Speculative feminisms : the significance of feminist theory in the science fiction of Joanna Russ, James Tiptree Jr. and Octavia Butler

Abstract

This thesis addresses the feminist movement in science fiction from the late 1960s to the 1990s. It explores how SF’s feminist futures have interpreted and challenged the politics of women's liberation. The thesis raises a number of critical questions about the confluence of feminist politics and the traditionally masculinist discourses of SF. It questions definitions of both gender and genre, and considers the history of feminist SF's publication, readership and criticism.

The thesis provides in-depth readings of key texts by three major authors of feminist SF: Joanna Russ, James Tiptree Jr, and Octavia Butler. Each chapter considers how their texts illustrate and develop pertinent issues for feminism. The study begins by analyzing the representation of female agency in early texts by Pamela Zoline and Russ. Later chapters develop this theme through readings of Russ's The 2Gmale Man which questions what it means to 'be' a woman (or a man); Tiptree's work which problematizes what it means to write as a man (or a woman); and Butler's Xenogenesis in which those feminist concerns have evolved into a questioning of what it means to 'be' human. The thesis concludes by examining contemporary science fiction by Pat Cadigan, Gwyneth Jones and Melissa Scott to ask whether the category of feminist SF remains relevant in the postmodern, if not post-feminist, 1990s.

The thesis proposes a dialogic relation between the theory and politics of feminism and feminist SF. It aims not only to chart the ways in which feminism has influenced women SF writers, or to highlight the ways in which feminist SF has interpreted feminist theory, but to argue that feminist SF actively contributes to the discourses of feminism. This study aims to elucidate the ways in which feminist SF may be truly considered as speculative feminism.

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