Alterity and Capitalism in Speculative Fiction: Estranging Contemporary History 3031399234, 9783031399237

Table of contents :
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
Chapter 1: Introduction: Anamorphic Estrangement
Gothic Marxism: Historical Materialism and the Fantastic
The Critique of Suvin’s SF Theory
Mark Bould’s Paranoid Theory of Fantasy: Ontology as Hermeneutics
Anamorphic Estrangement
Estrangement and Historicity: What Can We Do with It?
Overview of the Book
Bibliography
Chapter 2: Marxism as Narrative World-Building Method: New Weird Fiction and Capitalist Crisis in China Miéville’s Bas-Lag Trilogy
Weird Metaphors: A Fantastic Interrogation of History
Marxism as Narrative World-Building Method
Bas-Lag and Marx’s Theory of Crisis: The Possibility of the Impossible
Bas-Lag’s Abcanny Universe: Benjamin’s Allegory
Bas-Lag’s Industrial Capitalism: A Fantastic Documentation of Capitalist Crises
Remaking: Radical Social Labour Exploitation
The Plague of Nightmares: Weird Approximations to Capital
Crisis as Ontology: The Possibility of the Impossible
The Weaver: A Revolutionary Conception of Crisis
Renovating the Fantasy of Revolution
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 3: The Afterlives of Slavery: Spectres of the Antebellum in Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad and Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland
The Underground Railroad: A Collage of Institutional Racism
The Political Economy of Racism
Scenes from Darkest Africa
Spaghetti Western
Rivers Solomon’s Sorrowland
Sorrowland: Black Liberation?
Sorrowland: The Hauntings of Black History
Sorrowland: Sympoiesis and Black Liberation
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 4: Challenging Cultural Studies Through Dystopia: Catatonic Cultural Dominant in Noon’s Falling Out of Cars and McCormack’s Notes from a Coma
Catatonia and/or Schizophrenia: A Dynamic Cultural Dominant
Dystopia as a Metaphor for the Present
Falling Out of Cars: Catatonic Stasis
Falling Out of Cars: Catatonic Écriture and Losing the Traces of the World
Falling Out of Cars: Catatonic Capitalism
Notes from a Coma: Comatose Future and Catatonic Zeitgeist
Notes from a Coma: Coma and Exhaustion
The Coma Zeitgeist: Towards a Catatonic Future
Notes from a Coma: Post-Apocalyptic Mode of Production
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 5: Extrapolation and Social Reproduction: Anne Charnock’s Dreams Before the Start of Time and Bina Shah’s Before She Sleeps
Plausibility as Rhetorical Effect: Towards a Diachronic View of Extrapolation
Speculative Fiction and Socialist Feminism: Social Reproduction
Anne Charnock’s Dreams Before the Start of Time
Dreams Before the Start of Time: Beyond the Nuclear Family
Dreams Before the Start of Time: Capitalist Eugenics and Class Difference
Before the Start of Time: Integrating Gender and Class Struggles
Bina Shah’s Before She Sleeps
Before She Sleeps: Integrative World-Building
Before She Sleeps: Local and Universal Extrapolation
Before She Sleeps: The Underground Resistance
Before She Sleeps: The Trajectory of Feminist Movements
Bibliography
Chapter 6: Conclusion: New Horizons for a Marxist Theory of Speculative Fiction
Future Research
Bibliography
Index