Queer and trans theory

In this chapter, we follow Donna Haraway’s assertion that ‘science fiction is political theory’ to read Rivers Solomon’s SF novel The Deep (2019) as and alongside contemporary queer and trans theory. We argue that queer science fiction is not simple escapism, but a tool for refashioning the self and the present. Queer and trans writers and artists are not fleeing from the world as much as they are reshaping it by crafting science-fictional worlds which defy the stultifying norms of hetero- and cis-normativity. These re-imaginings of the self and communities are intertwined with the embodied reality of queer experience, and Solomon’s novel exemplifies sf’s ability to grapple with the various facts and fictions used to police queer and trans lives, such as the purported primacy of biological sex and kinship. Articulated in three interconnected sections, our chapter first uses Elizabeth Freeman’s concept of ‘temporal drag’ to find a purposeful re-writing and mythmaking in Solomon’s work that counters the violence of white supremacy. We then turn, via the work of Alexis Pauline Gumbs, to examine Solomon’s rejection of the natural world as an implicitly heteronormative realm. Instead, faer embraces the many parthenogenetic, intersex, polymaternal and decidedly non-normative creatures of the deep. Lastly we find in Solomon’s rejection of heteronormative kinship an imagining of collective being and reproduction that resonates with Sophie Lewis’s concept of amniotechnics and José Esteban Munoz’s vision of queer utopia. Finally, we turn outward to suggest that Solomon’s The Deep is not a static text, but one that constantly invites its reader to transform the story – and possibly, the world

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 Reading—a 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

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 Reading—a 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

Editorial

Editorial for the June 2022 issue