Redefining Humanity in Science Fiction: the Alien from an Ecofeminist Perspective
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Biblioteca Digital de la Universidad de Alcalá REDEFINING HUMANITY IN SCIENCE FICTION: THE ALIEN FROM AN ECOFEMINIST PERSPECTIVE By Irene Sanz Alonso Under the supervision of Dr. Carmen Flys Junquera Instituto Franklin – Universidad de Alcalá 2013 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS After all these five years, I have come to see the writing of this dissertation as some sort of intergalactic journey and this book as a spaceship arriving at its final destination. As any journey across the universe, my research started with fear and doubts, but it finally ended in success thanks to all those people who supported me along the way. Continuing with the intergalactic metaphor, I would like to thank the sponsors and patrons that made this adventure possible by providing the spaceship and the fuel for my journey. This dissertation would not have been possible without the grant I was awarded by the Autonomous Region of Madrid in 2007, which enabled me to focus on my research for four years as a researcher at the University of Alcalá. I also want to highlight the support of the Franklin Institute of the University of Alcalá, whose resources were of great help, and whose grant Eleanor Roosevelt made the binding of this dissertation possible. I am also indebted to the whole team of “engineers” whose knowledge helped me with the doubts that appeared throughout my journey. The arrival to my destination would not have been so successful without the support from the members of the research group GIECO, who are not only colleagues but good friends. Their recommendations have been essential to this project and I can only say thank you to all of them. I would also like to thank Dr. Axel Goodbody for his words of advice, both in academic and non-academic issues, during my stay at the University of Bath. And last but not least, I want to recognize the efforts made by the person who has guided me on this journey, Dr. Carmen Flys. Her support and critical advice have shown me the way to follow even at those moments when I could not see the end of the journey. This last section of acknowledgements is devoted to all the people that have accompanied me these years. Writing a dissertation is a solitary task, but I have always felt my family with me. I have special words of gratitude for my mother and my grandmother Almudena because of their unconditional support, and because they have always encouraged me to follow my dreams. I also want to say thanks to all my friends because of their efforts to understand what my dissertation is about. Finally, I thank Alberto for his company and support in this lonely journey. And after my thanks to my human companions, I also want to thank my non-human friend Kira, whose silent presence was also of great help. TABLE OF CONTENTS I. INTRODUCTION 3 II. SCIENCE FICTION 11 2.1 HISTORY 18 2.2 EXTRAPOLATION 24 2.3 SF AND POSTMODERNISM 27 2.4 FEMINIST SCIENCE FICTION 31 2.5 ALIENS AND CYBORGS 41 2.6 SCIENCE FICTION AND NATURE 55 III. ECOFEMINISM 61 3.1 TYPES OF ECOFEMINISM 69 3.2 CRITIQUE OF ECOFEMINISM 75 3.3 INTERCONNECTIONS BETWEEN WOMEN AND NATURE 80 3.4 GAIA 88 3.5 OPPRESSIVE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS 91 3.6 ECOFEMINIST ETHIC 100 IV. THE AUTHORS AND THEIR WORK 105 4.1 BIOGRAPHY OF OCTAVIA BUTLER 105 4.2 OCTAVIA BUTLER’S SCIENCE FICTION 108 4.3 SUMMARY OF THE XENOGENESIS SERIES (LILITH’S BROOD) 112 4.4 APPROACHES TO LILITH’S BROOD 118 4.5 BIOGRAPHY OF JOAN SLONCZEWSKI 124 4.6 JOAN SLONCZEWSKI’S SCIENCE FICTION 126 4.7 SUMMARY OF A DOOR INTO OCEAN 130 4.8 APPROACHES TO A DOOR INTO OCEAN 132 V. ANALYSIS OF THE NOVELS 137 5.1 NARRATIVE VOICES 139 5.2 THE ENVIRONMENT 145 5.3 SCIENCE 160 5.4 GENDER 174 5.5 HUMAN VS ALIEN 192 5.6 ECOFEMINIST ANALYSIS 225 VI. CONCLUSIONS 277 VII. WORKS CITED 291 VIII. SUMMARY IN SPANISH / RESUMEN EN ESPAÑOL 309 Perhaps the most important task for human beings is not to search the stars to converse with cosmic beings but to learn to communicate with the other species that share this planet with us. (Plumwood, Environmental Culture 189). Redefining Humanity in Science Fiction - 2 - I. Introduction I. INTRODUCTION The beginning of this dissertation dates back to 2007 with the PhD course on Ecocriticism, Ecofeminism and Environmental Justice. This course, taught by Professor Carmen Flys, was a turning point in my life as a student since it opened the doors to a research field that allowed me to explore many of my interests together: literature, science fiction, gender and the environment. It was then when Dr. Flys and I commented on the possibility of working on a dissertation about Science Fiction from an ecofeminist perspective, an idea that became real with the realization of the research project “‘When they killed even to save life, they died a little themselves.’An Ecofeminist Approach to Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis Series.” This work, which is the point of departure for this dissertation, helped me realize the possibilities of such a popular genre as SF to question the values of our society in terms of otherness, with special interest in the treatment of human and non-human others and the environment. One of the most decisive moments in the process of elaboration of this dissertation was when the Autonomous Region of Madrid granted me a scholarship to carry out the research for my PhD, which enabled me to work full-time on this project. This scholarship was in itself an achievement since my proposal was focused on the literary analysis of feminist Science Fiction works with special focus on issues of gender and the environment, and ecofeminism was relatively unknown in literary criticism in Spain, and SF was still regarded as a marginal genre of the literary canon. But the most visible achievement of all these years of research and work is precisely this dissertation which highlights the power of popular genres to work as vehicles of social criticism and of alternative and healthier lifestyles. When I started this dissertation, one of my goals was to show how literature can help us create a better world by inviting readers to reflect on the world we live in, with special attention to the environment and the relationship with the other. Although some critics believe that realist fiction may seem the more appropriate vehicle to do so, I think—following Darko Suvin and Patrick Murphy, among others—that the particularities of Science Fiction make of the genre a useful tool to question our values and our society. Science Fiction has usually been defined as an escapist genre because it portrays worlds different from our own. But many Science Fiction critics prefer to consider the genre as extrapolative, which implies that Science Fiction is about the world we live in as described from an estranged vantage point - 3 - Redefining Humanity in Science Fiction that enables the author to explore real problems from the perspective of the outsider. This process of defamiliarization positions the reader as an objective observer of his/her own world, making it easier to perceive and reflect on the conflicts of our society. Considering the environment, some Science Fiction novels about environmental degradation and ecological catastrophes have proved more fruitful in raising awareness about the possible future consequences of our failed relationship with the Earth. In this sense, Science Fiction is not only appropriate for speculating about the results of our actions nowadays, but it is also an interesting vehicle for proposing solutions to the social and environmental conflicts we face today. The extrapolative character of Science Fiction is especially interesting from an ecofeminist point of view because it serves the two main goals of ecofeminism: to question oppressive attitudes and unhealthy social systems and to propose alternative lifestyles based on an ethics of care and respectful practices towards the other, including nature. In this sense, the estranged point of view that Science Fiction allows writers to adopt enables readers to approach reality in a defamiliarized way. This way, readers are able to identify more easily those values embedded in our social structures that sanction and perpetuate oppression. The speculative nature of Science Fiction is also interesting for ecofeminists because it offers the possibility of imagining alternative—and healthier—social systems from which we can learn to improve our own reality. Ecofeminists argue that humans have failed to recognize the seriousness of the ecological crisis because we no longer see ourselves as part of nature; that is, we have “a weakened sense of the reality of our embeddedness in nature” (Plumwood, Environmental Culture 97). In this sense, Patrick Murphy comments that in order to “understand our appropriate ecological niche” we need to recognize that “humans are not only things-in themselves and things-for-us but also things-for-others, including the stable evolution of the biosphere” (“Ground, Pivot, Motion” 230). Ecofeminist authors also criticize the patterns of domination that have relegated women and nature—together with other human and non- human others—to a powerless position in Western culture, which has provoked the environmental crisis we face nowadays. But ecofeminists do not only criticize the unhealthy social systems that sanction oppressive attitudes since they also promote alternative lifestyles and an ethics of care that help humans understand their place in nature and their dependence on it, as well as respect for the other in his/her/its uniqueness.