Abstract
Both Gillian Beer and Donna Haraway are interested in scientific theory as text: as itself a type of fiction which can be deconstructed to show the ideology at work in its production. This book will explore the ‘different tensions’ that Haraway refers to in the work of women writers of science fiction (sf), where ‘scientific fact’ (or, at least, the theories presented as such) can be located as a sub-text informing the style and construction of the work. Taking a diverse sampling of women’s sf, from the turn of the century to the mid-1990s, I will demonstrate how these texts respond to an analysis which looks for a critique of scientific ideology: an exposure of the way in which gender is constructed in scientific thought.
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Most major scientific theories rebuff common sense. They call on evidence beyond the reach of our senses and overturn the observable world. They disturb assumed relationships and shift what has been substantial into metaphor …. When it is first advanced, theory is at its most fictive. The awkwardness of fit between the natural world as it is currently perceived and as it is hypothetically imagined holds the theory itself for a time within a provisional scope akin to that of fiction.
Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots1
SF is a territory of contested cultural reproduction in hightechnology worlds. Placing the narratives of scientific fact within the heterogeneous space of SF produces a transformed field. The transformed field sets up resonances among all of its regions and components. No region or component is ‘reduced’ to any other, but reading and writing practices respond to each other across a structured space. Speculative fiction has different tensions when its field also contains the inscription practices that constitute scientific fact.
Donna J. Haraway, Primate Visions2
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© 2000 Debra Benita Shaw
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Shaw, D.B. (2000). Introduction: Women, Science and Fiction. In: Women, Science and Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287341_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230287341_1
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-40999-0
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-28734-1
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