Disability Studies in Science Fiction and Fantasy

The 2018 Douglas Taylor Conference, "Embodiment in Science Fiction and Fantasy," which took place at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario on 18–19 May, presented a perfect opportunity to showcase the work of disability scholars. With three full panels dedicated specifically to the field, the conference displayed the diversity of disability studies. Individual presenters focused on such varied works across the science fiction/fantasy (SFF) genres and media as cyberpunk, video games like Mass Effect 2, hit franchises like Alien and Blade Runner, and policy regarding technological enhancement. While there were connecting threads between papers within and across panels, the analyses offered by the presenting scholars were also diverse in nature, even contradictory at times. The various papers also hinted at the intricacies and indeed difficulties of the interdisciplinary work that enriches disability studies and the larger cultural and literary field. While the capaciousness of disability studies is and has been a core component of its success, this same quality might also be what often relegates disability studies to the margins. What insights can we take away from this conference for critical reflection on the state of cultural and literary disability studies?

Most of the conference panels spanned several academic fields and popular media, and the first disability studies panel followed this trend. A common theme that emerged was the recognition that representations of disability in science fiction are often paradoxical: a single character or action might be read in contradictory ways. In my presentation I analyzed the character Lise from Gibson's "The Winter Market." Lise is a quadriplegic woman who has been objectified by the story's male, able-bodied narrator, Casey. The decision to upload herself onto a corporate computer mainframe feeds into the dangerous notion that disabled people should be separated from "normal" society, and yet even in doing so, they will remain economic burdens. She exercises agency, however, in uploading herself, and disrupts a strain of transhumanism that is predominantly male and able-bodied. I argue that she consequently presents complex possibilities for where posthumanist bodies could go and who these bodies might include.

The next presentation by Tracie Martin (Emory University) also found a contradiction at the heart of films like Lucy and The Lazarus Effect. Drawing on disability studies and feminist theories of eugenics, Martin analyzed the pseudoscientific trope that humans only use 10% of our brains, and that advances in science and technology could potentially unlock the other 90%. Despite the potential for increased neurodiversity, however, the films remain indebted to conventional representations of neurobiology and even forward eugenicist tropes. Finally, Luke Kudryashov (University of Michigan) read autism at the junction of alien and cyborg figures in Mass Effect 2. While the representations of the autistic character in this videogame narrative rely on stereotypes of autistic figures, Kudryashov also considered the material characteristics of videogame interaction, suggesting that the videogame creates conditions in which the player could better understand autistic experience, offering a different type of relationality that combats the stereotypical depictions of autistic people as asocial and incommunicative.

The first panel of day two focused on television and filmic representations of disability. Sara Dorsten (University of Toledo) presented on the A Song of Ice and Fire series. Dorsten discussed the obvious disability figures of George R.R. Martin's fantasy series—including Tyrion and Jaime Lannister as well as Bran Stark and Hodor—as well as the HBO adaptation, asking whether disability as a mere plot device was problematic or overall beneficial for people with disabilities. Martin both reproduces and challenges disability stereotypes with such characters, Dorsten argued, adding that critics/scholars need to redirect popular audiences toward analyzing what a writer does well but also point out what can be learned from negative portrayals. Next, independent scholar Kathryn Allan uncovered readings of disability in the Alien franchise, discussing the exploitation of non-normative, "alien" bodies in the films. Although Ellen Ripley begins as a heroic normate, by Alien: Resurrection her character reveals that the "normate" is in fact a mythical figure, and troubles the method by which "freaks" and extraordinary bodies become monstrous medical specimens and spectacles...