Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought

Introduction Science Fiction's Alien Construction

Introduction Science Fiction’s Alien Constructions U pon their release at the turn of the twenty-first century, the Matrix films had an immediate impact on popular imagination in the United States. The Hollywood-produced science fiction trilogy triggered questions about reality, self-determination, and resistance while setting new standards for film technology. With its clever plotline and breathtaking special effects, the trilogy became both a blockbuster hit surrounded by the usual media hype and an inspiration for academic debates. The Matrix also introduced a new female character to our cultural imagination: the movie-going public fell hard for Trinity, a strong, smart, action-driven resistance fighter and the hero’s romantic interest. Trinity joins the ranks of a number of extraordinary female science fiction heroes, such as Ripley from the Alien film series and Sarah Connor from the Terminator movies. These female characters share an unusual display of technological know-how, empowerment, and the habit of saving the world. They also have ‘‘unnatural’’ female bodies (often technologically enhanced or genetically engineered) and do ‘‘unfeminine’’ things. Significantly, it is within science fiction—film and literature—a genre usually understood to be predominantly male, that we seem to reimagine gender relations most radically. Here the controversial female cyborg challenges conventional ideas of gender, race, and nation, often at the same time as she reinforces them. Through figures like the female cyborg, Alien Constructions explores the relationship between science fiction and a feminist discourse that is attempting to conceptualize issues of difference , globalization, and technoscience.1 Science fiction is valuable to feminists because of its particular narrative mode. Two textual aspects that define science fiction are the structures and/or narrative devices that constitute its mode, on one hand, and themes and approaches on the other. Several structures and narrative devices of science fiction have been identified in classical science fiction criticism, such as the element of estrangement, or the confrontation of normative systems/perspectives, and the implication of 2 ALIEN CONSTRUCTIONS new sets of norms that result in the factual reporting of fiction. Spatial and temporal displacement as well as absent paradigms that structure the reading process are typical for science fiction. Also characteristic for science fiction are ‘‘worlds,’’ or systems of representation that create the freedom to voice assumptions otherwise restricted by a realist narrative frame, and the geographic displacement of identity formations. All of these elements shape the reading process, which in turn de- fines the genre. In addition to structural and narrative devices, there are recurrent themes and approaches in science fiction: the exploration of socioeconomic relations, the conflicting elements of modernity and postmodernity played out in urban science fiction, the construction of nature and culture, and the implications of technology—one of the most recognizable heuristic markers of science fiction—on human relations and life in general. Science fiction writer and critic Joanna Russ defines science fiction as ‘‘a mode rather than a form (a form would be something like the sonnet, the short story, etc.). It is, basically, anything that is about conditions of life or existence different from either what typically is, or what typically was, or whatever was or is. . . . Science fiction is about the possible-but-not-real’’ (‘‘Reflections on Science Fiction’’ 243).2 Science fiction stories can create ‘‘blueprints’’ of social theories. Only within genres of the fantastic is it possible to imagine completely new social orders and ways of being that differ radically from human existence as we know it. Alien Constructions is a recent intervention in the ongoing debate that examines the relationship of theory to science fiction. It explores how some science fiction engages with feminist thought in a way that enables us to understand oppression and to envision resistance beyond the limits set by much of feminist discourse . Alien Constructions is aimed at readers interested in feminist discourses as well as genre readers. While either audience at times might encounter familiar intellectual and narrative territories, some of the connections between science fiction and feminist thought made in the textual analyses within these pages will be new and hopefully will inspire further explorations. Science Fiction as Cultural Text The success of The Matrix and its status as one of the primary cultural points of reference in the United States at the turn of the twenty- INTRODUCTION 3 first century stands in the long tradition of science fiction...