Critical Theory and Science Fiction

Freedman, Carl. Critical Theory and Science Fiction. London: University Press of New England, 2000. Print.

***

Freedman writes that when he was working on this project, he offered colleagues this short description: “my thesis about critical theory and science fiction is that each is a version of the other” (xv). However, as a whole, Critical Theory and Science Fiction seems to argue that a certain kind of SF embodies the mode of emancipative thinking that Freedman associates with critical theory: “I do believe that both… have the potential to play a role in the liberation of humanity from oppression” (xx). In other words, Freedman doesn’t claim explicitly that critical theory itself is in some sense “science fictional.” Rather, he writes, “Just as Lukács argues that the historical novel is a privileged and paradigmatic genre for Marxism, so I argue that science fiction enjoys – and ought to be recognized as enjoying – such a position not only for Marxism but for critical theory in general” (xv). This leads me to the following questions: how would our thinking change if this relationship were reversed? What if “critical theory in general” was a paradigmatic “genre” for science fiction? What would this mean? Is it possible to enact this kind of cognitive estrangement on critical theory itself, or would the result be an irrational estrangement or fantasy, in Darko Suvin’s sense?

I’m interested in this more provocative and inchoate (and perhaps fatally problematic) project because it seems in order to use theory one first has to position oneself within the theoretical conversation; one has to form a set of intellectual and interpretative allegiances. One must decide upon a starting point from which to develop one’s own contribution to the conversation. This starting point most often is the theory of another thinker, whose work one complicates or applies to a particular cultural artifact under consideration. Freedman makes the point that each school of critical theory and literary interpretation privileges a certain genre for this analysis (he offers several examples on page 29). Further, Freedman himself seems to ally most strongly with Marx and historical materialism – although his discussion and application of theory is wide-ranging.

To develop my playful notion a bit, perhaps there are resonances between those who do theoretical work in an academic setting and authors of science fiction. Freedman claims that the two projects have “structural affinities,” but what “cognitive effect” might imagining the theorist as science fiction author produce? As I hinted at in the preceding paragraph, theorists ultimately make idiosyncratic decisions about where (and with whom) they begin and enter a conversation. These decisions occur within institutional contexts and also reflect the social process of scholarship. However, might one’s relationship with theory bear a personal imprint, as well? Theorists are indebted to the thinkers that preceded them, and must wrestle with their influences, no less than a science fiction author creates texts that derive from and complicate authors who wrote before. An author like William Gibson, for example, owes a great deal of his style to Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler and cites William Burroughs as one of his primary influences. However, Neuromancer ultimately provides a way of looking at a computerized world that goes beyond anything that came previously (both in the stylistic and “cognitive” sense).

However derivative its elements might be, then, Gibson’s “cyberpunk” is certainly an original invention, even if, as Freedman astutely points out, cyberpunk is “less radically critical and so less radically science fictional” than earlier works (198) [emphasis removed]. “Critical theory as cyberpunk” is then a doubly imperfect metaphor. However, this brings us to another parallel between the author of critical theory (CT) and SF. As Steven Shaviro suggests in Connected:

Both of these sorts of writing [CT and SF] seek to grasp the social world not by representing it mimetically but by performing a kind of ‘cognitive estrangement upon it so that the structures and assumptions that we take for granted, and that undergird our own social reality, may be seen in their full contingency and historicity. (x)

To pivot from my own cognitive estrangement and return to Freedman’s argument, “critical theory, as a mode of reading, tends to privilege science fiction (though usually, so far, implicitly and even unconsciously)… science fiction, like critical theory, insists upon historical mutability, material reducibility, and utopian possibility” (xvi).

There are perhaps other cognitively valuable resonances between authors of CT and SF; each traditionally occupies a position of privilege within the Euro-American world; each seeks to introduce a series of new words and concepts into various discourses (Csicsery-Ronay calls the language-inventions of SF authors “fictive-neology,” and CT authors often create their own words to express new insights provided by their arguments); neither is bound by scientific or empirically-verifiable epistemologies, nor can the speculations provided by CT and SF often be verified by empirical means.

I offer these thoughts primarily as a way of thinking a bit further about how I will position myself within the theoretical conversation. This is still very much a work-in-progress; I’m still in search of my “theory voice,” so to speak.

***

To return once more to Freedman’s argument, I should note that he does make one alteration to Suvin’s definition of SF as the literature of cognitive estrangement. Freedman’s departure hinges on whether or not Suvin’s definition of SF requires texts to adhere to the latest scientific epistemologies in order to be considered “cognitive.” For Freedman, this is not the case:

The crucial issue for generic discrimination is not any epistemological judgment external to the text itself on the rationality or irrationality of the latter’s imaginings, but rather (as some of Suvin’s language does, in fact, imply but never makes entirely clear) the attitude of the text itself to the kind of estrangements being performed. (18)

Freedman addresses this issue by creating the concept and term “cognition effect”: “Unless the distinction between cognition and cognition effect is kept steadily in view, the definition of science fiction as cognitive estrangement can lead to patent absurdities” (18) [emphasis added]. Scholars might debate whether Freedman’s modification of Suvin’s terms is truly necessary, but if nothing else the “cognition effect” provides an even clearer concept with which to understand and discuss what SF does for readers. Freedman distances “cognition” even more strongly from a narrow definition of “science.” He thus more closely aligns cognition with “critical thinking” than with anything resembling the scientific fidelity characteristic of “hard SF.”

Interestingly, Freedman doesn’t discuss at length how SF tropes are often appropriated by uncritical cultural projects: mindless entertainment spectacle, advertising, reactionary political rhetoric, etc. For example, most people’s conception of SF is probably closer to what SF scholars would pejoratively call “sci-fi.” If there is a “rhetoric of science fiction,” this problem is something worth thinking more about…

***

Other interesting quotations from Critical Theory and Science Fiction:

It is in the past forty years or so that we have witnessed the production of the largest distinct body of work that strongly incarnates tendency of science fiction and is explicitly and unambiguously published under name of science fiction. Especially insofar as the American and British traditions are concerned, this great increase in the critical sophistication of science fiction as named genre can be corrected with the more general increase in critical thinking – that is, in dialectical, historical, and utopian thinking – that characterizes the general cultural phenomenon known as ‘the Sixties.’ (94)

***

Science fiction is of all forms of art the one most closely and profoundly allied to critical theory. (199)