In contemporary mainstream science fiction victims are frequently the ultimate heroes, and white men are often (astonishingly) the ultimate victims. To occupy the position of the victim is often to be absolved of guilt and invested with the moral authority of retributive agency, and science fiction repeatedly offers agents of privilege an invitation to occupy the position of victims. In sharp contrast to this embrace of imperial masochism within mainstream science fiction, one of the most striking aspects of indigenous speculative fictions is a consistent refusal to sanctify victimry. Despite centuries of genocidal violence and extraordinary hardship within enduring settler–colonial regimes, indigenous sf narratives deconstruct victimization and eschew imperial masochism in favor of what Gerald Vizenor refers to as survivance paradigms. This essay examines key indigenous science fictions that reject victimization in favor of survivance narratives. Vizenor’s own “Custer on the Slipstream” (1978), for examp...
{"title":"Survivance in Indigenous Science Fictions: Vizenor, Silko, Glancy, and the Rejection of Imperial Victimry","authors":"D. Higgins","doi":"10.3828/EXTR.2016.5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/EXTR.2016.5","url":null,"abstract":"In contemporary mainstream science fiction victims are frequently the ultimate heroes, and white men are often (astonishingly) the ultimate victims. To occupy the position of the victim is often to be absolved of guilt and invested with the moral authority of retributive agency, and science fiction repeatedly offers agents of privilege an invitation to occupy the position of victims. In sharp contrast to this embrace of imperial masochism within mainstream science fiction, one of the most striking aspects of indigenous speculative fictions is a consistent refusal to sanctify victimry. Despite centuries of genocidal violence and extraordinary hardship within enduring settler–colonial regimes, indigenous sf narratives deconstruct victimization and eschew imperial masochism in favor of what Gerald Vizenor refers to as survivance paradigms. This essay examines key indigenous science fictions that reject victimization in favor of survivance narratives. Vizenor’s own “Custer on the Slipstream” (1978), for examp...","PeriodicalId":42992,"journal":{"name":"EXTRAPOLATION","volume":"57 1","pages":"51-72"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2016-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/EXTR.2016.5","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70509732","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Recent works by Ambelin Kwaymullina (Palyku), Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki), and Nnedi Okorafor challenge ideas that YA speculative futures must be ethnoculturally monolithic and unavoidably bleak. While their stories share elements with YA dystopia, postcolonial sf and Afrofuturism, they utilize a distinct artistic and theoretical approach called Indigenous futurism that incorporates Native/Indigenous concepts of community, power, and responsibility. From this unique position, their non-Caucasian female leads explore vital questions of choice and purpose, gender, violence, technology, environmental and social consciousness, and even endings and triumph.
Ambelin Kwaymullina (Palyku)， Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki)和Nnedi Okorafor最近的作品挑战了这样一种观点，即YA的未来必然是种族文化单一的，不可避免的黯淡。虽然他们的故事与青少年反乌托邦、后殖民科幻小说和非洲未来主义有共同的元素，但他们采用了一种独特的艺术和理论方法，称为土著未来主义，融合了土著/土著社区、权力和责任的概念。从这个独特的位置出发，她们的非白人女性女主角探索了选择和目的、性别、暴力、技术、环境和社会意识，甚至结局和胜利等重要问题。
{"title":"Children of Change, Not Doom: Indigenous Futurist Heroines in YA","authors":"Lyn James","doi":"10.3828/extr.2016.9","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2016.9","url":null,"abstract":"Recent works by Ambelin Kwaymullina (Palyku), Joseph Bruchac (Abenaki), and Nnedi Okorafor challenge ideas that YA speculative futures must be ethnoculturally monolithic and unavoidably bleak. While their stories share elements with YA dystopia, postcolonial sf and Afrofuturism, they utilize a distinct artistic and theoretical approach called Indigenous futurism that incorporates Native/Indigenous concepts of community, power, and responsibility. From this unique position, their non-Caucasian female leads explore vital questions of choice and purpose, gender, violence, technology, environmental and social consciousness, and even endings and triumph.","PeriodicalId":42992,"journal":{"name":"EXTRAPOLATION","volume":"57 1","pages":"151-176"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2016-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/extr.2016.9","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70509945","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I write science fiction. I practice a West African religion known as Ifa. I see no conflict between these two activities.Many highly intelligent people have tried to define science fiction. Me, too. I'm not immune to the lure of understanding what I do. The definition I came up with, the aphorism I wrote down and taped to the wall near my desk reads: "Science fiction is fiction that believes in science." That definition satisfied me at one level. Of course, it did raise the question of what it means to say that an abstraction "believes" in something. And then to say that one abstraction believes in another ... well, that's an obscurity dangling from an additional obscurity.Science is easier to define than science fiction. It's a system of knowing things, and it relies on forming and testing hypotheses, clearly stated suppositions about the universe. The results of these tests are supposed to be quantifiable, and the tests are supposed to be repeatable.Is it possible to believe in science? To have faith that this one system of knowing things is correct? I think so. I'm pretty sure so. When I talk about sf believing in science, though, my meaning runs more along these lines: stories belonging to this subgenre espouse, validate, support, and extrapolate from science as a belief.In the hit movie Avatar, botanist Grace Augustine defends her findings on the electrochemical network between Pandora's trees by distancing those findings from a religious belief system very much akin to my own. "This is not just pagan voodoo," she tells her corporate sponsor, reinforcing what I regard as a false dichotomy.There are solid connections between Ifa and the realm of science: Ifa divinities sacred to certain scientific methods, technologies, and areas of study; and parallels between divination and the scientific method. The flexibility of Ifa teachings and practice makes this tradition highly adaptable and able to encompass a scientific viewpoint when called on to do so. Also, the tools of divination (both the objects used and the texts referred to), the dances, songs, prayers, and offerings with which Ifa is celebrated, can all be seen as a technological repertoire for social cultivation. After exploring these points with me you may wish to read my science fiction story "Good Boy," available in my collection Filter House and on my website at www.nisishawl. com. In "Good Boy" a psychologist living on an extrasolar planet conducts experiments using an isolation tank, a la John Lilly. These experiments bring her and her detractors into contact with entities recognizable as members of the Ifa pantheon.I'm not going to try to thoroughly define Ifa, but I'll tell you some things about it. It's animistic-that is, the Ifa universe lives and grows and changes, and is full of subjects rather than objects. It's old. But also, it's new, because it's syncretistic-that is, it adapts itself to cultures it comes into contact with, adopting elements of them for its own purposes,
{"title":"Ifa: Reverence, Science, and Social Technology","authors":"Nisi Shawl","doi":"10.3828/EXTR.2016.12","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/EXTR.2016.12","url":null,"abstract":"I write science fiction. I practice a West African religion known as Ifa. I see no conflict between these two activities.Many highly intelligent people have tried to define science fiction. Me, too. I'm not immune to the lure of understanding what I do. The definition I came up with, the aphorism I wrote down and taped to the wall near my desk reads: \"Science fiction is fiction that believes in science.\" That definition satisfied me at one level. Of course, it did raise the question of what it means to say that an abstraction \"believes\" in something. And then to say that one abstraction believes in another ... well, that's an obscurity dangling from an additional obscurity.Science is easier to define than science fiction. It's a system of knowing things, and it relies on forming and testing hypotheses, clearly stated suppositions about the universe. The results of these tests are supposed to be quantifiable, and the tests are supposed to be repeatable.Is it possible to believe in science? To have faith that this one system of knowing things is correct? I think so. I'm pretty sure so. When I talk about sf believing in science, though, my meaning runs more along these lines: stories belonging to this subgenre espouse, validate, support, and extrapolate from science as a belief.In the hit movie Avatar, botanist Grace Augustine defends her findings on the electrochemical network between Pandora's trees by distancing those findings from a religious belief system very much akin to my own. \"This is not just pagan voodoo,\" she tells her corporate sponsor, reinforcing what I regard as a false dichotomy.There are solid connections between Ifa and the realm of science: Ifa divinities sacred to certain scientific methods, technologies, and areas of study; and parallels between divination and the scientific method. The flexibility of Ifa teachings and practice makes this tradition highly adaptable and able to encompass a scientific viewpoint when called on to do so. Also, the tools of divination (both the objects used and the texts referred to), the dances, songs, prayers, and offerings with which Ifa is celebrated, can all be seen as a technological repertoire for social cultivation. After exploring these points with me you may wish to read my science fiction story \"Good Boy,\" available in my collection Filter House and on my website at www.nisishawl. com. In \"Good Boy\" a psychologist living on an extrasolar planet conducts experiments using an isolation tank, a la John Lilly. These experiments bring her and her detractors into contact with entities recognizable as members of the Ifa pantheon.I'm not going to try to thoroughly define Ifa, but I'll tell you some things about it. It's animistic-that is, the Ifa universe lives and grows and changes, and is full of subjects rather than objects. It's old. But also, it's new, because it's syncretistic-that is, it adapts itself to cultures it comes into contact with, adopting elements of them for its own purposes, ","PeriodicalId":42992,"journal":{"name":"EXTRAPOLATION","volume":"57 1","pages":"221-228"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2016-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/EXTR.2016.12","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70509227","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Indigenous dystopian fiction presents not only the crisis of the future but the ongoing crisis of the present time, and that which is still resonant from the past. Accordingly, the potential healing of moments or processes of crisis in Indigenous dystopias is never possible without a strategic engagement with narrative itself, and even the formal aspects of the text. Storytelling, and a focus on space, place, and time in both the content and formal aspects of a story are factors in reconciling characters with that which inflicts them: in this sense, the dystopian Indigenous narrative is an engagement with environmental crisis, with the crisis of place and space, and must heal relationships with nature through a process of return to the cultural values inherent in a previous time and place.
{"title":"Indigenous) Place and Time as Formal Strategy","authors":"C. Scott","doi":"10.3828/EXTR.2016.6","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/EXTR.2016.6","url":null,"abstract":"Indigenous dystopian fiction presents not only the crisis of the future but the ongoing crisis of the present time, and that which is still resonant from the past. Accordingly, the potential healing of moments or processes of crisis in Indigenous dystopias is never possible without a strategic engagement with narrative itself, and even the formal aspects of the text. Storytelling, and a focus on space, place, and time in both the content and formal aspects of a story are factors in reconciling characters with that which inflicts them: in this sense, the dystopian Indigenous narrative is an engagement with environmental crisis, with the crisis of place and space, and must heal relationships with nature through a process of return to the cultural values inherent in a previous time and place.","PeriodicalId":42992,"journal":{"name":"EXTRAPOLATION","volume":"57 1","pages":"73-93"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2016-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/EXTR.2016.6","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70509777","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article defines Indigenous futurisms as Indigenous storytelling about the future and discusses its form and function in the work of five contemporary North American Indigenous artists. This involves, on the one hand, locating Indigenous artistic expression in the complex discursive field of colonialist representations, postmodern aesthetics, and popular culture; on the other hand, Indigenous futurisms must be both linked with and delineated from Western traditions of imagining the future. The future is an ideologically inflected space and in order to establish artistic presence and envision Indigenous futures, Indigenous artists break open structures of meaning production and liberate Indigenous forms of expression from stereotyping. On the intersection of North American Indigenous realities with pop art and popular culture, and of the memory of historical trauma with Western ideologies of progress, Indigenous artists create a visual code to map out new worlds and project Indigenous sovereignties int...
{"title":"Indigenous Futurisms in North American Indigenous Art","authors":"Kristina Baudemann","doi":"10.3828/EXTR.2016.8","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/EXTR.2016.8","url":null,"abstract":"This article defines Indigenous futurisms as Indigenous storytelling about the future and discusses its form and function in the work of five contemporary North American Indigenous artists. This involves, on the one hand, locating Indigenous artistic expression in the complex discursive field of colonialist representations, postmodern aesthetics, and popular culture; on the other hand, Indigenous futurisms must be both linked with and delineated from Western traditions of imagining the future. The future is an ideologically inflected space and in order to establish artistic presence and envision Indigenous futures, Indigenous artists break open structures of meaning production and liberate Indigenous forms of expression from stereotyping. On the intersection of North American Indigenous realities with pop art and popular culture, and of the memory of historical trauma with Western ideologies of progress, Indigenous artists create a visual code to map out new worlds and project Indigenous sovereignties int...","PeriodicalId":42992,"journal":{"name":"EXTRAPOLATION","volume":"57 1","pages":"117-150"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2016-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/EXTR.2016.8","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70509882","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
“Ghost Dances on Silver Screens: Pumzi and Older Than America” is a meditation on the ghost artistry of filmmakers Wanuri Kahiu and Georgina Lightning. Ghosts are an embodiment of the invisible forces of a past that hasn’t gone anywhere. Revealing what is normally concealed, ghosts are sacred/demonic tricksters who provide alternate perspectives on the here and now and on the future. Asha from Kahiu’s Pumzi and Rain from Lightning’s Older than America engage with the ghosts of their ancestors not as an exercise in nostalgia for a paradise lost nor as a scare-you-to-death adrenaline ride. Rain and Asha dance with the ancestors so that they might reorder the cosmos. They are futurists, reanimating and reinventing the world.
《银幕上的幽灵舞蹈:普姆齐和比美国更古老》是对电影制作人瓦努里·卡尤和乔治娜·雷明的幽灵艺术的思考。鬼魂是过去的无形力量的化身，过去的无形力量从未消失。幽灵揭示了通常隐藏的东西，它们是神圣/恶魔般的骗子，提供了关于此时此地和未来的不同视角。Kahiu的《Pumzi》中的Asha和Lightning的《old than America》中的Rain都与祖先的鬼魂进行了交流，既不是为了怀念失去的天堂，也不是为了刺激你的肾上腺素。雨和亚莎与祖先共舞，以便他们可以重新安排宇宙。他们是未来主义者，给世界注入活力，重新创造世界。
{"title":"Ghost Dances on Silver Screens","authors":"Andrea Hairston","doi":"10.3828/extr.2016.3","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/extr.2016.3","url":null,"abstract":"“Ghost Dances on Silver Screens: Pumzi and Older Than America” is a meditation on the ghost artistry of filmmakers Wanuri Kahiu and Georgina Lightning. Ghosts are an embodiment of the invisible forces of a past that hasn’t gone anywhere. Revealing what is normally concealed, ghosts are sacred/demonic tricksters who provide alternate perspectives on the here and now and on the future. Asha from Kahiu’s Pumzi and Rain from Lightning’s Older than America engage with the ghosts of their ancestors not as an exercise in nostalgia for a paradise lost nor as a scare-you-to-death adrenaline ride. Rain and Asha dance with the ancestors so that they might reorder the cosmos. They are futurists, reanimating and reinventing the world.","PeriodicalId":42992,"journal":{"name":"EXTRAPOLATION","volume":"22 1","pages":"7-20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2016-04-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/extr.2016.3","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70509808","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Not so clear-cut after all : Rezension: Clareson, Thomas D. / Sanders, Joe, The heritage of Heinlein : a critical reading of the fiction. Jefferson 2014","authors":"S. Spiegel","doi":"10.5167/uzh-142267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-142267","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42992,"journal":{"name":"EXTRAPOLATION","volume":"30 3 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70640608","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Matthew Kaopio's two young adult novels, Written in the Sky (2005) and Up Among the Stars (2011), tell the story of 'Ikauikalani Kealahele, a homeless fourteen-year-old Kanaka Maoli1 from the island of O'ahu who has been living in Ala Moana Beach Park since the death of his only remaining guardian, his grandmother. The plot of the first novel deals mostly with 'Ikau's day-to-day survival and is a coming-of-age story about 'Ikau's efforts at moving from cultural loss to a strong cultural identity through learning his genealogy and kuleana (McDougall, "Ue" 57). In the second novel 'Ikau expands upon his survival skills, which include reading the sky and stars, talking to animals, attending to the messages that come to him in dreams, and dealing with the vagaries of homelessness, including the constant search for food and harassment from unsavory street characters. Together, the two novels tell an uplifting story about how a young boy who is willing to forge caring relationships with others can discover a multitude of teachers and friends walking the streets of urban Honolulu.We might also say that the novels are broadly appealing because they tell the story of an Indigenous character who overcomes the effects of a history of political occupation and settler-colonial social relations without ever naming these ongoing oppressive processes and structures. In fact, as readers we are barely made aware of the history that has undoubtedly shaped 'Ikau's circumstances; there is only one moment in the two novels in which the reader is confronted with Hawai'i's political status. The narrator, who usually restricts himself to a close third-person point of view centered on 'Ikau, shows readers that he has a little more knowledge about the world than 'Ikau, and perhaps a few opinions. This shift happens in a scene describing what 'Ikau sees at a peace rally:Some of them were angry protesters practicing their freedom of speech by voicing their opposition to the state and the federal government as illegal occupants. Others claimed to belong to separatist nations and kingdoms governed by self-declared kings and queens. But the majority was made up of civil-minded citizens in support of finding resolution to society's problems, which included the issue of homelessness. (Kaopio, Stars 154)Whoever is narrating this passage seems to endorse the "civil-minded citizens" looking to solve problems, and seems skeptical and slightly disapproving of the "angry protesters" and "self-declared kings and queens." These turns of phrase are not surprising given the gently moralizing tone of the work; Kaopio seems interested in empowering the victims of empire through thinly veiled spiritual instruction, not in theorizing their oppression. That 'Ikau is a twenty-first-century homeless Hawaiian is the result of colonial dispossession (McDougall ,"Ue" 53). However, 'Ikau doesn't know that, and rather than contextualizing 'Ikau's life within Hawai'i's experiences of occupation and set
{"title":"Hawaiian Futurism: Written in the Sky and Up among the Stars","authors":"K. Amos","doi":"10.3828/EXTR.2016.11","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/EXTR.2016.11","url":null,"abstract":"Matthew Kaopio's two young adult novels, Written in the Sky (2005) and Up Among the Stars (2011), tell the story of 'Ikauikalani Kealahele, a homeless fourteen-year-old Kanaka Maoli1 from the island of O'ahu who has been living in Ala Moana Beach Park since the death of his only remaining guardian, his grandmother. The plot of the first novel deals mostly with 'Ikau's day-to-day survival and is a coming-of-age story about 'Ikau's efforts at moving from cultural loss to a strong cultural identity through learning his genealogy and kuleana (McDougall, \"Ue\" 57). In the second novel 'Ikau expands upon his survival skills, which include reading the sky and stars, talking to animals, attending to the messages that come to him in dreams, and dealing with the vagaries of homelessness, including the constant search for food and harassment from unsavory street characters. Together, the two novels tell an uplifting story about how a young boy who is willing to forge caring relationships with others can discover a multitude of teachers and friends walking the streets of urban Honolulu.We might also say that the novels are broadly appealing because they tell the story of an Indigenous character who overcomes the effects of a history of political occupation and settler-colonial social relations without ever naming these ongoing oppressive processes and structures. In fact, as readers we are barely made aware of the history that has undoubtedly shaped 'Ikau's circumstances; there is only one moment in the two novels in which the reader is confronted with Hawai'i's political status. The narrator, who usually restricts himself to a close third-person point of view centered on 'Ikau, shows readers that he has a little more knowledge about the world than 'Ikau, and perhaps a few opinions. This shift happens in a scene describing what 'Ikau sees at a peace rally:Some of them were angry protesters practicing their freedom of speech by voicing their opposition to the state and the federal government as illegal occupants. Others claimed to belong to separatist nations and kingdoms governed by self-declared kings and queens. But the majority was made up of civil-minded citizens in support of finding resolution to society's problems, which included the issue of homelessness. (Kaopio, Stars 154)Whoever is narrating this passage seems to endorse the \"civil-minded citizens\" looking to solve problems, and seems skeptical and slightly disapproving of the \"angry protesters\" and \"self-declared kings and queens.\" These turns of phrase are not surprising given the gently moralizing tone of the work; Kaopio seems interested in empowering the victims of empire through thinly veiled spiritual instruction, not in theorizing their oppression. That 'Ikau is a twenty-first-century homeless Hawaiian is the result of colonial dispossession (McDougall ,\"Ue\" 53). However, 'Ikau doesn't know that, and rather than contextualizing 'Ikau's life within Hawai'i's experiences of occupation and set","PeriodicalId":42992,"journal":{"name":"EXTRAPOLATION","volume":"57 1","pages":"197-220"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/EXTR.2016.11","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70509596","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In 2012, the Indigenous science fiction anthology Walking the Clouds challenged critics and artists alike to recognize the qualities lauded in contemporary experimental sf as core elements of ancient Indigenous epistemologies. Walking the Clouds asked critics to recognize the Indigenous origins of sf tropes, and it asked Indigenous artists to write more sf.That call has been answered by an impressive array of new publications, reprints, conference and journal CFPs, fresh sf stories that renew venerable traditions, old stories retold anew, short films and media explosions ranging from comic books, video games, board games, and graphic arts to music and new media conjurations.This special issue of Extrapolation brings together ten diverse contributors who extend the praxis of Indigenous Futurisms by drawing our attention to practitioners whose work we may recognize from previous venues, or whose contributions we might be receiving for the first time.The essays collected here explore discoveries, in contrast to the sf template of discovery. Indigenous Futurisms is not about chronicling the many instances of mainstream sf that borrow the victimized noble savage trope in order to relive wild-west fantasies, nor to offer contrition about past injustices, however well mannered. Maanoo. Our colleague John Rieder's 2008 study Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction remains the seminal scholarly redaction of ironic (post)colonial theories that perpetuate the colonial gaze while bearing witness to the Indigenous presence in sf.First in our collection of thought pieces on Indigenous Futurisms, Andrea Hairston challenges us to examine our feelings about ghost phenomena-those uncanny presences that we occasionally feel but cannot rationally categorize. Hairston professes that she is "a futurist speculating on disappeared history." After offering a considered historical record of ghost theories, she makes a satisfying assessment: "Ghosts are an embodiment of invisible forces from a past that hasn't gone anywhere." Set on this path, it is easy to see how contemplation of futurisms is another step in an inevitable direction, especially for peoples whose experience of an Apocalypse Now frustrates their chances of finding "a way out of no way to the future." Using the work of filmmakers Wanuri Kahiu (Kikuyu, Kenya) and Georgina Lightning (Cree, Canada), Hairston illustrates how artists who are haunted by a disappeared past while facing survival in a devastated present can reclaim possible futures through aesthetic creation.Hairston personalizes ghostly encounters as events that take place within the mindscape. Andrew Uzendoski tackles the trope in its most public and recognizable performance for Native American peoples, the Ghost Dance. Focusing on Gerald Vizenor's (Anishinaabe) sf alternate history The Heirs of Columbus, Uzendoski invokes seminal Indigenous Futurisms concepts, including lawful, legal, and intertribal resistance on national and internation
{"title":"Introduction: Indigenous Futurisms,Bimaashi Biidaas Mose, FlyingandWalking towards You","authors":"Grace L. Dillon","doi":"10.3828/EXTR.2016.2","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/EXTR.2016.2","url":null,"abstract":"In 2012, the Indigenous science fiction anthology Walking the Clouds challenged critics and artists alike to recognize the qualities lauded in contemporary experimental sf as core elements of ancient Indigenous epistemologies. Walking the Clouds asked critics to recognize the Indigenous origins of sf tropes, and it asked Indigenous artists to write more sf.That call has been answered by an impressive array of new publications, reprints, conference and journal CFPs, fresh sf stories that renew venerable traditions, old stories retold anew, short films and media explosions ranging from comic books, video games, board games, and graphic arts to music and new media conjurations.This special issue of Extrapolation brings together ten diverse contributors who extend the praxis of Indigenous Futurisms by drawing our attention to practitioners whose work we may recognize from previous venues, or whose contributions we might be receiving for the first time.The essays collected here explore discoveries, in contrast to the sf template of discovery. Indigenous Futurisms is not about chronicling the many instances of mainstream sf that borrow the victimized noble savage trope in order to relive wild-west fantasies, nor to offer contrition about past injustices, however well mannered. Maanoo. Our colleague John Rieder's 2008 study Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction remains the seminal scholarly redaction of ironic (post)colonial theories that perpetuate the colonial gaze while bearing witness to the Indigenous presence in sf.First in our collection of thought pieces on Indigenous Futurisms, Andrea Hairston challenges us to examine our feelings about ghost phenomena-those uncanny presences that we occasionally feel but cannot rationally categorize. Hairston professes that she is \"a futurist speculating on disappeared history.\" After offering a considered historical record of ghost theories, she makes a satisfying assessment: \"Ghosts are an embodiment of invisible forces from a past that hasn't gone anywhere.\" Set on this path, it is easy to see how contemplation of futurisms is another step in an inevitable direction, especially for peoples whose experience of an Apocalypse Now frustrates their chances of finding \"a way out of no way to the future.\" Using the work of filmmakers Wanuri Kahiu (Kikuyu, Kenya) and Georgina Lightning (Cree, Canada), Hairston illustrates how artists who are haunted by a disappeared past while facing survival in a devastated present can reclaim possible futures through aesthetic creation.Hairston personalizes ghostly encounters as events that take place within the mindscape. Andrew Uzendoski tackles the trope in its most public and recognizable performance for Native American peoples, the Ghost Dance. Focusing on Gerald Vizenor's (Anishinaabe) sf alternate history The Heirs of Columbus, Uzendoski invokes seminal Indigenous Futurisms concepts, including lawful, legal, and intertribal resistance on national and internation","PeriodicalId":42992,"journal":{"name":"EXTRAPOLATION","volume":"57 1","pages":"1-6"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3828/EXTR.2016.2","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70509746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Contemporary developed societies may be characterized not only by the unprecedented speed at which the amount of preserved information increases-with which various types of archive grow in size-but also by the democratization of access to these archives. This phenomenon has its origins in the growing popularity of digital media in general and the internet in particular: technologies which facilitate various means of storage and retrieval of information. Digital technologies are responsible not only for facilitating the storage of information traditionally understood as archival, but for the appearance of new types of archive, which, in turn, change the range of things deemed worthy of being preserved, and thus remembered. These changes are the focus of studies conducted within various social sciences, among them media theory and archival science, where one of the main themes is the issue of access to a variety of modern archives, as more and more things-starting with the least important administrative decisions and ending with pictures from individuals' private, often intimate, experiences-are recorded. This development gives rise to the question of who should be allowed not only to view these records but also to publish them, potentially in edited, changed, or manipulated versions. Growing digital records also prompt research into the changing relationship between personal and collective memory, as well as studies on the influence of digital archives on human creativity.However, in the search to understand the phenomenon of modern archives one can also turn to science fiction, which has always been concerned with technology, and today is particularly well-suited to comment on the changing world, as the speed of change brings us to a situation in which reality seems to catch up with science fiction scenarios. It could be argued that the advantage of science fiction over purely theoretical works is that it allows the reader to see the new technologies in, as it were, a more natural context of the world as experienced by people simply living in it, in contrast to seeing them abstracted from this natural context by theoretical thought.This article focuses on the way in which the issue of access to archives-in their current forms but also those that are only imagined but can be considered as highly probable-is represented in the science fiction novel Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. Set in the 2020s, the novel sketches the vision of the world of a not-so-distant future dominated by technology. The twenty or so years between the time in which the novel is set and the time in which it was written allow Vinge to extrapolate from the situation in the early years of the twentyfirst century to present probable developments in the near future. His main interest seems to lie in the field of communications and data storage, as he explores issues connected with the sending and receiving of newly created information but also with ways of gaining access to stored d
{"title":"Whose Archive?: Questions of Access to Information and Memory in Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge","authors":"S. Kozioł","doi":"10.3828/EXTR.2016.15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3828/EXTR.2016.15","url":null,"abstract":"Contemporary developed societies may be characterized not only by the unprecedented speed at which the amount of preserved information increases-with which various types of archive grow in size-but also by the democratization of access to these archives. This phenomenon has its origins in the growing popularity of digital media in general and the internet in particular: technologies which facilitate various means of storage and retrieval of information. Digital technologies are responsible not only for facilitating the storage of information traditionally understood as archival, but for the appearance of new types of archive, which, in turn, change the range of things deemed worthy of being preserved, and thus remembered. These changes are the focus of studies conducted within various social sciences, among them media theory and archival science, where one of the main themes is the issue of access to a variety of modern archives, as more and more things-starting with the least important administrative decisions and ending with pictures from individuals' private, often intimate, experiences-are recorded. This development gives rise to the question of who should be allowed not only to view these records but also to publish them, potentially in edited, changed, or manipulated versions. Growing digital records also prompt research into the changing relationship between personal and collective memory, as well as studies on the influence of digital archives on human creativity.However, in the search to understand the phenomenon of modern archives one can also turn to science fiction, which has always been concerned with technology, and today is particularly well-suited to comment on the changing world, as the speed of change brings us to a situation in which reality seems to catch up with science fiction scenarios. It could be argued that the advantage of science fiction over purely theoretical works is that it allows the reader to see the new technologies in, as it were, a more natural context of the world as experienced by people simply living in it, in contrast to seeing them abstracted from this natural context by theoretical thought.This article focuses on the way in which the issue of access to archives-in their current forms but also those that are only imagined but can be considered as highly probable-is represented in the science fiction novel Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge. Set in the 2020s, the novel sketches the vision of the world of a not-so-distant future dominated by technology. The twenty or so years between the time in which the novel is set and the time in which it was written allow Vinge to extrapolate from the situation in the early years of the twentyfirst century to present probable developments in the near future. His main interest seems to lie in the field of communications and data storage, as he explores issues connected with the sending and receiving of newly created information but also with ways of gaining access to stored d","PeriodicalId":42992,"journal":{"name":"EXTRAPOLATION","volume":"57 1","pages":"265-287"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2016-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"70509422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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