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Morrison Dissertation Revision Submission 12-1 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Decolonizing Utopia: Indigenous Knowledge and Dystopian Speculative Fiction A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English by Mary Irene Morrison December 2017 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Sherryl Vint, Chairperson Dr. David Lloyd Dr. Weihsin Gui Dr. Nalo Hopkinson Copyright by Mary Irene Morrison 2017 The Dissertation of Mary Irene Morrison is approved: _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgments I wish to thank my chair, Sherryl Vint, who guided me throughout my time at UC Riverside, and could not have been a more steadfast and helpful mentor for my dissertation and future career. David Lloyd also provided invaluable advisement and encouragement, in addition to being exemplary of the kind of scholar-activist I have become. Thanks also to my other advisors at UCR, Weihsin Gui, Nalo Hopkinson, and Jayna Brown, who provided support at various points in the writing process and in the job market. I thank John Rieder for advising me early on with regards to the structure of this dissertation. Jim Holstun, my master’s thesis advisor, first encouraged my interest in utopian studies. I also thank Science Fiction Studies for the R. D. Mullen Fellowship, which was incredibly valuable in researching my fourth chapter. Edwin Elias saw me through this process on a daily basis, from reading parts of drafts to cooking meals. Our scholarship has always benefitted from our intellectual partnership, making it legible across humanities and social sciences fields, and I wouldn't have been able to do this without him. My comrades in UAW 2865 kept me accountable in the real world to the social-justice orientation of my research. I also thank many of my friends and colleagues for their intellectual and moral support, especially Aaron Roberts, Taylor Evans, and Stina Attebery. Finally I thank my parents, Mary and Dale Morrison, for their emotional and financial support through the long years of graduate school. iv This dissertation is dedicated in loving memory of Tynesha "Lovely" Davis, comrade and scholar of dystopian fiction. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Decolonizing Utopia: Indigenous Knowledge and Dystopian Speculative Fiction by Mary Irene Morrison Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in English University of California, Riverside, December 2017 Dr. Sherryl Vint, Chairperson In a time of increasing inequality and ecological crisis, it seems more difficult than ever to imagine a more just and equitable world, where humanity's penchant for invention leads to better societies, rather than destroyed environments. Yet it is also conversely more necessary to do so, because such an imagination can become an inspiration for social change. This dissertation first examines how the techno-utopian imagination of even the most politically engaged European/Western science fiction (sf) writers is often problematic, in that it can perpetuate the utopian genre’s centuries-long entanglement with colonialism (dating back to colonial themes in Thomas More’s Utopia [1516]). This entanglement is prevalent for example in the biomedical science fictional imagination of Hollywood, as represented by the film Elysium, which imagines advanced medical technology and a class struggle to distribute it more equitably. Yet the film requires a White Savior (Matt Damon) to lead mostly poor people of color to revolution. Other problematic tropes abound in the genre, including alien Others as Indigenes in a primitive utopia, for example in Avatar. The technoscientific imagination advanced in sf with vi utopian themes is also coopted by corporations, who use utopian rhetoric to mask exploitation and environmental degradation. For example, Monsanto justifies the use of pesticides that harm people and the environment, by arguing that their advancements will “feed the world” now and into the future. This study then looks at the depiction of Indigenous sciences and knowledges in utopian/dystopian science fiction, in contrast to the techno-utopianism of Western science and science fiction. I study how Gerald Vizenor (Anishinaabe), Nalo Hopkinson (Afro- Caribbean), Thomas King (Cherokee), Larissa Sansour (Palestinian), and others imagine Indigenous philosophies of science, specifically how these approaches can address the world's most pressing problems, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and inequality — while maintaining healthy and just societies. The fourth chapter for example focuses on Gerald Vizenor’s Heirs of Columbus, a novel featuring a utopian reservation where Indigenous scientists heal genetic trauma resulting from colonialism. I show how Vizenor offers a decolonized view of utopia, through the potential and priorities of an approach to biotechnology informed by Indigenous philosophies. vii Table of Contents List of Figures ........................................................................................................................... ix Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 1: Anticolonialism and Techno-Utopian Hope in Western Science Fiction ....................................................................................................................................... 27 Chapter 2: Stories to Stop the Apocalypse: Indigenous Knowledge and Community Partnership in Thomas King's The Back of the Turtle and Nanobah Becker's "The 6th World" .................................................................................................. 79 Chapter 3: Dystopian Biopolitics in the Settler Colony: Larissa Sansour's "Nation Estate" and Alex Rivera's Sleep Dealer ........................................................ 126 Chapter 4: Decolonizing the Utopian Promise of Biomedical Sciences: Gerald Vizenor’s Heirs of Columbus ............................................................................................ 173 Chapter 5: Info-topia: Postcolonial cyberspace and artificial intelligence in TRON: Legacy and Nalo Hopkinson's Midnight Robber .......................................... 218 Conclusion: To Imagine Utopia is a Radical Act ....................................................... 245 viii List of Figures Fig. 1 Contact eye technology (film still) from Rivera, Alex. Sleep Dealer. Maya Entertainment, 2008. .................................................................................................................... 126 Fig. 2 Eye Scanning technology (film still) from Sansour, Larissa. Nation Estate (Short). 2012. .................................................................................................................................................. 127 Fig. 3 Olive Tree from Sansour, Larissa. Nation Estate- Photo and Video. ....................... 161 Fig. 4 Memo watering crops (film still) from Rivera, Alex. Sleep Dealer. ........................ 161 Fig. 5 Crops growing (film still) from Rivera, Alex. Sleep Dealer. ...................................... 161 Fig. 6 Window from Sansour, Larissa. Nation Estate- Photo and Video. ........................... 165 ix Introduction One afternoon during an uncharacteristically dry, hot summer in 2017, a group of Native Americans and their non-Native allies gathered outside the Tacoma Municipal Courthouse in protest. This protest was in support of a group of non-Native allies who had chained themselves to construction equipment, in a continuation of months of actions meant to stop construction of a fossil fuel facility being built on Puyallup Tribal and ancestral lands. At the event, Paul "Cheoketen" Wagner of the Vancouver Island Saanich tribe, increasingly a fixture at these events, spoke about the pan-tribal concept of natural law and the responsibilities of tribes living on the Salish Sea to protect the life that lives on and near the water. He argued that the Tacoma Municipal Court did not have sovereign jurisdiction over the actions of these protestors, and rejected colonial law in favor of natural laws passed down to him over generations, originally given to many Indigenous peoples by the Creator. These laws dictated not only relations between individuals in community and between other communities, but also relations between humans and the environment, of which Indigenous North Americans are stewards. For the centuries that the many tribes living around the Puget Sound and greater Salish Sea lived before colonization, he said, "this was paradise." Other Puyallup Tribe members echoed his statements, telling stories of when the salmon were so thick in waterways that you could literally walk across the water. 1 These speeches and others (ongoing at events as I write this) constitute the building of a hopeful narrative that is reflected in the dystopian fiction I study: Indigenous peoples have scientific knowledges and philosophies that can help solve the world's most pressing problems. Indigenous knowledges are typically undermined by Western narratives that depict Indigenous cultures as pastoral, simple cultures in harmony with nature only because they are lucky enough to live in environments that sustain life without effort — this is a colonial myth. When Wagner uses the term "paradise," it does not reflect a passive, pastoral utopia
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