Boundaries and Otherness in Science Fiction: We Cannot Escape the Human Condition
Journal Title: Text Matters. A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture - Year 2018, Vol 8, Issue 8
Abstract
The article explores the construction of boundaries, alterity and otherness in modern science-fiction (SF) films. Boundaries, understood as real state borders, territoriality and sovereignty, as well as the construction of the other beyond an imagined border and delimited space, have a significant meaning in the dystopian settings of SF. Even though SF topics are not bound to the contemporary environment, be it of a historical, technical or ethical nature, they do relate to the present-day world and transcend our well-known problems. Therefore, SF offers a pronounced discourse about current social challenges under extreme conditions such as future technological leaps, encounters with the alien other or the end of the world. At the same time the genre enables us to play through future challenges that might really happen. Films like Equilibrium (2002), Code 46 (2003), Children of Men (2006) and District 9 (2009) show that in freely constructed cinematic settings we are not only unable to escape from our border conflicts, but quite the contrary, we take them everywhere with us, even to an alternative present or into the future, where new precarious situations of otherness are constructed.
Authors and Affiliations
Isabella Hermann
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP417947
- DOI 10.1515/texmat-2018-0013
- Views 77
- Downloads 0
Recessive Action in Colm Tóibín’s Brooklyn
Colm Tóibín’s 2009 novel Brooklyn accompanies Eilis Lacey, a native of Enniscorthy, Ireland of the 1950s on a reluctant voyage across the Atlantic. Her passage reconstructs a common experience of immigration and exile to...
Literature That Saves: Matilda as a Reader of Great Expectations in Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones
The article reflects on the therapeutic and ethical potential of literature, the theme which is often marginalized and overlooked by literary critics, in the novel Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones. Matilda, the main character o...
Timespace for Emotions: Anachronism in Flaubert, Bal/Williams Gamaker, Munch and Knausgård
Quoting Flaubert through time, Mieke Bal and Michelle Williams Gamaker’s Madame B brings Madame Bovary’s reflections on love and emotions to the present day, in a productive anachronism. Their work produces an intertempo...
The First Constitutional Government of the Minnesota Anishinaabeg
In this paper I trace the development of Native American constitutionalism in the early twentieth century. Specifically, I focus on the first constitutional government of the White Earth Nation, located in northwestern M...
Éowyn and the Biblical Tradition of a Warrior Woman
The article discusses the portrayal of Éowyn in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings in the light of the biblical tradition of the warrior woman. The author focuses on the scene in which Éowyn slays the Nazgûl Lord in the bat...