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SF! Haraway’s Situated Feminisms and Speculative Fabulations in English Class

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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.

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Notes

  1. Haraway draws from her former student Joshua LeBare (2010) who calls the SFs ‘modes’ rather than genres.

  2. Research-creation is the intersection of art, theory, and research (Truman 2016b). See also Springgay in this issue.

  3. 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.

  4. 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.

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Funding

Funding was provided by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Grant No. 756-2017-0016).

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Correspondence to Sarah E. Truman.

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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

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