none

This thesis sets out to examine the relationship between science fiction and its conditions of production, specifically interrogating the genre's articulations of the ideology of modernity as progress. Sf has been characterized variously as a characteristically useful critical engagement with the ideologies of its context and as wholly ideological at the level of form, relying on the authority of a scientific episteme in its "cognitive estrangements," while not obligated to operate within the boundaries of this episteme. As such, the genre is unparalleled in its capacity to articulate ideologies under the guise of a putatively neutral science and reason. However, this same formal action places the genre in the unique position of being able to utilize the authority of a scientific episteme to re-evaluate the putative neutrality of that very scientific episteme. As a result, this study concludes that while the genre's reliance on the external authority of science in "cognitively" organizing its estrangements may make it particularly conducive to articulating ideological technoscience and the ideology of modernity as progress, the genre is characteristically ambivalent in this respect, both at the level of form and as a result of the incongruities between form and narrative. To support my thesis I engage a number of science fictional texts, focusing on Golden Age sf of the mid-20th century, while also branching out into explorations of a variety of 20th and 21st century sf texts, including texts from the pulp era, New Wave, cyberpunk, and post-singularity sf. I analyze within the effects of the conceptual mapping of society in terms of the natural sciences in sf, as well as the ambivalent presence of the robot as a megatextual motif, exploring the relationship of these to the ideology of modernity as progress and the post-scarcity fantasy of global mass consumption prosperity.

<p>  </p> <p>The garden and garden like spaces are ubiquitous in the Romantic narrative and my argument engages the (neo)colonial politics involved in their creation and maintenance within and outside of the Spanish Empire: the majestic and creole garden of Colombia and Cuba, the enslaved subsistence plot or <em>conuco </em>in Cuba, and the sacred, indigenous garden of Mexico, through writers such as Jorge Isaacs, Gertrudis Gómez de Avellaneda, Anselmo Suárez y Romero, Cirilo Villaverde, and Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, amongst others. I address how these garden spaces exist within and alongside of what I term the garden state: the transformation and domestication of nature through agriculture and horticulture. This is an imperial and neo-imperial environmental aesthetic that emerges in response to the rise of liberal agro-economic policies in the light of industrialization, the entrance of the West into ‘modernity,’ and the proliferation of the <em>hacienda </em>and <em>ingenio</em>. It is with the garden’s function as descriptor for nation and as discrete, enclosed space for the cultivation of nature that I engage with its capacity to mediate the politics of belonging and civilization in Romantic literature and mid-century cultural and political discourse. Traditionally read, the Romantic narrative centers around erotic productivity, through romantic couplings as a measure for the success or failure of the family. Parallel to this erotic drive, the garden state introduces a narrative of economic productivity that the presence of the garden, its creation, maintenance, and decline interrupts. The failure of the garden state parallels not only that of erotic productivity in the narratives, but rather it brings to the fore the fundamental contradictions of the civilizing project. These narratives are predicated on the continued exclusion of those exploited and displaced under the Spanish Empire—namely Indigenous Peoples, the enslaved, and women. However, as I develop a politics of belonging and labor, I posit that these same narratives complicate exclusionary politics through the environmental emplacement of their marginalized protagonists. As such their subsequent deaths or further displacement undermine the very places they were to uphold, causing the gardens’ destruction. I analyze the interaction of the politics of race and gender within the garden and garden state through death, labor, desire, and secularization to highlight the complexity of “civilization,” offering novel readings on how nature aides in questioning the broader limits of the nation in nineteenth-century Latin America and the waning Spanish Empire. </p>

No description available.