Variables of the Human: Gender and the Programmable Subject in Samuel R. Delany’s Triton

Abstract

The feminist redefinition of the term “gender” imbued the word with a utopian promise. Because of its utopian nature and its frequent explorations of the relations between the human body and identity, the critical apparatus of science fiction serves as the ideal narrative space for explorations of gender. Because many of his works openly grapple with theoretical concepts, Samuel R. Delany exemplifies the potential critical power of science fiction. Delany’s fiction often functions as a direct critique of particular theoretical ideas or enterprises. For instance, “The Tale of Old Venn,” the second of Delany’s 11 Nevèrÿon tales, quotes Lacan at its outset and proceeds to examine the concept of the phallus, how it differs from the penis, and how it rethinks the Freudian concept of penis envy. Similarly, as this chapter will demonstrate, his classic novel Tr o u b l e o n Tr i t o n can be read partly as a response to Foucault’s notion of heterotopias from The Order of Things but also as a critical response to one of the most utopian areas of theoretical discourse: gender theory. Numerous classic works of science fiction have reimagined sex, gender, and sexuality in various provocative ways, but Delany pushes such science fictional examinations into radical new territories that open the terms up to retheorization.

A normalizing society is the historical outcome of a technology of power centered on life.

—Michel Foucault (Sexuality 144)

Fantasy is what allows us to imagine ourselves and others otherwise. Fantasy is what establishes the possible in excess of the real; it points, it points elsewhere, and when it is embodied, it brings the elsewhere home.

—Judith Butler (Undoing 217)