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.
Downloads
References
Cave, Terence, Thinking with Literature: Towards a Cognitive Criticism, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2016.
Chiang, Ted, “Story of Your Life”, Stories of Your Life and Others, London, Picador, 2015: 106-72.
Clark, Timothy, Martin Heidegger, London, Routledge, 2002.
Csicsery-Ronay, Istvan, Jr., The Seven Beauties of Science Fiction, Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press, 2008.
Delany, Samuel R., The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction, Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press, 2009.
Easterlin, Nancy, “Thick Context: Novelty in Cognition and Literature”, The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Literary Studies, Ed. Lisa Zunshine, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2015: 613-32.
Felski, Rita, The Limits of Critique, Chicago-London, The University of Chicago Press, 2015.
Freedman, Carl, Critical Theory and Science Fiction, Middletown, Conn., Wesleyan University Press, 2000.
Gallagher, Shaun, “Hermeneutics and the cognitive sciences”, Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11.10-11 (2004): 162-74.
Heidegger, Martin, Basic Writings, Ed. David Farrell Krell, London, Harper, 2008.
Herman, David (ed.), Narrative Theory and the Cognitive Sciences, Stanford, Calif., CSLI Publications, 2003.
Jameson, Fredric, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions, London-New York, Verso, 2005.
Lupyan, Gary - Rick Dale, “Why Are There Different Languages? The Role of Adaptation in Linguistic Diversity”, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 20.9 (2016): 649-660, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2016.07.005, online (last accessed 19/07/2021).
Miall, David S., “Anticipation and feeling in literary response: A neuropsychological perspective”, Poetics, 23 (1995): 275-98.
Miall, David S. - Kuiken, Don, “Foregrounding, defamiliarization, and affect: Response to literary stories”, Poetics, 22 (1994): 389-407.
Shklovsky, Victor, Theory of Prose (1925), Eds. Benjamin Sher – Gerald L. Bruns, Elmwood Park, Ill., Dalkey Archive Press, 1991.
Suvin, Darko, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction. On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, New Haven-London, Yale University Press, 1979.
Id., “Considering the Sense of ‘Fantasy’ or ‘Fantastic Fiction’: An Effusion”, Extrapolation, 41.3 (2000): 209-47.
Id., “On Cognition as Art and Politics: Reflections for a Toolkit”, Defined By a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction and Political Epistemology, Ed. Darko Suvin, Oxford, Peter Lang, 2010: 269-320.
Suvin, Darko - Angenot, Marc, “Not Only But Also: On Cognition and Ideology in SF and SF Criticism”, Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction, Ed. Darko Suvin, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 1988: 44-60.
Vonnegut, Kurt, Slaughterhouse-Five, London, Vintage, 2000.
Wicks, Amanda, “‘All This Happened, More or Less’: The Science Fiction of Trauma in Slaughterhouse-Five”, Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, 55.3 (2014): 329-40.
Wilson, Robert A. – Keil, Frank C. (eds.), The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences, Cambridge, Mass., The MIT Press, 1999.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
