©2021 Virginia L. Conn ALL RIGHTS RESERVED An earlier excerpt of a section of Chapter Two was published under the title, “Affective Labor and Technologies of Gender in Wei Yahua’s ‘Conjugal Happiness in the Arms of Morpheus’.” It has been substantially reworked since publication. Per article 3 of the Springer consent to publish agreement, “Author retains the right to use his/her Contribution for his/her further scientific career by including the final published paper in his/her dissertation or doctoral thesis provided acknowledgment is given to the original source of publication.” The final publication is available at Springer via https://doi.org/10.1007/978- 3-319-57738-8_3. All images, unless otherwise stated, published here courtesy of Princeton University Library, Cotsen Special Collection. THE BODY POLITIC: SOCIALIST SCIENCE FICTION AND THE EMBODIED STATE By VIRGINIA LEE CONN A dissertation submitted to the School of Graduate Studies Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey In partial fulfillment of the requirements For the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Comparative Literature Written under the direction of Andrew Parker And approved by ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ ___________________________________ New Brunswick, New Jersey May 2021 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION “The Body Politic: Socialist Science Fiction and the Embodied State” By VIRGINIA L. CONN Dissertation Director: Andrew Parker My dissertation explores why and how science fiction writers and policymakers from Soviet Russia, Communist China, and the German Democratic Republic put a transformed human body at the center of their visions of the future. Since socialism conflated individual bodies with the national body, writers and planners commonly sought to portray a “new socialist human” free not only from want but also from physical imperfection. Science fiction texts described the world these citizens would inhabit as the socialist future, while policymakers drew up plans to create such utopias in real life. Both writers and planners placed narratives of the body at the nexus of modernizing developments as wide-ranging as marriage reform, cybernetics, hematology, labor camps, educational reform, and nuclear power. Chapter one surveys representations of socialism’s ideal body in three national science fiction traditions. Since socialism erases the boundaries between individuals and the collective, then the health of the state should be reflected in that of its citizens. Science fiction authors influenced policymakers, scientists, and labor organizers (some of whom were, themselves, science fiction authors) through their literary projections of bodily perfectibility. At the same time, through what Marx identified as “the alteration of men on a mass scale,” socialist policymakers proposed projects that were as much acts of imagination ii as any work of fiction. Socialist narratives of the future, whether literary or policy-oriented, required new bodies to fulfill their visions. The texts at the heart of chapter two, “Conjugal Happiness in the Arms of Morpheus” by Wei Yahua and Red Star by Alexander Bogdanov, decouple biological reproduction from social reproduction. Considering biological reproduction an impediment to physical perfectibility and even immortality, theorists and policymakers focused on reproduction as a specific point of intervention aimed at improving sexual equality. Though this split takes different forms in each case—one through the creation of a national superorganism connected through bloodsharing, the other through the production of robots as a check on population growth—both texts redistribute social processes historically associated with one biological phenotype as egalitarian projects. By rejecting the connection between sex and social reproduction altogether, however, they suggest that actual reproducing bodies are irreparably flawed. Chapter three asks how, in socialist narratives, workers were portrayed in the absence of work. Writers and policymakers often described the future as a post-labor utopia while exalting work in the present as a necessary duty, much like childbirth, from which every citizen would soon be freed. I argue here that the understudied ephemera lian huan hua (连环 画)—linked serial images, or propagandistic comic books from the PRC—exemplify this ideal of a future free from labor. As quotidian projections of futurity, lian huan hua depicted aestheticized and politicized images of the human not as a user of tools creating the state, but as tools utilized by the state for measuring individual and social progress. I turn in the last chapter to three texts about illness and deformity: the Chinese novelette “Corrosion” by Ye Yonglie, the Soviet story “Pkhentz” by Andrei Sinyavsky, and iii the GDR short story “The Eye that Never Weeps” by Angela and Karlheinz Steinmüller. Though formally different, all three are troubled by the imperfect bodies of their socialist citizens—bodies whose infirmities call out for correction through the application of the state's hygienic practices. For these texts to acknowledge the continued existence of disability, however, is to risk betraying the socialist vision of a perfected humanity. Across national and linguistic traditions, socialist science fiction encountered its limit in representations of deviant bodies that resist idealization—bodies that these narratives nonetheless cannot do without. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Just as revolutionary social transformation requires mass participation, so, too, is this thesis the product of a community of scholars, mentors, and friends. First and foremost, I would like to give credit to the Rutgers AAUP-AFT union, which during my time at Rutgers University fought tirelessly for the labor and intellectual rights of grad students and faculty. It is with enormous appreciation for their tireless efforts—from marches to sit-ins to countless town hall meetings—that I recognize the problem of making a more just world continues. A million thanks to Fatimah Fischer and Marilyn Tankiewicz (ret.), the administrative coordinators for the Comparative Literature program, without whom the entire place would literally fall apart. Fatimah and Marilyn hold/held everything together and made the bureaucratic labyrinth of the modern university not quite so unnavigable. Having worked from home over the last year, it’s hard to remember the before-time when I was regularly in the office, but for five years my work was materially supported and made possible by the often invisible and unrecognized labor of the cleaning staff employed by Rutgers. Being unable to thank them by name reproduces existing hierarchies of power and credit, and I regret perpetuating those structures by being only able thank them in aggregate. Without their work, mine wouldn’t have been possible. Thanks are also in order to the Rutgers Center for Cultural Analysis, the Rutgers Center for Chinese Studies, the University of Tokyo, Soochow University, Princeton University Special Collections, and the University of Hawai’i Manoa, all of which provided stimulating intellectual community and material support for my research. At Princeton, I would like to specifically thank librarian Chen Minjie, who took the time not only to guide v me through Princeton’s lian huan hua holdings but also to meet with me to discuss my research. I am indebted to her generosity. Thank you, too, to Coco Xu Ke and Penny Pui- Chee Yeung, who generously donated their time and energy to helping me translate some of those same lian huan hua for the low, low price of a famous fish dinner. More broadly, thank you to all the other grad students in Comparative Literature. Even though our schedules led to us discontinuing our regular Pino’s meetups even before the pandemic held us in stasis all over the world, your ongoing support, enthusiasm, and productive anger (and sometimes only cathartic frustration) has been a lifeline. Thank you to my Aresty research assistant, Alliah Pe Benito, who carried out an enormous amount of research on my behalf. Her support provided me with many of the vital pieces of information I needed to develop this project, and it has also been a joy to see her grow and develop as a scholar in her own right. More broadly, I want to thank my brilliant undergraduate students across the years, who— through ongoing critical in-class discussions—challenged me to improve my own thinking and to further refine my ideas. The future is in good hands with them. In terms of those who provided the most rigorous, sustained, and formative support, of course, thanks go to my wonderful committee: Andrew Parker, Song Weijie, Janet Walker, Wang Xiaojue, and Anindita Banerjee. With their expertise in topics as disparate as the Cold War, urbanism, speculative fiction, socialism, literature in translation, and theories of technology across the twentieth century, they were invaluable in guiding and shaping this project. From broader conceptual issues to copyediting my citations to providing me with resources for further reading and ways of thinking, their fingerprints are all over this manuscript. I couldn’t have done this without them and I am forever grateful for the ways they shaped me as a thinker and scholar (and also forever grateful for their quick responses to panicky emails sent at the last possible moment). Speaking of panicky emails, Jorge vi Marcone handled many of my questions with calm and poise, finding answers to questions that have led him down infinite, unexpectedly winding paths. Thanks go to him for making sure I’m always caught up on deadlines and right practices. And finally, last but not least, my most sincere thanks are reserved for the people who supported me through thick and thin throughout this process, who lifted me up when I was falling down, who checked in with me daily and celebrated my successes, who told me every day they were proud of me and backed it up with words and actions. Thank you to Jamie Bougher, Brad Luyster, Megan Stanton, Matt Witkowski, David King, and my family—without you, not only would this project not be what it is, but I wouldn’t be who I am.