The purpose of this Master’s thesis is to investigate the female reader of science fiction literature, a genre by tradition dominated by men. Through qualitative interviews with seven female science fiction readers, the relation between the reading and the readers’ lives, as well as their concepts of the science fiction genre and the community of science fiction readers, was examined. The main theoretical framework used for the analysis was Yvonne Hirdman’s gender theory, Judith Butler’s concept of identity and Louise M. Rosenblatt’s transaction theory. Science fiction literature offers the female readers an opportunity to consider ethical and political issues, but it also gives them entertainment and experiences beyond the ordinary. Even though science fiction generally is described as progressive, the female readers often find it stereotyped in its gender representations. Being a woman reading science fiction means being an outsider in the science fiction community, as well as to women in general. The choice to read science fiction is therefore highly conscious, reflecting the respondents’ identities and their views of themselves as independent, open-minded and intellectual individuals.

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.

Mitt arbete handlar om mötet mellan rysk konstruktivism och science fiction. Detta har jag gestaltat i ett textilt rum inspirerad av science fictionkarraktären Doktorn ur Doctor Who. Doktorn är en utomjording av en långt mer utvecklad art och från en mer avancerad civilisation än människorna, som reser i tid och rum i sitt tids-och rymdskepp TARDIS. Jag har designat ett rum som är min textila tolkning av TARDIS innersta. Arbetet kretsar kring tankar om gestaltning av en flerdimensionalitet som bara kan anas, inte ses eller förstås. Jag har arbetat med optiska och optiskt omöjliga mönster, UV-ljus och fluorescens för att få en känsla av fler dimensioner än våra vanliga mänskliga fyra. Syftet är att förvirra betraktaren, att irritera ögat och hjärnan till att leta efter lösningar som inte finns. My thesis is about the meeting of russian constructivism and science fiction. I have constructed a textile room inspired by a fictional character, The Doctor from Doctor Who. The Doctor is an alien from an ancient and advanced civilization, travelling through time and space in his space-time ship TARDIS. The thesis is my textile interpretation of TARDIS’ center. I have studied the possibilities of creating dimensions, or the experience of dimensions, that humans can’t see or understand. For this I have studied optical patterns in combination with black lights and fluorescence. My aim is to confuse and irritate the eye and the brain of the beholder, and to make her look for solutions that aren’t there. / <p>Program: Textildesignutbildningen</p>

Another major endeavor of this thesis concentrates on self-formulations of these queer sf bodies and textualities. My elaboration concerns their delineation of ontological pursuit, multi-hybrid post/non-humanity, and a highly self-aware appropriation of obscene, ambivalent and amoral performatives to constitute deviant cultural strategies which have by far successfully counter-written dominant politics' desire to assimilate dissident voices and recalcitrant sites. / My thesis provides three different approaches to re-read non-realistic, fantasmatic queer gender formations and trans-masculine sexualities. From these positions and perspectives, I will argue for the emergent force of queer transboyhood and gradual recognition given to several non-normative transgender masculine presences, starting from their connections and disagreements with old-guard lesbian feminist agenda and homo-normative les-bi-gay politics. This multitude built by trans-masculine affects not only greatly disturbs hetero-normativity and homo-normative discourses, such charismatic inscriptions which link into marginal territories also have created a persistent intervention to interfere and even convert/pervert canonized texts and representational modes. In these chapters to extrapolate this queer masculine sf heterogenesis, I focus on analyzing three archetypes of trans-masculine personalities and their highly different subjectivities. My aim for these analyses is to theorize how these marginal genders and bodies counterattack, infect, and thus re-write mega-historical narratives by their cultural momentum and anti-human poetics/politics. By performing these "infections", queer masculine subjectivity twists and transforms a seemingly liberal hegemony devoted to excluding the non-normative in the name of single-minded progress and bi-polar gender dichotomy. / This dissertation proposes to closely study writings on queer masculinity in English science fiction and fantasy, forming a trajectory of queer transboy representations from 1930s to the beginning of 21st century. By this project, I embark to articulate multi-layered historical contexts between speculative literature, sub-cultural sites, transgender politics, and constructions on marginal queer-gendered bodies. Through intertextual dynamics embedded within and among theoretical frameworks such as sf study, paraliterary interaction, penumbra sub-subjective tactics, post-human/trans-species writings, I will conduct articulations to generate forms and genealogies of queer masculinity in sf realm, building their continuum and ruptures, agency and subversive power. / 洪泠泠. / Adviser: Natalia Chan. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 73-03, Section: A, page: . / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 296-313). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Electronic reproduction. [Ann Arbor, MI] : ProQuest Information and Learning, [201-] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Hong Lingling.

Submitted by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-03-17T13:06:50Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Narrira Lemos de Souza - 2015.pdf: 1420242 bytes, checksum: e275e9c3570827e62eaa56f0d36e27e9 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2016-03-17T13:18:26Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Narrira Lemos de Souza - 2015.pdf: 1420242 bytes, checksum: e275e9c3570827e62eaa56f0d36e27e9 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-17T13:18:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Narrira Lemos de Souza - 2015.pdf: 1420242 bytes, checksum: e275e9c3570827e62eaa56f0d36e27e9 (MD5) license_rdf: 23148 bytes, checksum: 9da0b6dfac957114c6a7714714b86306 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-04-07 / Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de Goiás - FAPEG / Donna Haraway’s political myth is the theme of this research, the investigation implies to understand this character as agent of feminist and social transformation trough three possible images. Firstly, we intend to know, in our society, who is cyborg, knowing that we are talking about a capitalist and western society. There is a historical retrospective about cybernetics, computation and medicine; there is also basics conceptions to the better understanding of the research. We conclude that the cyborg is not only a myth, there are cyborgs looking for a formal identity in some governments. After that, we research the cyborg in the imagination of Science Fiction in some movies and televisions sitcoms, we want to know, after all, if these cyborgs are fiction or reality and if there is a border between this categories. Finally, we look into the cyborg of feminist theory, where the political myth is the meanly agent of Science transformation. We conclude that new characters are need to re-build a Science in which the Man is not the center of the history. / O mito político do ciborgue de Donna Haraway é tema desta pesquisa. A investigação trata de compreender este personagem como um agente de transformação social feminista através de três possíveis imagens. Primeiramente, procuramos entender quais são os ciborgues de nossa sociedade ocidental capitalista. Há um resgate histórico da cibernética, computação e medicina; há, também, conceituações básicas para a continuidade da pesquisa. Chega-se à conclusão de que o ciborgue não é apenas um mito, há ciborgues reivindicando uma identidade reconhecida pelos seus governos. Posteriormente, investigamos o ciborgue na imaginação do cinema de ficção científica, queremos saber, afinal, se estes ciborgues são ficção ou são realidade e se há uma fronteira entre essas duas categorias. Finalmente, debruçamo-nos sobre o ciborgue da teoria feminista crítica da ciência, em que o mito político é agente principal das transformações da ciência. A conclusão a que chegamos é que novos personagens são necessários para que se possa construir uma ciência em que o Homem não seja o centro da história.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-03-15T19:42:25Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Marcio Almeida Ribeiro.pdf: 3951759 bytes, checksum: 0136bfec093328ad1e98bb0bf4238f9c (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-02-06 / The purpose of this work is through an analysis of the feature sci-fi movie District 9, by Neill Blomkamp, investigate the use of documentary aesthetic as the proposed narrative for the film, as well as evaluating the choices of the director from the moment it is necessary to replace the documentary style in favor of a traditional narrative film to benefit the film's plot. This duplicity of styles will also be the object of analysis of this study. It will be presented a brief history of cinema, its principal names, as well as the influence of their work in the development of the film industry. We will identify the characteristics of the documentary, the most important filmmakers of this movement and its influence on the development of other movements in film history. / O propósito deste trabalho é, através de uma análise do longa-metragem de ficção científica Distrito 9, de Neill Blomkamp, investigar a utilização da estética do documentário como proposta narrativa para o filme, bem como avaliar as escolhas do diretor a partir do momento em que é necessário substituir o estilo documentário em prol de uma narrativa cinematográfica tradicional em benefício do enredo do filme. Essa duplicidade de estilos também será objeto de análise deste trabalho. Será apresentada uma breve história do cinema, seus principais nomes, bem como a influência de seu trabalho no desenvolvimento da indústria cinematográfica. Serão identificadas as características do documentário, os cineastas mais importantes desse movimento bem como sua influência no desenvolvimento de outros movimentos na história do cinema.

O medo é sinônimo da incerteza, da ignorância frente ao desconhecido. E, assim como argumentado por Bauman (2008), a escuridão não é a causa do perigo, mas é o habitat natural da incerteza - e, portanto, do medo. Na sociedade há inseguranças em praticamente todas as instâncias da vida e o sujeito vivencia o medo constante. Como reflexo dessa sociedade globalizada, baseada na privatização e desregulamentação, a cultura da mídia por vezes figurativiza, representa o tema do medo (de desastres naturais, doenças, desemprego, terrorismo) à imagem de monstros fantásticos, ou contrafactuais. São seres que confrontam nossa identidade e ameaçam a estabilidade social. Ao misturar a fantasia a elementos reais (promovidos pela ciência) o gênero da ficção científica utiliza um cenário futuro para levantar questionamentos sobre a sociedade atual e as relações entre o eu e o outro. A partir dessa discussão, neste estudo utilizamos o universo ficcional de dois filmes que fazem sucesso há mais de quatro décadas unindo terror e ficção científica, para, a partir deles, agrupar teorias e referenciais que possibilitem problematizar a alteridade no gênero da ficção científica e compreender como ela reflete os medos e as ansiedades. Os filmes O planeta dos macacos (1968) e Alien - o oitavo passageiro (1979) foram analisados pela perspectiva de autoras e autores dos Estudos Culturais, como Fredric Jameson, Douglas Kellner e Stuart Hall, além da metodologia de análise fílmica e da semiótica greimasiana. Observamos como conclusão que os seres alienígenas têm mais em comum com a espécie humana do que pensamos num primeiro momento; eles são capazes de aflorar os sentimentos mais obscuros, como a ganância e o ódio; geram insegurança e ameaçam a vida e o bem-estar / Fear is synonymous with uncertainty, with the ignorance in the face of the unknown. And, as argued by Bauman (2008), darkness is not the cause of danger, but it is the natural habitat of uncertainty - and therefore, fear. In society, there are insecurities in virtually every instance of life and people experiences constant fear. As a reflection of this globalized society, based on privatization and deregulation, media culture is sometimes figurative, representing the theme of fear (natural disasters, illness, unemployment, terrorism) as fantastic or counterfactual monsters. They are beings who confront our identity and threaten social stability. By blending fantasy with real elements (promoted by science), the genre of science fiction uses a future scenario to raise questions about current society and the relationship between self and other. From this discussion, in this study we used the fictional universe of two films that have been successful for more than four decades, uniting terror and science fiction, and, from them, group theories and references that make it possible to problematize the otherness in the genre of science fiction and to understand as it reflects fears and anxieties. The films The Planet of the Apes (1968) and Alien (1979) were analyzed from the perspective of authors of Cultural Studies, such as Fredric Jameson, Douglas Kellner and Stuart Hall, as well as the methodology of film analysis and Greimasian semiotics. We have observed that the alien creatures in the film have more in common with the human species than we might think at first; they are able to surface the most obscure feelings, such as greed and hatred; they can generate insecurity and threaten life and welfare

Magister Artium - MA / This thesis is an exploration and analysis of the ways in which we might use varying forms of Black thought, theory, and art to think Blackness anew. For this purpose I work with electronic music from Nigeria and Detroit between 1976 and 1993, as well as with works of science fiction by W.E.B. Du Bois, Samuel Delany, Ralph Ellison, and Octavia Butler. Through a conceptual framework provided by theorists such as Fred Moten and Kodwo Eshun and the philosophical work of Afrofuturists like Delany, Ellison, Butler, and Du Bois, I explore the outer limits of what is possible when doing away with a canon of philosophy that predetermines our thinking of Blackness. This exploration also takes me to the possible depths of what this disavowal of a canon might mean and how we work with sound, the aural, and the sonic in rethinking the figuring of Blackness. This thesis is also be woven together by the theory of the Black Radical Tradition – following Cedric Robinson and Fred Moten specifically. At the centre of this thesis, and radiating outwards, is the assertion that a set of texts developed for a University of the West – Occidental philosophy as I refer to it in the thesis – is wholly insufficient in attempting to become attuned to the possibilities of Blackness. The thesis, finally, is a critique of ethnomusicology and its necessity for a native object, as well as sound studies, which fails to conceptualise any semblance of Black noise.

Choi, Pak Cheong. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-115). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii / Chapter Chapter One: --- Introduction: Late Qing Science Fantasy and the Import of Science and Technology --- p.1 / Chapter Chapter Two: --- When Time Becomes Abstract: A Chinese Time Travel Story --- p.25 / Chapter Chapter Three: --- "Body in the Scientific Context: Physiology, Invisibility and Being in Motion" --- p.45 / Chapter Chapter Four: --- From Survival to Technotopia: Living and Evolving with Artefacts --- p.73 / Chapter Chapter Five: --- Conclusion --- p.108 / References

Esta pesquisa foi impulsionada pelos seguintes questionamentos: o que se passa quando uma narrativa nos arranca do lugar onde estávamos e contribui para a construção de outro espaço? Não um espaço imaginário, elaborado a partir de um pacto ficcional, mas um espaço real, tão real quanto possível? A primeira possibilidade de resposta recaiu sobre a ciência ficção, mas uma teoria da ciência ficção que deslocasse a perspectiva de gênero literário para o ato imanente de leitura. A partir desta questão, a tese se delineia com a problematização de alguns conceitos de ciência ficção, estranhamento cognitivo e estranho, para, em seguida, desenvolver o conceito de Devir Inaudito. Em um segundo momento, há a exposição de uma possibilidade de leitura, a partir dos processos propostos na primeira parte, para algumas obras produzidas em Angola e no Brasil, a saber: Teoria geral do esquecimento, de José Eduardo Agualusa; a animação O menino e o mundo, dirigida por Alê Abreu; O natimorto: um musical silencioso, de Lourenço Mutarelli e Uma duas, de Eliane Brum. / This research was driven by the following questions: What happens when a narrative uproots us from the place we were and contributes to the construction of a new space? Not an imaginary space, developed through a fictional pact, but a real space, as real as can be? The first possible answer lied upon science fiction, but a theory of science fiction which displaced the perspective of literary genre to the immanent act of reading. Based on this issue, this thesis is outlined with the problematization of some concepts of science fiction, cognitive estrangement and the uncanny to formulate the concept of Unheard-of Becoming. Later on, we present a possible reading, based on the processes proposed in the first part, of the following works produced in Angola and Brazil: Teoria geral do esquecimento, by José Eduardo Agualusa; the animation The boy and the world, directed by Alê Abreu; O natimorto: um musical silencioso, by Lourenço Mutarelli and Uma duas, by Eliane Brum.