Beyond Suvin: Rethinking Cognitive Estrangement
Abstract
This article proposes a reconceptualization of Darko Suvin’s notion of cognitive estrangement through affordance theory. Specifically, science-fictional estrangement is redescribed as the creation of fictional world-affordances imbued with cognitive potential. This perspective, drawing from traditional SF criticism, cognitive literary studies, and postcritical literary theory, allows to take the study of SF beyond the coordinates of critique and critical theory, which, also due to the profound influence of theorists such as Darko Suvin and Carl Freedman, have so far been the primary rhetorical and critical modes of this branch of genre criticism.
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