Generic Affinities, Posthumanisms and Science-Fictional Imaginings
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GENERIC AFFINITIES, POSTHUMANISMS, SCIENCE-FICTIONAL IMAGININGS SPECULATIVE MATTER: GENERIC AFFINITIES, POSTHUMANISMS AND SCIENCE-FICTIONAL IMAGININGS By LAURA M. WIEBE, B.A., M.A. A Thesis Submitted to the School of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy McMaster University © Copyright by Laura Wiebe, October 2012 McMaster University DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (2012) Hamilton, Ontario (English and Cultural Studies) TITLE: Speculative Matter: Generic Affinities, Posthumanisms and Science-Fictional Imaginings AUTHOR: Laura Wiebe, B.A. (University of Waterloo), M.A. (Brock University) SUPERVISOR: Professor Anne Savage NUMBER OF PAGES: vi, 277 ii ABSTRACT Amidst the technoscientific ubiquity of the contemporary West (or global North), science fiction has come to seem the most current of genres, the narrative form best equipped to comment on and work through the social, political and ethical quandaries of rapid technoscientific development and the ways in which this development challenges conventional understandings of human identity and rationality. By this framing, the continuing popularity of stories about paranormal phenomena and supernatural entities – on mainstream television, or in print genres such as urban fantasy and paranormal romance – may seem to be a regressive reaction against the authority of and experience of living in technoscientific modernity. Nevertheless, the boundaries of science fiction, as with any genre, are relational rather than fixed, and critical engagements with Western/Northern technoscientific knowledge and practice and modern human identity and being may be found not just in science fiction “proper,” or in the scholarly field of science and technology studies, but also in the related genres of fantasy and paranormal romance. This thesis offers an interdisciplinary examination – a science-fictional and posthumanist reframing – of the lines of affinity and relationality between these discursive and imaginative domains. Bringing together genre theory and critical posthumanism – itself informed by postmodern and poststructuralist feminism, postcolonialism, science and technology studies, and critical animal studies – with readings of several series in print (Christine Feehan’s Ghostwalkers, Kim Harrison’s The Hollows, and Justina Robson’s Quantum Gravity) and on television (Fringe, True Blood, and Sanctuary), I argue that such narratives’ powerful abiding interest in the domains of knowledge, experience and imagination that lie within, along and outside the margins of scientific orthodoxy, registers a broader cultural apprehension of the conditions and critical perspectives by which Western/Northern humanism, anthropocentrism, modernity, and technoscientific authority have been and can be seen to be destabilized. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It would not have been possible to imagine, pursue, or complete this project without the support and assistance of a great number of mentors, colleagues, friends, family and other human as well as nonhuman companions. In particular, I would like to thank Drs. Anne Savage, Susan Fast, Catherine Grisé and Petra Rethmann for serving on my committee. I deeply appreciate the time you put into this work, the criticisms, the suggestions, and the encouragement at various stages of my doctoral studies. I would like to dedicate this thesis to my parents, Valerie and Lorne Wiebe, and to the cats Xavier and Max, who were not able see it through to the end. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS page INTRODUCTION: ORIGINS AND SPECULATIONS 1 Origin Stories Speculation: An Etymology/Archaeology Science/Fiction: A Prelude Transitionary Thoughts CHAPTER 1: SCIENCE, THE PARANORMAL AND LOVE 21 Paranormal Science and Fiction Paranormal Science and Love Science Fiction, Feminism, Scientific Margins and Love CHAPTER 2: FRAMING UNDERSTANDING: GENRE IMPURITIES AND SCIENCE-FICTIONAL WORLDS 72 Our World Is Science-Fictional Genres, Frames and Imagined Worlds Science/Fictions The Provisionality of ‘Science’ and ‘Science Fiction’ CHAPTER 3: MAGIC, TECHNOSCIENCE AND SCIENCE-FICTIONAL FANTASY 111 Supernatural Fiction and Irrational Technoscience Patchwork Genres, Rational Magics and Supernatural Realities Speculative Narratives, Speculative Epistemologies CHAPTER 4: GENERIC AFFINITIES AND POSTHUMANIST CRITIQUE 159 From Modernity to a Posthumanist Condition Post/humanities and the Framing of Modernity and Science Science and Technology Studies: Epistemologies, Ontologies, and (Anti-) Anthropocentrism Posthumanism and/in Science Fiction CHAPTER 5: ABNORMAL ENTANGLEMENTS, POSTHUMAN REALITIES 199 The Posthuman Supernatural Abnormal Reality Knowing Subjects, Acting Objects, Posthumanist Entanglements Post-Quantum Futures Moving Toward a Conclusion v CONCLUSION: SCIENCE-FICTIONAL SPECULATION, WORLD-MAKING FRAMING 243 Posthumanism, (Ir)rationality and Science Fiction World Framings and Multiple Worlds (in which I live) Imagination and Social Change Concluding Thoughts WORKS CITED 264 vi Ph.D. Thesis – L. Wiebe; McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies INTRODUCTION: Origins and Speculations Origin Stories We humans are narratively-minded creatures. That is one of the basic premises of this thesis – the idea that storytelling is a primary means by which we engage with the world, a key mode of framing information and experience that allows us to comprehend and miscomprehend our sense(s) of self (individual and collective), of what lies beyond the boundaries of self, and how that boundary between self and other can change. Framing, as Judith Butler argues in Frames of War, isn’t simply about cognition and meaning-making – the processes by which we consciously recognize what or who is framed; framing also has affective dimensions that allow us to apprehend what lies outside our frames, to feel the instabilities introduced by the slight breakage inevitable in reframings, the misalignments introduced through the reiteration of frames as images, ideas and information circulate. This tension inherent in the processes of framing entails an insight that underlies a range of traditions and methodologies in literary and cultural criticism: that the stories we tell are not always what they seem. The stories that I’m interested in are the stories of popular culture, and this thesis is an argument about how a particular generic web of pop cultural narratives functions to frame the complex and contradictory experience of living in the mystifying and high-tech societies of the contemporary West/North. As narrative creatures we like our origin stories and this thesis has its own originary tale. In this particular framing my investigation begins with a cartoon, an animated television series produced by the Buena Vista division of Walt Disney entertainment. The series, a 1990s production, is called Gargoyles, and what continued 1 Ph.D. Thesis – L. Wiebe; McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies to resonate with me more than a decade after its original airing was the program’s persistent fusion of science and sorcery, myth and magic, futuristic technologies and medieval monsters. In Gargoyles, I noticed, neither the superstition of medieval Scotland (where the creatures themselves originated) nor the rationalism of contemporary America offers an adequate explanation of the world, and in the science- fictionalized and fantastical Gargoyles reality, neither magical powers nor technoscientific wizardry alone are sufficient tools for coping with the complexities of “postmodern” existence.1 For the characters in this television show, sorcery and science are more potent when used in combination, and most effective when combined with good intentions. One of the most fully elaborated expressions of this Gargoyles philosophy plays out over four episodes dealing with a hybrid character named Coldstone. In these episodes, the collision of magic and technoscience in the hands of ‘villainous’ characters leads to and exacerbates instability – specifically, the hybridization and fragmentation of body and identity. Coldstone – ‘created’ by the series’ primary villains – is the gargoyle version of a cyborg, a monstrous splicing of legend and technology and the ‘freakish’ collision of sorcery and science. Like Frankenstein’s monster, Coldstone is a patchwork masculine creature, made up of, in this case, the stone remains of three long dead gargoyles and several pieces of machine. But the pieces of Coldstone’s body are 1 Donna Haraway credits popularization of the term technoscience to Bruno Latour, who uses it to mobilize an “attack [on] the distinction between what counts as ‘science’ and as ‘society’.” Building on this, and on Heidegger’s notion of “technicity” to signify the process of changing “all the world into resource,” Haraway’s feminist and leftist interpretation of “technoscience” asks questions about “for whom and how” the products and practices of technoscience work, and seeks not just the predictable but also the unexpected results of technoscience – the potential for good surprises (Modest_Witness 279-280, note 1). For Haraway, technoscience is “more, less and other” than ideology, exceeding most critical definitions, even that of Latour, whose ideas she repeatedly invokes (49-51). 2 Ph.D. Thesis – L. Wiebe; McMaster University – English and Cultural Studies stitched together with robotics instead of surgical thread, initiated and reawakened with technoscience and magic, and the fragments that make up the creature’s identity and psyche are a mix of computer programming