Spaces of paradox: The poetics of disruption in twenty-first century speculative fiction

Haith, C

Thesis

Spaces of paradox: The poetics of disruption in twenty-first century speculative fiction

Abstract:: How do speculative novels post-2008 signal paradigm shifting ambiguities and uncertainties about literary genres in the first two decades of the twenty-first century? How might the poetics of disruption in contemporary speculative fiction signal a complex mediated interaction between formal literary devices and the transitional period from neo-liberalism into an unknown future global system defined by the uneven distribution of urban modernity? The six novels treated in this dissertation, published between 2009 and 2020, present a poetics of disruption that complicates distinctions between genres and modes, and demands a negotiation of ongoing paradigm shifts. Disruption of the status quo is a crucial tactic in social organising: just as speculation has literary and real-world referents, so too does disruption defy the borders of the text. I focus on three key spaces of paradox that are produced by the speculative mode in Anglophone literature in this century: urban interstices as depicted in China Miéville’s The City & The City (2009) and Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City (2010); hyperbole as a critical tool in Kim Stanley Robinson’s New York 2140 (2017) and Mohsin Hamid’s Exit West (2017); and writing as a resistant act of reproduction in apocalyptic narratives that renegotiate the binaries of urban and wilderness as portrayed in Louise Erdrich’s Future Home of the Living God (2017) and Lauren Beukes’ Afterland (2020). Produced in the urgent socio-political contexts of the last two decades, these texts engage in discourse about the future, gesturing to an emerging paradigm in the literary market in which disruption is generative of literary activism through the imbrication of utopian ideals in the speculative mode. While presenting sometimes pessimistic outlooks, the speculative mode in this century interpolates a utopian impulse in its very form.

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APA Style

Haith, C. (2022). Spaces of paradox: The poetics of disruption in twenty-first century speculative fiction [PhD thesis]. University of Oxford.

MLA Style

Haith, C. Spaces of Paradox: The Poetics of Disruption in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction. University of Oxford, 2022.

Chicago Style

Haith, C. 2022. “Spaces of Paradox: The Poetics of Disruption in Twenty-First Century Speculative Fiction.” PhD thesis, University of Oxford.
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