Abstract
In this chapter, Calvin develops the third of four modes of FESF, in which approaches to and attitudes about science and technology raise epistemological concerns. This chapter describes some of the ways in which feminist scientists and philosophers have challenged both the principles and practices of science, including gender disparities in the field and in interpretation of data, a challenge to the scientific method, and re-examination of the relationship of the Subject and the object of inquiry. To illustrate these concepts, Calvin draws examples from Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, Helen Collins, Amy Thomson, and Nalo Hopkinson.
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Notes
- 1.
The responses here are complicated and often contradictory. On the one hand, the scientific and technological innovations post-World War II have been life-changing, and many herald the possibilities. Many saw technology as the means to end global hunger and poverty, expand life expectancy and quality of life, reduce work time and increase leisure time. On the other hand, after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, many came to question the “good” of technological innovations. They came to not only doubt the positive effects of technology, but to see it as part of the problem. Those fears were reflected, particularly in US science fiction literature, television, and films.
- 2.
As two prominent and very public examples, in 2005, Lawrence Summers suggested that innate, biological difference may account for the gender disparities in science and engineering (Summers). In 2015 (as I write this chapter), British scientist and Nobel Prize winner Tim Hunt made public statements that women should not be allowed to work in co-ed labs because they are a distraction to male scientists, they tend to fall in love with their male colleagues, and they cry when they are corrected or scolded. See, for example, articles in The Guardian (Ratcliffe) and New York Times (Bilefsky n.p.).
- 3.
In Philosophy of Science after Feminism (2010), Janet Kourany cites a number of recent studies that examine the complex set of factors that exclude and/or discourage girls and racial and ethnic minorities from pursuing careers in the sciences. The studies include those by the National Academy of Science/National Academy of Engineering/Institute of Medicine (2007), the Barnard Center for Research on Women (2007), the National Science Foundation (2007), the Diversity in Science Association (2007), and the American Association of University Professors (2006) (115).
- 4.
In 1986, Harding called Newton’s Principia Mathematica a “rape manual” for the way in which it represents nature and the natural world both as passive and feminine, as a something to be exploited. Zhe later said that zhe regretted the comparison (Nemecek 100).
- 5.
See Sherilyn MacGregor’s Beyond Mothering Earth (2006) as just one example of an argument for a non-essentialist ecofeminism.
- 6.
In Indian Muslim society, zenana is the part of the house reserved for women. In the story, Hossain calls the male version mardana.
- 7.
Converting every living thing into a food source is one of many similarities shared with Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Herland, which appeared five years after “Sultana’s Dream.”
- 8.
For example, in “Feminism and Science” (1996), Evelyn Fox Keller notes McClintock’s method, in which the scientist cannot impose a vision onto the material but must let the object of inquiry speak (37). Keller suggests that McClintock’s different methodology produced a radically different interpretative paradigm. Zhe developed, instead of the hierarchical, linear model, an organismic model, wherein a delicate and complex interaction operates instead of a hierarchy (37). In “Beyond Masculinist Realities” (1986), Hilary Rose similarly suggests that McClintock proposed a more complex model of science “than the purely cognitive model most male science celebrates” (63).
- 9.
The quote from Kilgore’s essay addresses Hopkinson’s anthology, Mojo: Conjure Stories, though I would argue that it applies equally to Midnight Robber.
- 10.
The planet Toussaint bears the name of the liberator of Haiti, Toussaint L’Ouverture (see Aylott n.p.; Enteen 265; Rutledge, “Nalo” 12). The other planet, New Half-Way Tree, draws its name from “the busy downtown Kingston intersection and parish capital, named for a big silk cotton tree that marked the midway point between the hills and the markets in Kingston” (Enteen 278, ff19).
- 11.
From the novel: “You know how a thing and the shadow of a thing could be in almost the same place together? You know the way a shadow is a dark version of the real thing, the dub side? Well, New Half-Way Tree is a dub version of Toussaint, hanging like a ripe maami apple in one fold of a dimension veil” (2).
- 12.
The personal avatar that interacts with each individual is called “eshu,” which recalls a West African deity that is capable of being in all places at once and can see all things at once (see Aylott n.p.; Enteen 273; Glave 150). In this sense the parallels between eshu and Granny Nanny are apparent.
- 13.
Collier (2003) notes that the lizard/goat figure is common fare in Caribbean folklore. Furthermore, in Trinidadian culture, the douen are the spirits of dead babies (see Collier 449).
- 14.
For more on all the forms of “mothering” in the novel, see Giselle Anatol, “Maternal Discourses in Nalo Hopkinson’s Midnight Robber” (2006).
- 15.
Hopkinson and several critics have called Toussaint a utopia. For example, Erin Fehskens (2010) says that Toussaint “seems to be utopian” (138). Gregory Rutledge (2002) writes that Toussaint is a “near-utopian society governed by a computer matrix” (“Nalo” 12). Hopkinson said in an interview, “At some point, most of the way through creating the world I needed to tell the story, I realized to my surprise that I had created a utopia” (SFSite n.p.). Zhe adds, “The person who invented the system saw the high level of benign surveillance as an acceptable trade-off for the kind of safety and high quality of life that the people would have” (Aylott n.p.; SFSite n.p.).
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Calvin, R. (2016). Chapter Four The Third Mode of FESF: Epistemology and Science. In: Feminist Science Fiction and Feminist Epistemology. Studies in Global Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32470-8_5
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