Underwater, No One Can Hear You Perform Linguistic Constructions

Joan Slonczewski's A Door into the Ocean takes Feminist Uptopian Literature to new depths. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.) Having as a major setting a planet (moon) completely covered with water, A Door into the Ocean offers a counter-balance to the well-worn Science Fiction convention of settings of barren moons, rugged craggy landscapes and deserts. (Slonczweski mentions her intent to respond to the desert setting of Herbert's Dune, but must have had no knowledge of Lewis' 1943 Perelandra, which featured an ocean world with floating, fluid land.)

Such a subversion of setting serves well for subversions/interrogations of other conventions in areas such as gender, sexuality, politics, power, and materialism. In her own study guide, http://biology.kenyon.edu/slonc/books/adoor_art/adoor_study.htm, Slonczewski points out that conventional binaries, such as the conventional view of male/female, can be problematized (deconstructed) by use of language. (It is interesting to note that it is through language that such constructs are reified to begin with.) (I know that sentence ends in a preposition, but I like saying "to begin with" every now and then.)

In her online study guide, Slonczewski ways that "The deconstruction of polarities is mediated in part by the unique language of the Sharers which conflates subject and object. " Indeed, in Door, the language usage does serve to decenter, if not deconstruct, certain ideas ensconced in a current cultural dictionary. Terms like lovesharer, learnsharing, hitsharing, worksharing, share (a walk, a day), unspeak, all serve to make common ideas "new" by nature of de-familiarizing them. In this way, the regularity and ubiquity of common terms lose at least some power to instantiate commonly held ideas.

But language, (especially if it is a tool of the "master,") meets some limitation in its ability to deconstruct. I share a few here, based on Slonczewski's comments on her site...

1. "Sharers literally cannot imagine one human being forcing another to behave against her will. Their own system of governance does not even allow for such. "

But, I want to make someone do something against their will!
No, you can't do that! Be respectful of others.
I don't want to be respectful of others!
You must do it whether you want to or not!

Even though there may be a new sheriff in town - the new language/ideas still amount to a "sheriff" nonetheless. Imagining achieving compliance on the premise that no one can force others to comply is... well, words, again, fail.

2. "The Sharers use this power, enabled by their superior genetic technologies, to maintain their way of life. Their own nonviolent politics overcomes the oppressor."

Describing a Utopian society where egalitarian values preempt contests for supremacy is admirable - but not an easy task. What does it mean to say that the sharers have "Superior" genetic technologies? This seems far from an egalitarian appraisal. But maybe they mean that sharers are equal - but simply better than the Valans. Ouch. Once again, we run into something that smells remarkably similar to what Burke calls "congregation by segregation."
And nonviolent politics "Overcomes"? Isn't that sorta like "beating" the oppressors? Or "winning the war" against the oppressors? Yep, language is a funny thing, huh?

I think that language fails in cases like these because there is a certain unspoken (though I don't contend that it is unspeakable,) missing concept. In Greg Garrard's Ecocriticism, the chapter on "Dwelling" offers an insight into how this mis(non)understanding might occur. Garrard contrasts two views of how the Biblical mandate to "have dominion over" the earth might inform (or disinform) a comprehensive worldview of the environment. He then offers Jeanne Kay's argument that "both positions misread nature's role in the Bible... the Bible is neither anthropocentric nor ecocentric, but theocentric in a way and to a degree difficult for the modern reader to fully accept."

• The unspoken idea.
• The unmitigated binaries of the extant terministic screen.
• The use of language to bridge the gap it, in part, created.

All these elements are involved in such fiction that seeks to challenge what is seen as an oppressive hegemony. (OK, granted, it is usually the Nixon or Reagan or Bush administration, but theoretically, it could be something else...)



(Garrard is pretty hard on Heidegger, pelting the Nazi with berries (Berry) and burgers (Berger). But, alas, this will have to wait for another reflection.)

Neuromancer & Company: Cyberpunk, Cowboys, and Cyborgs

William Gibson's Neuromancer is hailed as the book that brought about a significant change in Science Fiction in the '80's, ushering in what would be known as "cyberpunk." Dr. Elisa Sparks, in her online class notes defines cyberpunk as "* A form of science fiction developed in the mid-80's which envisions a near-future world dominated by information technology. * Especially ways that tech is integrated into human body * usually involves people on the lower end of society who are rebelling against authority..."

Cyberpunk was praised by some critics as being a return to "hard" sci-fi, and an escape from a dark period of sci-fi malaise. What was this period of malaise? Nicola Nixon, in her article "Cyberpunk: Preparing the Ground for Revolution or Keeping the Boys Satisfied?" points out that the sci-fi of the '70's was, in part, feminist utopian literature. She references Jean Pfaelzer as she explains, "the feminist utopian text represents two worlds, the flawed present and the future perfect, which contradict and comment on each other. One world is feminist and egalitarian. The other world is not. And the world that is not utopian derives from the author’s representation of contemporary gender inequality, sexual repression, and cultural malaise."

Nixon goes on to explain that:

rising on the heels of the ’70s feminist SF writers, however, was another SF "movement," one loudly proclaiming its "revolutionary" status: cyberpunk. Cyberpunk—slick, colloquial, and science-based—represented a concerted return to the (originary) purity of hard SF, apparently purged of the influence of other-worldly fantasy, and embracing technology with new fervor.
Sterling’s desire to represent cyberpunk as a radical subgenre within SF... prompts him... to dismiss all of ’70s SF as "not much fun," as in "the doldrums," "dogmatic slumbers," or "hibernation" The political (or even revolutionary) potential for SF, realized so strongly in ’70s feminist SF, is relegated in Gibson’s cyberpunk to a form of scary feminized software; his fiction creates an alternative, attractive, but hallucinatory world which allows not only a reassertion of male mastery but a virtual celebration of a kind of primal masculinity...

So, it would seem that the arrival of cyberpunk, with its re-beatification of the macho cowboy hero, threatened to push aside the feminist political force of earlier sci-fi works. Reflective of the "tiredness" of the age of the '70's - and the embracing of the new silver screen political cowboy hero in the form of Ronald Reagan - a post-feminist zeitgeist seemed to encroach on both the sci-fi and political fronts.

Would this new form totally exclude the socialist-feminist, post-modern impulse form science fiction? Where would such impulses find space for treatment? Dr. Elisa Sparks indicates such a space in her notes on the themes of cyberpunk:

What are the crucial themes (of cyberpunk)?
* A society that is shaped by computers
* A central theme is the relationship between man and machine-- specifically, what makes us human as we interact and depend on machines at a more and more personal level
* cyborg is a central issue here-- humans become part machine

It is the cyborg that gives space for treatment of the issues presumably excluded from the conversation of science fiction. Donna Haraway, in "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century," describes this opening as such:

A cyborg is a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction… The cyborg is a matter of fiction and lived experience that changes what counts as women's experience in the late twentieth century. The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence.
an effort to contribute to socialist-feminist culture and theory in a postmodernist, non-naturalist mode and in the utopian tradition of imagining a world without gender, which is perhaps a world without genesis, but maybe also a world without end. The cyborg incarnation is outside salvation history. Nor does it mark time on an oedipal calendar, attempting to heal the terrible cleavages of gender in an oral symbiotic utopia or post-oedipal apocalypse...

The phallogocentrie origin stories most crucial for feminist cyborgs are built into the literal technologies - teehnologies that write the world, biotechnology and microelectronics - that have recently textualized our bodies as code problems on the grid of C3I. Feminist cyborg stories have the task of recoding communication and intelligence to subvert command and control.

The influences of cyberpunk, and particularly of Neuromancer, can be seen in a number of places in pop culture, ranging from Star Trek:The Motion Picture to TRON to The Matrix. The theme of alternate realities and existences, rebellion against the system, rage against/negotiating with the machine, embracing the "other," re-examination of human identity, in(tro)spection of computers and technology in everyday life, and other themes - these all keep science fiction open to interrogation by many theoretical approaches, including the socialist-feminist approach.

Donna Haraway notes that, "In retelling origin stories, cyborg authors subvert the central myths of origin of Western culture. We have all been colonized by those origin myths, with their longing for fulfilment in apocalypse." Even in such "cyberpunk cowboys" as Neo (in The Matrix), there exists a re-telling of Western culture's muthos, but also, an interrogation of that myth, and the potential for its subversion and, possibly, the establishment of a non-myth (which becomes a myth itself.)

Flasher est mortuus ; porro ago Utopia

Dr. Sparks referred our class to a chapter from Joanna Russ' "To Write Like a Woman: Essays on Feminism and Science Fiction." This chapter, entitled 'Amor Vincit Foeminam: The Battle of the Sexes in Science Fiction," provides a good grounding to understand James Tiptree's writings, but also to situate the collection of writings that make up the RCID Topias reading list.

I will point out a few things that I found particularly interesting in this piece, along with my reflections and responses.

Firstly, Russ points out that, in much of early science fiction treatments of the battle of the sexes, the situations in such works resulted from a "role reversal" in which the men's "Sacred Objects" (yes, in almost all cases these objects are conflated with the phallus) were commandeered by, or surrendered to, women. Russ sees this approach as "predictable."

Also seen as "predictable" in these works is the resulting dysfunction of women's control of these objects. The lesson, Russ holds, is that "women cannot handle power, ought not to have it, and cannot keep it. This is the natural order of things." (42) These two ideas serve to perpetuate a hegemonic zeitgeist of SciFi plot production.

It is against this hegemony that many of the authors on our list are responding/reacting/answering. It is against this hegemony that Russ particularly alludes to the work of James Tiptree (aka Alice Sheldon) as one which approaches the battle of the sexes differently, "both inverting some of its elements and commenting critically on others." (56) This work by Russ does serve to frame Tiptree for out readings, but also situates the work of our other authors.

Two works which are, in Russ' opinion, decidedly bad, benefit greatly from her scathing criticism. "The Battle against the Yukks," is supposed to be funny, Russ tells us, as if this would take away the appeal. It doesn't. Russ' explanation of the "perpetual blushing at the idea of Strange Thoughts" - and Mother's discovery that the frozen sperm supply had run out - almost beg for a reading. The criticism, in its denunciation, serves to entice - I mean, can it really be this ridiculous?

But Russ' comments on "Yukks" entices far less than her description of "Ecce Feminal." Women bikers juicing? (E9 - not 'roids.) And the leader is "Ripper Jack?" This sounds too bad to be missed! (If you explain movies like "Billy Jack" or "Smokey and the Bandit" well enough, even the most sophisticated film snob will be unable to resist such disasters.)

But - in Russ' criticism of "Ecce Feminal," she overlooks a possible subversion of the previously mentioned hegemony of SciFi writing convention. In this story, the man-killing, castrating, biker Ripper Jack falls in love and becomes a mother. But Russ never mentions any reversion of the Sacred Object to the Milquetoast man who fathers her child. (Unless Russ conflates, without laying any groundwork, either heterosexuality or "flowerprint blouse" with a re-subjugation of Jack as oppressed victim.)

Yes, these two works seem to be so bad as to be irresistible. Almost like a book that had such deliciously bad phrases of polemic overkill as "the only pure test case is a vagina acknowledging a godlike phallus." Oops, never mind, that was Russ herself. My bad.

But my notice of such a broad-brush statement may resonate with comments by Lewis Call in his "This Wondrous Death: Erotic Power in the Science Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr." Call notes that Russ may less than entirely comfortable with "Mama Come Home" because "it does not fit neatly into the theoretical framework of sex war feminism." (65) Hence my notice of the broad-brush treatment and tone of Russ may reflect a totalizing binary that Call hints at in his comments on Russ' either/or categorizations: "She observes that Tiptree's story divides women into two camps... and puts these two camps against one another." (65)

In his more nuanced treatment, Call allows for a complexity of reading (by the reader - and the characters,as well,) that supersedes set categorizations of either/or.