Articles (peer reviewed) by Jonathan Hay
Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, 2021
The complex dialectical accord between science fiction narratives of galactic conquest and postco... more The complex dialectical accord between science fiction narratives of galactic conquest and postcolonial theory has rightly been the subject of sustained critical debate. In his 2007 article "Biotic Invasions: Ecological Imperialism in New Wave Science Fiction," Rob Latham draws attention to "the entropic dissolution of the scientific modes of missionary imperialism accomplished by the New Wave" (491) and identifies that subgenre as having effected an important paradigm shift within the sf genre's racial consciousness. As Latham suggests, the postcolonial move in New Wave sf texts is fundamentally grounded in their "mundane" dialectical qualities (491). This distinction is crucial. Whereas portrayals of galactic technocultural dissemination in earlier sf texts often valorized the erasure of cultural difference in the name of colonial or neocolonial ventures, the New Wave focus upon individual subjectivities and immanent truths antithetically demonstrates the value of cultural multiplicity. 1 Accordingly, this article seeks to expand upon Latham's perceptive contention, by drawing upon recent postcolonial theory to interrogate the mundane rhetoric of Ursula K. Le Guin's Hainish Cycle and explicate the series' New Wave challenge to neocolonial orthodoxies. As Peter Brigg observes, despite its cosmopolitan overtones, the Ekumenthe exploratory and diplomatic collective at the center of the Hainish Cycle's advanced interplanetary society-typifies "a strange gap between the theory of intercultural relationships and putting them into practice" in an ethical manner ("Archetype" 46). The collective's failings seem particularly remarkable when we consider that Le Guin herself greatly valued a marked "difference of racial and alien types, gender difference, handicaps, apparent deformities, all accepted simply as different ways of being human" (Le Guin, "My Appointment") in the sf texts that she consumed. The ideological lacuna identified by Brigg proves significant throughout the series, as the technoculture of the Ekumen is typically adopted so unreservedly by the native cultures of
Messengers from the Stars: On Science Fiction and Fantasy, 2021
In the Anthropocene epoch, the utopian prospect which has structured civilizational development t... more In the Anthropocene epoch, the utopian prospect which has structured civilizational development throughout recorded history is extinguished almost entirely. Our anthropocentric fantasies of dominion over the natural world have proven harmful not only to the biosphere we inhabit, but to the continued existence of our own species. Instead, new conceptualizations which foreground the role of humanity within its environment must take precedence. Intricate portrayals of humanity’s interdependence within its planetary environment—and illustrations of the damage that our daily lives inflict upon the natural world—have long been apparent in the Science Fiction genre. By emphasising the importance of fostering and recognizing our species’ symbiotic relationship with its natural world through practices of daily life, the Anthroposcenic landscapes of Ursula K. Le Guin’s Science Fiction texts exert a posthuman vision which refutes anthropocentric ideologies, and decenters the notion of progress as an eschatology. Accordingly, this article closely analyses three texts of Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle which particularly exemplify her Anthroposcenic objective; The Word for World is Forest (1972); Planet of Exile (1966); and City of Illusions(1967). These texts extrapolate the Anthropocene epoch into a cosmic paradigm, and so demonstrate the extinction of utopian potential it personifies vividly.
Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, 2020
This article springs from the claim that representations of mundane human life are just as promin... more This article springs from the claim that representations of mundane human life are just as prominent as nova in contemporary sf, and that through their generative interplay the genre figures a transient dreamscape for visitation by the (post)human mind, via which the reader gains an expanded perception of not only their own empirical environment, but also of posthuman possibility. The presence of the quotidian in sf confirms the capacity of the (post)human mind to transcend the presumptions of traditional humanism. By deconstructing the rhetorical role of nova in Duncan Jones’s Source Code (2011), I demonstrate that the novel content of sf fades intratextually, just as nova within the genre tend towards entropy intertextually; an accumulative process I term novum decay.
Journal of Science Fiction, 2020
Just as it looms large in contemporary consciousness, the figure of the Anthropocene dominates th... more Just as it looms large in contemporary consciousness, the figure of the Anthropocene dominates the speculative fiction of the Hugo and Nebula award winning author Paolo Bacigalupi. The post-apocalyptic and post-capitalist settings common to Bacigalupi’s oeuvre do not merely seek to depict unsettling Anthropocene landscapes. Rather, Bacigalupi’s speculative fiction vicariously demonstrates the crucial role that embodiment plays, and will continue to play, in determining the impact of the Anthropocene upon human life. Our bodies, his works propose, are both the fabric upon which the horrors of the Anthropocene will be written, and the means by which we can learn to adapt to the rigors of our rapidly shifting planetary environment. As such, Bacigalupi’s works propose a range of novel bodily economies, which are just as much potential alternatives to the damaging neoliberal ideologies of our contemporary world as they are statements of impending social upheaval and widespread human suffering. Through the textual analysis of a cross-section of Bacigalupi’s works, this article demonstrates his emphasis upon the urgency and importance of our own societies learning to construct and implement alternate economic paradigms.
Journal of Posthuman Studies, 2020
Over time, speedrunning communities work collaboratively to optimize, re-configure, and improve u... more Over time, speedrunning communities work collaboratively to optimize, re-configure, and improve upon the quickest possible completion times of video game titles. I argue that this progressive ethos, coupled with the performative nature of modern speedrunning, lends a distinctly artistic character to the practice. Speedrunning is a form of (post)human expression that is manifested not only through the programming of a video game, but also through players' approach to gameplay. By choosing to speedrun, players actively impose a discrete temporal limit on the inhuman algorithms of video games, and so attempt to conquer and thereby curtail their technological novelty. However, within the field of game studies, the literature published on speedrunning to date is almost unilaterally anthropocentric, and focuses on the transgressive nature of the practice, ignoring the intricacies of its technological fundament. Rather, (post)humans and technologies interact in a transformational manner through intra-active assemblages, broadening the condition of embodiment. To theorize a posthumanistic theory of the practice, this article takes as its focus the speedrunning community of the video game Super Mario Odyssey and suggests that speedrunning may ultimately be considered a mode of (post) human performance art.
Language, Literature and Interdisciplinary Studies, 2020
Via the analysis of a cross-section of episodes from Russell T. Danvies's era of the revived BBC ... more Via the analysis of a cross-section of episodes from Russell T. Danvies's era of the revived BBC Science Fiction television series Doctor Who (2005-2010), this paper demonstrates that the programme utilises representations of the viewer's everyday lifeworld to figure a posthuman rhetoric. Through the viewer's in-phenomenal interaction with its representation of the mundane, the show emphasises the already significantly posthuman nature of the technologically saturated lifeworld of the contemporary individual. It challenges Darko Suvin's notion of cognitive estrangement, which fails to describe the show's Science Fictional discourse, and instead proposes the alternate mechanism of cognitive engagement. This inquiry, therefore, reappraises the thematic concerns of the show during the years when Russell T. Davies served as the programme's showrunner, revealing Doctor Who's emphasis upon the everyday (post)human lifeworld. It concludes that the show refutes technocentric ideologies, and thus rigorously demonstrates the consonance between the (post)human present and posthuman future.
KronoScope, 2019
Although many SF texts proceed from the speculative premise that our species will continue to dev... more Although many SF texts proceed from the speculative premise that our species will continue to develop technologically, and hence become increasingly posthuman, our species’ continuance into even the next century is by no means assured. Rather, the Anthropocene exerts a new temporal logic; it is an age defined by an intensification of geological timescales. It is therefore noteworthy that many contemporary SF texts are ecologically interventionist and figure apocalyptic future temporalities which curtail the posthuman predilection common to the genre. This article analyses a tetrad of literary texts, written at various points during the last three decades, which summatively reveal the mutations of the (post)human temporalities figured by cli-fi texts. These four texts are: Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars Trilogy (1992-1996); Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods (2007); Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things (2014); and Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Water Knife (2015).
Vector, 2019
A countercultural movement characterised by a dynamic understanding of the narrative authority he... more A countercultural movement characterised by a dynamic understanding of the narrative authority held by texts, Afrofuturism rewrites African culture in a speculative vein, granting African and Afrodiasporic peoples a culturally empowered means of writing their own future. This article examines the manner by which clipping.'s 2016 album Splendor & Misery-a conceptual hip-hop space opera-freely enlists and reclaims texts from the African cultural tradition in order to manifest its Afrofuturist agenda. The process by which Afrofuturism reclaims and rewrites culture is paralleled within Splendor & Misery through the literary device of mise en abyme; just as the album itself does, its central protagonist rewrites narratives of African cultures and traditions in an act of counterculture.
Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, 2019
This article argues that Science Fiction is a posthuman art form, whose texts posit a utopian dre... more This article argues that Science Fiction is a posthuman art form, whose texts posit a utopian dream which emphasises that the process of becoming posthuman is both incremental, and conditional upon the equitable cultural, social, and environmental evolution of our societies. The genre provides a transient dreamscape for visitation by the (post)human mind, by which the reader gains an expanded perception of not only their own empirical environment, but also of posthuman possibility. This posthuman dream however, is not a simply literalised by SF’s estranging narrative strategy, but rather is located in the intersection between the SF narrative and its generic form. Through the decay of their initially defamiliarizing nova into data which are cognitively explicable by their (post)human audience, SF texts dramatize our species’ continuous journey of becoming posthuman. This fundamentally posthuman model of the SF genre therefore challenges the model of cognitive estrangement proposed by Darko Suvin, and so proposes that SF exerts a pragmatic utopian dream that avoids being deterministic or teleological.
FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture & the Arts, 2018
Through the analysis of a capitalist text, and by reflecting on the discourse of Marx and Althuss... more Through the analysis of a capitalist text, and by reflecting on the discourse of Marx and Althusser, this paper demonstrates why Marxism remains a potent politics of dissent. It suggests that Marxist philosophies can come to function in an ultimately reparative manner through their promotion of countercultural ideologies.
Exclamat!on: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 2018
This article argues for the importance of recognizing the queerness of many established works wit... more This article argues for the importance of recognizing the queerness of many established works within the literary canon as a means of contextualising modern queer identities and practices historically. It undertakes the queer reappropriation of two canonical Victorian poems; Christina Rossetti's Goblin Market (1862), and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's In Memoriam (1850). As the article demonstrates, the queer affective features of these poems express the viability of alternative modes of relation, and so convey a poignant sense of the insurrectionary elation that can be realised through affective relationships that subvert normative sexual conventions.
Articles by Jonathan Hay
Hélice: Critical Thinking on Speculative Fiction , 2021
Whereas prior academic studies of the Hainish Cycle have been primarily produced by means of text... more Whereas prior academic studies of the Hainish Cycle have been primarily produced by means of textual analysis, I demonstrate that a concordance analysis of its six novels reveals significant, yet heretofore overlooked, ecological aspects of Le Guin's series. As becomes apparent, snow imagery literalises the Hainish Cycle's New Wave moves from technological, to biological and sociological concerns, emphasising the series' significant challenge to the technophilic assumptions and eschatological foundations of the preceding Golden Age. Accordingly, this article demonstrates the primacy of the datum of snow within the narratives of the Hainish Cycle novels, and delineates its important contribution to the series' SFnal dialectic on aggregate.
New York Review of Science Fiction, 2021
When Isaac Asimov began to expand the fictional universe of his acclaimed Foundation Trilogy in 1... more When Isaac Asimov began to expand the fictional universe of his acclaimed Foundation Trilogy in 1982—almost thirty years after the publication of its prior entry, Second Foundation (1953)—he did so with the express intention of assimilating its continuity into a unified “history of the future” with his Robot and Galactic Empire series. Although the Foundation Universe has received little critical attention to date as a unified series, the analysis of it cumulatively reveals its significantly mundane and repetitive aspects. Demonstrably, the rhetorical function of such banal components renders the series conspicuously posthuman.
Hélice: Critical Thinking on Speculative Fiction, 2020
As this article demonstrates, the characteristic focus within Asimov scholarship exclusively upon... more As this article demonstrates, the characteristic focus within Asimov scholarship exclusively upon the technological aspects of his robot stories and novels has meant that the importance of their mundane components have been systematically overlooked. By shifting critical focus to the mundane aspects of these works, it becomes newly apparent that Asimov uses a mundane foundation to problematise humanistic constructs of the human. These mundane components comprise an essential cognitive foundation of known phenomena, via which the comprehension of Asimov’s profoundly novel robots becomes plausible contextually. By readily anticipating and demonstrating the phenomenological impact of the everyday positionality of technology in the contemporary world, Asimov’s robot stories and novels recode the outdated signifier of the ‘human’ in a posthumanistic paradigm.
Chapters by Jonathan Hay
Aliens: A Companion, 2024
In the uncharted territory of space, humans ourselves become alien. This understanding is central... more In the uncharted territory of space, humans ourselves become alien. This understanding is central to Nnedi Okorafor’s Nebula and Hugo award-winning novella Binti (2015) and its sequels Home (2017) and The Night Masquerade (2018). Through the interactions between humans and the trilogy’s “alien” Meduse, Okorafor’s text makes unfamiliar and radically expands the familiar territory of race. Typically, aliens in science fiction are rigidly defined as either enemies or friends of humanity. Yet, the Meduse transcend this simplistic dualism, and therefore comprise a central component of Binti’s Africanfuturist meditation on race.
Boogie Down Predictions: Hip-Hop, Time, and Afrofuturism, 2022
This chapter examines the manner by which clipping.’s 2016 album Splendor & Misery—a conceptual h... more This chapter examines the manner by which clipping.’s 2016 album Splendor & Misery—a conceptual hip-hop space opera—freely enlists and reclaims texts from the African cultural tradition in order to manifest its Afrofuturist agenda. A countercultural movement characterised by a dynamic understanding of the narrative authority held by texts, Afrofuturism rewrites African culture in a speculative vein, granting African and Afrodiasporic peoples a culturally empowered means of writing their own future. The process by which Afrofuturism reclaims and rewrites culture is paralleled within Splendor & Misery through the literary device of mise en abyme; just as the album itself does, its central protagonist rewrites narratives of African cultures and traditions in an act of counterculture.
Talking Bodies Vol. II: Bodily Languages, Selfhood and Transgression, 2020
Bodies occupy a paradoxical space in modern society. On the one hand, the body is the most obviou... more Bodies occupy a paradoxical space in modern society. On the one hand, the body is the most obvious and visible medium used to represent and express ourselves and our identities. On the other hand, this importance also leaves the body open to being controlled, regulated and interpreted. The result of this uncomfortable balance is that body diversity remains at once embraced and vulnerable, and the expression of that diversity is encouraged by some, while also being the subject of the prejudice of others. This chapter acts as an introduction for nine interdisciplinary, international essays, each engaging with the theme of “the body”, broadly defined. It thus lays the groundwork for a volume in which the body not only speaks but is heard and listened to.
Books by Jonathan Hay
Talking Bodies Vol. II: Bodily Languages, Selfhood and Transgression, 2020
This volume brings together scholars from across disciplines and continents in order to continue ... more This volume brings together scholars from across disciplines and continents in order to continue to analyse, query, and deconstruct the complexities of bodily existence in the modern world. Comprising nine essays by leading and emerging scholars, and spanning issues ranging from literature, history, sociology, medicine, law and justice and beyond, Talking Bodies vol. II is a timely and prescient addition to the vital discussion of what bodies are, how we perceive them, and what they mean. As the essays of this volume demonstrate, it is imperative to question numerous established presumptions about both the manner by which our bodies perform their identities, and the processes by which their ownership can be impinged upon.
Papers by Jonathan Hay
Revista Helice, 2021
One typo in Kim Stanley Robinson’s 1988 novel The Gold Coast is so prominent as to merit consider... more One typo in Kim Stanley Robinson’s 1988 novel The Gold Coast is so prominent as to merit consideration. Nevertheless, there is no evidence that it has ever come to the attention of readers before now.
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Articles (peer reviewed) by Jonathan Hay
Articles by Jonathan Hay
Chapters by Jonathan Hay
Books by Jonathan Hay
Papers by Jonathan Hay