Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'The heroic and feminist science fiction'

In this thesis I discuss feminist science fiction as a literature that explores a variety of alternative social realities. This provides the site to explore alternative notions of the heroic inspired by feminist critiques of the traditional heroic, which come from feminist philosophical, as well as literary critical sources. Alternative notions of the heroic offer a shift in perspective from a specific heroic identity to the events the characters are involved in. The shift to events is made precisely because that is where the temporal is located and dynamic change occurs. Events are where 'becoming' alternatively heroic occurs: in the interaction between a character and the environment.

This study explores the interaction between feminist science fiction and feminist theory, focusing on the body and embodiment. Specifically, it aims to demonstrate that feminist science fiction novels of the 1990s offer an excellent platform for exploring the critical theories of the body put forward by Judith Butler in particular, and other feminist/queer theorists in general. The thesis opens with a brief history of science fiction's depiction of the body and feminist science fiction's subversions and rewritings of this, as well as an overview of Judith Butler's theories relating to the body and embodiment. It then considers a wide range of feminist science fiction novels from the 1990s, focusing on four key areas; bodies materialised outside patriarchal systems in women-only or women-ruled worlds, alien bodies, cyborg bodies and bodies in cyberspace. An in-depth analysis of the selected texts reveals that they have important contributions to make to the consideration of bodies as they develop and expand the issues raised by theorists such as Butler, Elisabeth Grosz, Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva.

Chapter one, “Narrating Entanglement: Posthuman Agency and Subjectivity in Shane Carruth’s Filmography,” considers the resonances of independent filmmaker Shane Carruth’s two SF films, Primer (2004) and Upstream Color (2013) with the ethos of quantum entanglement through close-readings of Primer’s anti-individualistic portrayal of scientific invention and Upstream Color’s metaphorically entangled human-pig character system. Chapter two, “Race and Schrödingers’s Legacy: History is Both Alive and Dead in Hari Kunzru’s White Tears” analyzes the 2017 novel White Tears as a narrative figuration of of the political, racial, and cultural entanglements set in motion by the economic structure of slavery, ultimately arguing that Kunzru’s entangled plotlines and histories critique the entanglement of contemporary U.S. capitalism with its past and present exploitation of black bodies. The third and final chapter, “Problem Child: Untangling the Reproduction Narrative in Lai and Phang’s SF Bildungsromans” uses close readings of two SF bildungsromans, Larissa Lai’s 2002 novel Salt Fish Girl and Jennifer Phang’s 2015 film Advantageous, both of which follow women of color protagonists not permitted to grow up in the ‘right’ ways, to shed light on the instability of a social order simultaneously grounded in the exploitation of marginalized bodies and the illusion of a reproducible, homogenous nation. Ultimately, “Entangled Bodies” uses a literary exploration of quantum entanglement to reveal both the limits of seemingly-totalizing power structures, narrative or otherwise, and the collective possibilities for re-definition that can, in part, be kindled by a favored tool of Western science: the human imagination.

This dissertation explores the ways that women authors of science fiction have altered conventions of utopia and science fiction in order to revise conceptions of gender, sexuality, the body, and the environment. I examine several twentieth-century feminist critical dystopias that continue to betray genre and form, and to shape the science fiction being written at this moment. Each of the works demonstrates particular elements that facilitate its revisionary power: challenging and deconstructing sex/gender systems, blending utopian and dystopian conventions, and engaging in temporal play. By doing so they accomplish a range of tasks: disrupting generic and historical conventions, blending genres, redefining utopia, and making connections with present realities in order to make a case for social change, particularly for female and queer subjects. Though many of the texts are considered canonical by sf standards, and have been widely praised and critiqued in academic publications, each one continues its project of resistance in the light of the genre and of ever-evolving theories of gender, sexuality, race, and identity. As a scholar of gender and queer theory, I find within sf an extraordinary realm of potential for those willing to challenge norms and imagine new possibilities. In their rejection of system and form, the authors render impure the genre of science fiction, providing a new space in which utopian ideals can become literary and cultural resistance.

This research conducts a feminist poststructuralist examination of the vocabularies of heterosex: it investigates those terms, modes of talking, and meanings relating to sex which are associated with discourses such as scientific and popular sexology, medicine and psychiatry, public health, philosophy, and some feminist critique. The analysis of these various representations of heterosex involves the deconstruction of binaries such as presence/absence, mind/body, inside/outside and masculine/feminine, that are endemic to Western notions of sex. It is argued that such dualisms (re)produce and perpetuate differential power relations between men and women, and jeopardize the negotiation of mutually pleasurable and safer heterosex. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which sexological discourse deploys such dualisms as normal/abnormal, natural/unnatural, and healthy/unhealthy sex, and produces specifically gendered 'experiences' of sexual corporeality. The thesis examines a variety of written texts and excerpts from film and television; it also analyzes transcript material from individual and group interviews conducted by the researcher with heterosexual women and men, as well as sexual health and mental health professionals, in order to identify cultural pressures influencing participation in risky heterosexual behaviours, and also to identify alternative and safer pleasurable practices. Some of these alternative practices are suggested to rely on a radical reformulation of sexual relations which derives from the disruption of particular dualistic ways of understanding and enacting sex. The overall objective of the thesis is to deconstruct cultural imperatives of heterosex and promote the generation and acceptance of other modes of erotic pleasure. It is hoped that this research will be of use in the future planning and implementation of sex education and safer sex campaigns in Aotearoa/New Zealand which aim to be non-phallocentric and non-heterosexist, and which might recognize a feminist poststructuralist politics of sexual difference.
Note: Thesis now published. Potts, Annie (2002). The Science/Fiction of sex: feminist deconstruction and the vocabularies of heterosex. London & New York: Routledge. ISBN 04152567312. Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy.

This thesis examines a recent trend in contemporary science and speculative fiction to produce new and/or alternative iterations of reproduction that are not limited by biology, gender, or species. Through Donna Haraway’s notion of “cyborg regeneration” and recent critical and theoretical revisionings of this concept, I investigate this trend in three key texts: Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods, Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber, and Larissa Lai’s long poem “rachel” from her book of poetry Automaton Biographies. Each of these authors offers representations of reproduction that counter gender stereotypes and essentialism and produce new cyborg maternal or explicitly non-maternal figures unbound to patriarchal models of repronormativity and colonialist constructions of the mother. By portraying these nonunitary maternal figures and/or non-reproductive bodies, I argue that these sf texts present new forms of procreation that further feminist conversations about gender, the body, the limits of the human, future populations, and desire.

This thesis is a queer theory analysis of the feminist science fiction novel The Kanshou by Sally Miller Gearhart. After exploring both male and female authored science fiction in the literature review, two themes were to be dominant. The goal of this thesis is to answer the questions, can the traditional themes that are prevalent in male authored science fiction and feminist science fiction in representing gender and sexual orientation dichotomies be found in The Kanshou? And does Gearhart challenge these dichotomies by destabilizing them? The analysis found determined that Gearhart's The Kanshou does challenge traditional sociological norms of binary gender identities and sexual orientation the majority of the time.

The purpose of this thesis was to examine the treatment and portrayal of children in science fiction utopian literature and determine whether this effectively indicated the writers’ feminist visions for social change. A feminist theoretical perspective and critical interpretation of several of the genre’s canon, Sheri Tepper’s The Gate to Women’s Country, Suzy McKee Chamas’s Motherlines, Sally Miller Gearhart’s The Wanderground, Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and Octavia Butler’s Xenogenesis series, were used as research methodologies. The findings revealed that children communicate feminist prescriptions for change in three ways: children as the literal, biological future, the link between two opposing societies, or the explanation for the difficult philosophies and structural elements of the societies. As this subject has been an unexplored area of criticism, it is recommended that critics begin to examine this treatment of children to more easily understand the writers’ social visions and effect their blueprints for change.

Rosa Montero's novels Lágrimas en la lluvia and Peso del corazón focus on Bruna Husky, an android private detective living in Madrid in 2109. Husky's career leads her into investigating various sinister plots, both of which she falls victim to. These quests lead her to make discoveries about herself that challenge her beliefs about herself. All the cases that Bruna investigates take her on journeys that mirror Campbell's structure of the monomythic quest. My analysis of the novels focuses on how Bruna follows the model of the Campbellian cycle while at the same time questioning the quest, keeping true to archetypes of the feminine quest as established by Anis Pratt and Dana Heller. My article focuses on three distinctive steps in the quest, the crossing of the threshold, initiation, and the return, as well as the most important characteristic of the feminine quest, the heroine's negation of the patriarchal society.

Within the latitude of a science-fictional elsewhere and elsewhen, women can establish their own social norms and accepted praxis. The modification encountered in alternate feminist spacetimes specifically incorporate many new ideologies concerning motherhood. Central to this discussion is the means by which feminist authors regard the influences of patriarchal institutions and the subsequent changes in society because of, or in spite of, these changes. The male-dominated fields of technological patriarchy (reproduction and fertility "specialists") and the military, for example, are areas upon which feminist authors speculate. Three feminist strategies for coping with a patriarchal social order, as seen in the works of science-fiction, are entrance into the male world and attempts to change it, competition in the patriarchal world on its own terms and total retreat from an oppressive society, accompanied by the creation of a feminist utopian otherworld. These feminist spacetimes share a number of convictions. Most important, conception is never an unwilled experience. The "maternal instinct", is redefined as a calling which, in some cases, extends to males and non-biological mothers. Traits that are salient in the childraisers are those which are mirrored by these alternate feminist spacetimes as a whole and which contribute to the definition of these societies as utopias. The treatment and/or possession of children as property is frowned upon in the novels. Some points of dissent amongst feminist SF authors include the existence of technology in an utopian or dystopian future for motherhood, and whether or not males are permitted and/or encouraged to participate in society as a whole and more precisely in the experience of mothering. The dystopia, for its part, can thus be regarded as a warning against the encroachment of rampant patriarchal enterprises through their representation of the extrapolation of male-centred value systems. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

This dissertation examines the themes of subversive language and representations of the body in an eclectic selection of feminist science fiction texts in French and English from a French materialist feminist point of view. The goal of this project is to bring together the theories of French materialist feminism and the theories and fictions of feminist science fiction. Chapter One of this dissertation seeks to clarify the main concepts that form the ideological core of French materialist feminism. Theoretical writings by Monique Wittig, Christine Delphy, Colette Guillaumin, Nicole-Claude Mathieu provide the methodological base for an analysis of the oppression of women. Works by American author Suzy McKee Charnas and Quebecois author Elisabeth Vonarburg provide fictional representations of what Wittig calls "the category of sex". Imagery that destabilizes our notions about sex is studied in Angela Carter's The Passion of New Eve. French materialist feminism maintains that the oppression of women consists of an economical exploitation and a physical appropriation. The second chapter of this dissertation looks at images of women working and images of (re)production in science fiction by Quebecois authors Esher Rochon, Louky Bersianik, Elisabeth Vonarburg, and American authors Ursula Le Guin, Joanna Russ, Marge Piercy, James Tiptree, Jr., Suzy McKee Charnas and Octavia Butler. The third chapter examines the theme of justified anger, as expressed in feminist science fiction, when women become aware of their own oppression. In addition to authors already mentioned above, I take examples from works in English by Kit Reed & Suzette Haden Elgin, and in French, by Marie Darrieussecq, Joelle Wintrebert and Jacqueline Harpman. Chapter Four seeks to show the importance of the act of writing and producing a text as a recurring theme in feminist science fiction. Highlighted examples from works by many authors including Elisabeth Vonarburg and Suzette Haden Elgin are representational of what Wittig calls "the mark of gender", the use of pronouns, marked speech and linguistic experimentation and invention.

In this dissertation I explore a number of contemporary science fiction franchises in order to ascertain how the figure of the action heroine has evolved throughout her recent history. There has been a tendency in film criticism to view these strong women as ‘figuratively male’ and therefore not ‘really’ women, which, I argue, is largely due to a reliance on the psychoanalytic paradigms that have dominated feminist film theory since its beginnings. Building on Elisabeth Hills’s work on the character of Ellen Ripley of the Alien series, I explore how notions of ‘becoming’ and the ‘Body without Organs’ proposed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari can be activated to provide a more positive set of readings of active women on screen. These readings are not limited by discussions of sex or gender, but discuss the body in terms of its increased capacities as it interacts with the world around it. I do not argue for a Deleuzian analysis of cinema as such, because this project is concerned with aspects of representation which did not form part of Deleuze’s philosophy of cinema. Rather I use Deleuze and Guattari’s work to explore alternative ways of reading the active women these franchises present and the benefits they afford. Through these explorations I demonstrate, however, that applying the Deleuzoguattarian ‘method’ is a potentially risky undertaking for feminist theory. Deconstructing notions of ‘being’ and ‘identity’ through the project of becoming may have benefits in terms of addressing ‘woman’ beyond binaristic thought, but it may also have negative consequences. What may be liberating for feminist film theory may be also be destructive. This is because through becoming we destabilise a position from which to address potentially ideologically unsound treatments of women on screen.

This thesis explores how science fiction and fantasy retellings of the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast" bring visionary insights to the fairy tale. Stories such as Tanith Lee's science fiction novella "Beauty" and Mercedes Lackey's fantasy novel The Fire Rose constitute living and developing incarnations of "Beauty and the Beast." To better explore the visionary leaps made by these stories, they are placed in contrast with one of the original recordings of the story by Madame Marie Le Prince de Beaumont and the 1991 Disney film version, Beauty and the Beast.

As Richard Thomas writes, “there is nothing like Star Trek…Of all the universes of science fiction, the Star Trek universe is the most varied and extensive, and by all accounts the series is the most popular science fiction ever” (1). Ever growing (the latest Star Trek film will be released in Spring 2013) and embodied in hundreds of novels and slash fanfiction, decades of television and film, conventions, replicas, toys, and a complete Klingon language Star Trek is nothing short of a cultural phenomenon. As Harrison et al argue in Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek, the economic and cultural link embodied in the production of the Star Trek phenomena “more than anything else, perhaps, makes Star Trek a cultural production worth criticizing” (3). A utopian universe, Star Trek invites its audience to imagine a future of amicable human and alien life, often pictured without the ravages of racism, sexism, capitalism and poverty. However, beyond the pleasure of watching, I would ask what do the representations within Star Trek reveal about our popular culture? In essence, what are the values, meaning and beliefs about gender, race, sexuality and disability being communicated in the text? I will explore the ways that the Star Trek universe simultaneously encourages and discourages us from thinking about race, gender, sexuality and disability and their intersections. In other words, this work will examine the ways that representations of identity are challenged and reinforced by Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager. This work will situate Star Trek specifically within the science fiction genre and explore the importance of its utopian standpoint as a frame for representational politics. Following Inness, (1999), I argue that science fiction is particularly rich textual space to explore ideas of women and gender (104). As Sharona Ben-Tov suggests in The Artificial Paradise: Science Fiction and American Reality (1995) science fiction’s “position at a unique intersection of science and technology, mass media, popular culture, literature, and secular ritual” offers critical insight into social change (ctd. in Inness 104). I extend Inness and Ben-Tov here to assert that the ways in which science fiction’s rich and “synthetic language of metaphor” illustrate and re-envision contemporary gender roles also offers a re-imagination of assumptions regarding race, sexuality and disability (Inness 104). Extending current scholarship (Roberts 1999, Richards 1997, Gregory 2000, Bernardi 1998, Adare 2005, Greven 2009, Wagner and Lundeen 1998, Relke 2006, and Harrison et all 1996), I intend to break from traditions of dichotomous views of The Next Generation and Voyager as either essentially progressive or conservative. In this sense, I hope to complicate and question simplistic conclusions about Star Trek’s ideological centre. Moreover, as feminist media theorist Mia Consalvo notes, previous analyses of Star Trek have explored how the show constructs and comments on conceptions of gender and race as well as commenting on economic systems and political ideologies (2004). As such, my analysis intends to apply an intersectional approach as well as offer a ‘cripped’ (McRuer 2006) reading of Star Trek in order to provide a deeper understanding of how identities are represented both in science fiction and in popular culture. Both critical approaches – especially the emphasis on disability, sexuality and intersectional identities are largely ignored by past Trek readings. That is to say, while there is critical research on representations in Star Trek (Roberts 1999, Bernardi 1998) much of it is somewhat uni-dimensional in its analysis, focusing exclusively on gender or racialized representation and notably excluding dimensions of sexuality and ability. Moreover, as much of the writing on the Star Trek phenomena has focused on The Original Series (TOS) and The Next Generation this work will bring the same critical analysis to the Voyager series. To perform this research a feminist discourse analysis will be employed. While all seven seasons and 178 episodes of The Next Generation series as well as all seven seasons and 172 episodes of Voyager have been viewed particular episodes will be selected for their illustrative value.

In this dissertation, I argue that contemporary cultural narratives are infused with ongoing ideologies of Euro-American imperialism that prioritizes Western bodies and ways of engaging with living and nonliving beings. This restriction severely hinders possible responses to the present environmental crisis of the era often called the 'Anthropocene' through constant creation and recreation of imperial power relations and the presumed superiority of Western approaches to living. Taking inspiration from postcolonial theorist Edward Said and theories of cultural studies and empire, I use interdisciplinary methods of narrative analysis to examine threads of imperial ideologies that are (re)told and glorified in popular American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001). Voyager follows the Star Trek tradition of exploring the far reaches of space to advance human knowledge, and in doing so writes Western imperial practices of difference into an idealized future. In chapters 2 through 5, I explore how the series highlights American exceptionalism, Manifest Destiny, a belief in endless linear progress, and the creation of a safe 'home' space amidst the 'wild' spaces of the Delta Quadrant. Each of these narrative features, as presented, rely on Western difference and superiority that were fundamental to past and present Euro-American imperial encounters and endeavors. Through the recreation of these ideologies of empire, Voyager normalizes, legitimizes, and universalizes imperial approaches to engagement with other lifeforms. In order to move away from this intertwined thread of past/present/future imperialism, in my final chapter I propose alternatives for ecofeminist-inspired narrative approaches that offer possibilities for non-imperial futures. As my analysis will demonstrate, Voyager is unable to provide new worlds free of imperial ideas, but the possibility exists through the loss of their entire world, and their need to constantly make and remake their world(s). World making provides opportunity for endless possibilities, and science fiction television has the potential to aid in bringing non-imperial worlds to life. These stories push beyond individual and anthropocentric attitudes toward life on earth, and although such stories will not likely be the immediate cause of change in this era of precarity, stories can prime us for thinking in non-imperial ways.
Doctor of Philosophy
In this dissertation, I argue that contemporary cultural narratives feature continuing Euro-American imperialism that prioritizes Western bodies and ideas. These embedded narratives recreate centuries of Western imperial encounters and attitudes, and severely hinder possible responses to the present environmental crisis of the 'modern' era. Taking inspiration from postcolonial theorist Edward Said, I use interdisciplinary methods of narrative analysis to examine threads of imperialism written into popular American science fiction television series Star Trek: Voyager (1995-2001). Voyager follows the Star Trek tradition of exploring the far reaches of space to advance human knowledge, and in doing so inscribes Western imperial practices of difference and power into an idealized future through features of exploration, modernity, and progress. In order to move away from these imperial modes of thinking, I then propose alternatives for new narrative approaches that offer possibilities for non-imperial futures. As my analysis will demonstrate, Voyager is unable to provide new worlds free of imperial ideas, but the possibility exists through the loss of their entire world, and their need to constantly make and remake their world(s). World making provides opportunity for endless possibility, and science fiction television has the potential to aid in bringing non-imperial worlds to life. These stories push beyond individual and human centered attitudes toward life on earth, and although such stories will not likely be the immediate cause of change in this era of environmental crisis, stories can prime us for thinking in non-imperial ways.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2007.
Title from file title page. Elizabeth West, committee chair; Layli Phillips, Kameelah Martin Samuel, committee members. Electronic text (52 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Jan. 30, 2008. Includes bibliographical references (p. 49-52).

This thesis seeks to bridge feminist and environmental justice movements through the literature of black women writers. These writers create an archive that contribute towards the liberation of queer, black, and transgender peoples. In the novel Parable of the Talents, Octavia Butler constructs a world that highlights the pervasive effects of climate change. As climate change expedites poverty, Americans begin to blame others, such as queer people, for the destruction of their country. Butler depicts the dangers of fundamentalism as a response to climate change, highlighting an imperative for a movement that does not romanticize the environment as heteronormative, but a space where queers can flourish. Just as queer and environmental justice movements are codependent on one another, feminist movements cannot be separate from black and transgender liberation. This thesis will demonstrate how writers, such as Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Angela Davis, and Janet Mock, help establish a feminism that resists the erasure of black and transgender people.

More than 2.6 million troops have deployed in support of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Still, surveys reveal that more than half feel “disconnected” from their civilian counterparts, and this feeling persists despite ongoing efforts, in the academy and elsewhere, to help returning veterans overcome physical and mental wounds, seek an education, and find meaningful ways to contribute to society after taking off the uniform. This dissertation argues that Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans struggle with reassimilation because they lack healthy, complete models of veteran identity to draw upon in their postwar lives, a problem they’re working through collectively in literature and artwork. The war veteran—returning home transformed by the harsh realities of military training and service, having seen humanity at its extremes, and interacting with a society apathetic toward his or her experiences—should engage in the act of storytelling. This act of sharing experiences and crafting-self subverts stereotypes. Storytelling, whether in a book read by millions, or in a single conversation with a close family member, should instruct civilians on the topic of human resiliency; it should instruct veterans on the topic of homecoming. But typically, veterans do not tell stories. Civilians create barriers to storytelling in the form of hollow platitudes—“thank you for your service” or “I can never understand what you’ve been through”—disconnected from the meaning of wartime service itself. The dissonance between veteran and civilian only becomes more complicated when one considers the implicit demands and expectations attached to patriotism. These often well-intentioned gestures and government programs fail to convey a message of appreciation because they refuse to convey a message of acceptance; the exceptional treatment of veterans by larger society implies also that they are insufficient, broken, or incomplete. So, many veterans chose conformity and silence, adopting one of two identities available to them: the forever pitied “Wounded Warrior” or the superficially praised “Hero.” These identities are not complete. They’re not even identities as much as they are collections of rumors, misrepresentations, and expectations of conformity. Once an individual veteran begins unconsciously performing the “Wounded Warrior” or “Hero” character, the number of potential outcomes available in that individual’s life is severely diminished. Society reinforces a feeling among veterans that they are “different.” This shared experience has resulted in commiseration, camaraderie, and also the proliferation of veterans’ creative communities. As storytellers, the members of these communities are restoring meaning to veteran-civilian discourse by privileging the nuanced experiences of the individual over stereotypes and emotionless rhetoric. They are instructing on the topics of war and homecoming, producing fictional and nonfictional representations of the veteran capable of competing with stereotypes, capable of reassimilation. The Introduction establishes the existence of veteran culture, deconstructs notions of there being a single or binary set of veteran identities, and critiques the social and cultural rhetoric used to maintain symbolic boundaries between veterans and civilians. It begins by establishing an approach rooted in interdisciplinary literary theory, taking veteran identity as its topic of consideration and the American unconscious as the text it seeks to examine, asking readers to suspend belief in patriotic rhetoric long enough to critically examine veteran identity as an apparatus used to sell war to each generation of new recruits. Patriotism, beyond the well-meaning gestures and entitlements afforded to veterans, also results in feelings of “difference,” in the veteran feeling apart from larger society. The inescapability of veteran “difference” is a trait which sets it apart from other cultures, and it is one bolstered by inaccurate and, at times, offensive portrayals of veterans in mass media and Hollywood films such as The Manchurian Candidate (1962), First Blood (1982), or Taxi Driver (1976). To understand this inescapability the chapter engages with theories of race, discussing the Korean War veteran in Home (2012) and other works by Toni Morrison to directly and indirectly explore descriptions of “difference” by African Americans and “others” not in positions of power. From there, the chapter traces veteran identity back to the Italian renaissance, arguing that modern notions of veteran identity are founded upon fears of returning veterans causing chaos and disorder. At the same time, writers such as Sebastian Junger, who are intimately familiar with veteran culture, repeatedly emphasize the camaraderie and “tribal” bonds found among members of the military, and instead of creating symbolic categories in which veterans might exist exceptionally as “Heroes,” or pitied as “Wounded Warriors,” the chapter argues that the altruistic nature which leads recruits to war, their capabilities as leaders and educators, and the need of larger society for examples of human resiliency are more appropriate starting points for establishing veteran identity. The Introduction is followed by an independent “Example” section, a brief examination of a student veteran named “Bingo,” one who demonstrates an ability to challenge, even employ veteran stereotypes to maintain his right to self-definition. Bingo’s story, as told in a “spotlight” article meant to attract student veterans to a college campus, portrays the veteran as a “Wounded Warrior” who overcomes mental illness and the scars of war through education, emerging as an exceptional example—a “Hero”—that other student veterans can model by enrolling at the school. Bingo’s story sets the stage for close examinations of the “Hero” and the “Wounded Warrior” in the first and second chapters. Chapter One deconstructs notions of heroism, primarily the belief that all veterans are “Heroes.” The chapter examines military training and indoctrination, Medal of Honor award citations, and film examples such as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Heroes for Sale (1933), Sergeant York (1941), and Top Gun (1986) to distinguish between actual feats of heroism and “Heroes” as they are presented in patriotic rhetoric. The chapter provides the Medal of Honor citations attached to awards presented to Donald Cook, Dakota Meyer, and Kyle Carpenter, examining the postwar lives of Meyer and Carpenter, identifying attempts by media and government officials to appropriate heroism—to steal the right to self-definition possessed by these men. Among these Medal of Honor recipients one finds two types of heroism: Sacrificing Heroes give something of themselves to protect others; Attacking Heroes make a difference during battle offensively. Enduring Heroes, the third type of heroism discussed in the chapter, are a new construct. Colloquially, and for all intents and purposes, an Enduring Hero is simply a veteran who enjoys praise and few questions. Importantly, veterans enjoy the “Hero Treatment” in exchange for silence and conforming to larger narratives which obfuscate past wars and pave the way for new ones. This chapter engages with theorists of gender—such as Jack Judith Halberstam, whose Female Masculinities (1998) anticipates the agency increasingly available to women through military service; like Leo Braudy, whose From Chivalry to Terrorism (2003) traces the historical relationship between war and gender before commenting on the evolution of military masculinity—to discuss the relationship between heroism and agency, begging a question: What do veterans have to lose from the perpetuation of stereotypes? This question frames a detailed examination of William A. Wellman’s film, Heroes for Sale (1933), in the chapter’s final section. This story of stolen valor and the Great Depression depicts the homecoming of a WWI veteran separated from his heroism. The example, when combined with a deeper understanding of the intersection between veteran identity and gender, illustrates not only the impact of stolen valor in the life of a legitimate hero, but it also comments on the destructive nature of appropriation, revealing the ways in which a veteran stereotypes rob service men and women of the right to draw upon memories of military service which complete with those stereotypes. The military “Hero” occupies a moral high ground, but most conceptions of military “Heroes” are socially constructed advertisements for war. Real heroes are much rarer. And, as the Medal of Honor recipients discussed in the chapter reveal, they, too, struggle with lifelong disabilities as well as constant attempts by society to appropriate their narratives. Chapter Two traces the evolution of the modern “Wounded Warrior” from depictions of cowardice in Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage (1895), to the denigration of World War I veterans afflicted with Shell Shock, to Kevin Powers’s Iraq War novel, The Yellow Birds (2012). As with “Heroes,” “Wounded Warriors” perform a stereotype in place of an authentic, individualized identity, and the chapter uses Walt Kowalski, the protagonist of Clint Eastwood’s film, Gran Torino (2008), as its major example. The chapter discusses “therapeutic culture,” Judith Butler’s work on identity-formation, and Eva Illouz’s examination of a culture obsessed with trauma to comment on veteran performances of victimhood. Butler’s attempts to conceive of new identities absent the influence of systems of definition rooted in the state, in particular, reveal power in the opposite of silence, begging another question: What do civilians have to gain from the perpetuation of veteran stereotypes? Largely, the chapter finds, the “Wounded Warrior” persists in the minds of civilians who fear the veteran’s capacity for violence. A broken, damaged veteran is less of a threat. The story of the “Wounded Warrior” is not one of sacrifice. The “Wounded Warrior” exists after sacrifice, beyond any measure of “honor” achieved in uniform. “Wounded Warriors” are not expected to find a cure because the wound itself is an apparatus of the state that is commodified and injected into the currency of emotional capitalism. This chapter argues that military service and a damaged psyche need not always occur together. Following the second chapter, a close examination of “The Bear That Stands,” a short story by Suzanne S. Rancourt which confronts the author’s sexual assault while serving in the Marines, offers an alternative to both the “Hero” and the “Wounded Warrior” stereotypes. Rancourt, a veteran “Storyteller,” gives testimony of that crime, intervening in social conceptions of veteran identity to include a female perspective. As with the example of Bingo, the author demonstrates an innate ability to recognize and challenge the stereotypes discussed in the first and second chapters. This “Example” sets the stage for a more detailed examination of “Veteran Storytellers” and their communities in the final chapter. Chapter Three looks for examples of veteran “difference,” patriotism, the “Wounded Warrior,” and the “Hero” in nonfiction, fiction, and artwork emerging from the creative arts community, Military Experience and the Arts, an organization which provides workshops, writing consultation, and publishing venues to veterans and their families. The chapter examines veteran “difference” in a short story by Bradley Johnson, “My Life as a Soldier in the ‘War on Terror.’” In “Cold Day in Bridgewater,” a work of short fiction by Jerad W. Alexander, a veteran must confront the inescapability of that difference as well as expectations of conformity from his bigoted, civilian bartender. The final section analyzes artwork by Tif Holmes and Giuseppe Pellicano, which deal with the problems of military sexual assault and the effects of war on the family, respectively. Together, Johnson, Alexander, Holmes, and Pellicano demonstrate skills in recognizing stereotypes, crafting postwar identities, and producing alternative representations of veteran identity which other veterans can then draw upon in their own homecomings. Presently, no unified theory of veteran identity exists. This dissertation begins that discussion, treating individual performances of veteran identity, existing historical, sociological, and psychological scholarship about veterans, and cultural representations of the wars they fight as equal parts of a single text. Further, it invites future considerations of veteran identity which build upon, challenge, or refute its claims. Conversations about veteran identity are the opposite of silence; they force awareness of war’s uncomfortable truths and homecoming’s eventual triumphs. Complicating veteran identity subverts conformity; it provides a steady stream of traits, qualities, and motivations that veterans use to craft postwar selves. The serious considerations of war and homecoming presented in this text will be useful for Iraq and Afghanistan War veterans attempting to piece together postwar identities; they will be useful to scholars hoping to facilitate homecoming for future generations of war veterans. Finally, the Afterword to the dissertation proposes a program for reassimilation capable of harnessing the veteran’s symbolic and moral authority in such a way that self-definition and homecoming might become two parts of a single act.

Doctor of Philosophy
In this thesis I discuss feminist science fiction as a literature that explores a variety of alternative social realities. This provides the site to explore alternative notions of the heroic inspired by feminist critiques of the traditional heroic, which come from feminist philosophical, as well as literary critical sources. Alternative notions of the heroic offer a shift in perspective from a specific heroic identity to the events the characters are involved in. The shift to events is made precisely because that is where the temporal is located and dynamic change occurs. Events are where 'becoming' alternatively heroic occurs: in the interaction between a character and the environment.

Joanna Russ is a gifted writer whose works expose the folly of the dominant paradigm in science fiction, a patriarchal society which subverts female development. My thesis examines Russ's development as a writer, her innovative and heuristic approach to science fiction, and her feminist convictions. To trace the development of Russ's works I will examine the characteristics and qualities of science fiction and adventure fantasy, their relationship to one another, and how they differ from conventional fiction. I will then apply those principles to Russ's "Alyx stories" as they develop from fantasy to science fiction, becoming more sophisticated and critical. Picnic on Paradise (1968) heralds Russ's arrival as an author of science fiction. As a feminist entering a predominantly male genre, Russ established a foundation for later feminist writers via her critical approach to mainstream ideology and her intelligent alternatives to conventional gender roles. By detechnologizing science fiction and incorporating feminist issues in her plot and characterization she brought the women's movement into science fiction. Russ's most provocative novel, The Female Man (1975), examines the difficulties of constructing a workable feminism for women of differing backgrounds and interests. She exposes the socialized self-denial and isolation used to divide women's groups and proposes a humanistic approach to feminism which subverts stagnant patriarchal conventions.

Ursula K. Le Guin is often called a feminist science fiction author. Drawing on such theorists as bell hooks and R. W. Connell, I analyze three novels by Le Guin from a social constructivist feminist perspective. I discuss The Dispossessed as it relates to gender and the family in utopian writing, The Lathe of Heaven with respect to gender and race, and Lavinia and gender within the context of the overall trajectory of Le Guin’s writing. I conclude that these novels depict gender in ways that often essentialize identity, whether the novels’ presentations of gender align with liberal or radical feminist ideas, and sometimes represent characters more conservatively than the label “feminist author” might imply. I propose that Le Guin’s status as a feminist writer requires more specific qualification that accounts for the variety of beliefs in existence in contemporary feminist discourse.

碩士
國立政治大學
英國語文學系
88
Struggling with the social norms of gender and to be a ''visible'' woman writer, Marge Piercy challenges and interrogates the canonical, patriarchal hegemony that dominates the culture. Her work, Woman on the Edge of Time, invites multiple alternatives by imagining beyond what is taken for granted. This thesis aims to explore how the heroine''s time-travel undergoes a dialogic process between the past, present and future, which effects a feminist politics to examine the social norms and to anticipate a change toward an egalitarian world. This thesis is divided into four chapters. The first chapter offers an overview of both the text and context of this novel. Since I define this novel as a generic mixture of feminist utopian writing and postmodern science fiction, I first introduce theories of postmodernism, feminism, science fiction, and utopian writing, and their intersections. The exploration of theories here paves the way for the textual analysis in later discussion. In the second chapter, I discuss how the writer manipulates postmodern strategies to express her feminist concerns of destabilizing the canon and enabling a dialogic interaction between the margin and the center. The third chapter focuses on key debates within feminist discourse, which are revealed and symbolized through the heroine''s telepathic experiences communicating between the dystopian present and the utopian future. The feminist thinking toward language, history, science/technology, ecology, gender/sexuality, and subjectivity is elaborated in this chapter. Finally, the concluding chapter reviews theories and issues concerning both postmodernist and feminist thinking highlighted through the heroine''s time-travel/mind-travel, which is a dialogic process bringing up different voices and perspectives--a voyage of rethinking and reshaping.

碩士
國立臺灣大學
外國語文學研究所
96
Abstract Feminist science fiction is the genre in which feminist discourse and technological discourse intersect. This thesis focuses on an issue in this intersection: motherhood, intending to analyze how motherhood is represented in different ages and influenced by social values as well as technological practice. I choose three works for my analysis: Herland, Woman on the Edge of Time, and He, She, and It. I consider Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland as a precursor of feminist science fiction and in which a utopian society constituted of women alone is depicted. This society, while supportive of mothers, presents a unitary conception of motherhood with their strict employment of eugenics. Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time depicts the time travel of a Chicano mother. With the antithesis of time frames, Piercy is able to criticize patriarchal ideologies of the contemporary society as well as imagine a better future, enabled by the adoption of artificial reproduction technologies, for mothers. He, She, and It, another work by Piercy, questions the identity of being human as well as conception of “natural motherhood.” With the metaphor of cyborg, Piercy not only challenges the demarcation of gender identities but also points out that motherhood, as a practice, differs according to personal choices as well as social values. Her conception of motherhood in this text, although failing to incorporate biological males in the practice of motherhood, defies the stereotypical ideal of mothers as nurturers and child-rearers in patriarchy.

In this thesis, I will examine the connected representations of religion and gender in the context of contemporary American telefantasy (a term for science fiction, fantasy, and horror television genres) programs that include characters who experience fantastic visions that can be explained as originating from either divine or medically materialist origins. The fantastic mode, facilitated by telefantasy’s non-verisimilitudinous genre, presents these visions in a liminal space in which religious and gender representations can potentially subvert or challenge patriarchal and hegemonic representational norms. I analyze Battlestar Galactica (Sci-Fi 2003-2009), Eli Stone (ABC 2008-2009), and Wonderfalls (FOX 2004) for their formal presentation of visions, representations of visionary characters, and the religious representations that form the context for the visions and visionaries. I focus on visionary characters that are directly implicated by the television text as being potential prophets: Laura Roslin and Gaius Baltar on Battlestar Galactica, Eli Stone on Eli Stone, and Jaye Tyler on Wonderfalls. Though each visionary character explores the possibility of subverting patriarchal religious norms, Roslin, Baltar, and Stone’s prophetic roles ultimately privilege patriarchal readings of their narratives, but Jaye, by avoiding the language-symbol systems of traditional religions, maintains the fantastic liminal space and thus the potential for subversion, even if it is only a possibility in the narrative. This thesis seeks to contribute to the scholarship of religious representations in fictional television, with a special emphasis on telefantasy.
text

My dissertation examines some of the ways in which new technologies alter traditional readings of the female body and of feminine subjectivity in contemporary fiction. To illustrate these alterations, I have selected two short stories, one by William Gibson and the other by Margaret Atwood, published in the speculative fiction Tesseracts2 anthology in 1987, both of which deal with disease and women's technological access. Within this context, I examine how feminine sexuality and embodiment are deconstructed and re-written. While historically women have been represented as victims of technology and/or intimately connected with the natural world, I propose that women's increased access to both bio-technologies and communications technologies offers an unprecedented route to self-definition and cultural power. I explore ways in which analogue technology mimics women's reproductive enslavement in Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, and in which the emergence of digital technology offers some emancipation in The Blind Assassin. Subsequently, I discuss the intersections of sex work and virtual reality in William Gibson's Cyberpunk Trilogy and associated short fiction, demonstrating that digitality is not a panacea for gendered oppression. However, digitized women may have unexpected opportunities for self-definition. In comparing Gibson's Idoru and Atwood's Oryx and Crake, I discuss how women “created” for the male gaze (either virtually or by cloning) may evade that gaze and both assert their individuality and create communities among women with similar origins. Subsequently, I examine the interconnections among women, animals, and food that emerge within technologized cultures. Self-protective anorexia provides a link among Atwood's earliest writing (The Edible Woman) and her most recent (Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood), and suggests that the same technological facility which provides access to power also induces profound bodily anxieties in female characters. Building on those anxieties, I conclude with a discussion of the ways in which disability disrupts expectations of feminine embodiment. The constant abjection of women with disabilities is counter-balanced by those women's ability to create radical innovations of technology that transform the larger culture.

This thesis examines epic impressions between two disparate literary genres, the classical Homeric epic and the science fiction novel, Frank Herbert's Dune in particular. This is done by applying Jung's archetypes and his notion of the collective unconscious to both literary works. This thesis argues that, through intertextual dialogue, continuities can be seen to exist between the Homeric epic and Dune and other science fiction texts of a similar nature. Chapter one examines epic impressions through a study of the classical heroic superhuman. This superhuman, his birth, divine attributes and heroic adventures shall be isolated and applied to both the classical hero and the hero of Herbert's narrative. Chapter two will examine the relationship between prescience ("hyperawareness") and the divine oracle of the classical epic. Chapter three will examine the archetype of the "Terrible Mother" and the masculine fear of feminine powers that works to keep the feminine subordinate.
English Studies
M.A. (English)

This thesis is an exploration of the relationships between humans and mechanized beings in Japanese science fiction anime. In it I will be discussing the following texts: Ergo Proxy (2006), Chobits (2002), Gunslinger Girl (2003/2004), and Mahoromatic (2001/2002). I argue that these relationships in these anime series take the form of master/slave relationships, with the humans as the masters and the mechanized beings as the slaves. In virtually every case, the mechanized beings are young females and the masters are older human males. I will argue that this dynamic serves to reinforce traditional power structures and gender dynamics in a posthuman landscape. Additionally, I will argue that by enforcing a dynamic of human-male as master and nonhuman-female as slave, science fiction anime works to fortify the “human” as the primary subject of society. This is done to preserve humanism in the overpowering wave of posthumanism.

This study comprises a close reading and textual analysis of The Sentients of Orion, a space opera series by Australian author Marianne de Pierres, with a view to investigating the representations of gender in modern, popular science fiction by women authors. I hypothesise that de Pierres will pose a fictional enquiry into gender, based on the richness of science fiction by women, but that a closer examination of physical and emotional intimacy (both positive and negative) in these ‘less literary works’ will prove de Pierres’ gender enquiry to be superficial and inconsistent in nature. My main approach is a qualitative exploration of selected incidents through the theoretical lenses of feminist literary criticism, gender theory and, where applicable, queer theory. While I draw eclectically on these interpretive paradigms, my approach is most closely aligned with poststructuralist feminism. Proving the first part of my hypothesis, my findings show that de Pierres does pose an enquiry into gender through her portrayal of plot and character. The particular focus on the intimacies involving the heroine, women, men, and alien characters, proves the second part of my hypothesis incorrect as it reveals how de Pierres not only deeply and consistently challenges the heteronormative status quo, questioning dynamics in relationships, gender roles, ageism, sexism and societal stereotypes, but also provides possible alternatives.
English Studies
D. Litt. et Phil. (English)