The Human Race Vs. the Minorities: Racism, anti-racism, and intelligent non-humans in the world architecture of speculative fiction

This dissertation examines the intelligent non-humans of speculative fiction, interrogating their relationship to the social construct of “race.” It seeks to provide a framework for answering questions about whether a given fictional group is racial and the degree to which making claims about intelligent non-humans contributes to real-world inequality and oppression. To accomplish these goals, the dissertation examines the most popular works of speculative fiction from the twentieth century with supporting examples from elsewhere throughout the genre. It analyzes those works with a focus on their world architecture, defined here as the collection of all details about the world and the events therein that can be established by an appeal to the text. It compares the world architecture of each work to real-world ideological frameworks, showing how the works reflect and renegotiate contemporary ideologies in structuring their fictional worlds.

The analysis proceeds from establishing the link between intelligent nonhuman creatures and “race” to exploring the ends to which texts deploy that link. This process begins in chapter three, which compares numerous fundamental traits of various non-humans to contemporary beliefs about human races. It further explores parallels between beliefs in racial hierarchies and the underlying logic of racial mixedness. It establishes that the texts define intelligent non-humans in terms strongly reminiscent of those used by contemporary racists to define human racial divisions. It further reinforces this claim by an appeal to features such as racial taxonomy and “new racism” to show that as racist beliefs have evolved over the century in the real world, the portrayal of intelligent non-humans in speculative fiction has evolved to match.

Chapter four takes the pattern of representation established in chapter three and extends it, drawing on concepts from Whiteness studies. By exploring concepts such as normativity, enterprise, gendered relationships to light and dark, color coding by pigmentation, and reproductive anxieties, chapter four reveals further nuance to the hierarchies established in chapter three. In particular, it shows the hierarchies extending in muted form between genders and humans of different skin tones. Many of these uses of Whiteness come despite attempts by the same texts to work against them. The chapter takes initial steps in exploring the use of racialized non-humans by arguing that using Whiteness to rationalize the hierarchies of the fictional world reinforces its use in rationalizing real-world hierarchies.

Chapter five finally explores the deployment of this racialization by considering the anti-racist strategies each work engages with. Each work involves itself with a variety of relativist, universalist, and practice-oriented anti-racist strategies. Each involvement shows the willingness of the works to negotiate these strategies and a critical awareness of those strategies’ strengths and shortcomings. At the same time, the works show a productive (“producerly”) complexity, and I discuss how each engagement leaves opportunities for selective (“guerilla”) readings. This openness ensures the ideological compatibility of the works with a wide audience by remaining open to interpretations across a broad range of the political spectrum.

Ultimately, the dissertation establishes sufficient ground to answer final questions, such as whether a given work might be considered “racist” or “antiracist,” a question it tackles based on various foci and meanings. Any answer as to whether the works are “racist” regarding human beings must be highly qualified. However, there is an undeniable “yes” to whether they are “racist” regarding intelligent non-humans. Intelligent non-humans are constructed in racial terms, while humans mainly exist in a normative position relative to them. Among humans, differences appear regarding enterprise and participation in gendered Whiteness. Nonetheless, these are patterned rather than explicit, and no inherent differences are directly ascribed to humans based on skin tone, while some are openly denied. At the same time, each work is undeniably anti-racist, yet this anti-racism and racism coexist comfortably and without contradiction, as each work opposes certain features of or associated with racism while casually embracing more fundamental aspects. This complexity and openness to race is typical of popular speculative fiction and shows that race matters, even when it does not exist.