while with the other continually decentering and devaluing humanity’s importance in larger cosmic history. As technological modernity begins to develop horizons of power and knowledge increasingly beyond the scale of the human, I argue, science fiction becomes an increasingly important cognitive resource for navigating the ideological environments of modern political subjects. In particular I argue for a new understanding of the science fiction genre focused on an aspiration to totality: cognitive maps of the historical world-system on an immense, even hyperbolically cosmic, scale. In the twentieth century empire itself is one such totality, insofar as imperial ideology asserts the existence of a historical logic of progress that ultimately culminates in the empire itself. Such totalities necessarily iv provoke thoughts of their own inevitable negation, an eventuality I organize around the general category of “apocalypse.” In three chapters I consider apocalyptic texts concerning entropy and evolution (chapter one), environmental collapse and ecological futurity (chapter two), and zombie catastrophe (chapter 3). In particular I focus on literary work from Isaac Asimov, H. G. Wells, Mark Twain, Olaf Stapledon, Margaret Atwood, Ursula K. Le Guin, Kim Stanley Robinson, Robert Kirkman, Joss Whedon, Ted Chiang, and Philip K. Dick. I ultimately argue that the totalizing thought experiments of science fiction have functioned as a laboratory of the mind for empire’s proponents and detractors alike, offering a “view from outside” from which the course of history might be remapped and remade. As a result—far from occupying some literary periphery—I argue science fiction in fact plays a central role in political struggles over history, empire, identity, justice, and the future itself. v Dedication for Jaimee, like everything else, and for Zoey, who was just in time vi Contents Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... iv Acknowledgements.......................................................................................................................x List of Figures............................................................................................................................. xiii Introduction: How to Read Science Fiction and Why ..............................................................1 Science Fiction and Utopia...................................................................................................3 Science Fiction and Empire................................................................................................11 Science Fiction and Totality...............................................................................................21 Chapter One: Billions and Billions ............................................................................................47 I. Three Ways of Looking at Apocalypse: H.G. Wells......................................................53 Utopia as Event: “The Star”...............................................................................................53 Utopia Denied: The Time Machine...................................................................................57 Utopia Achieved?: War of the Worlds .............................................................................70 II. Amazing Stories................................................................................................................78 ‘Within Ten Short Minutes…Twenty-Five Thousand Men Lay Dead around Us’ ...78 ‘Things Go Wrong’..............................................................................................................92 III. ‘And Yet I Worshipped’: Star Maker..........................................................................106 Olaf Stapledon and the Challenge to God.....................................................................106 The Search for the Star Maker .........................................................................................121 ‘How to Face It All?’ .........................................................................................................137 Chapter Two: Shipwrecked Passengers on a Doomed Planet ............................................144 I. Spaceship Earth................................................................................................................146 vii Pale Blue Dot......................................................................................................................157 Malthus and the Limit......................................................................................................163 Oil! .......................................................................................................................................176 II. Utopia and/or Extinction: Oryx and Crake.................................................................186 The End as a Beginning....................................................................................................190 Blood & Roses....................................................................................................................194 Forget Building a Better Mousetrap; Build a Better Mouse ........................................200 ‘The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race’ .............................................205 ‘Ustopia,’ Politics, and Apocalypse ................................................................................213 III. Permaculture and Ecotopia in Ursula K. Le Guin and Kim Stanley Robinson....222 Chapter Three: Zombie Life .....................................................................................................245 I. Zombie Others..................................................................................................................250 The Colonial Gaze.............................................................................................................257 Zombie Ethics ....................................................................................................................269 Zombie Gaze, Zombie Embrace......................................................................................279 II. Zombie States ..................................................................................................................282 Necropower and Zombis in Haiti...................................................................................287 I Don’t Care, I’m Still Free: Firefly..................................................................................296 Zombies in Space: Reavers...............................................................................................303 Becoming Reavers .............................................................................................................310 Zombis in Cyberspace: Dollhouse..................................................................................314 Society of Control..............................................................................................................318 viii Losing Control...................................................................................................................324 III. Zombietopia...................................................................................................................329 Coda: Science Fiction and/as