Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Cyborg: Posthuman Feminism and Biopower in Peninsular Women's Science Fiction

Abstract

This study examines works of women’s science fiction literature from Spain produced in the late 20th and early 21st centuries: Lágrimas en la lluvia and El peso del corazón, by Rosa Montero; Consecuencias naturales, by Elia Barceló; “Informe de aprendizaje,” by Sofía Rhei; “La plaga,” by Felicidad Martínez; “Casas Rojas,” by Nieves Delgado; and “Yo, cuqui,” by Laura López Alfranca. Academic study on Spanish science fiction is scant, and even more so in the case of Spanish women’s science fiction. Using theories of the posthuman, feminism, and biopower, this study analyzes how Spanish women’s science fiction actively disrupts hierarchical binaries and boundaries prevalent in the genre (male/female, nature/culture, organic/inorganic, human/nonhuman). In doing so, the narratives destabilize and resist heteropatriarchal structures that rely upon these binaries, such as the masculinist portrayals of female and nonbinary bodies, capitalist neoliberal environmental antagonism, and emphasis of dominance and alterity over solidarity and alliance work with Othered subjects—all of which find direct corollaries in social issues of contemporary Spain. At the same time—and in lieu of these binaries—these texts propose and affirm developing a state of constant becoming and evolution based on a rhizomatic relationality among different subjectivities.