Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender and Ecology in Literature ed. by Douglas A. Vakoch (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender and Ecology in Literature ed. by Douglas A. Vakoch Megan Stowe International Voices on Ecofeminist SF. Douglas A. Vakoch, ed. Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender and Ecology in Literature. Routledge, 2021. 232 pp. $128 hc, $39.16 ebk. In the first book-length approach to its subject, Ecofeminist Science Fiction: International Perspectives on Gender, Ecology, and Literature comprises fourteen chapters by voices in ecocriticism spanning five continents. The editor, Douglas A. Vakoch, outlines the project’s scope in his Preface as international scholars “scrutiniz[ing] science fiction for insights into the fundamental changes we need to make to survive and thrive as a species” at a time of ecological despair (20). The scope of this work is expansive, as scholars interrogate ecocriticism’s intersections with the Anthropocene in film, television, and both canonical and lesser known but equally important literatures that “trace the origins of human-caused environmental change in the twin oppressions of women and nature driven by patriarchal power and ideologies,” while also providing alternative ways of seeing and being in the world (19). Patrick D. Murphy offers the Introduction, creating a brief timeline of the historical interactions among women, science fiction, and the environment. Though the beginning of the introduction does not seem immediately clear as a framing mechanism for the anthology that follows, Murphy’s critique of the state of ecocritical anthologies up to this point is a salient one: “feminist and ecofeminist analyses of science fiction [by now should have] simply become part and parcel of any collection of essays on such literature [and] . . . any ecocritical anthology should have to include a substantial body of ecofeminist critique” (25). But it has been limited even among noted critics and authors in the field, which Murphy cites as justification for this anthology’s intervention. The book’s chapters are arranged in four parts. “Part 1: Female Bodies: Plants and Animals, Cyborgs and Robots” includes Melissa Etzler’s “Mothered by Arid Sand”: Hanns Heinz Ewers’s “Alraune with an Ecofeminist Twist,” followed by “The Runa and Female Otherness in Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow” by Leslie Kordecki. Etzler argues that the titular character Alraune can be read as a proto-ecofeminist femme fatale who redresses male manipulation and dominance in a novel where “the equation of [End Page 498] women, animals, and the earth and the argument for their subservience is so extreme it comes across as absurd” (47). Etzler takes care to trace the lineage of such pairing of the earth and woman from Plato to the novel and beyond, noting that the characters Baum and ten Brinken use language that suggests “woman equals earth” which “establishes the earth as desirous (wanton) of its own exploitation (wench), that [both] woman and earth equal a lustful body desiring its own subjugation [enabling] them to act violently toward women with no qualms” (43). Kordecki’s chapter also links women, animals, and earth and their relative subjugation through a gendered description of the Runa and Jaa’nataa that parallels typical ecocritical distinctions about women, land, and patriarchy through the lens of critical animal studies. Kordecki’s emphasis on reproduction and speciesism, too, looks ahead towards chapter 3, though the analysis of so many interesting claims, especially regarding cannibalism and Catholicism, seems limited. Chapter 3 is “Reproduction, Utilitarianism, and Speciesism in Sleep Dealer and Westworld” by Imelda Martín Junquera. The most promising framework in this chapter is Martín Junquera’s attention to how capitalism and the male domination granted through its access have both recreated and challenged that power and control by creating the female technological Other. “Both kinship and ethical accountability,” she says, “need to be redefined in such a way as to rethink links of affectivity and responsibility, not only for non-anthropomorphic organic others, but also for those technologically mediated, newly patented creatures we are sharing our planet with” (81). This argument is paralleled in her analysis of Rudy’s experience of firing the drone under orders in Alex Rivera’s film Sleep Dealer (2008), where technology serves to disrupt empathy by eliminating any real interaction between the drone user and its victim (82...