28 research outputs found
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Collective close reading: queer SF and the methodology of the many
Beyond Gender Research Collective are a group of researchers, activists and practitioners brought together by a shared commitment to imagining the world differently through collaborative explorations of queer, trans, and feminist science fiction. As Beyond Gender we understand ourselves as an example of what Jasbir K. Puar describes as a queer assemblage; we form, and are formed by, a practice we have developed called "collective close reading" (CCR). We begin this chapter by outlining CCR as a practice of utopian worlding: CCR is our method for reading and enacting science fiction, through which we exercise our capacity for imagining, dreaming, and building together. We apply this methodology to Ursula K. Le Guinâs "The Shobies' Story" (1990), particularly focussing on the ways in which Le Guin's narrative gestates new modes of art and of kinship, based on celebration of communal activity and politics of affinity. We conclude by connecting this reading of and through Le Guin's tale to our collective practices of performing science fictionality and of empathetic friendship. In doing so, we demonstrate howââlike Le Guinâs ShobiesââBeyond Gender's dedication to communal play and care allows us to insist upon expansive, heteroglossic, and generative possibilities in our collective futures
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Drowning in the cloud: water, the digital and the queer potential of feminist science fiction
Water is frequently associated with a naturalized, trans-exclusionary understanding of womanhood. In this chapter we challenge this association. Focusing on the cyborgs of feminist SF and the waters in which they swim, gestate, and struggle, we theorize water as a technology that plays a crucial role in the self-consciously unnatural politics of queer resistance. In order to navigate these turbulent waters we have deployed the methodology we call Collective Close Readingâa practice of nonhierarchical knowledge production founded on a complex web of interdependence. In this way we seek to model the watery, cyborg collectivity depicted in the strange worlds of feminist sf. We swim together, beyond, against, and into gender