The following guest post by Michael Kennedy is the first of a series on sociology and science fiction.
It’s good to travel in company that does not keep the boundaries between sociology and other knowledge cultures too high, especially when it comes science fiction!
For someone like me who has worked on utopia, dystopia, and eutopia for some time, science fiction is an essential part of the trade, especially in east central Europe and Eurasia. During my last trip to Europe’s last university in exile, European Humanities University, I joined a workshop on creating curricula for a second year seminar in the social sciences. Without batting an eye participants suggested pairing Arendt’s reflections on judgement with Zamyatin’s We, on whose backcover Ursula Le Guin declared “the best single work of science fiction yet written”. Were this discussion in Vilnius, then, we might not consider it exceptional. But it is in America.
I haven’t taken science fiction as far as I might, but I have been revising a book manuscript on superhero sociology for some time. I also contributed to a recent volume on female superheroes, in which I developed an idea of how Elektra, of Marvel Comics and associated films, could be helpful in cultivating critical capacities.[1] But superheroes are different from science fiction.
Continue reading “sociology, science fiction, and superheroes”
You must be logged in to post a comment.