Luckhurst - Introduction

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IntroductionAuthor(s): Roger LuckhurstSource: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 33, No. 1, Technoculture and Science Fiction (Mar., 2006),pp. 1-3Published by: SF-TH IncStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241404 .

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INTRODUCTION

1

Roger

Luckhurst

Introduction

It is now

twenty-two years

since the

publication

of the three texts that

have

dominateda

generation

of sf criticism: FredricJameson's

Postmodernism,

or

the Cultural

Logic

of Late

Capitalism,

Donna

Haraway's

A

Manifesto

for

Cyborgs,

and the

English

translation

of

Jean-Francois

Lyotard's

The

Postmodern Condition. These works have been

immensely

productive,

acting

genuinelyin Foucault's terms as foundersof discursivity. Inthe postmodem

paradigm,

sf found itself

in

a

surprisingly

powerful

cultural

location,

the

exemplary symptomatic

writing

of a new

epoch.

Sf was

diverse or

ambiguous

enough

to

support

anxiousaccountsof the

hypercapitalized

echnological

capture

of the last elements of human freedom or more

optimistic

accounts of

the

posthuman,

anti-essential

hybridization

of human and

animal,

animal and

machine. There are now canonical sf texts

associated with these strands: vast

critical

literatures

now

attendWilliam

Gibson, Philip

K.

Dick,

James

Tiptree

Jr., Octavia

Butler,

Blade

Runner,

the Alien

quartet,

and a small

handful of

otheralleged exemplifications.

As historical

materialists,although

of

different

kinds,

Jamesonand

Haraway

addressed a

specific

conjuncture

in

the

1980s,

with

specific

theoretical

and

writerlystrategies

(indeed,

one of the most

striking hings

re-reading

heir

work

now

is the exorbitant

rhetoricaldevices

in

which

their critical

theory

inheres,

a

rhetoric

that has often

been badly

imitated).

But can these

frameworks,

formulated n

Ronald

Reagan's

first

term,

survive

across

twenty-twoyears

of

profound

global transformation?

Does the

postmodernparadigm

still work for

2006?

The idea for this special issue was generatednot from a sense of wantingto

discreditor

displace the

conjuncture

of sf

and

postmodemism-indeed, several

essayists

here

engage

with the still

uncircumventablework of

Jameson and

Haraway.Rather,it was

to

attempt

o find

new

connectionsbetween

contempo-

rary

sf

and a

body

of

critical

theory

that

focuses on

technoculture

but that has

largely

been

eclipsed by

the

exhaustive

finessing of

the concept of

postmodernism.There have been

some

strikingblindspots

n

this

regard.

The

first four

essays

will

lead

readers from

the familiar to

(we hope)

the

rather more

strange.

Manuel

Castells, as

Robert

Harding explains,

borrows

much of his culturalcommentary romJameson, andthis thesis of a distinctive

new

epoch of

informationalism

marked

by

timeless

time and the

space of

flows

is

entirely compatiblewith

cultural deas of the

postmodern.Yet his huge

three-volume

sociological

work, The

Information

Society, reads

like a

compendiumof

science-fictional

tropes

in

its

central emphasis

on the

role of

technologicaltransformation

n

the 1990s. It

provides

the mass of

sociological

raw

data that

updates

Jameson's 1984

sketch. The

pleasingly

eccentricGerman

theorist,

Friedrich

Kittler,

is

also

prepared

o use

epochal

markers, proposing








2

SCIENCE ICTION

TUDIES,

VOLUME 3

(2006)

distinct techno-cultural

discourse networks at

1800,

1900,

and

2000.

The

critical resources,

however,

are

wildly

different from the familiar

array

of

cultural

critique:

Kittler

mixes

up

Goethe and circuit

diagrams,

Lacan

and

Victorianpedagogic

manuals,

Rilke

and

gramophones.

Kittler's

contention,

hat

technology

and modem

subjectivity

are

inextricably

related, speaks

to the

core

of the cultural

work undertaken

by sf,

yet

his

work

has

had

greater impact (so

far)

on

media

studies scholars and historiansof media

technologies.

BrunoLatour s perhaps he most well-known

figure

here, yet

his

wholesale

rejection

of the

modern/postmodem

paradigm

has contributed o his

miniimal

influence on sf criticism. The

strangest

silence

in

sf

scholarship

has

surely

been

the

marginal

nterface

between

sf critics and those

in

Science and

Technology

Studies and

History

of Science

programs.

With a

very

few

exceptions (most

notably,

N. Katherine

Hayles),

the revolutions nside the

history

of science

in

the last

twenty years

have

passedlargely

unnoticed

n

sf criticism. Latourhas

been

at

the center

of

many

of the

disputes

n the field:

his actor-network

heory,

and

his

provocative

championing

of a

nonmodernism that

might

network

togetherhumans

and

nonhumans

n new

formations,provide

an

exciting

matrix

of

ideas within which

to

rethink

contemporary

f.

Sherryl

Vint

and

Mark

Bould

also engage

with

Latour's scientifiction

book, Aramis,

or the

Love

of

Technology 1993),

in

their

trenchant xamination

of

his critical

potential

for sf

scholars. Latour s a theoreticalmagpie,but apersistentpointof reference is the

work of

Michel Serres. Serres is of the

generation

hat

provided

the main

body

of

French

structuralists and

poststructuralists, yet

his

rejection

of the

phenomenological

raditionhas placed

him

outsidethis

grouping.Instead,Serres

has

pursued

what

Laura Salisburyrightly calls an

authenticallyperverse

trajectory, placing literature,

philosophy, quantum

physics, mathematics,

and

mythology

in

bizarrenew topological

and temporal

relations. Serres provides a

whole

set

of

metaphoricalpassageways between the

literary

and scientific that

again

allow

for new

ways

of

negotiating

he

hyphen between the

technological

andthe cultural,that transitional pace explored by sf.

The

four

introductoryessays on Castells, Kittler,

Latour, and Serres

are

designed

to

provideorientations o more or

less unfamiliar

heoreticalwork, and

have

space to make

only suggestivecommentson how sf

texts might be

read in

relationto

these very different

theoreticalwritings. Our other contributors

ave

had freer rein to

explorecontemporary f

and its relations

o thetechno-cultural.

Enns, along

with

Vint and Bould, directly pick up

from our

theoretical

orientations:

hey

read

Philip K. Dick or

Hugo Gemsback

with and against the

matrix

offered by Kittler and Latour.

Sf readings are

already opening up along

these new pathways. Stacey Abbott offers a genealogy of the computer-

generated

mage special effect,

while

Kaye Mitchell's

reading of the fiction of

Justina

Robson and

Pat

Cadiganpushes the

feminist

debates aboutcyberculture

and

embodiment n

new

directions.

The

central idea

that might be taken to link

Castells, Kittler, Latour,

and

Serres

together is the

network. Latour

insists that the success of a

scientific

statement, technological project, or

indeed journal

special issue comes from

making

as

many

connections as possible to as many

heterogeneous

social,








INTRODUCTION

3

political, scientific,

cultural,

and critical elements. One

of

the ambitionsof

this

guest

editor

was

to

introduce o Science Fiction Studies

young

scholars

who

have

beenproducingworkacross a diverserangeof literaryfields and who would not

necessarily

identify

themselves as sf scholars.

It

is

my sense that there is an

emerging generationthat

reads science fiction

alongside and intertwinedwith

other literatures

without

having

tortured

debates about

culturalvalue

or

generic

boundary. Laura

Salisbury eaches and writes

about Samuel

Beckett,

neurosci-

ence,

the

flickering

technologies

of

Modernism, and

children's fantasy; Gill

Partington

tudies

eighteenth-century rint

technologies at

the birthof the novel

but also

internet

conspiracy

theories

and the fiction of

Neal

Stephenson. This

kind

of fluid

movements

between fields are

what

attracts them to network

theories. To thrive, sf criticismneeds to welcome them into its network, too.






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