Abstracts

 

Mónica Ayuso

Toward a Broader Definition of the Unrealistic: Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God and Ernesto Quiñonez's Taína

 

This article argues that Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God (2017) and Ernesto Quiñonez’s Taína (2019)—the former directed towards the future, the latter towards the past--have a similar purpose. Mainly through incursions into the genre Quiñonez himself labeled urban magical realism, Taína recapitulates the real social and historical relations that obtain within the post-colonial culture of Latinx, mostly Puerto Ricans, in New York. In this manner, they restructure/rewrite the past, implicitly reorienting the future. And in her one and only foray into the genre of speculative fiction to date, Erdrich’s Future Home aims equally at dislodging present conditions involving the Ojibwe as a means of imagining a different future. Both narratives come to terms with a traumatic past. First they deploy, and then they foil, dominant histories/narratives in order to decolonize the deterministic future that colonial/capitalist power structures crystalize for Indigenous peoples. The genres of magical realism and speculative fiction open alternate spaces of empowerment and engagement as they broaden the definition of the unrealistic to include the magical and the futuristic.

 

Anthony López Get

Communication Breakdown: Failed Embodied Individuation and Computer Mediated Communication in Samanta Schweblin’s Kentukis [Little Eyes]

 

The present study explores the failure of technological bodies as vessels for alternative subjectivities or as viable forms of new human relations in Argentinian writer Samanta Schweblin’s dystopian novel Kentukis [Little Eyes] (2018).  The characters in the novel represent the alienation of individuals in an increasingly technological world—not futuristic, but very current and present—with thousands of channels and mediums of communication, but fewer chances of human contact. This lack in the lives of the characters puts them in a vulnerable condition, exploited by the marketing of these new technologies. The element of anonymity provided by Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)—here represented by kentukis—contrasts with the exponential invasion of privacy some users are willing to endure in order to participate in a social game.  I argue that the novel criticizes the alienating effect of technology and the inadequacy of the vast options of CMC. Alluding to current anxieties in the Information Era related to identity and the use of alter egos mediated by computer interfaces, the author exposes the need to find meaningful channels of communication, the limitations of these embodied subjectivities by means of the different characters’ inability to communicate effectively, and the fragility of these alternative lives.

 

Steffan Hantke

Benevolent Conspiracy: Biopolitics and Paranoia in Shane Carruth’s Upstream Color

 

Celebrated by critics for its elliptical, fragmentary aesthetics, Shane Carruth's Upstream Color deploys elements of the paranoid science fiction thriller, albeit without the requisite affective register of panic and anxiety. The fictional biotechnological process at the core of its narrative evolves into a complex web of visual and thematic associations in which paranoid anxiety gradually dissipates. While this appears at first glance as a critical deconstruction of conspiracy theories—all the more relevant at a time when American politics engages more than ever in what Richard Hofstadter has called a “paranoid style”—the film actually steers clear of conventional gestures of opposing or debunking paranoia. Instead, it expands the representational range in which paranoia can be rendered and experienced. Proposing what amounts of a version of conspiracy that is no longer nefarious in methods and intents, but potentially beneficial in its outcomes, Upstream Color assumes particular relevance in regard to the biological metaphors it selects to make its point—an exploration of biopolitics which, viewed in hindsight of the COVID-19 pandemic, accounts both for the productive management of biotechnological anxieties and the conspiracy theories in which these anxieties manifest themselves.

 

Yuri Garcia

Filmic Transpositions of Comic Books: Theorising the Relationship Between the Languages of Cinema and Comics

 

Filmic transpositions of comic books—especially superhero stories—have provided huge box office gains for Hollywood, while the comic book market seems to leverage itself with the publicity of its characters and their narratives in the audiovisual. This article outlines some similarities between these two media, highlighting aspects of their languages. The first section presents the relationship between comics and live action cinema, tracing an overview of their historical elements and already developing some articulations of a more theoretical nature. Similarities between the two media through specific authors and issues of language and content will also be addressed, to provide a more complete view of this phenomenon. The second section focuses on discussing some differences and difficulties, debating the transposition process through more technical observations, and approaching the most recent scenario of film productions and specific research on the subject. This discussion of similarities and differences in the relationship between cinema and comics will highlight issues surrounding the popularization of live-action transpositions of superhero stories, a process that does not seem to be reaching its conclusive period, but rather opening new possibilities. The final section contains considerations on the most recent mutations in this field, demonstrating that this object of study is a phenomenon in constant transformation and reconfiguration.

 

Keywords: Cinema; comic books; transpositions; language; theory.

 

Sayujya Sankar

Grotesque Bodies and Grotesque Power in Djinn City and Clone

 

The presence of the grotesque in Djinn City and Clone functions as a mirror to society, depicting various curbs on freedom and individual rights. Saad Hossain and Priya Chabria refer to a historical or mythical past located within the Indian subcontinent, which defines the plotline for their protagonists. Through this interweaving of past, present and future, the writers reflect the stark reality that humanity is predominantly repressive while simultaneously exploring what justice is in these skewed worlds.

Djinn City and Clone begin by exploring the differences between the human and the fantastic, only to highlight the monstrosity in both. Fundamentally, both novels ask what it is to be human(e) and situate this existential question in the regional and historical landscape of Bangladesh and India, respectively. The authors shape notions of the grotesque/ human and the monstrous/humane not as opposing qualities, but as interchangeable characteristics among various beings. The depiction of past, present and future can be interlinked with the socio-political landscape depicted in the novels.

 

Marissa Luquette

Jinetes de la tormenta: The Invasive Influence of Gender Constructs on the Journey Towards Selfhood and Societal Progress

 

Through the lens of Jinetes de la tormenta, a Spanish novel written by Javier Castañeda de la Torre in 2019, this article seeks to classify gender as a primary source of human discontent and a significant obstacle on the journey towards self-actualization and social progress. Lacanian psychoanalytic theory as well as the feminist theories of Hélène Cixous are employed to demonstrate the alienation from and erasure of the self that occurs within the novel through the consistent use of European languages binarized by gender. Alongside Lacan and Cixous, theories by Judith Butler are utilized to detail the confines of the gendered body that impede the protagonist, Yarsa’s, ability to develop a sense of identity and find fulfillment in her life. In conclusion, this article examines Yarsa’s communications with Gumba, an artificial intelligence of extraterrestrial origin via a futuristic machine called the “axionita,” first, as a method for healing from gender-based violence, and second, as an accessible model of technology through which a gender-bound perception of the self can be deconstructed. As a result of inclusive language patterns set forth in user-based technology like the “axionita,” the undivided self can be recovered, as opposed to contemporary technology which stifles inclusivity and reinforces alienation from the self.

 

Willow M. Conley and Natalie Grinnell

The Queer Temporality of Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate

 

In most contemporary werewolf literature, the werewolf body changes shape but the contemporary werewolf heroine is still helpless to resist this temporal sequence of  birth, marriage, reproduction, and death typical of  historical romance. This article uses the concept of queer temporality to show how the werewolves in Gail Carriger’s Parasol Protectorate series twist away from normative temporality to redefine the nature of the wolf, its erotic relationships, and its function in the werewolf pack, creating a queer space in the supernatural community that resists many of the clichéd tropes of other paranormal romance.

 

Dylan Henderson

“I’m No Mollycoddle”: A Reinterpretation of Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model”

 

H. P. Lovecraft’s “Pickman’s Model” has attracted less scholarly attention than the other short stories he wrote at that time, and most critics have dismissed it as pulpish and conventional. If contextualized, however, the nature of the story changes, and it becomes one of Lovecraft’s most pointed, and enjoyable, satires. A close reading suggests that it reimagines recent events in Lovecraft’s professional life, specifically his troubles with the new editor of Weird Tales, Farnsworth Wright. Responding to a controversy over “The Loved Dead,” which Lovecraft revised, Wright promised in early 1925 to ban gruesome horror, a compromise that would exclude many of Lovecraft’s contemporary efforts. The contradictions that Lovecraft saw in this policy, and which he mocked in his correspondence, resurface in “Pickman’s Model,” which invites the reader to laugh at its protagonist and his stance toward weird art and, by extension, the stance taken by Weird Tales. 

 

Barbara Greene

The Hell that You Create: Hellbound: Hellraiser II and the Limits of the Symbolic Order

 

The horror of Hellbound: Hellraiser II lies not in its use of menace or the boundaries of the human body that are violated but instead in its exploration of the ultimate Lack that lies within the Symbolic Order and male hegemony. Those who fully absorb the masks and identities projected upon them by the Symbolic Order remain utterly vulnerable to the mundane world’s paternal order. Hell is a mirror that makes physical the inherent violence of the social order in the same way that the filth and brutality of Dr. Channard’s basement is an overt version of the brightly lit mental ward above, where women are imprisoned, exploited and brutalized.

The Hellish maternal only arises when it exists as a mirror to the mundane paternal.  Kirstie and Tiffany’s ability to see the illusory nature of both realms provides them with the power to escape and find their sense of identity and peace.  This escape is only available to the feminine due to their psycho-social development.  Ultimately, their connection to reality and their intuitive grasp of the limits of the mundane world’s Symbolic Order allow Kirstie and Tiffany to survive their encounter with Hell when those around them fail. Despite their status as female patients in a mental institution, they recognize that the power of the institution is not all-encompassing, just as they recognize that the power of the Leviathan is limited. Only through the liberation of resisting surrenders of identity can both worlds collapse into something truly compassionate and without horror.

 

Geoff Guevara-Geer

Elliptical Structures and Fantastic Times: Coltrane’s “My Favorite Things” and García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude

 

Calling upon Cuban Severo Sarduy’s neo-Baroque figure of the ellipse, this article considers similarities between John Coltrane’s jazz recomposition of “My Favorite Things” (1960) and Gabriel García Márquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Both are approached as ellipses, dually centered and liberated from the singular centrisms of then-recent works, Coltrane’s “Giant Steps” (1967) and García Márquez’s “The Third Resignation” (1947). Unlike those circular or linear works, these achieve a floating, fantastic time, barely tethered to pre-determined forces and immensely appealing to mass audiences. It was a moment for ellipses in the arts, works achieving a fantastical sense of time, only obliquely responding to historical forces. After these works, the arts at large, and these artists in particular, would leave ellipses and mass appeal behind with more forward-thinking works such as Coltrane’s Interstellar Space (1967) and García Márquez’s The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975).

 

Patrick Anthony Barbosa Brock

Genre Infrastructure as Speculative Method in Latin America

 

Based on ethnographic research of 100 speculative fiction creators and fans in nine Latin American countries, this article describes the contemporary social role of genre and its communities of practice. Identifying the intersection of the genre’s self-organization and political intent in the region as genre infrastructure, the article argues that it constitutes a socially regenerative collectivity and speculative method. Lastly, it discusses the potential of these efforts to enact change as a new form of political imagination within the globally emerging culture of CoFuturisms. Because of the way cognition is socially distributed, this article argues that CoFuturisms can operate as political-aesthetic subjectivities that intervene in the failure to conceive and enact different presents and futures.

 

Jon Alkorta

Gender and Old Age as Sources of Empowerment: Tenar’s Case in Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea Saga

 

The present paper aims at filling a gap that exists in scholarly research about Tenar’s character in Le Guin’s Earthsea saga once she reaches old age. The study of this period of her life is crucial because it is the combination of two factors, namely her female condition and old age, that enable her to become a powerful and individualised character. This essay establishes bridges between Tenar’s own process and Le Guin’s ideals about gender and social equality.  To accomplish this, the present paper focuses on Tenar’s life as an adult as shown in Tehanu and The Other Wind, discerning the role that Le Guin’s ideas about feminism and social power structures play in this character’s conversion into a powerful individual.  Studying Earthsea’s last two novels, Tehanu and The Other Wind, conveys Le Guin’s anxieties related to issues such as gender and social justice. What is remarkable in these last instalments is the skill that Le Guin showcases even after getting rid of some of its main conventions, namely action and adventure. In Tehanu and The Other Wind, it is as if the action and main lines of the argument are moved to the background and the focus is put on the lives that certain characters lead. As Rashley points out, they are the result of Le Guin’s “effort to redefine the nature of heroism to include women’s experience” (27). Le Guin picks and discards elements of the fantasy genre as she deems them appropriate for the telling of her story and those of her female characters, whose life stories resemble the description she gives of her own life.

 

Keywords: gender, old age, empowering, social equality, Le Guin, Earthsea