Critical Theory and Science Fiction

by Carl Howard Freedman

Carl Freedman traces the fundamental and mostly unexamined relationships between the discourses of science fiction and critical theory, arguing that science fiction is (or ought to be) a privileged genre for critical theory. He asserts that it is no accident that the upsurge of academic interest in science fiction since the 1970s coincides with the heyday of literary theory, and that likewise science fiction is one of the most theoretically informed areas of the literary profession. Extended readings of novels by five of the most important modern science fiction authors illustrate the affinity between science fiction and critical theory, in each case concentrating on one major novel that resonates with concerns proper to critical theory.

Freedman's five readings are: Solaris: Stanislaw Lem and the Structure of Cognition; The Dispossessed: Ursula LeGuin and the Ambiguities of Utopia; The Two of Them: Joanna Russ and the Violence of Gender; Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand: Samuel Delany and the Dialectics of Difference; The Man in the High Castle: Philip K. Dick and the Construction of Realities.

Genres: Science Fiction, Philosophy, Criticism, Literary Criticism, Essays, Reference, Lit Crit

206 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2000

About the author

Carl Freedman was born in North Carolina and educated in the public schools of Chapel Hill and Raleigh. He received his higher education at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), Oxford University, and Yale University. He has taught at Yale, at Wesleyan University (Connecticut), and, since 1984, at Louisiana State University (Baton Rouge), where he is the Russell B. Long Professor of English and has been named a Distinguished Research Master. He is the author of many books, articles, and reviews that cover a wide range of topics in modern thought and culture: most notably Marxist critical theory, science fiction, film, and US electoral politics. He lives in Baton Rouge with his wife, an attorney, and has one daughter, a software tester, and one stepdaughter, a librarian.

Reviews

[Emma Sea · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars. I'd like to say Review to Come, but let's be real, I still haven't reviewed books I read months ago. I'm never going to catch up now.

[Nathaniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

it would be nice if people engaged in theorizing sci-fi could stop throwing fantasy wholesale under the bus in order to do it.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting and largely thought-provoking book that makes some odd assumptions about other genres, over-explores certain topics and under-explores others (postmodern philosophy, for one) and is crippled terribly by an awful academic writing style.

[Mjhancock · Rating 3 out of 5]

Freedman argues that not only do science fiction and critical theory have a major overlap, but that science fiction can be considered a genre that is predisposed to critical theory, and vice versa. Granted, part of that connection comes from the definitions he's using for both. He defines science fiction in Dark Suvin's sense, as a genre of cognitive estrangement--that which encourages you to think of an alternative fictional world (estrangement) but one which can be considered as rationally occurring similarly or in the future of our own (cognitive). though he softens the definition to include any work that has cognitive estrangement as the general focus (Suvin was a little more hardline). Critical theory, on the other hand, Freedman defines as "dialectical thought"--basically, theory that focuses on criticizing prevailing concepts, up to and including its own methods; he offers Marxism, psychoanalysis, and postmodernism as major examples. And if those are the terms you're working with, then his thesis seems to be a pretty natural fit.

The first chapter of the book sets up these definitions, and the second considers their implications--what the two share in common in terms of historical mutability, material reducibility, utopian possibility; how these factors play out in Philip K. Dick's prose; the narrative structure of science fiction in terms of the historical novel and critical theory; science fiction's connections to utopia; the affinity of the two forms and how it's overshadowed by eddies in critical thought. Chapter three looks at the sci-fi/crit issue in terms of specific issues, authors, and novels: Ursula K. Leguin's The Dispossed and positive utopia; Johanna Russ's The Two of Them and feminism; Samuel Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand in terms of Adorno and difference, and Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle in terms of the dialectic of enlightenment and science fiction at large. The final coda looks at what critical theory and science fiction mean in light of postmodernism.

While I do agree with Freedman's premise that a major vein of science fiction does what he defines critical theory to do, I also suspect that it's a trait you could find in a subset of almost any literary genre--heck, I could even point to a children's series or two that could pull it off (and I'd love to see the book written with that premise; you could even argue that with children's literature's license to explore the absurd, they engage in critical theory MORE than other genres). That said, I did enjoy the book, for the most part. It's very heavily rooted in literary theory; since I've shifted a bit more into media theory since my early graduate days, perhaps I felt that root a little more than I would have--the postmodernism musings at the end felt particularly unengaging to me. It felt like it was setting up postmodernism for ages, then sort of fell off.
In comparison, I think the second chapter was the one I found most intellectually interesting, though the third chapter was the one I enjoyed the most--less for the studies themselves than because I allowed myself a break to go and read the novels he was using. If nothing else, I'll always think fondly of this book because it pushed me to read The Dispossed and Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand. (I'd already read Man in the High Castle, and I couldn't find a copy of The Two of Them.) I think its chief idea is fairly straightforward once the definition is set up, but I don't regret the time I spent with it--or the time I spent tangentially near it.

[Simon B · Rating 3 out of 5]

Often a hard slog, but peppered with some intriguing insights. Taking much from Lukacs' The Historical Novel Freedman's basic argument is that the genre of science fiction shares a special affinity with Critical Theory in general and with Marxism in particular. His reasoning is consistent and plausible. As a Marxist who reads and enjoys a lot a sci-fi I'm a prime candidate to endorse his views. But I find myself sceptical regardless. There are plenty of great sci-fi novels that reflect on various aspects of human liberation with great artistry. And science fiction clearly differs from crime fiction, a conservative genre that tends to presume the sanctity of bourgeois property and bourgeois right. But the ideological dominance of the ruling class is still reflected in sci-fi too, despite many worthy exceptions. Reactionary tropes (militarism, space empires, anti-ecological promethianism) are still common in SF. I'm sceptical that the political tendency or affinity of fiction is discernible at the level of genre and form. The truth is concrete. Specific sci-fi novels may well have an affinity to critical theory, less so whole genres. Freedman is most accessible and interesting when he discusses a few sci-fi authors (Lem, Dick, Le Guin, Delany & Russ) in detail. His comments on Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia and Phillip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle are especially perceptive.

"The dialectical complexity of The Dispossessed should not, therefore, be confused with a refusal to take sides. Indeed, far from resolving into any sort of Olympian apoliticism that would affect a liberal - individualist position “above” politics, Le Guin’s text is able to enforce its anarcho - communist political vision with special power precisely because of its theoretical self - critique, and it is perhaps here that the novel’s greatest achievement is located. Like all authors in the utopian generic tradition, Le Guin is in some measure a didactic writer. Although, as Brecht would remind us, the didactic impulse is a perfectly legitimate component of artistic production, and is devalued only by the precritical prejudices of a naively contemplative middle - class aesthetic, it is also true that narrowly didactic art is weakened by being didactic in an insufficiently critical way, by failing to be strictly dialectical. The result is the kind of text that seems to make things too easy for itself, to argue its case in a way that causes the outcome to appear rigged in advance. Le Guin, by contrast, is distinguished by her willingness to make things difficult for herself, to incorporate into her own text as many rigorous objections to her own viewpoint as possible. The result is the kind of text that achieves a genuine critical victory, not just a formal win by default. Like the greatest didactic writers — Brecht and Ibsen come readily to mind — Le Guin, at her best, prefers on intellectual and aesthetic principle to make her case as strong as possible by not flinching from the most cogent counterarguments that might be mounted.

[Joseph Sobanski · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Critical Theory and Science Fiction Carl Howard Freedman does exactly what the title describes, exploring the compatibility of the literary genre of science fiction with Critical Theory. In particular Freedman uses György Lukács's critical readings of historical fiction and redirects it to science fiction. Science fiction is defined by Freedman as a genre which concerns the dialectics of estrangement and cognition.

"The first term refers to the creation of an alternative fictional world that, by refusing to take our mundane environment for granted, implicitly or explicitly performs an estranging critical interrogation of the latter. But the critical character of the interrogation is guaranteed by the operation of cognition, which enables the science-fictional text to account rationally for its imagined world and for the connections as well as the disconnections of the later to our own empirical world." (16-17)

Therefore fiction without estrangement (or only cognition) would be realism, and fiction without cognition (only estrangement) would be fantasy.

Freedman then proceeds to fruitfully explore several famous works of science fiction, such as Delany's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand and Dick's The Man in the High Castle through this critical lens of cognitive estrangement. By doing so he points out how the texts use science fiction to critically analyze their contemporary society, as well as exploring possible alternative societies (such as in Le Guin's The Dispossessed).

What I think Freedman has done is to offer a very convincing way to explore what we might now call New Wave Science Fiction. But I wonder how useful his analytical lens would be in discussing both the Cyberpunk genre (which he dismisses as lesser than) and the current wave of science fiction (which combines fantasy and sci-fi into the new (?) genre of speculative fiction). So while I found Freedman's definition of science fiction as cognitive estrangement useful in my readings of current and past works of sci-fi, I think his central claim, that critical theory and science fiction are fundamentally intertwined, perhaps may not explain for today's trends as represented by speculative fiction.

Still, I would absolutely recommend this book for anyone interested in exploring the theory behind science fiction, or for anyone who is interested in delving deeper into some of the foundational texts of the New Wave of Science Fiction.

3.5/5

[Melissa Rininger · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is the fluffiest book I have ever read. I can't find his major arguments because he wastes pages upon pages using high falutin words that lack conviction. Damnit, man, state your purpose! For a man that studied Orwell, this writing style is exactly what Orwell made fun of in his esssys. All credibility is lost.

[Mariano · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely brilliant!

[Jessica · Rating 1 out of 5]

here, the author asserts that of all the genres, science fiction has a special ability to explore and develop the concepts of critical theory.

while i agree, i hated this book. lol. i couldn't even finish the second chapter!

his writing style is obtuse and too academic. i suspect that he simply published his dissertation. nothing wrong with that, but i was not the right audience to appreciate this work.

[Rachel van der Merwe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant.