Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought by Patricia Melzer
By Patricia Melzer
Though set in different worlds populated by means of alien beings, technology fiction is a domain the place people can critique and re-imagine the paradigms that form this international, from basics similar to the intercourse and gender of the physique to worldwide strength relatives between sexes, races, and international locations. Feminist thinkers and writers are more and more spotting technology fiction's power to shatter patriarchal and heterosexual norms, whereas the creators of technology fiction are bringing new intensity and complexity to the style through attractive with feminist theories and politics. This publication maps the intersection of feminism and technology fiction via shut readings of technological know-how fiction literature through Octavia E. Butler, Richard Calder, and Melissa Scott and the films The Matrix and the Alien series.
Patricia Melzer analyzes how those authors and movies symbolize debates and ideas in 3 parts of feminist inspiration: identification and distinction, feminist opinions of technological know-how and know-how, and the connection between gender id, physique, and wish, together with the recent gender politics of queer wants, transgender, and intersexed our bodies and identities. She demonstrates that key political components form those debates, together with worldwide capitalism and exploitative type relatives inside a transforming into foreign approach; the effect of laptop, commercial, and clinical applied sciences on women's lives and reproductive rights; and posthuman embodiment as expressed via biotechnologies, the body/machine interface, and the commodification of wish. Melzer's research makes it transparent that feminist writings and readings of technological know-how fiction are a part of a feminist critique of current energy relations—and that the alien structures (cyborgs, clones, androids, extraterrestrial beings, and hybrids) that populate postmodern technology fiction are as possibly empowering as they're threatening.
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