Alien constructions: Science fiction and feminist theories

This dissertation explores the relationship between feminist science fiction and a feminist discourse that conceptualizes issues of difference, globalization, and technoscience. More specifically, it is the discourses within both feminist theory and SF on subjectivity in patriarchal systems (i.e. the construction of the self through negotiations of identity and difference), that is of interest here. Key elements that these discourses draw on are global capitalism and exploitative class relations within a growing international system (relationships of First and Third World, postcolonial relations) and the impact of technologies on women's fives (Internet, medical establishment, reproductive technologies). In its dealing with these issues, feminist SF creates complex representations of post-human embodiments (bio-technologies and the body/machine interface) that challenge and redefine existing notions of feminist political resistance.;The assumption underlying this analysis is that the complex process of both producing and consuming cultural texts produces theory, and that feminist science fiction functions as an analytical and theory-building tool. By locating feminist theory in cultural texts, I contest the separations of cognitive realms, such as creativity and intellectuality, on which the Western defined concept of theorizing rests. It shifts the discourse away from a hierarchical structure of theory building towards a more open, multileveled production of theory, and towards interdisciplinary approaches within feminist inquiry.;The thesis of this dissertation is that feminist science fiction, while often complementing and reflecting specific feminist theories, also challenges, expands, and at times contradicts them, and that a dialogue between feminist SF and feminist theories can add clarity and dimension to feminist debates. The goal of this textual analysis is to lay out the dialectical relationship between feminist theories and the science fiction texts in question, creating possibilities for empowering and resisting reading processes, while being critical of the (U.S.) hegemonic cultural discourse surrounding science fiction narratives and criticism.;The texts analyzed here include feminist science fiction stories, such as the work of the African American writer Octavia E. Butler; the Hollywood SF movies The Matrix and Alien Resurrection; and technological dystopias and feminist utopias by authors Richard Calder and Octavia Butler.