Abstract
This article draws on Donna Haraway’s call for feminist speculative fabulation as an approach to qualitative research methodologies and writing praxis in schools. The first section of the article outlines how I conceptualize speculative thought, through different philosophers and theorists, and provides a brief literature review of speculative fiction used in secondary English curricula. The article then focuses on an in school creative writing project with grade 9 English students. In the student examples that I attend to, speculative fabulations and situated feminisms (race, gender, sexuality) are entangled, rendered complex, and in tension. In the final section, I discuss the Whiteness of mainstream speculative fiction and argue that speculative fabulation must be accountable to situated feminisms in how we read, write, and conduct research.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Haraway draws from her former student Joshua LeBare (2010) who calls the SFs ‘modes’ rather than genres.
Research-creation is the intersection of art, theory, and research (Truman 2016b). See also Springgay in this issue.
These are ‘negative’ skills or potentials in the sense of not being present—therefore perhaps similar to the virtual in the Deleuze’s sense, or a negative prehension in Whitehead’s sense.
Managing ‘risk’ might sound reasonable, but we need to remember that those in power make sure their own risk is manageable, which does not mean, and has never meant, everyone will be taken care of.
References
Ahmed, S. 2008. Open Forum. Imaginary prohibitions: Some preliminary remarks on the founding gestures of the ‘‘New Materialism”. European Journal of Women’s Studies 15(1): 23–39.
Åsberg, C., K. Thiele, and I. van der Tuin. 2015. Speculative before the turn: Reintroducing feminist materialist performativity. Cultural Studies Review 21(2): 145–172.
Barad, K. 2003. Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 28(3): 801–831.
Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Barad, K. 2015. Transmaterialities: Trans*/matter/realities and queer political imaginings. TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly 2(2): 387–422.
Blackman, L. 2017. “Loving the alien”: A post-post-human manifesto. Subjectivity 10(1): 13–25.
Chu, S. 2008. Science fiction and postmemory han in contemporary Korean American literature. MELUS 33(4): 97–121.
Crenshaw, K.W. 1991. Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review 43(6): 1241–1299.
de Freitas, L. 2017. Nonhuman findings from the Laboratory of Speculative Sociology. The Minnesota Review 88: 116–126.
Debaise, D. 2017. Nature as event: The lure of the possible. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Delany, S.R. 1984. Starboard wine: More notes on the Language of Science Fiction. Pleasantville, NY: Dragon Press.
Delany, S.R. 2009. The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press.
Deleuze, G. 1994. Difference and repetition. (trans: Patton, P.). New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Deleuze, G., and F. Guattari. 1986. Kafka: Toward a minor literature. (trans: Polan, D.). Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Dillon, Grace L. 2012. Walking the clouds. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Egaña Rojas, L. 2018. Suturar los espejos rotos de lo imposible (Sutured Broken Mirrors of the Impossible). ADA: Journal of Gender, New Media, and Technology (13). https://adanewmedia.org/2018/05/issue13-rojas-engl/.
Eshun, K. 2003. Further considerations on afrofuturism. CR: The New Centennial Review 3(2): 287–302.
Fisher, M. 2013. The metaphysics of crackle: Afrofuturism and hanutology. Dancecult: Journal of Electronic Dance Music Culture 5(2): 42–55.
Goodeve, T.N. 2000. How like a leaf: Donna Haraway an interview with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve. New York, NY: Routledge.
Grebowicz, M., and H. Merrick. 2013. Beyond the Cyborg: Adventures with Donna Haraway. New York, NY: Columbia University Press.
Haraway, D. 1988. Situated knowledges: The science question in feminism and the privilege of partial perspective. Feminist Studies 14: 575–599.
Haraway, D. 1991. A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The reinvention of nature, ed. D. Haraway, 149–181. New York, NY: Routledge.
Haraway, D. 2008. When species meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Haraway, D. 2016a. Staying with the trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Haraway, D. 2016b. Speculative fabulation. Youtube Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFGXTQnJETg.
Hebron, S. 2014. John Keats and ‘Negative Capability’. British Library Online. https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/john-keats-and-negative-capability.
Higgins, J. 2016. Survivance in indigenous science fictions: Vizenor, Silko, Glancy, and the rejection of imperial victimry. Extrapolation 57(1–2): 51–72.
Hopkinson, N. 2004. Introduction. In So long been dreaming: Post-colonial science fiction and fantasy, ed. Nalo Hopkinson and Uppinder Mehan, 7–9. Vancouver, BC: Arsenal Pulp Press.
Imarisha, W. 2015. Introduction. In Octavia’s Brood: Science fiction stories from social justice movements, ed. W. Imarisha and A.M. Brown, 3–5. Oakland, CA: AK Press.
Instone, L., and A. Taylor. 2015. Thinking about inheritance through the figure of the anthropocene, from the antipodes and in the presence of others. Environmental Humanities 7: 133–150.
Kilgore, D.D. 2014. Afrofuturism. In The Oxford Handbook of Science Fiction, ed. R. Latham, 561–572. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
LeBare, J. 2010. Farfetchings: on and in the SF Mode. Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation. University of California, Santa Cruz.
Luciano, D., and M.Y. Chen. 2015. Introduction: Has the queer ever been human? GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 21(2): iv-207.
Manning, E. 2016. The minor gesture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
McRuer, R. 2006. Crip theory: Cultural signs of queerness and disability. New York: New York Press.
Medak-Saltzman, D. 2017. Coming to you from the indigenous future: Native women, speculative film shorts, and the art of the possible. Studies in American Indian Literatures 29(1): 139–171.
Milburn, C. 2012. Greener on the other side: Science fiction and the problem of green nanotechnology. Configurations 20(1): 53–87.
Negarestani, R. 2008. Cyclonopedia: Complicity with anonymous materials. Melbourne, AU: re. press.
Nyawalo, M. 2016. Afro-futurism and the aesthetics of hope in Bekolo’s Les Saignantes and Kahiu’s Pumzi. Journal of the African Literature Association 10(2): 209–221.
Obourn, M. 2013. Octavia Butler’s disabled futures. Contemporary Literature 54(1): 109–138.
Rieder, J. 2008. Colonialism and the emergence of science fiction. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.
Sehgal, M. 2014. A situated metaphysis: Things, history and pragmatic speculation in A.N. Whitehead. In The allure of things: Process and object in contemporary philosophy, ed. R. Faber and A. Goffey, 162–188. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
Shaviro, S. 2015. Discognition. London: Repeater.
Simpson, L. 2011. Dancing on our Turtle’s back: Stories of Nishnaabeg re-creation, resurgence and a new emergence. Winnipeg, MB: ARP.
Springgay, S., and S.E. Truman. 2017. On the need for methods beyond proceduralism: Speculative middles, (in)tensions, and response-ability in research. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800417704464.
Springgay, S., and S.E. Truman. 2018. Walking methodologies in a more-than-human World: WalkingLab. New York, NY: Routledge.
Subramaniam, B. 2014. Ghost stories for Darwin: The science of variation and the politics of diversity. Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Truman, S.E. 2016a. Becoming more than it never (actually) was: Expressive writing as research-creation. Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy 13(2): 136–143.
Truman, S.E. 2016b. Intratextual entanglements: Emergent pedagogies and the productive potential of texts. In Pedagogical matters: New materialisms and curriculum studies, ed. N. Snaza, D. Sonu, S.E. Truman, and Z. Zaliwska, 91–108. New York, NY: Peter Lang.
Truman, S.E. 2017. Speculative methodologies & emergent literacies: Walking & writing as research-creation. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Toronto, Canada.
Truman, S., and S. Springgay. 2016. Propositions for walking research. In International handbook for intercultural arts, ed. K. Powell, P. Bernard, and L. Mackinley, 259–267. New York, NY: Routledge.
Vizenor, G. 2012. Custer on the slipstream. In Walking the clouds: An anthology of indigenous science fiction, ed. G. Dillon, 15–25. Tucson, AS: University of Arizona Press.
Whitehead, A. 1978. Process and reality (corrected ed.). New York, NY: Free Press.
Womack, Y. 2013. Afrofuturism. Chicago, IL: Chicago Review Press.
Funding
Funding was provided by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant No. 756-2017-0016).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Truman, S.E. SF! Haraway’s Situated Feminisms and Speculative Fabulations in English Class. Stud Philos Educ 38, 31–42 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9632-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-018-9632-5