Project(ing) Human: Representations of Disability in Science Fiction

Project(ing) Human: Representations of Disability in Science Fiction PDF Author: Courtney Stanton
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648896928
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

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Book Description
This edited volume examines representations of disability within popular science fiction, using examples from television, film, literature, and gaming to explore how the genre of science fiction shapes cultural understanding of disability experience. Science fiction texts typically grapple with concepts such as transhumanism, embodiment, and autonomy more directly than do those of other genres. In doing so, they raise significant questions about the experience of disability. More broadly, they often convey the place of disability in not only the future but also the world of today. Through critical research, the chapters within this interdisciplinary collection explore what science fiction texts convey about the value of disability, whether it be through disabled characters, biotechnologies, or, more broadly, conceptions of an idealized future. Chapters are grouped thematically and include discussions of the intersections of disability with other identity groups, the interplay of disability and market/capitalist value, and how disability shapes current and future definitions of human-ness, agency, and autonomy. This full volume builds on current research regarding the relationship of disability studies to the science fiction genre by exploring new themes and contemporary media to aid as an instructional tool for scholars in fields of disability studies, science fiction literature, and media studies.

Project(ing) Human: Representations of Disability in Science Fiction

Project(ing) Human: Representations of Disability in Science Fiction PDF Author: Courtney Stanton
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648896928
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 208

Get Book Here

Book Description
This edited volume examines representations of disability within popular science fiction, using examples from television, film, literature, and gaming to explore how the genre of science fiction shapes cultural understanding of disability experience. Science fiction texts typically grapple with concepts such as transhumanism, embodiment, and autonomy more directly than do those of other genres. In doing so, they raise significant questions about the experience of disability. More broadly, they often convey the place of disability in not only the future but also the world of today. Through critical research, the chapters within this interdisciplinary collection explore what science fiction texts convey about the value of disability, whether it be through disabled characters, biotechnologies, or, more broadly, conceptions of an idealized future. Chapters are grouped thematically and include discussions of the intersections of disability with other identity groups, the interplay of disability and market/capitalist value, and how disability shapes current and future definitions of human-ness, agency, and autonomy. This full volume builds on current research regarding the relationship of disability studies to the science fiction genre by exploring new themes and contemporary media to aid as an instructional tool for scholars in fields of disability studies, science fiction literature, and media studies.

Reclaiming the Disabled Subject

Reclaiming the Disabled Subject PDF Author:
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 9354351298
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
Mired inside its rather archaic comprehension as a medical phenomenon, disability, for a long time now, has been ignored as a marker of identity. The world has only been busy in rectifying the absences that have, ostensibly “dis-abled”, rather than accepting such impaired existences as human beings themselves. The volume intends to reclaim the representations of disability and present narratives that do not just use the figure of the disabled as a means to an end. It includes translation of 17 disability centric short stories from multiple Indian languages into English. Further it uses these stories as illustration to test and develop new theoretical formulations concerning disability and the disabled. What grants the proposed work its uniqueness is, in other words, not only the translations of the erstwhile lost stories of disability but also the use of these stories towards the formation of theoretical paradigms to move forward the project of Disability Studies. The volume shows, interrogates and problematizes the affect that impairment and disability has on those who are “abled”. It presents how the “normal” human being approaches the disabled and interacts with them. All in all, owing to its academic engagement with disability as a phenomenon and within a narrative, this work intends to take the role of a resource book that will find ready use in the newly emergent multidisciplinary field of Disability Studies and will be of great significance to India and the world at large especially since Literature has a major role to play in this field. Not only, then, does it present different disability narratives to the world but, through their academic interrogation, also allows researchers and academics, especially in India, to form the theoretical enhancements in Disability Studies that both our country and the world desperately require.

Disability Identity in Simulation Narratives

Disability Identity in Simulation Narratives PDF Author: Anelise Haukaas
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031444825
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
Disability Identity in Simulation Narratives considers the relationship between disability identity and simulation activities (ranging from traditional gameplay to more revolutionary technology) in contemporary science fiction. Anelise Haukaas applies posthumanist theory to an examination of disability identity in a variety of science fiction texts: adult novels, young adult literature and comics, as well as ethnographic research with gamers. Haukaas argues that instead of being a means of escapism, simulated experiences are a valuable tool for cultivating self-acceptance and promoting empathy. Through increasingly accessible technology and innovative gameplay, traditional hierarchies are dismantled, and different ways of being are both explored and validated. Ultimately, the book aims to expand our understandings of disability, performance, and self-creation in significant ways by exploring the boundless selves that the simulated environments in these texts allow.

Decloaking Disability

Decloaking Disability PDF Author: Alicia Verlager
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : People with disabilities in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 124

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Book Description
(Cont.) This work demonstrates that, while images of disability rarely inform us about the everyday experience of disability, they can inform us about how technology frames non-normative bodies as either "less than" or "more than" human, and how the tropes and language associated with disability is often used to characterize technology itself.

The WisCon Chronicles

The WisCon Chronicles PDF Author: JoSelle Vanderhooft
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781619760424
Category : Disability awareness
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In science fiction and fantasy, just as in the world we all inhabit, disability is often misunderstood, maligned, and disregarded, even by fans (as well as people in general) who are committed to social justice, anti-oppression, and equal representation for all in sf/f fandom. In the spirit of WisCons continuing mission to boldly go where no con has gone before in breaking down barriers, this volume of the WisCon Chronicles seeks to smash ableist narratives that keep disabled people from full participation in the present we inhabit and the speculative futures we hope to create. Contributors include Andrea Hairston, Debbie Notkin, Nisi Shawl, Josh Lukin, and Nancy Jane Moore, among others. The volume includes a CD of the text, including supplemental material.

Narrative Prosthesis

Narrative Prosthesis PDF Author: David T. Mitchell
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472067486
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Reveals how depictions of disability in fiction serve an essential narrative function

Fantasizing Disability

Fantasizing Disability PDF Author: Jeffrey M. Preston
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 390

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Book Description
Most media texts currently being developed with disabled characters are crafted by individuals who are nondisabled and, as such, are based on what the nondisabled think it would be like to be disabled--a perception that is informed by the fantasy of disability. The fantasy of disability is a net of ideas, created by no single individual but perpetuated and circulated between subjects and which seeks to contain the danger of limitation, to subject it to a set of societal preconceived notions about what it means to be disabled and how a person is expected to act and react to the diagnoses of disablement. With the help of French psychoanalysts Jacques Lacan and Julia Kristeva, this project seeks to answer three key questions currently underserviced by the existing field of media and disability studies: 1. What are the unconscious fantasies circulating in representations of disability? 2. What role do these fantasies play in defining the condition of disability? 3. What can these fantasies teach us about human vulnerability writ large. By looking at war films, such as Coming Home (1978) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and modern teen drama, such as Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001) and Glee (2009), this project postulates that depictions of disability in the media are representative of the nondisabled producers encountering their own potential disablement, with the real purpose of the fantasy of disability being to consolidate and strengthen the perception that disability is indeed foreign--there is a difference between the disabled and the nondisabled--a line that must be drawn to safe guard the nondisabled from the perceived threat of castration posed by disability and the risk of suffering a narcissistic identity wound. In this way, depictions of disability are formed by anxieties of ruptured identity and crushing emasculation while disabled characters are driven by fantasies of rebirth and reconstitution: dreams constructed to neutralize the anxieties of the nondisabled subject when encountering their own inherent vulnerability.

Disability, Literature, Genre

Disability, Literature, Genre PDF Author: Ria Cheyne
Publisher: Representations: Health, Disability, Culture and Society
ISBN: 1789620775
Category : Disabilities in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
Examining the intersection of disability and genre in popular works of horror, crime, science fiction, fantasy, and romance published since the late 1960s, Disability, Literature, Genre is a major contribution to both cultural disability studies and genre fiction studies. Drawing on recent work on affect and emotion, the book explores how disability makes us feel, and how those feelings shape interpersonal and fictional encounters. Written in a clear and accessible style, Disability, Literature, Genre offers a timely reflection on the rapidly growing body of scholarship on disability representation, as well as an innovative new theorisation of genre. By reconceptualising genre reading as an affective process, Ria Cheyne establishes genre fiction as a key site of investigation for disability studies. She argues that genre fiction's unique combination of affectivity and reflexivity makes it ideally suited to the production of reflexive representations of disability: representations which encourage the reader to reflect upon what they understand about disability, and potentially to rethink it. Examining the affective--and effective--power of disability representations in a wide range of popular genre fiction, this book will be essential reading for academics in disability studies, literary studies, popular culture studies, and the medical humanities.

Disability and Popular Culture

Disability and Popular Culture PDF Author: Katie Ellis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317150376
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
As a response to real or imagined subordination, popular culture reflects the everyday experience of ordinary people and has the capacity to subvert the hegemonic order. Drawing on central theoretical approaches in the field of critical disability studies, this book examines disability across a number of internationally recognised texts and objects from popular culture, including film, television, magazines and advertising campaigns, children’s toys, music videos, sport and online spaces, to attend to the social and cultural construction of disability. While acknowledging that disability features in popular culture in ways that reinforce stereotypes and stigmatise, Disability and Popular Culture celebrates and complicates the increasing visibility of disability in popular culture, showing how popular culture can focus passion, create community and express defiance in the context of disability and social change. Covering a broad range of concerns that lie at the intersection of disability and cultural studies, including media representation, identity, the beauty myth, aesthetics, ableism, new media and sport, this book will appeal to scholars and students interested in the critical analysis of popular culture, across disciplines such as disability studies, sociology and cultural and media studies.

Rhetoric of the Human and Representations of Artificial Intelligence in Science-fiction

Rhetoric of the Human and Representations of Artificial Intelligence in Science-fiction PDF Author: Calvin T. Johns
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Abstract: The human animal survives as a technological creature. The work of environmentalism and the recent re-enchantment with 'Nature' must be seen as regenerative steps forward, not steps back toward some pre-technical state. The inorganic, fabricated worlds of human beings are equally our 'environments,' and, viewed as such, could provide new possibilities for community renewal, experiencing authenticity, and spiritual meaning. Artistic texts, like those of science-fiction, demonstrate productive and progressive methods for bridging the gap between the human and machine. In this vein, I argue that representations of artificial intelligence, urban environments, and hybrid technologies in science-fiction texts imagine for us solutions to the presumed antagonism between Nature and Technology and its spiritual effects. Although science-fiction since Mary Shelley has voiced anxieties over industrialization and scientific 'progress,' several artists have argued for a spirituality that can exist within technology by refiguring traditional dystopias. As tutor texts, I use the novels of Philip K. Dick and the mangalanime series Ghost in the Shell, visions that react against the Romantic nostalgia of canonical, pessimistic sci-fi. Drawing from these texts as well as those of critical theory, cognitive science, philosophy, and material culture, I openly question the boundaries between organic and inorganic, human and machine, natural and artificial, scientific and spiritual. Seen as conflicting poles, these binaries reflect too simplistic a worldview and may occlude progressive development beyond hollow compromise. My work makes room for us to accept the reconciliation of Nature and Technology, undermining the 'tech-junkie' and 'tree-hugger' mentalities that mitigate healthy ecological practices internationally and the development of new forms of spirituality.