ronay - science fiction and empire

8/11/2019 Ronay - Science Fiction and Empire

1/16

SF TH Inc

Science Fiction and EmpireAuthor(s): Istvan Csicsery-Ronay, Jr.Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 30, No. 2, Social Science Fiction (Jul., 2003), pp. 231-245Published by: SF-TH IncStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4241171.

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2/16

SCIENCE ICTIONAND EMPIRE

231

Istvan Csicsery-Ronay,

Jr.

Science Fiction

and

Empire

In this essay, I

will make

a

preliminaryattempt

at

cognitive mapping.

I meanto

look at sf as

an

expression

of the

political-cultural

ransformationhat

originated

in European imperialism and

was

inspired by

the ideal of a

single global

technological regime.

I will make

the claim that the conditions for the

emergence of sf

as a

genre

are

made

possible by

three factors:

the

technological

expansion that drove real imperialism,the need felt by national audiences for

literary-cultural

mediation as

their societies were transformed rom

historical

nations into hegemons,

and the fantastic

model of achieved technoscientific

Empire.

A

quick list

of the nations that have

produced

most of the sf in the

past

century

and a

half

shows

a

distinct

pattern.

The dominant f

nations

are

precisely

those that

attempted

to

expand beyond

their national borders

in

imperialist

projects: Britain, France, Germany, Soviet Russia, Japan,

and

the US.' The

pattern

is

clear,

but

not

simple. English

and French sf

took

off when their

imperialprojects were at theirheights, and have continued o thrive long after

their colonies gained independence.2

German sf was

primarily

a

product

of

Weimar-that

is,

after the

collapse

of the short-lived German

imperium.3

Japanese

sf-which is now one

of

the most influential of

contemporary

international

tyles-also producedrelatively

ittle

before the end of WorldWar

II.4Soviet

sf

picked up

a rich Russian radition

of satirical

and

mystical

scientific

fantasy and adapted

t

to its

own

revolutionarymysticism

in the

1920s; after a

long dormancyunder Stalin,

it

revived again during he thaw of the 1960s, only

to evaporatewith the fall of Communism.5

n

the US, sf was a well-developed

minor genre in the nineteenth century; it exploded in the 1920s and has

continued

its

hegemony

ever since. Whetherthis occurred

during

the

collapse

of

imperialism

as a world-historical

project,

or

fully

within

a

pax

Americana hat

can

stand

as

the American

Empire,

we will

have to examine. Our

answers may

not only help

us

to interprethow

the sf

genre functions

in

twentieth-century

cultural

history,

but also make

us sensitive

to

its

functionas a

mediatorbetween

national

literary

traditionsand that chimerical

beast, global technoculture.

To

conduct this

investigation,

we must be

clear about certain

concepts that

it

is

hard to

be clear

about.

By sf,

we

should understand

not an ideal category

with a putativesocial or aesthetic ogic, but what nationalaudiencesunderstand

to be sf-which is less a class

than a

jelly

that shifts

around

but doesn't lose

its

mass. Some

core

elements of the

genre appear

n

every sf culture, and help to

establishan international

rototype

or what

audiencesconsider

sf. But there are

significant

differences

at

the

margins

of the

class.6 We should

also

keep

in

mind that

imperialistprojects

took differentforms in

differentnationalcultures,

depending

on when

they

were embarked

upon,

the character of the home

culture,

and their material

technological

relations.

I

approach

he

matter

as

a

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3/16

232

SCIENCE ICTION TUDIES,VOLUME 0 (2003)

complex volution

rom

mperialist

rojects

hatwere

expansions

romnation-

consolidating odernizingrojects-i.e., attaching

erritorieso the

nation-state

with henaivebelief

that he

metropole

wouldnotbe

changed-to

thecondition

ofglobalmarketapitalism

hatMichael

Hardt ndAntonio

Negri,

n

their

book

Empire 2000),treat

as

postmodern

mpire.Sf,

I will

argue,

hasbeen

driven

by

a desire

or the

imaginary

ransformationf

imperialism

nto

Empire,

viewed

not primarily

n

terms

of

political

and economiccontests

among

cartelsand

peoples,

butas

a

technological

egime

hataffectsandensures

he

global

ontrol

system

of de-nationalized

ommunications.

t is in thissense hat

Empire

s the

fantastic

ntelechy

of

imperialism,

he ideal state hat ranscendshe national

competitionseading

oward

t.

For mostcommentators,mperialisms the ideological ustificationor

attempts y a nation-stateo

extend ts

power

over

other,

weaker

erritories,

n

competition

with

similarnation-states

triving

or the same

goals.

Hardtand

Negri'sconceptof Empire,

by contrast,

s

themoreor less achieved

egime

of

globalcapitalism.

This

regime atally

restricts

he

power

of

nation-states,

nd

maintains tself

through

nstitutions f

global governance

and

exchange,

information

echnologies,

and

the de facto

military

dominance f

the United

States.

I

am not concerned

with

whetherHardtand

Negri's

model

accurately

describeshe realconditionsf theglobalcapitalist egime.7ts thesis s being

put

o the

test

at this

very

moment,

s the US

pursues conquest

hatresembles

classical

mperialism

t

leastas muchas

it

does

global

onflict

management.

We

will

see

in

time whether t has irreparablyisturbedhe

Pax

Americana n

which o muchof Hardt nd

Negri's heory ests,or whethert hasdramatically

expanded

he

power

of

the

American

mpire

o

enforce world

eace. Formy

part,

Hardt

and

Negri's

notion s thin stuff

upon

whichto base a

critique

f

globalcapitalism. t is, however, mmensely sefulas a tool for understanding

contemporaryeopolitical

mythology,

s a

cognitivemap,

n

Jameson'serms,

of thepresent. tmanageso combine rucial deasaboutglobalizationhared

by

multinational

apitalism

ndMarxist

ritiques

f

imperialism;

nd

by doing

so

it

describesan

imaginaryworld-picture

n

which fundamental

istorical

transformationsreconceptualizedndrationalized.

s

a

politicalmodel, t has

the flavor

of sf-and thus

joins

other such

politicalsf-mythsas Haraway's

cyborg,

Baudrillard's

imulacra,

and

Deleuze-Guattari's

opologies.8As

a

world-model,

it is

simultaneously n ideological fiction and a way of

experiencing

he

world.

It is also what

PeterStockwellcalls an architext:

complex ognitivemetaphorntowhichcanbe

mapped eaders' enseof reality

andalso themanydifferent artsof thescience-fictional egatext-theshared

body

of

worksand

assumptions

f the sf

genre 204).

In

this sense, the ideaof

Empire

s like

that

of

utopia.

Indeed,

will

argue

hat he

utopian rchitexts

closely

linked o the

model

of

Empire.

will

emphasize

his in science

iction

by treating

eal

imperialism

s

the

growingpains

of

imaginary mpire. will

treat

Empire

s

the

entelechy,

he embedded

oal,

the

conceptual

ulfillment

f

imperialism.



4/16

SCIENCE ICTIONAND

EMPIRE

233

SF and

Imperialism.

The role of

technology

n

propellingmperialist rojects

is

often

neglected.9

And

yet technological

development

was

not

only

a

preconditionor the physicalexpansionof the imperialistountriesbut an

immanent

riving

orce.

It led to

changes

of

consciousnesshat acilitated

he

subjugation

f less

developed ultures,

wove

converging

etworks f

technical

administration,

ndestablished

tandards

f

objective

measurement

hat ed

inevitablyo myths

of racialandnational

upremacyAdas 145).

It stands o

reason hat

f,

a

genre

hat xtols

and

problematizesechnology'sffects,

would

emerge

n

those

highly

modernized

ocietieswhere

technology

had

become

established

as a

system

for

dominating

he environment nd

social life.

Imperialist

tateswere at

the

wavefront

f

technological evelopment.

heir

projectshadwhatThomasP. Hughes alls technological omentum 111).

The

tools of exploration

nd coercionformed

systems,

as

did the tools of

administrationnd

production

n

the

colonies,

and these

systemsgradually

meshed.Colonial erritories

were

treated

s

free

zones,

wherenew

techniques

and nstrumentsould

be triedout

by companies

nd

bureaucracies

ar

from he

constraintsf

conservative

ational

opulations.

hese

nnovationshen

ed

back

into

the

metropole, nviting

more

andmore

nvestment,

echnical

laboration,

andnew

applications.

he

exponentialrowth f mechanical

roduction

nd

he

production

f

mechanismontinually

idened

he

gapsbetween mperial gents

and theirsubjectpeoples. Supremacyecamea function f thetechnological

regime Adas

134).

There

can be

no

doubt

hat

without onstantly cceleratingechnological

innovationmperialism ouldnot have

had

the force it

did,

or

progressed o

rapidly.

Without

teamships

nd

gunboats,

epeating

ifles and

machine

uns,

submarine

ables, telegraphines,

and anti-malarial

edicines,

he

power

of

imperial

dventurers ouldhave been

greatly

imited,

and

perhaps

ot

even

possible.10

But

imperial echnology

was not

only

a

set

of

tools

used for

exploitation

f

the colonies.

Imperial

uture

hock

blew back

into

the

home

country,consolidating new ideaof politicalpower inked o technological

momentum,

ssentially olonizing he homeland

oo,

andat a

speed hatmade

all resistanceutile.Each

global echnological

uccess

brought ower

and

money

to

technologicalprojects, creating

a

logrolling

effect that

drove irrational

political

and economic

exploitationbeyond

its

tolerances,

n

grand-scale

uncontrolled

ocial

experiments.

t also fueled

evermore

ocusedandcomplex

technologicalmomentum-until ocial

conflicts, both withinandbeyond he

national

borders,

could

only

be seen as

politically manageable hrough

technological

means.With

mperialism, olitics

became echnological.

Letus look at thispropositionrom heperspective f literary istory. t is

generally ccepted

hat

he novel

was an instrument

or

establishing ourgeois

national

onsciousness.

n

Benedict

Anderson'swell-known ormulation,he

novel was one

of

the

tools for

constructing

he

imaginary

ense

of national

community

n

modernizing

ocieties.The

Marxist

GeorgLukacs, or his part,

argued

hatthe novel

developed

n

every

national ulture n more

or less the

same

way

because modernizationolloweda

single

historical

rajectory.

A

society

was eitheron the

bus-indeed,

like

England

nd

France, itting

behind



5/16

234

SCIENCE FICTION STUDIES,

VOLUME

30

(2003)

the wheel-or

off the bus

and in

the dust. The fact

that

novels

were written

in

national

vernaculars,

relying

on

certain collective

memories and

myths,

was

irrelevant o Lukacs. However, studentsof the Westernnovel can't ignorethat

novels

were also projects of national consolidation and

normalization.

Novels

were

attempts to reconcile at least two

great

competing

cultural

desires: to

preserve the

specific

knowledge

of a

society's present

in

its

language

and

collective

memory (what

Balzac called the

archeology

of the

present ),

and to

ascend into the world

community

of modern

players,

to

join

the

Club of Nations

at the forefront of historical

progress.

If

the

popularity

of a

literary genre

is a

sign

of its

power

to

mediate real

social

dilemmas

through

maginaryresolutions,

what is

sf's

role? Whatand

how

does itmediate?Sf is generallyset inmarkedcontrastwiththebourgeoisrealism

of

the novel. It has been linkedto a

variety

of

anti-realist,

and so

anti-bourgeois,

literaryforms (most

frequently, pastoral,

romance,

and

utopia).

In the

US,

sf's

most

enthusiastic

audiences

were

originally

on the

margins

of the

bourgeoisie:

recent

immigrants,

working-class

readers,

and

students

of

technical

schools;

for

them the

fantasies

of

physical

mastery

and

engineering

know-how

offered an

imaginary

alternative source of social

power

to

the norms of

middle-class

existence

(Stockwell

99).

In

Weimar

Germany, by

contrast,

sf

was directed

primarilyto the middle

class,

but a

class

preoccupied

with

national

resentment

and revenge fantasies (Nagl 30-31). In both cases, the fantasies were quite

similar

to the

ideologies

of

mastery

that

inspired

he

imperialist

adventurers nd

colonists. Historians treat

Cecil Rhodes's sublime

statementof

regret

as the

consummate

expression

of

imperialist

desire:

The

world

is

nearly

all

parceled

out,

and

what there is

left of

it,

is

being

divided

up,

conquered

and

colonized. To think of

these stars that

you

see

overhead at

night, these vast worlds which

we can never reach. I

would

annex the

planets

if

I

could;

I

often think of that. It makes

me sad to

see them so

clear and yet so far.

(qtd

in

Hardt and

Negri 221)

To

paraphrase

Philip

K.

Dick's Palmer

Eldritch:

mperialism

promises he stars;

sf

delivers.

I

am

not

arguing

that sf

replaces

bourgeois

realism as the

main

mediating

agent of

late

modernist national

culture

in

the West.

That

would too great a

claim.

(Even

so,

some

versions

of that

argumentwill

make

sense, if insteadof

sf we

put

forward a

larger

class of

fantastic

writing that

incorporates sf's

traditional

devices and

world-pictures,

a version of

slipstream

writingin which

bourgeois

realism,

the non-Western

fantastic, visionary

satire, and

sf are

blended.1 )Aspiring technocratic audiences did not replace the bourgeois

national

publics

wholesale.

If

sf took on some

of the

role of mediating

between

the

national

pasts

and the late

modern

futurepresent,

what

role did national

traditions

have

in

the

cultural

work of sf?

Studentsof

imperialismknow from

the work

of Hannah

Arendtand

Edward

Said

that

imperial

expansion

had a

profound

effect on

culture in

the home

countries,

even

when the

effect was hardly

noticed

at the time.

Since most

bourgeoisnation-states

had

completed

heirpolitical

consolidationonly recently,



6/16

SCIENCE ICTIONAND EMPIRE

235

and heir ocialconsolidationotat all in

many ases, theirunderlyingonflicts

were often still activeandmenacing.

mperialismttemptedo resolve iving

domestic roblems y exportinghem

beyond heborders f the Homeland.As

these offworld olonial onstituenciesstablishedhemselves, heyputgreat

pressureon the metropoles o give up

certain onstraintshatwent with the

nation-state, ndto adjust o the facts

f occupied erritories:echnological

violence was justified by ideologies of

supremacy Arendt 136-38). The

corrosive ffect hathis ustification,nd hereliance n

technologicaliolence,

had on the most positive institutions

nd values of the nation-states seen

climactically

n

the attempt y

the home

powers

o

reproduce

heiroffworld

successes n the OldEarth

f

Europe

n

the

FirstWorldWar

Adas365-66).

At

thatpoint, hecollidingwould-bempires evealedhat heir echnosystemsad

determinedheir dentitiesmore

han heir

histories

ad.Their

nationalraditions

couldnot extend o the outerplanets,

mainlybecause he colonists hemselves

refused o accept heconstraintslacedontheir iberty.Foradventurersuchas

Rhodes, he national lag

had been

merely

an asset in the work of

imperial

accumulation;

or the home

populations,

t had

represented

he

very

reason

or

that

accumulation. or mperialists,

he

twentieth-century'sorldwarsproved

merely

hatnational

dentity

s

a volatile nvestment

nstrument;

or

national

populations

t

catastrophically

ndermined

he

politics

of

reality

tself.

Sf raisessomevery specificquestionsnthishistoricalontext.One s: are

the differences

n

national raditions

f sf due

primarily

o

the desire

o retain

traditional ultural values historicallyestablished

against

the

engine

of

technological xpansion?

s

this why

we notice

the

significant

ifferences

f

tone, of genericaffiliation, f conventions

f

representation,

hatmarkFrench

sf

fromBritish,US fromGerman, apaneseromRussian? f

so, then

sf

may

havemuch he samefunctionhatnovelistic ealismhad n

bourgeois ational

modernization:managing he abstract

echno-politicaleap forwardout of

domestic

ulture,

rom

a nation

among

nations o a

global

culture.

Another uestions:hassf beenaprivilegedhematicenre perhapsn the

way that film has been a privilegedmaterial

medium)

or

expressing

and

representinghe dialectics

of

this imperial

process, becauseof its central

fascinationwith

technology?

Has

sf

labored o

manage

the

technological

momentum

nherent

n

imperialism,

by infusing

it

with nationalcultural

dialects -symbol ystems, iterary

orms

and

formulas,

rtistic

echniques,

and

discourse

ractices?

To

study

his

genealogy,we

will

have

to

correlate t

least hreedomains:

1)

the character f the

imperial

moment-whatdifference

did

it make

whether heexpansionwasa gradual ndarticulatedrocess,as with heBritish

and

French;

or

intense, short, highly

artificial,

and self-reflective

ike the

Germanand the

Japanese;

or a

smooth accessionand

aggrandizement

f

economicand

military ower,

as

in

the case of the US?

2)

the

character f the techno-culture-wast

widely

diffused

n

social

ife,

as in

the

US, Britain,

and

France,

was

it

a

foreign mport

s

in

Japan,

was it

associated

with

revolutionary ysticism

s

in

Russia nd he Soviet

Union,

was

it an

expression

f romantic

onging

andresentments

in

Germany?

rom

he



7/16

236

SCIENCE ICTION TUDIES,VOLUME

0

(2003)

rear-view

mirrorof achieved

Empire,

what role did a

given

technoculture

play:

dominant

agency, marginal late-coming,

adversary

counter-imperialism,

or

historicalsublation?

3) finally, the character of the

literary-cultural

raditions

that infused

the

fiction

of

sf. This

is

the zone

of science fiction's

literary

unconscious.

National

literary or

artistic forms

may

lead us to the traditions hat

distinguish

he

styles

of different nations'

sf.

Clearly,

sf is identifiable

by

the

icons it uses:

the

spaceship,

the

alien,

the

robot,

super-weapons,

bio-monsters,

and the

more

recent

additions,

wormholes,

the

net,

the

cyborg,

and so on.

It

is not difficult

to link these to colonialist

and

imperialist

practices.

They represent

he

power

tools of

imperial

subjects,

the transformations f the

objects

of

domination,

and

the ambiguitiesof subjectswho find themselves with split affinities. In these

terms,

sf's icons

are

abstract

modem

universals,

free of

any specific

cultural

associations. Yet when we view or read sf of different

national

styles,

we feel

marked

differences. The

same

icons are cast in

the mode of

political

and/or

visionary

fantasy

in

Soviet

sf; scientific romance

n

British sf and its slapstick,

dance-hall Red

Dwarf inversions;

as fanciful ironic

surrealism

in

post-Verne

French

sf

and its

vertiginous

inversion,

the

camp

of Metal

Hurlant;

as

supersaturated

ationalistromanticism n

German

sf

and its

militantecophile sf

descendants;

as

catastrophism

n

Japanese sf

and its hidden

puppet-theatre

traditions;and as galactic Edisonianproblem-solving n US sf and its wired-

beatnik

bourgeois-bashing

twin of

tech noir. These

are,

of

course,

crude

characterizations.National

styles develop along

with

social

life,

and

change

constantly

n

response

to

influences,

both domestic and

foreign.

There are also

clear

signs

that these currents are

converging, precisely

because

of the

delight

in

diversitythat

Negri

and

Hardtconsider

characteristic f

capitalistglobalism.

SF

and

Empire.

If

we look

at

sf's

connectionwith

technoscientific

empire

only

from

the

perspective

of

historical

imperialism,we

will

see an

exoskeleton, the

genre as the interface between the pressures of global capitalistevolutionand

national

technoculture.To take a truly

dialectical view,

we also have to look at

the

internal

space of the

genre, its

world-model,

its

assumptionsof

conceptual

design

through

which it

makes politics, society,

ontology, and

technology

science-fictional. I

believe that this

imaginary

world-model is technoscientific

Empire-Empire

that is

managed, sustained,

justified, but also

riven by

simultaneously nterlocking

and

competing technologies

of social control and

material

expansion. Sf artists

construct tories aboutwhy

this Empire s

desired,

how it is

achieved,

how it is

managed,how it corrupts for

corrupt t

must), how

it declines andfalls, how it deals withcompetingclaims to imperialsovereignty,

or

how it

is

resisted. The

history of sf

reflects the changingpositionsof

different

national

audiences as

they

imagine

themselves in

a

developing world-system

constructedout of

technology's second

nature.

To see this

connection

concretely, let us

take a quick

ook at thequalities hat

Hardt and

Negri attributeto Empire.

Where imperialism

is aboutunlimited

growth,

embodied in

unlimitedexpansion

(of capital,

markets,

and

production),

empire

is

also

about the

consolidation

of

the

expansions of the past,

and the



8/16

SCIENCE FICTION AND EMPIRE

237

irresistible attraction o imperial order.

Its expansion is driven not by greed or

national pride, but by the putatively superior ability of the imperial order to

deliver peace and security.

Empire seeks to establish a single

overdetermining ower that is located not

in a recognizable territory, but in an

ideology of abstract right enforced by

technologies

of

control.

Its

characteristic

space

is

horizontal, expansive, and

limitless; it exhaustsand suspends

historical ime, pragmatically i.e., cynically)

taking up typological justifications

from the

past

and the

future

as

the occasion

demands. Its goal is the management

f

global conflict, worldpeace. Empire

continually reproduces and revitalizes itself

through

the

managementof local

crises, and indeed by the transformation

f potentially global challenges into

administrativeconflicts. It eschews dialectics and transcendence(which are

inherentlydestabilizing) n favor of

constant ntervention.It intervenesboth in

the social world and

in the minds

of

private

individuals,

two

spheres

it fuses

throughpervasive communications

echnologies.

Its

physical space

is

limitless,

open

to

perpetualexpansion,

and

its social space

is

open

to

variety, hybridity,

and

relentless denaturing.Empire is

the

consummatereplacementof natureby

artifice.

In its

ontology,

all

existence

is

derived from a

single, infinitely varied

immnanence-withrules

that

allow for infinite

exceptions, but

not

repudiation.

Empire

s the fusion of force

and

legitimacy.

Since

order s its

drivingvalue,

its driving motive is enforcement. Its laws are not the laws of God, but of

science. These are theorized globally,

but they are enforced locally,

as

exceptions. Technology pervades

Empire;

it

constructs a power grid through

which it distributes its force and, by doing so, converts the line of

communication nto

a

power-cord. It

rules,

write

Hardt

and

Negri, through

he

bomb, money, and ether (345). Its centers of

power are

the

ganglia we know as

global

cities. To

these,

we can

add Haraway's privileged sites

of

biopolitical

virtuality: the gene, the fetus, and the

lab-distributed interfaces where

the

essential conflicts of

capitalism

between social control and unbridled

material

expansionare ceaselessly engaged.

As an

imaginarypolitical domain,

Empire

is related

to

utopia. Utopia

is

an

idealized

image

of the

city-state-indeed,

the

nation-state-where internecine

conflicts

do

not

arise,

since

the

ideal

congruence

of

right

and

law is an

ontological given. Utopias

resolve inherentdifferences

through

he

irresistible

logic

of their

order. They

are

spatiallycircumscribed,

and so

they easily

contain

their

people, reinforcingtheir

self-identity.

Their

hegemony may

extend

past

their

city walls,

but

they

are

essentially

insular.

They

do not

expand,

and

so

their

stabilitydepends

on their

strict

adherence o natural aws of balance.

They

are scientific and rationalbecause their laws reflect a logic of stability nherent

in

naturalreason.

The model of

Empire

is

grounded

n

the

history

of

real

empires.

Utopia

is

crafted rom

an

abstract

onjunction

f

community

andnatural

harmony;Empire

is

energizedby a

more concrete

relationship:

he

conjunction

f

might

and

right.

Even in its most idealized

form,

Empire

is

a

complex

machine

that

distributes-and

thereby produces-force.

In

utopias,

force

is

occasionally

rationalized

as

a

way

of

protecting

the balance between

people

and

state,

and



9/16

238 SCIENCE

ICTION TUDIES,

VOLUME 0

(2003)

insuringthe

inviolability

of the enclave. In

Empire,

it is the

vitalizing

condition

of

possibility.

All the social and creative

endeavorsof

imperialpeoples

are

shot

throughwith the institutionalviolence that makes them materiallypossible.

Imperial

violence

is so

powerful

that

it must

expand;

contained,

its

society

would implode like a black hole.

Sf's

debt

to

utopia

is

great;

but it owes more to

Empire.

For sf's

techno-

science-which is the basis of its

icons,

energies,

and

imaginary

historical

conflicts-has little to do

with

utopia's institutionalized

balancing

acts and

containment

trategies.

Technoscientific

projects

expand,

mesh with

others,

and

gain

power

from

grand-scale

conflicts that

inspire

new

resolutions,

which

then

evolve into new mechanisms.

The

expansion

of

technoscience is both internal

(thelogic of its technicalapplicabilityandimprovement)andexternal(thelogic

of its universal

application).

An

engine

aspires

o

maximumrelevance.

Violently

overcomingobstacles

placed

in its

way by

nature

which

is

nothing

ess that

the

world-as-given

before imperial

echnologies

go

to work on

it),

technoscience

charges

all

its

claims

to

right

and

law

with

the irresistible

expansion

of its

violence.

The

force

is

justified,

however,

in

the name of

peace

and order.

Before

armiesand

proconsuls, echnoscientific

Empire avors

the

adventurer,

the

Odysseanhandyman

ar

from

home,

whose

desire

for

movementandconflict

inspires

his skill

with tools. With each

fight and each

sociotechnical

problem

solved, the imperialhandymangainsincreasedpersonalsovereigntyandpower.

As

Empireproducesperpetual

conflict

on

local levels that invite

its intervention

(a process

Hardt

and

Negri

call omnicrisis

189]), imperial

fiction

produces

adventures in an

immanent,

lateral cosmos. Sf is most

comfortablewith

such

imperial

adventure-worlds.

Even

the classical genres to which sf is often

traced

(the

pastoral,

the

romance, the utopian

cityscape)

originate

in

the

imperial

imagination

(specifically

from

Alexandria,

Byzantium,

and

Rome),

as do

their shadow-

genres,

the

slave's

narrative,

he

journeythrough

hell,

and

the

dark

city.

Utopias

demandplacement,position, definition; they are, as Louis Marinnamesthem,

games with

spaces, real

maps of imaginary

erritories.

Empiresare, by contrast,

unbounded

in

space,

and

restless

in

time.

Empire

is

a

model

of

constant,

managed

transition: ts

worlds are

perpetuallyat some

point on the

timeline of

imperial

evolution, from

initial expansion,

through

incorporation,and then

corruption,

to

decline and fall.

There

is

much more we

could

say

about

this rich political myth.

But even

this

is

enoughto see how

much this

imaginary

echnoscientificEmpire

offers sf.

The

genre's

favorite

counterfactualoperations

and

mechanisms are all made

rationalby imperialontology. Time-machines,faster-than-lightravel, galactic

history, parallel

universes, the

restless

reconstruction f

relationshipsbetween

the center

and the

peripheryendlessly replayed n

the

relationshipbetween Old

Earth

and the

offworlds, aliens and

cyborgs, space

opera, utopia and

dystopia-these

motifs, like

many

others in sf, rely on a

cosmos

governedby the

laws and

right

of

technoscience, and

yet are open to almost

infinite

variation.Sf

is an

endlessly

productive engine of

local

crises

in

a highly tolerant

universe

from

which it is

impossible to depart.



10/16

SCIENCE

FICTION AND EMPIRE

239

Hardtand Negri's model

of

Empire

has a

distinctly

science-fictional

feel to

it. Polybius, Machiavelli, and Spinoza

may hover in the background,but the

Empireof the

contenporary

resemblesthe familiarworld of cyberpunkandtech

noir.

Empire appears

in

the form of

a very high-tech

machine:

it is virtual,

built to

control the marginal event,

and

organized

to dominate and when necessary

intervene

in

the

breakdowns

of

the system (in

line with

the

most

advanced

technologies

of robotic

production).

(39)

The imperialorder is formed

not

only

on the basis of its

powers

of

accumulation

and

global extension,

but also on the basis

of

its

capacity

to

develop

itself

more

deeply, to be reborn,

and

to

extend

itself

throughout

he

biopolitical

atticework

of world society. (41)

The empire's institutional

tructure

s

like a softwareprogram hatcarries

a virus

along

with

it,

so

that

it is

continuallymodulating

and

corrupting

he institutional

forms around it.

(197-98)

This

is

the

imperial Sprawl,

ruled not

through

decrees

and

armies (well,

mostly not through armies)

but

through

communication/control

networks that

distributevirtual

power.

This

power

is

internalized

by imperial

citizens as

surely

as if

they

had

chips

embedded

in their

brains.

In

Empire, subjectivity

is

multicentered,produced hrough

nstitutions hatare

terninally

unstable,always

breaking

down. As the

integrity

of

social institutions

such

as

schools, families,

courts,

and

prisons) fragments,

and

the once-clear

subject-positions

associated

with them weaken, the call

for

imperial comprehensiveness s strengthened,

inauguratinga comprehensive

deology, a finely distributedpragmaticmyth of

networked, globally interlocking

power.

This is

the twenty-minutes-into-the-

future of

Philip

K.

Dick,

J.G.

Ballard,

William

Gibson,

Pat

Cadigan, and

MamoruOshii, where computerizedcommunicationsoperate 24/7, generating

a

mindscape

of

consumingsubjects

nto which

capitalist deology

feeds directly.

It perpetually breaks down

and reconstructs human consciousness, as in a

Cadigannovel,

into

provisional

target-identities

o

which the

nostalgic,

utopian

dream

of

wholeness can

be sold and resold

perpetually

n

variant,

sometimes

mutually contradictory orms,

and which

can be

hired

to

convey its

fictions of

sovereignty

ever

deeper

into

the

self

that once

imagined

t was itself sovereign.

In this

empire,

there are infinite

possibilities

of

projection,

but

only

one

reality.

The

most

natural

thing

in the world

is that

the world

appears

to

be

politically

united,

that

the

market is

global,

and

that

power

is

organized throughout

ts

universality. Imperial politics

articulates

being

in

its

global

extension-a

great

sea that only the winds and the current move. The neutralization of the

transcendental

magination

is thus

the first

sense

in which the

political

in the

imperial

domain is

ontological.

(354)

Since

contemporary mperialpower

does

not emanatefrom

one

center,

but

rather from

the

cyberspatial

ganglia

of

postmodern metropoli,

resistance

manifests

itself in the

daily

refusal

on the

part

of the

multitude to

follow

commands.

For Hardt and

Negri,

revolution is

neither

possible

nor

desirable,

since

no

class

can act as the

self-conscious

agent

of

history.

Freedom

rests,

as



11/16

240

SCIENCE FICTION

STUDIES, VOLUME 30

(2003)

in

Gibson's

world,

in

findingone's own

uses for

things.

In

contrast

with

sabotage,

heresistance

trategy

f national

modernism,

esistance nder

Empire

consists fwithdrawingonsent,

f

desertion212).Even hegreatestebelsare

refuseniks,

hoosing

o

withdraw,eaving

behind

hem,

ike the fused AIs

in

Neuromnancer1984),

a world n

which

things

re

hings 270).Although

his

strategy ardlypromises

muchas

a

way

of

landing

lows

against

he

empire,

t

is a dominantmotif

in

the countercultural

Lost n

Space or

alternatively,

Lost

n

the Urban

Labyrinth )ubgenre.

Ironically,

ost n

Space

tv series,

1965-68;

ilm

1998]

tself is as

hysterically

onservative

s Robinson

Crusoe.)

Where the

overtly imperial

mode

accepts

the hierarchical

network of

administration-Starfleet

ommanders

till

representing

he Federation-even

mainstream opularworks such as Farscape(1999-2003)and Star Trek:

Voyager

1995-2001) ry

to

establish de-centralized eb

of

relationships

n the

unchartederritories,

ow

ust

a wormhole

way

rom he

past and

he

politics

of

empire).

This

homology

between

Empire

and sf extendsto

formal evels. The

cinematic erial

form,

for

example,

s

particularly

ell-suited or

imperial

f.

It

permits n enormous

ariety

of elements o be

juxtaposed

ith

only

minimal

motivation.

n

each

episode,yet

another ultural

metaphor

f

spatial

r

temporal

disruption

s

managed.

This has been

true

from

he

earliest

versions,

such

as

FlashGordon,o morerecentones-e.g., StarTrekandFarscape.Theserial

permits

alien and ocal elements o be

acknowledged,

ithout

hreatening

he

order of

things.

The

physically

nfinite

expanse

of

space

in

such

forms is

generally

controlled

by

forms of recursionand

recapitulation-plot

evices

revealing

hat

far-flung

differences re

related o the terrestrial

metropole's

perennial roblems.

At its

most ntellectual

xtremes,

f

can even

magine

hat

basic

aws

of nature re

artificial,

ools or

themanifestationnd

ommunication

of

power-as,

for

instance,

Stanislaw em's

notion

n A

New

Cosmogony

f

GreatCosmic

Civilizations hat

changeunderlying

osmic

laws

in

order

to

communicate itheachother andprevent uman eings romeverthreatening

their

hegemony).

Hardt nd

Negri'sEmpire

s a

creature f its

time.

Its

model s

the mageof

globalcapitalismhatcrystallized

mmediately fter

he firstGulf

War.Their

vision is

essentially he liberal

world-picture,

lightlyMarxified, f a post-

Fordistnternational

ervice conomy ttendinghe

ransformationf

production

by computers

nd

robots. The authors

have

surprisinglyittle to

say about

technologies

other than

communication/control

ets. For them,

technology

signifiescontrol,

he

imperialmachine

34). Their

conceptionf historical

imperialism,oo,ignores he echnological omentumhatdemolishedhedams

and

breakwaters

f

the

nation-states,

nd

createdthe

constantlymutating

channels f

global

lows. From

he

perspective

f

sf, Empire elongs

o a special

subgenre-let's

call

it the sf of

global

management-withffinities

ot only to

cyberpunk,

utto Isaac

Asimov'sFOUNDATION

novels

1951-53),JamesBlish's

CITIES N

FLIGHT

series(1955-1962),andStarTrek.

Sf s

imperial

magination

s

more

comprehensivehan his.

Since he basic

conditions f sf are

made

possible

by

the

hypothesisf the

immanentntology



12/16

SCIENCE FICTION AND EMPIRE

241

of

technoscience,

the

genre

sets out to

imaginethe effects of

any technologythat

might

affect the

way

we live

now.

This includes not only the near-future

applications of

already operative communication/control echnologies, but

technosciencethat

might radically transform he

most basic aspects of physical

reality, such asnanotech,faster-than-light pace

travel, geneticengineering,etc.

The

only

restriction sf

writers have historically set

for themselves is that the

powers

in

conflictmust

test technology

as a

basis for

sovereignty. Sometimes he

drama is

explicit,

as

in

overt imperial science fictions. In works as various as

H.G. Wells'sThe

Warof

the

Worlds 1898), The

Day

the

EarthStoodStill

(1950), Earth vs.

the Flying Saucers (1956),

Frank

Herbert's

Dune (1965), Joe

Haldeman's The

Forever War (1974), Star Wars(1977), Orson Scott Card's

Ender's Game (1985), Bruce Sterling's Schismatrix(1985), Dan Simmons's

Hyperion 1990),

Ursula

K. Le

Guin'sHAINISHovels and ain Banks's

CULTURE

novels, antagonistic

technological regimes compete

for dominance. Whatever

their differences

may be,

however

great

the

gulfs

between them, they operate

in

the same

social-ontologicalcontinuum,

he

mostsalientqualityof which is the

ability of sentient beings

to

constructtechnological

cultures to manipulateand

extend their

power

over the worlds

in

play.

In

the

human-against-nature

arieties of sf descended from

Verne, heroic

protagonistsuse their know-how to

cope

with

problemsposed by hostile natural

phenomena.They maybe ultimatelysuccessful, as in mostcatastrophe ilms, or

they may

fall to the

superiorpower

of

the

physicaluniverse,

as in works like

Arkaday

and Boris

Strugatsky's

Far Rainbow

(1963)

and

Sakyo

Komatsu's

Japan

Sinks

(1973).

Whatever he

outcomes,

each

contest

is

a local test

case for

the

resilience

and

maturity

of

human

echnoscienceas a

species enterprise.

Even

in

stories

that take

resolutely anti-technological

stances,

and where the

technoscientific

empire

takes an

Ozymandian all,

such as

George

R.

Stewart's

Earth Abides

(1949),

the terms of

struggle

are determined

by

technoscience.

Technological culture's

incapacity against

the universe

is

the

point

of such

parables.

To

say

that sf is

a

genre

of

empire

does not mean that sf artistsseek

to

serve

the

empire.

Most serious

writers

of

sf

are

skeptical

of entrenched

power,

sometimes because

of

its

tyranny,

sometimes

because

it

hobbles

technological

innovation. This is one reason

why

some Marxist critics consider the

genre

to

be

inherently

critical, despite

the fact that careful social

analysis rarely plays

a

central role

in

sf narratives. Fredric

Jameson, by contrast,

has

argued

that sf

thematizes

(and

indeed

imitates)

the

way global

capitalismprevents

dialectical

historical awareness from

coming

to

revolutionary

consciousness. Jameson

traces the origin of sf in the West from Verne, whose works beganto appear

precisely at

the

point of transition rom

metropolitan

modernism o

imperialism

(149).

Jameson's terms are

different from the

ones under

discussion

here,

but

it

may

be

a

short

step

from his view to the one I am

proposing.

Pace Hardtand

Negri,

the

technoscientific

Empire

that makes sf

possible

has

much

in

common

with Jameson's

negative totality.

In

the

past

fifty years,

sf

has coine

to

occupy

an

importantplace

in

highly

technologized

cultures.

In more and more

areas,

modernization

wipes away pre-



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242

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FICTION STUDIES, VOLUME 30

(2003)

modem,

and

indeed

pre-postmodern,

hierarchical and

transcendentalworld-

views that obstruct

market rationality

and

technological

rationalization.

Hypercapitalismabors oreplacehemwith he multiculturaloexistence f

irresolvable,rreduceable,

nd ntractableifferences

hatmustnever

develop

intoseriouschallenges

o

imperial overeignty.

The

utopian

dealof universal

right and law is replaced

by

the

imperialpractice

of

corruption-i.e.,

the

constant iolation f

universality

n the

interest

f

power.

Empire requires

hatall relationsbe accidental.

Imperialpower

is

foundedon the

rupture

of

every

determinate

ontology. Corruption

s

simply

the

sign

of the

absence of any ontology.

In

the

ontological vacuum, corruption

becomes

necessary, objective.

Imperial sovereignty

thrives on

the

proliferating

contradictions corruption gives rise to; it is stabilized by instabilities, by its

impurities

and

admixtures;

t

is calmed

by

the

panic

and anxieties it

continually

engenders. Corruption

names the

perpetual process

of

alteration and

metamorphosis,

the anti-foundational

oundation,

the

deontological

mode of

being. (Hardt

and

Negri

202)

Empiremanages

ts

populations y bombarding

hemwith

a

multitude

f

subject ositions,

multitude

f

hailings.

Eachone

pretends

o offer he

prospect

of

unity, consummation,

he fulfillment

of

wishes, yet

each is

comfortably

corrupt.Theyreproduce

he

mperial rocess

f

establishing

overeigntyfor

he

market,for law andorder)by creatingandmanaging rises in individual

subjects.

Mark

Bould heorizes

hatmodern

antastic

iction

s

inspired y

the

need to

manage

his relentless orced divisionand mutation

f

subjectivity

through strategy

f

paranoid

elf-construction.

But hispsychicandaesthetic

quivalent

f

deserting

he

Empire as

imited

force in sf. In its

purist

orms,

sf

ultimately laces

its

trust

n

the

problem-

generating

nd

problem-solvingapacities

f

technology

nd

theontologyof

science. The more technoscientific

egemony

s

consolidated,

he more

contradictionst

seeks

out

and strives to

mediate

in

fiction. The most

characteristicmperialantastic ormsmaythenbeworld-blends,nwhich he

technoscientific

ntology

of

sf

is mixed with

other kinds. This is a well-

establishedlement f the

Japanese

f-animediom. n

many

of the

major

works

of the

genre-Neon

Genesis:

Evangelion (1996-97),

Serial

Experiments:Lain

(1998), Ghost n the Shell (1995), GalaxyExpress

1996)-non-realistic domains

of

power

or

styles

of

representation

nfiltrate

ealism, reating ybridworlds.

It is

also characteristic

f

much

French

f

(whose nfluence n

Japanese f is

considerable),

or which

scientistic

plausibility

s

secondary omparedwith

carnivalesque blending and philosophical metaphor.

Many-perhaps

most-importantworksof sf violate hestrict ulesof scientific lausibility nd

introduce

eteronomicealitiesnto heir

tories.Arguably,his

signifies hat he

power

to

manageculturaldifferences s

at least as

importanto sf as the

cultivation

f

technoscience's

mythology.

If

my hypothesiss

correct hat

he

cognitive ttractionf sf is

closely inked

to

the

imaginaryworld-modelof

Empire, many interestingprojects

may follow.

It

may help us to locate

sf's place

in the

formation f

a

larger deological

mythology

f modernizationnd

capitalist lobalization.t may

help

us to

see



14/16

SCIENCEICTIONND

EMPIRE 243

how sf mediatesbetween

the culturesof nation-states nd the imaginary

coexistence

f

infinitevariety

n unboundedrder.Itmayhelpus to see how

specificnational ultures ndergo lobalization;ndhow technologympinges

on artistic ulturenot only as

a

set of tools, but

as a modeof awareness.And

perhapsmost mportant,

t

may,by showing

us the extent o whichwe imagine

the world

in

imperial erms, begin

to

challenge

us also to

see

the

world

differently.

NOTES

1. The

one significant exception

to this

pattern

s

the

Mitteleuropa

of

Karel

Capek

and Stanislaw

Lem.

A

case

might

be made for

the

Austro-Hungarian

Empire,

the

most

northern

city

of

which

was Lem's Krakow.

2. For overviews of British sf, see Stableford,Griffiths,and Greenland.For French

sf, see Lofficier, the more

eccentric

Gouanvic, Bozzetto,

and the

special

issue of

SFS

on

sf in

France (16.3 [November 1989]).

A

serious

book-length

study

of French sf as a

whole has yet to appear

n

English.

3. For German sf, see Fischer, Fisher, and Nagl.

4.

RegardingJapanese sf,

Matthew is

uninformative; ee Napier on anime,

and

the

SFS

special issue

on

Japanese

sf

(29.3

[November

2002]).

5. On

Soviet sf,

see

Heller, Griffiths,

and

Nudelman.

6. For

a discussion of prototype-effects pplied

to

sf, see Stockwell

6-7.

7.

Critiques

of

Empire

include: Kevin

Michael,

The

Non-Dialectical Marxism of

Hardt and Negri, 7heory/PracticeNewsletter (April 2002) ;

Tom Lewis, The

Empire Strikes Out,

International Socialist Review

24

(July-August 2002) ; TimothyBrenna,

The

Empire's

New

Clothes,

Critical

Inquiry

29

(Winter 2003). 337-67;

Louis

Proyect,

Hardt-Negri's Empire':

A

Marxist

Critique

;

GopalBalakrishnan, Hardtand Negri's Empire, NewLeftReview

S

(Sept.

-

Oct. 2000)

;

and Jon

Beasley-Murray,

Lenin in

America

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