Speculative Fiction as a Weapon of Intellectual Warfare: The Battle to Imagine a Racist or an Anti-Racist Future
Humanities
Critical Race and Ethnic Studies 190
The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential impacts of the speculative fiction genre of narrative writing, which has the unique power to imagine futures not necessarily determined by our present and past. My argument revolves around utilizing this power in order to fight for an anti-racist future. Speculative fiction authors have the ability to use the genre as a tool of intellectual warfare, to either perpetuate colonial and racialized thinking that can permeate into the public consciousness or counteract and dismantle those ways of thinking. I analyze famous examples that either explicitly or subtly perpetuate colonialism and racism, and I also analyze examples of anti-racist work within the genre. At the conclusion, I turn a lens onto my own creative work and explain my intended goals in counteracting racism within my own narrative. I also explore my place in writing an anti-racist speculative fiction piece as a white male.
