UC Riverside UC Riverside Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Queering Bodies: Aliens, Cyborgs, and Spacemen in Mexican and Argentine Science Fiction Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/1tx0h3jx Author Shafer, Alexander Phillip Publication Date 2017 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RIVERSIDE Queering Bodies: Aliens, Cyborgs, and Spacemen in Mexican and Argentine Science Fiction A Dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Spanish by Alexander Phillip Shafer June 2017 Dissertation Committee: Dr. Freya Schiwy, Chairperson Dr. Alessandro Fornazzari Dr. Sherryl Vint Dr. Benjamin Liu Copyright by Alexander Phillip Shafer 2017 The Dissertation of Alexander Phillip Shafer is approved: Committee Chairperson University of California, Riverside Acknowledgments Writing a dissertation has been challenging but rewarding. I am grateful to the many professors and fellow students at both Brigham Young University and University of California Riverside for the many seminars, hours of advising, and discussions surrounding literature, philosophy, cultural studies, and life. I want to first thank David Laraway who gave me my introduction to graduate school in our theory seminar. He also helped bring the Chilean science fiction writer Mike Wilson Reginato and the science fiction critic J. Andrew Brown to BYU. The courses and lectures and time I spent with them was invaluable and I wish to thank both of them for helping me discover and learn to appreciate science fiction in new ways. I wish to also thank Dale Pratt for teaching a class on science and literature and for taking me to my first conference as a graduate student to present my ideas on Borges and science fiction. From BYU, I also want to thank David Dalton for introducing me to Mejicanos en el espacio. I’m grateful for the many discussions we’ve had about it as well as Mexican science fiction. I want to express my gratitude to my committee. Thank you, Sherryl Vint for the independent studies which lead to the creation of this dissertation. You have pushed me, challenged me, and helped me grow in ways I can’t begin to thank adequately. I also want to thank you for bringing Latin American science fiction authors and scholars. That has been invaluable to me as I’ve progressed in this process. Thank you, Alessandro Fornazzari for taking the time to encourage me to write about a topic which few other students pursue. I also wish to thank Freya Schiwy for helping me through the ups and iv downs of dissertation writing, for listening to me patiently express ideas and also my frustrations. In courses and in meetings she has helped me and pushed me to improve my thinking in so many areas. It’s been a long process but I can’t thank her enough for the mentoring and guidance throughout. To my friends and family: you have been there for me and inspired me in more ways than I can begin to express. Brian and Rukiya Fox, Judy Cervantes, and Nikolái Ingistov García, thank you for the support and for the many hours you’ve spent discussing with me the ideas that lead to this dissertation. Thank you for being with me through what has been at times a very difficult process of coming out and coming to terms with being queer. Lastly, I want to thank Cinthia Craig who as one of my closest friends has spent countless hours brainstorming with me, motivating me, and even editing some of the following pages. She has been there for me throughout this entire process. I do not know where I would be without her. v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Queering Bodies: Aliens, Cyborgs, and Spacemen in Mexican and Argentine Science Fiction by Alexander Shafer Doctor of Philosophy, Graduate Program in Spanish University of California, Riverside, June 2017 Dr. Freya Schiwy Chairperson This dissertation analyzes a number of science fiction novels and short stories from Mexico and Argentina. These include texts that are frequently read as science fiction as well as a few that aren’t. These texts are: “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” by Jorge Luis Borges, Mejicanos en el espacio by Carlos Olvera, “Los embriones del violeta” by Angélica Gorodischer, La ciudad ausente by Ricardo Piglia, “Ruido gris” by Pepe Rojo, and Mantra by Rodrigo Fresán. These texts portray alien invasions and encounters, or cyborgs, exploring in intricate ways the relation of gender, race, and sexuality to colonial expansion, coloniality, and neoliberalism. By exploring both texts from Mexico and Argentina I am able to compare and contrast the ways that race and sexuality manifest themselves in science fiction. My theoretical approach includes various queer theorists such as Sara Ahmed, Judith Butler, and J. Halberstam. It also includes scholars of science fiction such as J. Andrew Brown, John Rieder and Sherryl Vint. The queer possibilities of the texts I vi analyze have been, with few exceptions, largely overlooked or underrepresented by scholars. I have found that this approach brings to light the way science fiction creates new worlds, bodies, and spaces goes hand in hand with representations of queer space and time. Cyborgs, aliens, and space men have various queer encounters in the texts I examine. Though different, each text represents queer lives through the homosocial bonds of characters who find themselves in outer space or even just the changing of life on earth due to technology. The encounter between peoples and customs in outer space and alien planets abstracts actual cross cultural and colonial encounters and manifest the way that gender, race, and sexuality are intricately connected and important to consider in such encounters. Science fiction provides a vehicle to understand historical and present differences and the way that gender, sexuality, and race are constructed across time and space. vii Table of Contents Introduction……………………………………………………………………………1 Chapter 1 Queer Phenomenology in “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius”….……….........………………18 Chapter 2 Queer Spacemen in Mejicanos en el espacio and “Los embriones del violeta”…………42 Chapter 3 Queer Cyborgs in Ricardo Piglia’s La ciudad ausente and Pepe Rojo’s “Ruido gris”………………………………………………………………………………….......72 Chapter 4 Cyborgs and the Queer Apocalypse: Rodrigo Fresán’s Queer Cyborgs in a Globalized Digital Age………………………………………………………………………………95 Bibliography…………………………..……………………………………………….117 Endnotes……………………………………………………………………………….122 viii Introduction In the 1980 movie, The Empire Strikes Back, the Empire goes in search of the rebel forces following the destruction of their base on Hoth. Darth Vader leads the charge, hunting for Luke Skywalker, the only known remaining Jedi in the universe. When they encounter each other on Bespin, the major reveal of the second Star Wars movie is that Darth Vader is actually the father of Luke Skywalker. This leads to a light saber fight between father and son, with Luke protesting: “That’s impossible!” when he learns the truth. How could this cyborg and incarnation of evil be the father of, Luke, the last remaining hope for the rebels? This example shows an interesting connection between colonialism and mythology at the heart of the cyborg figure. As Donna Haraway states, the female cyborgs are the “renegade daughters of the military industrial complex and patriarchal capitalism.” But what of male cyborgs? As J. Andrew Brown notes, Darth Vader is “popular culture’s best known cyborg” (151). The fact that his name is listed among conquerors of empires in the argentine novel Mantra is explored by Brown. The novel lists Vader as one of a series of famous people who conquer by looking at maps, such as Julius Caesar and Hernán Cortés. The fact that Darth Vader uses a mask also makes him part of the “mythology” of the cyborg that populates Mantra (151). This mythology is to embody the effects of, as Haraway states, patriarchal capitalism and the military industrial complex, while also showing a sign of resistance. Thought of a different way, cyborgs then represent the culmination of empire and technology, and thus must be thought of in line with colonialism. The juxtaposition of historical and fictional 1