| dc.description.abstract | This thesis aims to investigate how science fiction can engender critical conversations about post-humanity as otherness by close reading N.K Jemisin’s science fiction series The Broken Earth Trilogy. More specifically, it investigates how Jemisin uses science fiction devices to criticise ideological structures, social constructs and the marginalization apparent in the Anthropocene. Her portrayal of capitalistic greed, dehumanization and slavery parallels ideas and events found in the cultural and industrial history of the Western world, and, especially, in the United States. This is emphasized by depictions of marginalization of alternate identities in speculative pasts and futures, which also offer solutions in alternative ways of thinking. The theoretical focus of this thesis, includes discourse on science fiction devices, and how these can be used to evoke processes of otherness. Furthermore, it discusses sites of otherness, in the Anthropocene and Capitalocene, and investigates how these interact with ideas in the trilogy, arriving in solutions in the posthuman. The posthuman, as discussed by Rosi Braidotti, is a theory free from binary exclusionary thought which pushes through anthropocentric ideas of humanity, revealing solutions in embracing otherness. As will be explored in this thesis, these views are paralleled in The Broken Earth Trilogy, where the visualisation of otherness plays a crucial part in establishing the identities that hold the potential to save the world. Additionally, this thesis investigates post- or non-anthropocentric views on subjective truths, by means of the narrative devices that belong to the genre of science fiction which enable the writer to engage in radical depictions of identity. This is, for instance, revealed through the category of the grotesque, which provides an inward sense of shock when faced with the unrecognizable other, but which also urges the reader to reconsider existing notions of identity and otherness in themselves. | |
