Posthumanist Androids, Animals, and Aliens: Using Science Fiction “Others” to Re-negotiate Human Interactions

Abstract

Science fiction has long been a place to reimagine first contact. Sometimes it follows a strictly imperial path, in which civilizations (often inspired by the vestiges of our own colonial past) prove their dominance across the stars, but some seminal works of science fiction have been used by authors to rethink the ethical implications of interspecies and interhuman meetings. Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Androids), Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Word for World Is Forest (Forest), and Octavia E. Butler’s Dawn each use “Others” as metaphors to examine necessary humanizing elements for human-human relationships. In Androids and Forest the non-human Other is fully a stand-in for humans, failing to imagine an authentic Other and potentially dehumanizing real humans, while the aliens of Dawn are not part of the human identity, but still critique Western traditions. Androids argues for the importance of empathy on both sides of the relationship, Forest of the inadequacies of extending rights based on likeability or rationality, and Dawn of the need for accountability through guilt. Of particular theoretical import to this thesis is biologist and literary theorist Donna J. Haraway and her concept of “response-ability” from her book When Species Meet. Response-ability is Haraway’s belief that cross-species cooperation and benefit relies on looking for, understanding, and following cues from the Other. Although response-ability is Haraway’s methodology for interspecies relationships, I argue that it is the basis for any respectful relationship, not just human-animal but also human-human. Science fiction visualizes new meetings between humans and Others to emphasize the importance of response-ability in human-human relationships. As this thesis deals with dehumanization, it touches upon acts of dehumanization such as racism and rape. I have tried to do so respectfully.