This project focuses on science fiction literature of Spain and Argentina produced in the last twenty years (1990-2010). It hypothesizes that in this period a change of perspective substantially modified science fiction productions in both countries and converges into a new model of narrative. As a consequence of this reformulated vision, a new narrative perspective immerses readers in an era of simulation, hyperreality, and post-humanism. When advanced technology is able to modify the basic human anatomy, and persons are trapped between virtual and real universes, simulacra facilitate control of people in an effective and impersonal manner. Simultaneously, fictional scenarios show new post-human beings sharing future worlds with humans. In this regard, the new literary production leads the reader to a redefinition of what it means to be human. With a theoretical framework centered on simulacrum, hyperreality and post-humanism, this study places the use of new technologies and the critique of postmodern society at the epicenter of the discussion as proposed by selected novels.

In this study I examine the arguments made by Martha Nussbaum in Poetic Justice in defence of a positive role for literary engagement in the process of moral and political judgement formation. Nussbaum argues that novel reading offers a unique chance to engage our empathy in morally beneficial ways, because it stands as a kind of practice run for appropriate moral judgement through the adoption of an emotionally engaged yet critically distant “Judicious Spectator” stance when reading. I examine her account of the activity and purported benefits of reading and argue that her use of the Judicious Spectator concept is incompatible with her claims about the structure of novels and the experience of reading. I suggest examining an alternative set of fictions, namely the genre of science fiction and in particular Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Left Hand of Darkness as a means to assess whether Nussbaum’s account plausibly captures the moral value of reading fiction. I argue that even a charitable reading of Nussbaum’s Judicious Spectator concept cannot explain the central thought experiment at the heart of Le Guin’s novel, as it invites readers to contemplate a re-evaluation of their own self-identities or foundational assumptions, allowing them to abandon beliefs and understandings that have perhaps unwittingly coloured their previous moral reasoning without undergoing the scrutiny of justificatory rigour. This resulting type of re-evaluation is, I argue, primarily self-reflective in nature and not externally directed to programmatic outcomes like the possible interpretations of the novel available to Nussbaum. This good, which I label ‘appropriate doubt’, is defended as a general feature of certain kinds of novel reading, and as worthy of moral attention. I conclude that this shows Nussbaum’s account of engagement with fiction to be at best, incomplete.

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.

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.

Asian American literature has continued to evolve since the emergence of first generation Asian American writers in 1975. Authors have continued to interact not only with Asian American content, but also with different forms to express that content – one of these forms is genre writing. Genre writing allows Asian American writers to interact with genre conventions, using them to inform Asian American tropes and vice versa. This thesis focuses on the genre of science fiction, specifically in the subgenre of time travel. Using three literary case studies – Ken Liu’s “The Man Who Ended History,” Charles Yu’s How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, and Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” – this thesis seeks to explore the ways in which different Asian American writers have interacted with the genre, using it to retell Asian American narratives in new ways. “The Man Who Ended History” explores the use of time travel in restoring lost or silenced historical narratives, and the implications of that usage; How to Live Safely is a clever rewriting of the immigrant narrative, which embeds the story within the conventions of a science fictional universe; “Story of Your Life” presents a reimagining of alterity, and investigates how we might interact with the alien in a globalized world. Ultimately, all three stories, though quite different, express Asian American concerns in new and interesting ways; they may point to ways that Asian American writers can continue to write and rewrite Asian American narratives, branching out into new genres and affecting those genres in turn.

I denna uppsats jämförs i ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv två svenska romaner som diskuterar medvetandets natur och gränserna för det mänskliga. I En levande själ från 1980 av Per Christian (PC) Jersild (f. 1935) konfronteras vi med djur som utsätts för plågsamma djurförsök och med uppfödandet och programmerandet av aborterade mänskliga fosterhjärnor som skall utnyttjas som biodatorer i intelligenta maskiner. I Sången ur det kinesiska rummet från 2014 av Sam Ghazi (f. 1967) står i stället möjligheten till en rent artificiell intelligens i fokus. De två böckernas frågeställningar kring vad som händer i en framtid när robotar blir alltmer människolika och människor alltmer robotlika är idag högaktuella. Inte minst gäller det frågan om gränserna för det mänskliga och behovet av en etik som inkluderar andra väsen med ett medvetande. Sammanfattningsvis visar analysen i uppsatsen att en posthumanistisk läsning möjliggör nya och givande tolkningsmöjligheter av bägge verken trots att endast Sången ur det kinesiska rummet beskriver sin posthumana verklighet i ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv medan En levande själ i huvudsak har en mänsklig utgångspunkt för sin gestaltning av Ypsilon. I ett posthumanistiskt perspektiv framträder också romanernas karaktär av moraliska tankeexperiment tydligt.

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Speculative fiction is a genre that is gaining urgency in the contemporary Canadian literary scene as authors and readers become increasingly concerned with what it means to live in a nation implicated in globalization. This genre is useful because with it, authors can extrapolate from the present to explore what some of the long-term effects of globalization might be. This thesis specifically considers the long-term effects of globalization on communities, a theme that speculative fictions return to frequently. The selected speculative fictions engage with current theory on globalization and community in their explorations of how globalization might affect the types of communities that can be enacted. This thesis argues that these texts demonstrate how Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s notion of “cooperative autonomy” can be uniquely cultivated in the conditions of globalization – despite the fact that those conditions are characterized by the fragmentation of traditional forms of community (Empire 392).

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In this thesis I argue that science fiction is not a genre exclusively made up of written texts but a community or series of communities. I examine the science fiction community's engagement with questions of femeninity, masculinity, sex and sexuality over the past seventy years, that is from 1926 until 1996. My examination of this engagement is centred on the battle of the sexes, the lives of James Tiptree, Jr. and the Award named in Tiptree's honour. I make connections between contemporary feminist science fiction and the earliest pulp science fiction engagements with sex and sexuality.